Washington, DC
November 14, 2003

Mayors/Business '04 Summit/New York City, November 12

Mayors and business leaders gathered in New York this week to continue discussions as we develop our '04 Metro Policy and Strategy for the '04 Presidential and Congressional campaigns and election.

This week's emphasis was the state of infrastructure in our nation. Dr. C. Michael Walton from the University of Texas led off in New York providing the mayors with the recently published report of the American Society of Civil Engineers which gives the USA infrastructure an overall D- grade.

We also heard from former Ambassador to France, Felix Rohatyn, who throughout his career has been pushing our nation to provide the social and infrastructure needs we must have in order for the USA to be competitive with other nations.

Conference President James A. Garner announced that The United States Conference of Mayors will unveil our first blueprint plan for the '04 elections at our 72nd Annual Winter Meeting in Washington January 21-23.

The significance of the New York meeting is our strong belief the business community wants to work with mayors as we go forward toward the '04 elections. We had representatives from a number of business sector leaders that are new to our joint effort. It is quite clear that more business leaders will be with us in the future.

Marc Morial, President of The National Urban League, continues to broaden his constituency of business leaders and he urged his former mayoral colleagues to continue to stay close with the business community because he said together we will make a difference in the '04 elections.

We were fortunate also to have Mr. Brian Reardon from the White House where he serves as the Special Assistant of President Bush's National Economic Council (NEC). We asked him to use the tax code to provide new incentives for businesses, large and small, to expand the development of our cities. We also asked him, representing the Bush Administration, to consider a new and expanded brownfields development initiative to help develop the thousands of vacant lots we have in our cities once they are given the approval to develop by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Chair of our Council for Investment In The New American City, continues to hammer the fact it is not the 50 states that drive our national economy. Through our metro economic studies we have established the fact that the 319 metro economies drive the national economy. The metropolitan gross product statistics prove that the metro economies of the nation in some instances, while centered by the central city, produce the metro economic production that covers portions of two states or more and does not stop at the city jurisdictional line.

Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic, fresh from a whopping re-election vote for his fifth term winning by 71 percent, expressed deep concern over the safety aspect of the infrastructure report given by Texas Professor Walton. Mayor Plusquellic centered on thousands of substandard bridges in our country that are crossed over by yellow school buses with children in them going to and from school. In addition to advocating for investing for the purpose of maintaining and developing our infrastructure, he painted a clear and serious warning to the press and all assembled that precious lives may be lost if adequate care is not given to our infrastructure.

The message from New York is if we are to keep our nation's economy strong as it gains strength with recent positive reports, we must provide smart investments within our metro areas to keep our nation's economy moving the nation back to where it was before the recent downturn. Another point is that it is not altogether a question of new money, it's not how much money the federal government spends; rather it is how it is spent and where it is spent. And working with USA business, mayors can leverage quite a bit more than one expects if mayors are provided seed money, fewer mandates, less red tape and greater tax incentives that are favorable to our cities.

We will continue to work with the business community as we take our '04 metro plan forward into the '04 Presidential sweepstakes. And we will come forth in January and mayors will take our message forward to all those running for President. President Bush and the Democratic candidates will continue to come to our cities for votes in our metropolitan areas. What we want is an understanding of what mayors believe they need today. And equally important, we want all candidates to appreciate the fact that mayors and business leaders work together night and day to keep the metro areas economically strong and thus, make our nation competitive and economically strong.

John Alexander Cochran II

I am pleased to inform all that on November 5, 2003 at 12:41 pm, John Alexander Cochran II was born weighing in at 8 lb. 10 oz. and measuring in length at 21 3/4 inches. Alexander, my youngest son and wife Teresa are doing a great job as new proud parents. The boy's name is "Jac" and he is the first baby Cochran boy born since my little brother Bob was born in 1943. So the Cochran name will go forward and if we are lucky he may go back to Athens town and become a Georgia bulldog like his father and my son Alexander, and me and my father. God Bless you Jac and welcome to our world!