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so good afternoon it's great to be here today at the Greater Boston Food Bank and representative dr. sunny agua thank you for joining us today and I especially want to thank you for all the work that you and your colleagues at Boston Medical Center did over every day but especially over the course of past hundred 20 days or so your videos by the way were sort of must-see TV for many of us in policy and in healthcare during that period the lieutenant governor Karyn Polito and secretary sutter's and secretary theory DS and I are all grateful for the opportunity that Katherine and the team gave us to tour this food bank facility and to see some of the work that's being done here to address food insecurity every single day especially during this public health emergency we're here today to share an update on our administration's work to address food insecurity and announced the opening of an application process it's a grant program that we announced last month to help address this issue in particular but first I do want to give an update on Public Health metrics with respect to Co vat19 on Monday I think as everybody knows we begin phase two of our reopening program over the past few days restaurants have opened for outdoor dining retail stores of welcome customers inside and other businesses and activities have restarted we're glad to be able to responsibly open up more parts of our economy but as everybody knows continued progress and reopening depends on our ability to keep pushing back against kovat 19 we're glad to see the public health data continues to move in the right direction a clear indication that we continue to make progress in this fight against the virus yesterday over 10,000 tests were reported and only 267 new cases were confirmed positive as of yesterday we've conducted over 660,000 tests across the Commonwealth the average positive test rate is down to 4.2 percent that's about an 86% reduction in the number of positive cases on a percentage basis since April 15th and the number of people that remain hospitalized due to kovat is down to 1386 which is down over 60% since the middle of april and obviously we hope to continue to see positive development on those trends as we move further into Phase two and beyond now with respect today's visit at the food bank food security's obviously been something the administration has been working hard to address with many of our colleagues in state government and local government and in the food business here in Massachusetts prior to the pandemic but like in so many other areas this public health emergency has heightened the concerns and the needs of many of our vulnerable families and communities we recognize that this crisis has made things more difficult for families that were food insecure and has obviously increased the need in many communities across Massachusetts there are many people and many families who have never called on places like the Greater Boston Food Bank for help before but now they really need it the increased demand underscores the importance of organizations like the Greater Boston Food Bank and so many of their peer organizations around the Commonwealth lieutenant governor and I and others have had the opportunity to visit this facilities many times and talk to the team and each time we do were all reminded about what an asset this organization is for Boston and for the Commonwealth as a whole last year the food bank distributed over sixty eight million pounds of food across a wide area that stretched from the Cape Cod border or from the New Hampshire border to Cape Cod the islands and the south coast in a minute you hear more about what's been going on here at GBF be from Kathryn D'Amato who can talk specifically about the food banks incredible work Cova 19 has affected everybody here in the Commonwealth in one way or another but some of our communities have obviously been disproportionately impacted last month we announced a 56 million dollar investment to combat urgent food insecurity for some Massachusetts families and individuals as a result of kovat 19 that funding was a recommendation of a food security task force the we put together earlier this spring the task force was established to provide more access to food assistance during kovat 19 and we're pleased to have representatives from the Greater Boston Food Bank as part of that group one of the events we announced last month was a new 36 million dollar food security infrastructure grant program to provide individuals and families with access to fresh local food today we're here to announce that the administration has opened applications for that grant program the program is open to organizations that are part of the Massachusetts local food system including production processing distribution and community food organizations in addition to those organizations school meal programming urban farms community gardens and other organizations that are involved in this effort can also apply applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis through the fall September 15 2020 the funds are part of a broader 56 million dollar investment that we announced last month as part of our work to implement the recommendations of the food security task force other investments include a five million dollar increase in the healthy incentives program to meet increased demand for local produce and to increase access points the produced snap and hip benefits three million dollars in funding for immediate relief for food banks twelve million dollars for the provision of 25 thousand family food boxes per week through the through a regional food supply system each family food box contains 30 to 35 meals and the food boxes are distributed throughout the state this work will continue through the summer as needed we'll continue to bring every resource that we can to bear here in the Commonwealth as we continue to fight kovat 19 and we'll work with the food security task force and our partners in the legislature to continue to address food security issues going forward and to ensure that every family and individual in the Commonwealth has access to food the House and Senate have been tremendous proponents on this issue for a very long time and they helped to make many of these resources available ensuring the families have the food that they need on the table will always be one of the crucial priorities that we continue to work with our colleagues on as we recover and seek to move forward in the weeks and months to come I also just want to say having walked through the facility here it's almost every organization that does almost anything has had to pivot and change in a pretty significant way the way it operates to deal with many of the constraints and the obstacles and the disruptions that have been associated with covin 19 but the work that's been done by this organization and so many other organizations who are part of this food security network to think differently about the way they both packaged and delivered product so that they could make it possible for people to continue to access the food that they needed but do so in a way that would be safe given that historically a lot of this has been done by bringing it to food pantries and then given people the ability to shop you really can't do that in a kovat 19 environment for a whole bunch of reasons so what people have done is they've created packaging that in many cases carries as much as a week's worth of vegetables and vegetables a week's worth of dry goods a week's worth of other kinds of protein and made those boxes available to people and then those boxes become the meeting the vehicle through which they actually get access to those services and in some cases they just go directly to the places where most of these folks live and have it distributed there I know it feels like we've been in this thing for a very long time but it's pretty impressive to think that a big supply chain like this which is national in many respects and certainly statewide when you get here in Massachusetts has done so many things to think differently in the course of about three months to make sure that it had the ability to both continue to provide more product in many cases as much as 50 or 60 percent more product than they distort leda livered and come up with delivery models that were actually safer from an infection control point of view than the way they've done it historically it's a real tribute honestly to everybody who's been part of this exercise and with that I want to turn it over to lieutenant governor pollito yes that definitely worth cheering for it's great to be here at the Greater Boston Food Bank to see many of the volunteers hard at work to package and deliver food to individuals and families across our Commonwealth especially during these challenging times that's very reassuring and very inspirational for all of us I also want to thank the food security insecurity task force for all of their collaboration members of the legislature everyone working together to see this grant made possible it's really a great effort I'm also pleased to announce a new initiative today to help small businesses and communities recover as we continue through the Commonwealth's reopening process even with phase 2 reopening this week we must still remain vigilant taking precautions wearing our face coverings when entering public spaces washing our hands and trying to stay least six feet away from others and the pandemic has highlighted existing mobility needs and created new ones as more people get out and about such as having sufficient spaces for people to walk and physically distance from others and be spaced apart went outside and lined queues at retail stores and as we've all come become accustomed to at our grocery stores today we're launching this new program called the shared streets and spaces emergency grant program and this was coordinated through the efforts of the team at mass dot it's a total of five million dollars and it will be available directly to municipalities this is a new grant program as I stated which will provide grants as small as five thousand dollars and as big as three hundred thousand dollars for you municipalities to quickly launch or expand improvements to sidewalks curbs streets on street parking spaces and street parking lots in support of public health safe mobility and renewed commerce in their communities this is like the restaurant in your downtown or your Main Street that you might see opening now with outdoor dining in a parking lot or in a parklet or using sidewalks these funds will be directly available for a municipality to help these businesses create more comfortable and exciting spaces in your community so that people can get out safely and enjoy they're off the offerings at their local establishments some of these projects will help calm roadways modify sidewalks or streets and repurpose on or off street parking where needed to better support curbside sidewalk and and street retail and dining other projects will create safe connections to essential destinations and workplaces including new and expanded facilities for bus transportation putting in flex posts and creating a bike lane we designed this program because we heard from a lot of municipal leaders that they both needed help but wanted to help and so to the mayors and town managers and business leaders and school superintendents and families who've all been thinking ahead this is a resource and in partnership we'll be able to help create the safer more exciting places within community to help people safely move about Master will support municipalities as they implement these projects and we also want to thank the bar foundation the bar foundation will provide free technical assistance to municipal officials help them fill out their applications and walk them through this process and help them strategize and problem-solve around how to transition these places within their communities to these new opportunities the website will be launched shortly and mascot has made this process as easy as possible a simple application with lots of resources and inspiration and a distance and the applications will be available on April on June 22nd the applications will be available on June 22nd Massachusetts can be a leader in helping our cities and towns improve their economies many of these businesses that have suffered great losses since March so this is an exciting new opportunity in partnership these streets are crucial public spaces and when you safely and well can be a key ingredient in a mindful kovat 19 recovery process as well as help to make our communities more resilient for the future as I stated mass dot is committed to acting on these applications quickly so quick launch simple process in a rolling application process so when the applications come in they will be reviewed decided upon and the funds directly given to the communities through the chapter 90 program in closing I want to thank our cities and towns our regional planning agencies our partners at the bar foundation for everything they do to make our communities safer stronger and better and with that it is my great honor to turn this over to Katherine D'Amato a real thought leader inspirational leader into you and your team and the countless number of volunteers here thank you so very much so everyone welcome to the Greater Boston Food Bank I have three things I'd like to say in a very short time one is say thank you the second is to address this surging and ongoing need and the last is to really bring home how much we need to maintain our vigilance and momentum regarding fighting food and security in our state so thank you governor Baker lieutenant Baker secretary Sutter secretary a Theotis thank you for visiting us and being here today and taking the tour and seeing the resilient and important work of the team that's downstairs that's here every single day we are grateful to our team members who are workforce essential frontline workers to sure that food gets out every single day I also want to thank our network there are over 550 agencies in 190 cities and towns and the strength of that network is something for you to understand we have less than 3% of those agencies that have closed which means they are operating they are present and that is a record in our country but it speaks to their resilience as well and their commitment to feed those in need I do want to thank Governor Baker and lieutenant governor for your leadership and identifying and putting into place this food security task force it's going to make a significant difference going forward in our state and this is just something that has been evident we've had food insecurity for a long time in our state it's not something that just popped up due to covet 19 but it has been exacerbated by kovat 19 like many things have and in such the food security task force is going to be able to address as the lieutenant governor did and the governor noted these opportunities to apply for grants to be able to build infrastructure in our state and to move things forward so we are grateful as the Greater Boston Food Bank to have a seat at that table and to be invited into these conversations because we know that the food banks across the state the nearly a thousand feeding programs across the state programs like project bread MLR I our state agency partners in M Dardis ad pH and D ta have been all phenomenal and that takes leadership from the governor and the lieutenant governor to be able to push that forward and we are deeply grateful so your team's governor lieutenant governor have been incredible they always were but this is a way that that we have seen them rise and have the conversations around food insecurity across our state the dedication and working alongside to do things in the last 90 to 120 days as the governor noted contracts have been adjusted taining USDA waivers training partner agencies on how to help with snap at reach and snap outreach and snap applications and so much more have all been here to help what is now addressed by feeding America a fifty three percent increase in food insecurity and Massachusetts now being the second highest state in the nation for increased risk of food insec
rity among children this now puts us at one in seven people will experience food insecurity and one in five is a child that is what we are facing now those are extraordinary numbers those are deeply painful numbers those are numbers that will require us to stay focused but not surprisingly it's supported by not just the national study but we're seeing a 50% increase of need at the community level GBF be used to spend about sixty thousand dollars a month on food we're now spending up to three million dollars a month on food we have record food prices and a disruption to our supply chain and nearly a 400% increase in snap applications across our state so we applaud and want to be very clear we applaud you governor Baker and lieutenant governor Pulido and your teams along side with our legislature to make a statement and dress food and security at this time and in this way it is the momentum we all need to make Massachusetts a food secure state we must remain vigilant and we pledged to work with you to we pledged to work with your teams we pledged to solve problems with you to create sustainable solutions that will allow for recovery and build back better so we can all emerge stronger together we can end hunger here and we can together make Massachusetts a food secure state so thank you for being here and I'd like to introduce secretary centers Thank You Katherine it's a pleasure to be back at the food bank where you and I are walking through New Market Square or walking walking in the halls with all the food yep nope I always feel very welcome here Thank You governor lieutenant governor and my good colleague secretary Theor IDs I want to thank the Greater Boston Food Bank for hosting us today and for all the work you're doing to keep families safe they're encoded 19 pandemic and to help Massachusetts become a food secure state the pandemic has greatly impacted many families financial stability across the state and has hit working families and our residents who've historically experienced food and security particularly hard we know there are many families in all parts of the state who are dealing with food and economic insecurity as a result of the pandemic every individual family and community should be should have access to nutritious food community-based organizations including the Greater Boston Food Bank and local pantries have also seen a significant increase in demand and you heard what Catherine said in terms of the amount that they're spending every month and getting food out we've seen increasing food benefit applications for safety net programs like snap WIC and seeing an increase in the number of applications for MassHealth which is our Medicaid program the Cova de 19 command center quickly convened the food security task force in April which is chaired by secretary of Theory's commissioner Kershaw and Jill Shaw of the Shaw Family Foundation and made up of members from public and private agencies in the legislature who brought their expertise and wisdom to the immediacy of the pandemic and to bridge opportunities into whatever our new normal will look like the for immediate actionable areas were to develop and implement an emergency food program fortified the food bank system maximize federal resources for food and nutrition and reinforce and redeploy the food system in four structure as you heard the governor say we announced the 56 million and support to start addressing these needs including the 36 million dollar infrastructure grants with secretary thea rightists will go into the five million dollars for the healthy and sentence program three million for food banks and twelve million in emergency food boxes and as we were having the tour we saw about seventeen thousand five hundred boxes they're being packed and sent out across the state and this week we took additional steps to put the funding in action as you've heard which as you will hear more about the other things we've done we established the emergency food distribution sites and school meal sites for food across the Commonwealth we implemented the pandemic EBT program to provide food to almost 500,000 youth who had usually received free or reduced price lunches we implemented the online EBT purchasing that went live on May 29th and as of yesterday there were eleven thousand two hundred and seventy six transactions totaling more than a million dollars before I hand over the podium to secretary theour IDs I want to give a shout-out to bithia Carter who's president of New England blacks and philanthropy and a member of the governor's black Advisory Council feels like forever ago but it was only probably a few weeks ago when the governor and I were meeting with the council the 56-million food security package was discussed and we were urged to use an equity lens in the development of the grants and review process bithia I contacted bithia after the meeting and she took me up on the offer to provide guidance to the infrastructure grant in our review process so I'm deeply appreciative of the insights that have been incorporated into the infrastructure grants opportunity as well as the review process going forward Thank You secretary theaters Thank You secretary Sutter's and lieutenant governor and governor and thank you to the Greater Boston Food Bank for hosting us today and to Catherine for your team's work and for the group who came together as part of the food security task force the Greater Boston Food Bank and other food banks across the Commonwealth play an extraordinary role in the emergency food safety net for families in need we thank you for your partnership during this time and also for your long-standing partnership over the years especially through the Commonwealth's Massachusetts emergency food assistance program we had a EA and the Mass Department of Agriculture have been particularly thrilled to work with the food bank through our mass grown initiative to ensure that a portion of this food assistance comes directly from our local farms and producers here in the Commonwealth increasing food security and the resiliency of our food system is critical to protecting the health of Massachusetts residents this ongoing crisis has highlighted the importance of reinforcing our local food supply chain and ensuring that the phone food grown and produced here in Massachusetts reaches all our residents especially vulnerable populations and those struggling with food insecurity thanks to the work of the food security task force led by the command center Massachusetts has released a request for responses for the new 36 million dollar food security infrastructure grant that the governor announced a moment ago the program will provide grants up to $500,000 for projects that will help ensure that individuals and families throughout the Commonwealth have access to nutrition with a special focus on food that is produced locally and advances equitable access to food not during this crisis but over the long term and something Catherine said here really rings true this is a situation where we want to build back better and really increase that resilience over the long term building on the recommendations of the food security task force we are also seeking project proposals focused on ensuring that Massachusetts farmers fishermen and other local food producers that have been hit hard during this pandemic are better connected to a strong resilient food supply chain to help mitigate future food supply and distribution disruptions throughout the pandemic our local producers have met numerous challenges in getting their food to market and the program will help to build out the infrastructure needed to strengthen those new markets and to and to connect them to food insecure communities we're also working through this program to address equity and to ensure that residents that have historically experienced food insecurity live in food deserts or environmental justice neighborhoods and lack access to local food options particularly communities of color gateway cities and low-income residents have access to fresh healthy local food the program also seeks to support minority and urban producers and minority and women-owned businesses the grants will fund investments in technology equipment increased capacity and other assistance to help producers distribute food especially to food insecure communities we have a number of different examples pulled together in the RFR and one that secretary Sutter's noted we're looking for grants to support urban farms and community garden Gardens and other resources used to grow food in urban areas I'm personally thrilled about seeing children get outside the summer and have the opportunity to grow and eat food grown with their own hands this could also cover things like food processing facilities and food collaborative 'he's a great resource for our local fishermen and aquaculture us who don't have that support to come together and to sell their product as well as equipment for sanitation remote ordering and curbside pickup the program has also been tightly linked to the healthy incentive program and we seek additional producers and vendors to expand that access this program will help give them the infrastructure they need in the form of equipment to help them accept the benefits as the governor mentioned applications will be available on a rolling basis through September 15th and we are also looking to do this in a similar way to the grant program that us mascot is rolling out very simple application rolling process and getting the money out the door as quickly and easily as possible we're grateful for our strong local industries here in the Commonwealth our farmers and fishermen and food producers and I'm looking forward to the significant investment in an infrastructure we need to continue to respond to the impacts of this pandemic while creating a system that provides greater more equitable access to nutrition and strengthens the role of local food in the Commonwealth's overall food system thank you very much questions on this [Music] well first of all part of the reason for pursuing a careful and cautious and phased approach to reopening was to be sure that we would be able to deal with hot spots or or any examples of increased positive testing along the way but we've also built into this a number of initiatives that are designed to help us deal with kovat 19 along the way the first is you know every employer has a set of statewide standards they have to abide by to reopen that are related to the best guidance from a variety of Public Health Organization's secondly most of the industry sectors that have been given permission to open have a set of industry protocols that they also need to abide by and they have to attest to those protocols in a very public way third lieutenant governor spent many many hours with our colleagues and local government to be sure that they know and understand exactly what the rules are for local businesses and employers as they go through the process of opening and and finally you know the whole point behind creating a tracing program to go alongside an enhanced testing program was so that we would be able to quickly identify people who tested positive help them isolate and support them in their isolation access their close contacts and ensure that we could do the same with their close contacts and so far that approach you know a careful phase in a lot of guidance and advisory information for employers and businesses a lot of support for cities and towns with respect to the role they have in overseeing this and an aggressive testing and an tracing program is doing the right kinds of things but we're going to be very vigilant on this stuff and we set all along that additional openings are going to be function of a continued review of the data points that are on that checklist that we distributed when the lieutenant governor released the reopening report well we've been we meet lieutenant governor and I meet every 90 days or so with the black and Latino caucus and we've been doing that for the past five years and over that period of time a whole bunch of issues have come up and have been addressed either on the administrative side through issues around data reporting and transparency associated with purchasing and hiring and and all the rest but also statutory initiatives around criminal justice reform the 80 million dollars we put out for homeownership programs and a variety of other initiatives and in fact a big part of the reform bill that we filed in January with respect to the state police came from conversations we'd had with the caucus and and this idea of creating a certification program for the law enforcement community here in Massachusetts also came out of conversations we've been having with the caucus and and we've been working with them on that for I'm gonna say at least the past six to nine months maybe and we expect an anticipate will file legislation on this shortly I can't speak so the the Y's are the were the or the house what I can say is that I am very excited about the fact that a bunch of these issues are likely to get addressed between now and the end of the session but then you won't come to the press conference when we file it so we're gonna we're gonna file it soon look I think everybody I hope everybody at this point understands that there needs to be more transparency and accountability around around law enforcement and I say that as somebody who is a big believer in and supporter and I know the Lieutenant Governor it is as well the law enforcement community they do some really important things and the vast majority of them live up to the oath that they swear but as we saw with the state police issues we had which were more administrative than than related to excessive force there needs to be checks and balances in that system the legislation we filed with respect to the State Police was designed specifically to address many of those checks and balances and I hope that legislation finds its way through the process as well but I do believe that what we're gonna file will do what I believe a lot of people want to see done which is to create a process that creates more transparency and accountability so that the law enforcement officers who are doing the right thing get the training and the and the benefit of that training and the opportunity to continue to protect and serve their communities but there's a very fundamental and explicit process to deal with those who don't so how might these people who's always thought that at the end of the day if you're a public official you should always be looking for opportunities to improve the quality of the way you operate and the way you do your work and you should be humble enough to recognize that you don't have all the answers I tend to believe that our job at the state level is to do everything we can to support our colleagues a municipal government to make sure they have the resources they need to do their job and one of the things we've been spending a fair amount of time on for the last few weeks with respect to that is talking to colleagues at the federal level and to other governor's about working to ensure that there will be a what I call a state municipal government relief bill that gets passed sometime this summer because I do believe that state governments and municipal governments are going to need the federal government's assistance if we are going to be part of the positive reopening of the economy my message to a lot of the folks in Washington has been if you want to continue to see positive movement unemployment and an economic growth you can't have cities and towns and states around the country heading in exactly the opposite direction and where our goal is going to be to do the best that we can to provide locals with the resources that they need and then they need to make decisions about what they think the best and most appropriate way to spend those are but as a general rule I'm not a big believer that just I never believe that the best way to solve any problem in government is just across the board anything and we've been pretty I think effective over the last five years in making decisions about resource allocation that are based on data and informat
on I think again when I would I would say there is our role more often than not is to provide support to our colleagues and local government with whatever the issue is and and we have a lot of resources that we can bring to bear to assist them and and we talk to them all the time and I continue to think that the best way for us to support them is to maintain an open door and to make sure that if they have issues or concerns they want us to help them with it they reach out and we'll do what we can to help yeah I do and and as I said about two weeks ago that mark Pearlstein who we brought on to write his report on on the Holyoke soldiers home that he was sort of rounding the final turn and I expect his report will be out sometime soon but I'm not gonna comment on it beyond that until that report gets out because in the end I think that's going to be a far more comprehensive representation of what took place then sort of the bits and bytes that show up along the way here yeah the emergency order was put in place to support the healthcare community which was walking into unchartered territory with respect to serving people on an issue that was a new virus for which there was very little known still in many respects there's an ongoing debate right now about what it is how it works and what we can all do about that but I think in many ways there was broad consensus on that legislation I mean the the trial bar in Massachusetts the plaintiff bar basically supported it and I think the reason people felt that was appropriate was because of the tremendous amount of unknown information associated with how to treat and how to deal with this issue what I've said all along on this is that I happen to think that part of the reason the T got into some of the difficulty both financially operationally and organizationally that it got into was because it got removed from what I think of is the accountability of the governor's office in the executive branch generally and part of the point behind creating the fiscal management Control Board which the legislature was very helpful on and chasing many of the reforms that we chased as a result of the formation of that board has been the fact that the executive branch the administration me the lieutenant governor the Secretary of Transportation owned a big piece of the accountability for what happens there and that translates into a far more transparent agency that I believe is a lot more accountable to the public in addition to that the t gets about a billion dollars a year from taxpayers through general fund sales tax money from people who never ride it and I think going forward the more accountable that the T can be and the operation and leadership of the T can be to the executive branch and by definition to the governor and lieutenant governor the better off we're all going to be there's a certain amount of public accountability and transparency that comes with that that's important so yeah I think the governor should have a role in appointing the general manager yeah well the first thing I wanna say about the National Guard is the National Guard has been mustering in Massachusetts since 1620 okay 150 years before we had a United States of America alright this is not a new entity this is an organization that's been part of the fabric of of the Commonwealth for a very long time and the so called citizen soldier who serves in the National Guard is somebody who volunteers who has another job that they do you know 9:00 to 5:00 that volunteers to do this because they want to have an opportunity to give back with respect to fighting fires delivering on all kinds of missions associated with bad weather rescue missions I mean they've been incredibly valuable to us and to the people of the Commonwealth over the course of the past five years and we called them up in March to help us deal with kovat 19 and they've been called up since March and at some point when we get passed kovat and all the other stuff that the Guard's been up to and been doing will stand them down but in the meantime they've been involved in an enormous number of missions of one kind or another over the last five years and one kind or another for the past several months and and as I said before you know most of the time all the time when we use the guard it's typically to respond to local community concerns and assistance and support there's some stuff they do that they do specifically for us they were first entity on the ground practically the morning after the lieutenant governor and I had that phone call with Alex Morse and they were hugely important in helping us stabilize and and put the pieces back together again at the Holyoke soldiers home our mobile testing program which wasn't just about the nursing homes but also took place in a lot of places we would call testing deserts around the mess around Massachusetts was driven and led by the National Guard the National Guard played a huge role in our food program in the city of Chelsea they do a lot of different really important things here in Massachusetts and and like I said they come when they're called and typically we bring them in when we have either issues that we believe we need their help on or we hear from communities that are looking for them to help them so they're going to stay active until such time as we get through the variety of emergencies especially with respect to kovat that we've been dealing with you know there are so many moving pieces associated with with our fiscal position that it's very hard to answer really big questions and I know that's a bit of a dodge and I apologize but it's true I will say that there's currently a there's a supplemental budget currently before the legislature that is all about getting reimbursed by the federal government for many of the dollars we have already spent you know the way to think about this is we've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on personal protective equipment right we basically got into that business and and those are all reimbursable under the emergency declaration that we issued in the and the President signed but I can't get federal reimbursement for that until the legislature appropriates the money that's associated with that so we then have an appropriation that we can take and then file the reimbursement with the feds to get reimbursed so there's a whole bunch of moving pieces here there's the legislation I talked about that we're gonna advocate for that hopefully will come out of the legislature in July but there's also this huge amount of federal reimbursement that's available to us that we need the legislature to act on that stuff so that we can get that federal reimbursement and don't leave that on the table the way to think about this is FEMA gets appropriated funds during an emergency right and those funds are available until they're gone now that doesn't mean you don't get reimbursed at some point down the road but if you're not one of the people who gets in line relatively early with all your incurred expenses that are federally reimbursable it may be a while before you get the money and it's very important to us with all these moving parts between us and the feds and the local communities that a lot of this stuff get buttoned up and done and it's hard to comment on something like how the big pieces of the budget are going to play out until we know more about that the other thing we don't know is we all pushed our tax filing deadline to July because of the because of the kovat pandemic and a desire on the part of the feds and the states to give people a longer lead time to actually pay taxes that would normally have been doing April so we don't really know what the actual tax revenue for the month of April which is the biggest month on the calendar and the fiscal year it's gonna look like until people actually pay their taxes in July so there's just a lot of moving parts [Music] well it certainly will change for the New York near future as these are parking spaces parking lots sidewalks that have been used for other purposes will be changed so for instance you might need jersey barriers in order to close off a street to make it a dining area and then create a pass area for accessibility purposes and for mobility purposes so there will be changes and until such time that we return to another use for those locations I can also say as part of this program the safe routes to school is a part of this as well as we prepare for folly opening to encourage communities to think about how to move children into schools and maybe more walking and parent drop-offs for walking and biking to school will be part of this as well so these are meant to be funds that are available can quickly get into the hands of municipalities transition these spaces so that we help restaurants we help retail we help the local downtown's and Main streets become active with more outdoor uses which from the public health standpoint is really encouraged so this is a innovative it's creative but it's also an exciting opportunity for municipalities Mike you know you know that it's a general rule we don't speak on legislation that's currently working its way through the process because because weird things can happen I really I really want to see the bill I want to see the bill that I'm actually going to be asked to sign okay thanks [Applause]
