Andrew Cuomo came before the nation's mayors for the last time as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the first plenary seesion of the Conference of Mayors 69th Annual Winter Meeting. "This is a bittersweet time for me to be here. I've spent more time with the family of mayors than I have with my own family over the past eight years," Cuomo said.

Secretary Cuomo told the mayors that he had "some great, great teachers" at the Conference of Mayors such as Mayors Daley, Rendell, Jennings, Webb, Coles and Executive Director J. Thomas Cochran. "And they had a student who needed a lot of help. But, I listened and we did what we did." The Secretary thanked the mayors for what they had done for him, for HUD, and for the nation.

Secretary Cuomo then spoke of the challenges he had at HUD. He said that "the elimination of HUD was not, in fact, the elimination of a department in Washington. It was the elimination of your cabinet seat, at the table with the President of the United States." Secretary Cuomo gave credit to the mayors for working to make the cabinet "seat stronger than ever before."

Highlighting the progress of cities over the last several years: a low rate of unemployment, a 30-year low in crime, a rise in the quality of life, the Secretary noted that "the perception of cities is different."

But he questioned: "how to continue to grow and preserve the environment? How do you do that? I'll tell you how. Redevelop the cities."

The Secretary called for "making the city the educational capital of this nation" and "a federal government that is a full partner with the nation's cities." The operating rationale for this partnership is for the city to be the managing partner. "You draft the plan. We participate in yours," Secretary Cuomo said.

"What doesn't work," the Secretary said, "is the relationship where the federal government says to cities and local governments, you know better than we do, so we're going to transfer all the responsibility to you, so you can handle these problems." The problem, according to Secretary Cuomo, is that resources are not transferred along with the responsibility. The Secretary warned: "Don't go back to that rationality. We know it didn't work. We need to go forward."

Secretary Cuomo's last point was "that our agenda is not an urban agenda. It is not an agenda for the cities, to the exclusion of anyone else. When we argue for the cities, we argue for the nation, because as goes the nation's cities, goes the nation. I am convinced of this point, not just because we're a nation respective of people, not just because we're driving the economy, but because the only question left for this nation will be answered in the cities."

He asked: "does the fundamental premise of the American experiment work? Is diversity a strength or is diversity a weakness?"

He said: "that question will be answered first in the nation's cities. This is where we come together. This is where we meet. And this is where we decide that we can make it together, or we decide that we have to flee one another and separate from one another and build walls and build gates and build freeways."

Secretary Cuomo concluded his speech, saying, "you think this is success, America? You haven't seen anything yet. Because, we're going to take the success of the cities that says we forge one people, we forge one America, that we can then go and make that the governing rationale of this nation. And imagine how successful we're going to be, when we truly are one people, one America."