perhaps supersede mrc. where do you see the mrc versus the mmc and how can they work together to leverage china's involvement in the region? >> okay. i am from vietnam but i do not represent vietnam in mrc. i am a ceo, a neutral professional ceo. i'm not, how to say, funded by vietnam in order to vietnam at the mekong river commission. talking about the lower mekong corporation, when they submit meeting in china, in march 2016,

i made an announcement and press release. after that we supported the mekong river commission. we supported. you need to know the mekong corporation has a wide area of corporation. water management or water resources is only one of the five areas they cover. so that's one thing. so to answer that -- and we would like very much, because we represent -- we are regional organization of only four countries which clues vietnam, thailand, laos and cambodia. we had china and burma and myanmar as partners. in that sense we would say that

we would like to participate in the work of lower mekong corporation. actually we volunteer to take care of all the water issues of the corporation. we also would like to -- this may be too close -- to take care of what the issues of the corporation if possible, however still located in loose or in cambodia, not to move to china. and we express that to china, we would like to do that. now, does it supersede mekong river commission? there is concern of many development partners. but i don't see that it would supersede, because it has larger

areas of interest, of the activities. the second thing is this. mekong river commission is the only organization which is treaty based. the mekong corporation is not treaty based. by the way, we have been in the business for the last 21 years. if you compare the 1995 mekong agreement with so-called 1997 united nations water courses convention, then i would say that we have longer history, longer, how do we say, time, for operation of the agreement or implementation of agreement in the region. the u.n. convention is entered into only one year ago, at the end of 2014. and even if we take that in the

mekong region, we have only vietnam ratified the convention. other countries did not ratify. even china did not vote, how to say, against it in 1997. so it says that the mekong river commission is very relevant, and by the way, if you look back at, how to say, 1995, when the agreement was signed, it was a most appropriate agreement at the time and it entered into right away. moreover, if you look at the history of the mekong river commissions for the last 21 years, it is a legendary one. take the u.n. convention. it's beautiful, it's wonderful. however, vietnam is the only country to ratify it but other countries do not ratify it, it is not effective at all.

in that way i think i answered the question that it is relevant, and the mekong corporation will not supersede the mekong river commission. >> if i can ask a followup, then we can come back to your question. where did the microphone go? let's work that way because the microphone is closest to you, then we'll get it this way. >> i'm former a consultant for the mekong river commission. i think this is more of a reflection and perhaps an unrelated question. if you don't mind, can you show your last slide? >> uh-oh. there you go. >> i'm also an engineer, by the way. i don't think you were saying there is a conflict here. in fact i think what you're saying is that a diplomat in

india has to work together to achieve the objectives that are prescribed by the minister. what i would like to say is what mrc is. they're both engineers and diplomats. the overlapping perspective of diploma diplomacy, the first is a technical objective. if you look at the logo of mrc, there is a lot of debates on the real definition of that. and so that's the first objective of mrc, to be able to come up with a sustainable development and management of the river basin. it's primarily technical. obviously there's the political management aspects of that. but the second objective of diplomacy that is not really being discussed is that mrc as a

hydrodiplom hydrodiplomat, just to keep the peace, i'm not saying that mrc, these will not be there. i think it's important to know that mrc is kind of successful in that as well. i don't have a question, i suppose. i think richard mentioned that both rivers, the mississippi river and the other river are both muddy rivers. yes, i recognize that. but i think in the mekong river -- and the mekong river, sediment is more treated as one of the life lines in that region, while correct me if i'm wrong, the mississippi river, i think sediment is more like looked at more negatively. thank you. >> we're getting better at that, the delta issues. thank you. did you want to pass the microphone this way?

does anybody have a particular response? no? >> can i say something? the other slides that i didn't show were related to this one. and the point that i wanted to make with that is that water management is more like three-dimensional chess. so you have the flat plane where the engineers and the ministers of water resources, irrigation, are working on their problem. there are another set of planes above that. and the solution to the mekong river problems lie not in the water resources sector, but they lie in the diplomatic triangle, because they can get at other issues of benefit sharing, trade agreements, water quality agreements, transboundary. all of these things can be used to leverage the things that you want to achieve in water resources management. so that's beyond our realm, right? that's beyond the engineers' realm. it's in the diplomats' realm.

i'm not sure that they're functioning at the multidimensional level as they should. >> i think that's exactly right. and it is challenging, because we're all stove piped. and these are very intersectorial types of challenges, and how can you reach decisions across those different sectors and different aspects of trade and everything else. very, very challenging. it's a big challenge, i think, that we'll face. we talked a little bit about this earlier. how do you bring technical information to the relevant policymakers or how do you empower the policy makers who are part of your conversations to be able to make the kinds of decisions they will have to make? that's going to be a real challenge. >> hi, i'm jane somers, the energy adviser at the usaid

office. my comment is on eugene's presentation. thanks for the graphics, as an engineer i like the visuals. i guess the one comment i would make is, i don't agree with you that it's an either/or of an economic development or so-called green economy. i think that if we don't develop it in an environmentally sustainable way, our economic growth, then it's much more difficult and expensive to later try to introduce green or environmentally friendly, even emergency efficiency measures into these projects after they're all constructed and built. so i would just say i think they should be done together, and in fact you can have more economic growth if you did it in a sustainable way. my question for you, dr. phan, for mrc, what do you think are

your greatest needs that agencies like usaid or other donors could assist you to strengthen your authority or your capacity organization to be as effective as possible, and ways we can assist you in achieving your goals? >> i would say i do not know very much also about usaid. so i don't know what i can ask you, because i don't know a lot. so that's one thing. however, all what i know, technically you can help us a lot. as also u.s. army corps of engineers, in the technical areas. even though -- actually i approach amfred and banko two times. we would like very much to complete so-called council study

which would assess all the impacts of the hydropowers mainstream and also add impacts in order to have it as inputs for the decisionmaking in full countries. so all that, the technical expertise from you, i think that's very important. and also all the experience that you have done in other regions would be also helpful. i think that we also have -- we also look at the geospatial, that you have cambodia office. we think that's great. however, it costs a lot of money, by the way. so i think this also, we might have also a the problem to implement, how to say, high technology in the region. but that's not the only thing.

i think also the soft skills or soft, how to say, areas, i learn from u.s., usaid that you have center of conflict resolution. you talk about stakeholder engagement. those things are very, very helpful for us. one of the things that i learned for the last week, during this trip that we witness, we listen to public hearings in the mississippi river commission, which amazingly they have done that for the last 150 years, since 1878. the number is 396 sessions of this water inspections. and one session, the last

session that they did, they have seven public hearings from the top of the river to the downstream. and we hear -- and the amazing thing is we do not know that in mekong river commission. we never do that. this is an eye opening experience. so just to give you that you have done a lot in your history, in your experience. we would like to tap into these experience and expertise. >> any software skills, very interesting. >> if i could perhaps add about the potomac river. we've also undergone an extensive evolution since 1940. some of that experience may be instructive to others as well. back in the day, as many of you

know, many water resource issues were basically considered engineering problems. build a dam, dig a ditch, build a levy. we have over the years come away from that, obviously. we're very much now in a world of integrated water resource management where we try to bring together all the various aspects of the environment and deal with them in an integrated fashion. and that means including, for instance, natural infrastructure. the role of forest and wetlands in regulating water flow or cleaning water and so on. and we at the icprb, the interstate commission on the potomac river basin, have recently recast our strategy river plan to reflect that more explicitly. i encourage you, if you have a chance, to go to our website, potomacriver.org, and look at that. likewise, we're now in the

process of starting stakeholder consultations in order to develop a basin-wide water resources plan for the entire basin involving all state coalitions. that will be a two-year process. so it's been bringing people together, not just focusing on the engineering, but those things are obviously important, but really trying to integrate all of that to find the best solutions, i just wanted to add that to the discussion. >> thank you. >> aaron, can i also raise an issue? again, a bit of a followup to jane somers' questions she raised, but also i wanted to say to eugene, you get the prize for probably the most provocative statement ever made about hydropower on any of the panels that we at the stimson center have organized on the subject.

that's not meant as an unintended -- yes. one point you made that is relevant to what jerry was talking about, when i heard all the things you say it's doing, i didn't hear any priorities either. i didn't hear any kind of strategic approach. so -- and i don't want to make a big point about that, but rather, use both those comments to raise another issue that aaron would be very familiar with, but also, if you recall, on both of our regional representatives here, and that is there's been -- these days the debate is not so polarized maybe as it was in the past, partly because of the reality that some of these dams are being built. but in fact there are rising, there are rising questions about

even the feasibility, financial feasibility and the political feasibility of the projects and political risk. and also things like -- the mekong in recent years hasn't got the amount of water in it that was assumed was going to be there for the future in terms of flows, particularly during the dry season. and even china's dams haven't regulated the river in a way that's avoided the court reporter avoided the drought and serious problems with hydrodams. there's been a lot of discussion about the so-called nexus, that is, the tradeoffs between water, energy, food security, other values of water. and i wondered if particularly those in the center of the panel

would like to comment on where this stands with the nexus, and even as you say as well, where does the nexus stand in terms of either the mrc or the friends of lower mekong, the lower mekong initiative. there's a lot of talk about these tradeoffs. but there's no mechanism so far to actually get them -- put them into play. anyone? >> nexus. >> maybe just to give my colleagues a few seconds to think, because i usually talk and not think, we do have priorities. and i think when you look at where usaid and the state department have been focusing a lot of the attention around building capacity to improve the sustainability of infrastructure investments, to improve integrated planning and the information for integrated planning and development and decisionmaking. but remember, a lot of our

investments are done on a bilateral basis, not necessarily regional. so, you know, we still have to do just to all the bilateral programming that's addressing some of the basic needs which go from access to drinking water and sanitation to improving agriculture. there are all sorts of other development outcomes in the individual countries. the nexus -- so part of my role within the mekong is i chair the environment and water working group of the lower mekong initiative. and i've been talking quite a bit about the nexus and the nexus issues. and i know that, you know, what does the nexus actually mean? i know that's a tough issue to address. and i think the way we've tried to view it is, it's really about identifying new opportunities for economic growth because of the synergies between water, food, and energy. what are the -- what's the money that we're leaving at table by

not looking holistically at these three issues collect i feel collectively when we're talking about development? the other side of the coin is the risks, and understanding the new risks that are emerging because of the interconnections between water, food, and energy, and are we doing enough to address those kinds of issues. this has become a major theme in our discussions in the lmi. at the state department we're working close with our usaid colleagues to put out a request for proposals to look at nexus programs within the mekong region, and our hope is to begin some programming that addresses some of those challenges in the coming months. i know it's an area that we're trying to advance quite a bit with our colleagues in the region. but jerry, did i do that justice? >> that's correct. the only thing i would add on, as i mentioned, we have specific tragedies for a given country. that looks at the development challenges in that country but also private donors.

it would be a broad perspective on what is the role of the u.s. government in that particular country. for example, you're talking about the nexus. we're focusing much more on food security. you're looking at the link between food and nutrition. to gene, your point about malnutrition, in the development world, it's very important to think about what's required for development in these countries. and oftentimes it's good nutrition for the first two years of a child's life, and then it's good education, and then you've got to have the private sector engaged for creating jobs, you have to have clean water. there are a lot of things that have to be done. i would say there is kind of a prioritization. but it's -- it's within a broader context. >> but let me retwist your question a little bit and propose it to dr. phan, because we know a lot of the water challenges that the mrc will be

looking at is going to be driven by the energy sector. and the energy conversations are happening in gms, they're happening in other fora. what steps are you thinking about, or are you not there yet, but how we bring some of those communities into some of these discussions within the mrc or some of the mrc concerns into other areas? there's a greater interconnectivity between the decisionmaking processes around energy, around food, and what the mrc is looking to do on water. >> well, this is very difficult for me to define. however, we have a five-year strategy plan, which covers all these hydropower, it covers also the fishery, which is the fruits of security, we talk about

securities in cambodia. and the water, we ensure the water quality, and how we facilitate -- my colleague just talked about the sediment, which i think you just said about sediments, it is treated or considered differently than in the mekong river. in the mekong river, sediment is very vital, which helps the vietnamese rice bowl in the mekong delta. in fact even with the suggestion actually from nature and heritage institute, we even suggest to china to do the segment flashing of their dams in order to, how to say, release the 50% of the sediment which is

trapped in china. so i would say yes, it's covered in our strategy plan. so in a way we are working on all these issues doctor to -- i think it's not really, how to say, expressed clearly in our strategy plan, this nexus. however, all this, how to say, the three components are embedded in the house strategy. >> first i would like to share an information about the mekong river watershed. from the bottom of the laos, to china, the current river, from

laos and china, go to the delta of mekong river. sometimes some people may see lanchang, it's the name of the upper river only. that's why in the mekong river commission, we have four countries that are a member. then we have two, china and myanmar. so that is the thing that i would like to share. and regarding the -- on the information leading to the watershed basin plan, if compared to mississippi, mississippi is in advance for us to know, to develop the basin. so you're looking at sedimentation, water quality, water use. and then and so we are looking at the flat managements and everything. we are looking at the last

information or last experience. that's why we have an mou with the mirc and mrc, so we come here to share and to learn from mirc how is the management of managed basin development in our watershed. thanks. >> microphone? >> hello. i'm a graduate student focusing on energy environment. i have a quick and simple question. so you mentioned that in laos there is plans that complement based on the agreements from mekong river commission. so is there any plans in the

rest of the three countries that has been successfully implemented, like in a concrete way? is there any plan or any construction that has been completed based on the argument? >> i'm sorry, meaning are there construction plans that one country has brought to the mrc that have been actually carried out, that the mrc -- >> that's based on the mrc argument. >> the figures and protocols within the mrc. >> that's right. >> so have there been specific dams or other activities that have been proposed by some of the countries that have worked through the pnpca procedures successfully? >> okay, let me answer that. i think that, if i understand your question correctly, that

you want to see any output from the mrc at all, right? i talk about the strategy plan, 2016-2020. it is the second five years strategy plan. we had the first five-year strategy plan which is a full 2011-2015. how to say, our assessment is that that strategy plan was largely completed. so i would say that if in, how to say in summer, you have the whole strategy plan for the five years, and if i'm not mistaken, the budget for that, for the last five years, about $100 million, $120 million? i think $120 million. now, i mean, in the broader terms that you have a strategy plan which was largely completed, so accomplished, that

could be an accomplishment, it was not under my watch, right, so i just -- but for the last 21 years of mekong river commission, you could see that we have five procedures, those are five procedures actually in the place, and the use, which is the first one, is the water quality. then the next one would be the water flow of the river, right? the next one is water utilization. then the fourth one is data exchange. actually data exchange is also very important one. and moreover, we have also the, how to say, provision of the data from china. it has been increased from 2002, they provide more data to mrc commission.

actually my previous ceo even shared with me that china shared the data with the mekong river commission more than with any other country. so than any other institution. so the last one aaron already mentioned, the procedures for notifications, prior consultation, and agreements, which has been applied twice to the sibri and dunsanon. these two applications are unique. no any way in the world which was accomplished, even though those are procedures which have been, how to say, they identify design changes or they require design changes for sibri.

and that's why, to reduce negative impacts of the dam to the environment. those are, how to say, accomplishment. i think that you work with mrc, i think that you might agree with me. so to answer a simple question, a lot of things to say. >> all yours, gene. >> you think i ran out of provocative things to say, right? and this is to the diplomats here. have there been discussions in the background that we're not aware of? what would it take to get -- what was it, the siabori dam to be left uncompleted, what incentives can you give, provide, to build other dams

upstream that would equal the capacity, more or less, the hydroelectric power capacity and the flood control capacity, of the siabori dam? what is it, cambodia that's building it? >> laos. >> what would it take for laos to say, okay, we will not build a dam but we want something more and bigger? what's on the table? >> are you asking me? >> i'm asking the diplomat, aaron. >> i'm supposed to be the moderator. [ laughter ] >> this is the way i would run negotiations. okay, so what do you want? what is it going to take? actually donald trump would be good at this. what would it take for you to forego the dam and we'll build you other dams that will be equivalent? and it seems to me that is the logical thing to do rather than -- in other words --

>> can i answer the question? >> please go ahead. >> here's the thing. the mrc, the mrc and the state department, and all of the other whole diplomatic community, basically, if you understand optimization, you plan by constraints. where i would rather that you plan by what are your objectives, okay? realign your objectives. reconfigure the whole table, the chess board, okay, and then start all over again. instead of being stuck in the same are you trut that you've b in the last 20 years. >> no question. look, you're exactly right. we do go back and ask these questions. and i don't want to pick on laos. any country in this kind of a situation. there's no question, they need emergency security. look, they're trying to meet the basic needs of their people. they need energy to meet the basic needs of their people. they need water to meet the

basic needs of their people. they need food to meet the basic needs of their people. and in some cases, you talk, one, about providing those services, but also generating foreign revenue, which can generate income to allow them to invest in those circumstances directly. laos needs to provide services for their people and generate revenue. hydropower is a way of generating revenue. this is a really complicated set of challenges when you talk about what is our capacity to influence this. and please, gentlemen, step in and correct me if i don't have this right. >> i think first of all, it's laos, it's not cambodia, right? and i have the honor to visit the site. so i find it's a very beautiful span. but i would say laos has

objective to develop economic -- i mean, to have a good economic development. actually to increase their gdp, their income, revenue. so if you have in your house, if you have these nine dams that could be built, and you could have a lot of, how to say, income right away, why don't you do that in order to reduce the poverty of your country? now you say, what would be the incentive for laos not to build a dam? simple, give them money. are you able to give them money in order for them to, how to say, to be free from the least developed countries? simple. and also there was a talk,

actually your iler, when we met in vietnam, there was a workshop in this water use of mekong river water in a sustainable way. and he say would vietnam be, how to say, willing to pay laos a certain amount of money for laos not to build a dam? simple. right? another thing that i would say, well, you can come in and build a nuclear power plant for them. and then they would have this nuclear power plant, and then maybe they will have another kind of a protest, green protest, do not build a green power plant, follow japan, follow germany, forget the nuclear power plant, the same game again, right? now, but i have looked at this -- looked at the hide roar

power in sibari. it would go into operation into 2019. and you know what? laos would use only 5% of that 1200 megawatt hydropower plant. 95% would be sold to thailand. thailand is the biggest investor, right? so -- but however, i would say that i would like to say i love this forum, your american fellow. laos has an excellent degree on the green energy. and i think it's -- even they, how to say, advocate use or purchase or sale of energy when

should be green. that is very good, i think it's very progressive advance in the region. by saying that, i think that thailand should buy only green energy from laos and laos should build only green, how to say, green dams. so just i think i wrestled some with your question. >> another question, before gene things of something else. >> thank you. i think i completely changed my question after that conversation. so i'm from the u.s. department of energy, office of international affairs. i cover southeast asia, including laos. my question is for everyone on the panel. in your respective positions and

with your organizations, in what way are you incorporating climate change and the anticipated change in long term rainfall, either increase or decreasing changes, into your -- into the planning and development of your systems and into a long term portfolio? >> i can do it first. we're doing it several ways. there's a requirement, executive order, all international u.s. government activities must look at climb change impacts as part of their design. so we do it at the country level strategy. and the second point, we design a given project, a specific project. there is going to be a mandatory analysis, just like we have for gender issues, there's going to be a climate change analysis that looks at a given project, a health project, an agriculture project. they'll be looking at climate change impacts and how we address it and mitigate it.

[ inaudible question ] for example, we're looking at more impacts in the health where there's going to be more demand for health systems, okay, because of the impact of climate change. in agriculture, you're seeing, well, what are we going to be doing about the drought, long periods? well, you're going to have a drought resistant seeds, drought irrigation, change your cropping. each particular project, you have to look at it and say, what is it trying to accomplish, what kind of impact do you expect, it could be floods, it could be droughts. each example will have to give a country-specific example. it's a required mandatory analysis. i would like to think usaid will be learning while we do this, learn and adapt, and be transparent about what worked and didn't work. we are putting all evaluations online, here is what usaid did, some worked, some didn't work, and being transparent about it.

>> how are you guys looking at climate impacts and those types of issues? >> climate is extremely important for us. a lot of our work at the potomac river basin commission has to do with longer term forecasting, demand and supply for the washington, dc metropolitan area. we're very much aware of the modelling that's taken place in terms of predictive variability in precipitation. it seems that the basin as a whole is sort of in an intermediary. some areas will get more water, some will get less. overall, the amount of water may be roughly the same for the next several decades. but there is concern about the intermittency and the variability in that supply. we for instance issued last year a report looking at the water supply for the area over the next 25 years. we are relatively confident that

we can survive most kinds of incidents of drought that have occurred in the past. as we get further along in the future, we do get concerned about what the possibilities are. so we're definitely sort of factoring that into all of our activities. and it's an issue for us. >> gene, put your engineer hat on, not your philospher what. you did some of this in the great lakes. can we actually look at some of these long term -- >> we -- >> can we assess them with some sort of -- >> no. we assessed it. so from the mekong river basin report, so here are six scenarios that the mekong river commission used. and you can see, as an engineer, how do i design, what are the engineering design standards for a system that varies plus 40% to minus 40%? we found the same thing in the

great lakes, except we used 23 gcms and 360 scenarios. so the cloud of dots encompassed plus or minus 10 degrees celsius, plus or minus 100% variability in lake levels. how do you get out of that morass? unless you use engineering judgment, which is what i'm here for. there is no way to plan for this. on top of which, and i didn't bring the slide because i didn't want to bore you, there's a 10,000-year record of monsoons in vietnam, in caves. they have stalactites, stalagmites. you can see over the last 10,000 years, the monsoon intensity has decreased significantly since 10,000 years ago, to a point where the khmer civilization disappeared because they had

40-year droughts, no monsoons. now it's rebounding. 10,000 yours ago the temperature was 2 degrees celsius higher. the other paleologic evidence, you better be preparing for more frequent floods, more intense monso monsoons, more flooding than there has been in the recent case. >> good question. tough answer. any thoughts? >> i think right now vietnamese are concerned that they are getting less water and less. so if monsoon is more, it would be very wonderful for the vietnamese. >> monsoons and typhoons, remember. you're getting hit from both sides. >> to answer your question, what we do, i think that in mekong

river commission we have, if i'm not mistaken, about five transboundary projects which are model projects in order to find measures against climate change. so with those, how to say, projects, if the projects seem to be, how to say, successful, identify good measures that would be multiplied or copied to other regions, that's going on right now. we have, in fact, before this military reform in the mekong river commission by july, we have a big program actually funded by european union with the name climate change adaptation initiative. so right now there's a program

that has been even, how to say, that's expanded, will be standing for the next 12 years, 12 months. however, because of this reduction to become a leaner organization for the mrc, we use a lot of stuff. a year ago we have about 200 people. now we are -- we have only 66 positio positions. then also it will affect, how to say, the program. i mean, we don't have enough people to move in it. but that's what we have to do. >> let's ask that question directly. as the moderator, you just came and told us, look, you have 650 different models. how much did all this cost? >> because we had plenty of money, we spent about $2 million just on the climate change impact naturalizatioanalysis.

>> so just doing the analysis, they've got real needs. are we taking money away from delivering services on the ground to invest in analyses and research that really might not get us much further down a sound development pathway? in other words, i've got a person who is making a decision about, look, i need all the research i can to provide these basic needs for the people i've got here. this climate analysis sounds like spending a lot of money on things that aren't going to get me answers. >> cloud of dots. >> is this an existential issue or a real practical issue that we're going to be working with in terms of balancing our investments and where we put other money in the future? >> i think for usaid, it's a reasonable balance. you're asking questions. you're not going to invest a large amount of money without looking at the research,

science-based evidence, and making a judgment. looking as you go along. we don't have all the answers. >> if you want to build a hydropower dam, you want to -- >> if you wanted to build a dam, then you can't answer these questions. you're building a piece of infrastructure that's going to be in the river for 200 to 500 years, right? we don't understand the hydroelectric environment beyond 30; is that fair? there's a real challenge between those two issues to begin with. and we talked about this at lunch. if you can build a dam and take it out in 50 years, that would be the ideal situation, because it may not be appropriate at that point. we may not need them at that point. but they still represent one of the most important ways of meetings some of these basic needs now. this is a real challenge. >> you don't want to create a potential disaster that's greater than the original flood itself.

right? >> i was just speaking, if you are another country looking to invest in infrastructure in let's say laos, and you're looking to profit over a 25-year concession, you're going based on historical data. you're not required to do a climate change analysis. are you making the best investment decision? you can generate less in times of drought, but you can never generate more than your mass capacity in times of flood. so either you're pispilling you money or you're not getting the money you anticipated. >> we have a great deal of concerns about how these things are being financed and the way that third-party funding is now playing a much larger role in the development of large information than the traditional financial institutions.

in some of this -- you're right. it's a 25, 30-year concession. what happens in years 50 might not be as important to them, and they might not want to make investments up front to address those 50 or 100 concessions. there is a large capacity building element in that. one of the areas we have worked is to build their capacity to be able to look at these types of arrangements and understand what types of things they should be requiring in these kinds of deals. and that's going to be more important. the buyer is going -- we're going to have make the buyer more capable of being aware. sorry. it's buyer beware, but we want to build our capacity so they can enter into arrangements to protect their own interests because they want something that's going to be delivering in year 50. they want something that's not going to create a bigger problem than they've got. we need to work with those countries to build their

capacity to enter those agreements because that's the wave of the future. it's a tough world out there. >> let me clarify. two aspects of dam design. one is you want to maximize your output and maximize your benefits, but you also want to make sure that the design is safe, that the dam doesn't collapse, that it passes the maximum probable flood. and it's the maximum probable flood that i can't figure out from these gcms. okay? i could do everything else. give me -- we could do all of the other stuff, but this is the part that's really important that people tend to overlook. >> sorry. i'm looking because henry you had your hand up. i want to make sure nobody else -- rich, how much time did you want to close up? >> we can run out of questions,

if we do. otherwise four is our count. thanks. i'm not discouraging you guys. i'm just saying we'll cut off at 4:00. >> thank you again. so the mekong river basin development plan and subsequent versions of it in the future are based on the good understanding of the negative and positive impacts of development in conjunction of climate change, so i think the answer is yes. the investment of climate change in general is well worth it. in fact, i think there is still a climate change study to actively identify -- they run a lot of climate change scenarios, gcm models, and a number of down

scaling techniques, and they have come up with nine climate change scenarios that basically, you know, paint the probable extent of the change in climate in the future. i think in the mekong river basin understanding the impacts is based on running these scenarios, okay? and i think the scenarios have to be plausible scenarios. so i'm going back to the hydropowered dams. in the council study, which is still under going, we consider scenarios that are possible. what is meant is that hydro-powered dams are going to be there. i think the discussion has to really focus on minimizing the negative impacts, maximizing the positive impacts of the developments, taking advantage of the opportunity that is the climate change presents, and taking account some of the risk.

i will cite two examples, for example. the hydro-powered dams in laos and china, i think they are kind of designed to maximize power. but obviously through negotiations, consultations, discussions among the four-member countries as well as the dialogue partners there might be room for more joint operation perhaps for the benefit of flood control or dry season irrigation or counteracting the impact of sea level rise. maybe the joint operation, the multiobjective operation of those will supersede the operation for maximum power. so i'm hopeful that's going to happen, and i think that's going to happen. the real conflict i think in the mekong basin is hydropower versus fish. the rest of the impacts, i

think, can be mitigated to some extent. but fish and dams, they don't mix. i think 1/3 of the fish species in the mekong river basin are those called long distance migrators. they migrate all the way to china, and those will be impacted because of the barrier impact of the dams both upstream and downstream. and the solution has to actually look at who is really impacted of those, and that's basically the 60% poor people in the basin. the basin, i think, is about 60 million that are relying on consistent fishing. solutions has to involve moving these people from subsidized farming to something else to other sectors. that's not necessarily water.

that's not necessarily energy, but other sectors as well. if i'm a subsidized fishermen, i would probably hate myself for fishing every day. i would rather be working in an office, for example. that is just me. and be able to provide better to my family. if we can provide an option to the fishermen maybe through the host countries and the other countries as well, maybe through the development partners, i think that would be a big step toward actually coming up with a political and management solution to this fish versus dam conflict. >> thank you. >> fish here in the u.s. from the agriculture [ inaudible ]. >> thank you, henry. that's a very good way to, i

think, bring this back to a more philosophical aspect as well. we at stimson -- we agree with most experts, environmental scientific experts, et cetera, that mainstream dams of 68, 70 meters high are not a really good thing in terms of so many are still dependent on fish for their livelihoods and survival, but at the same time we try to be practical about this so that la laos, because they have an interest in this, but there's also the issue should laos profit at the expense of downstream countries. there has been strategic environmental study for the

mekong river commission and there was a portland university study which showed the huge disparity between new benefits and solutions. the benefits to laos are much smaller than the impact, negative impact, downstream on other countries, so that's not the say -- we're not saying laos shouldn't build a dam. we're saying it takes it back to what are the tradeoffs, how many dams, which ones, what type sort of thing approach to the issue. my colleague -- weatherby, who was responsible for putting this program together, but our other colleague who is on holiday right now, we've come to the conclusion it's not going to be persuasion which is save the fish or save the environment.

it's about money, and it's about economic development and the profits that come from it. and we don't believe in perpetual poverty either as an answer to these things, but the main point i would make is simply that it's mainly the money that's going to be the driver. the reality, the narrative, we're developing for the future of these mainstream dams is that the clinical and financial risks are rising, and these are all concessions. these are all either private companies or state-owned companies, state-owned banks, et cetera that are investing in these projects. china may do some investment other than economic purposes, but still even their companies, they want to make money. they don't want to lose money in projects.

there is a real question now whether these are money making projects over the longer. that's sort of what we were looking at. what are the cost and benefits? you can say the same about the climate change here and the political debate argument about it. at the end of the day, it's not going to be the politicians. it's going to be the insurance companies who are going to decide how we respond to rising sea level for instance. so this has been a wonderful discussion, i think, particularly to get all of these different perspectives on this issue, and it is extremely complex issue. stimson, we don't say we have all the answers at all, but we do think this issue of trying to better evaluate the tradeoffs is very important, but also sharing the water and the energy is very important. but also looking at where the money's coming from.

it's not coming from laos or cambodia or vietnam. it's coming from developers and banks that finance them. very various reasons, these projects don't look so great now as they did when the first mous were assigned. that also means it is incumbent on the donor community in particular to try to help a country like laos or cambodia or vietnam to find other ways to get to where they want to go in terms of economic growth and development. so i want to thank everyone very, very much. again, it's particularly a pleasure and honor to have a ceo here from the mekong river commission, because it is really a big deal that the first time

the ceo is from the region. it was once thought that would be very hard to do because who would decide who is going to get it. somehow you emerged out of the private sector which is an interesting way to -- path that maybe hadn't been thought so much about in the past. the mekong river commission has a lot of laws, a lot of problems, but it's the only game in town. there will never be another treaty like the 1995 mekong treaty. if we let that fall into disuse or disrepair or ineffectiveness, then who knows what is going to happen. in a region with decades of warfare and struggle and political problems and still political hard feelings among different countries. so i want to thank you you

again, everyone, and the audience. it's great to get an audience where we have both the domestic u.s. and the international and the environmental perspectives represented. again, thank you, courtney, for your work in pulling this together and for all of the -- [ applause ] and for all of you on the panel and people who support your work for being so forthcoming in joining our program. thank you very much. [ applause ] for campaign 2016, c-span continues on the road to the white house. >> we're going to get things done, big things. that's who we are as americans. >> we will have one great american future. our potential is unlimited.

>> ahead, live coverage of the presidential and vice presidential debates on c-span. the c-span radio app, and c-span.org. monday september 26th is the first presidential debate live from hofstra university in hempstead, new york. then thursday governor mike pence and senator tim kaine debate at longwood university in farmville, virginia. sunday on october 9th, washington university in st. louis hosts the second presidential debate leading up to the third and final debate between hillary clinton and donald trump taking place at the university of nevada las vegas on october 19th. live coverage on the presidential and vice presidential debates on c-span. the c-span radio app makes it easy to continue to follow

the 2016 election wherever you are. it's free to download from the apple app store or google play. get audio coverage and up to the minute schedule information for c-span radio and c-span television plus podcast times for our popular public affairs, book, and history programs. stay up to date on all the election coverage. c-span's radio app means you always have c-span on the go. local government officials and public safety experts on the cost related to improving community policing. this is hosted by the nonprofit research organization cna. it's about two hours.

>> hello. >> so it's probably a timely thing for me to say this is actually being broadcast live on c-span. maybe you didn't know that. we're very pleased about that. i need to say two things and then i'll introduce this panel. number one, there is a reception after this session this afternoon. we encourage all of you to join us and continue the conversation, and you will receive, if you don't have in

your packets, a feedback form. we are very interested in your thoughts and suggestions about how we do when we do these sessions. we're now about to hear primarily from what people on the other side of the street have to say about this whole reform issue. several of our city management representatives on the panel have law enforcement backgrounds, but we're going to start out with rebecca neusteter. she was the director of research and policy and planning for the new york city police department. if you look through her bio, you'll see she has a number of

other research credentials in her background and actually some local government work through the new york city office of management and budget. i have had the pleasure to work with her on a couple of projects with the city police department and have always found her to be very helpful. bear with me, rebecca. next to her is sly james, mayor of kransas city, and we're very pleased to have him here. it is great to have somebody from the same city on the other side of the street. mayor james was elected to his position in 2011. his focus and his passion for the work that he does has to do with education, employment, efficiency, and enforcement. i had a very interesting conversation with him in kansas city recently where he

presented. he is very passionate about this work. following sly is going to be theron bowman. we know him as t. he rose up through the ranks as a police officer in arlington, texas, is now deputy city manager in arlington, texas, over neighborhood services and director of public safety. t. is actually involved in several of our projects here at cna, and he is a valued and respected colleague. again, he brings a wonderful perspective of city management from his experience as a police officer and a police chief. and then we have my new friend leonard matarese who is the director of research and project development at the center for public safety. the thing i like most about him is when i was an undergraduate at rutgers university in sociology, he was an

undergraduate in political science at the same campus, so we went to school together a long time ago. he has been very helpful to us through his role as a chief consultant, chief adviser, on issues of public safety and policing and law enforcement. he and i had been talking. through our conversations actually, i think the idea for this session bubbled up. i'm very glad to have him. now let's turn it over to rebecca to start us off, please. >> thank you so much for that introduction, chip. i'm delighted to be here with my esteemed panelists and i'm really happy to be here with the audience as well. as the other panelists and our opening key speaker mentioned, there's really a crisis in policing today. i think rod described it just as

perfectly as anybody could that it's a crisis in confidence. in the 1990s, we had another type of crisis in policing, a crisis that involved violence and disorder in our communities. thankfully we've moved beyond that. at least a bit in our u.s. cities, but the police and the community are at an all-time sort of odds and the confidence is really very lacking in both directions. we talk a lot about how the confidence of community members and police was lacking, but i think it's also important to note that police officers are not very confident in the communities that they're serving either and that they're scared every single day that they go to work. many of the problems that we see today have to deal with fears of trust, anxiety, and just overall fear for safety and well-being. we also know now that no community is immune to the problems that we've seen.

it's happening all around us. i'm from new york city. we think about our community based organizations and the police have a very long history of working with our communities, but we've had the same problems and many similar circumstances to what we have seen in ferguson as well as all across the country. so it's clear that we need reform, but what kind of reform and how do we reform? this panel is designed to discuss the costs and benefits. so i want to focus a little bit on the sort of research aspect of this work. in the cost and benefits at this moment in time are more profound than they have been at any point in my lifetime anyway, so we must think about and discuss the status quo in a really empirical and thoughtful way as possible. our anecdotes and our feelings are important, but we need to be able to measure and quantify what the values are on the

reform side as well. in the next few minutes, i'll describe an approach to police reform. since i don't have much time, i'll talk quickly. i'm a new yorker. i apologize if i talk too quickly, but i'll be conscious of the time. but i also just want to note before i begin that vera works with units of local government and community leaders all across the country. so if anything i say today resonates with you, please feel free to reach out to me. we'd love to figure out ways to explore collaborations with other units of government that we've not worked with in the past. so i think i have a powerpoint. there we go. today i'll briefly provide an overview of the vera institute of justice as well as a description of our historical work on police reform and our emerging strategy to develop models that will benefit law enforcement as well as the communities that they serve. at vera, we work with others who

share our vision to tackle the most pressing injustices of our day from the causes and consequences of mass incarceration, racial disparities, and the loss of public trust in the law enforcement to the unmet needs of the vulnerable, marginalized, and those harmed by crime and violence. we have to think about the criminal justice system in the context of a really changing and dynamic society. in less than three decades, it's projected that there's going to be a minority majority in this country. so thinking about language access and due process is really important as the climate and the environment of our country is changing rapidly. vera's centers and programs bring together staff with different methodology.

we wo we bring together researchers, technical assistants experts, and providers of direct service in a way that amplifies our experti expertise. our capacity to manage programs -- our cost-benefit knowledge bank was initially funded by the bureau of justice assistance. it seeks to inform about the budget impacts and provide tools that help to incorporate cost-benefit analysis into their policy development. we developed this bank in response to a growing need to cost-benefit analysis capacity

in the criminal justice field. v v ver -- a little bit of history on the vera institute of justice. vera began during criminal justice research over 55 years ago. the way the organization works is that we identify an area within the criminal justice in which we feel like there's a needed reform. we develop a sort of policy lever or set of solutions in order to address that problem, then we rigorously test that solution in a pilot. often what we call demonstration projects. it will include impact analysis. it will include qualitative

interviews with communities. the manhattan bail project was a ground breaking reform. it was so revolutionary and effective in its benefits it was not only taken to scale in new york city and now continues to serve as new york city's pretrial services agency, but it also continues to serve as best practices for pretrial and bail decision making all across the world. building off this success, vera began its first project in the policing field. in 1964, vera began working with police official and the project was called the manhattan summons project. the idea was that police officers would use an actuary tool to determine on the spot who is likely to fail to appear for arraignment and then dedicate their resources to putting into custody those

individuals. individuals who were likely to show up for arraignment would instead be issued a summons and not be escorted by a patrol officer throughout the entire arraignment process. this was a huge cost saver for new york city, and it was soon expanded across the city and has also served as a national model for the issue wans of summons across the country. while vera's policing projects span a broud range of issues, they fall into five categories. police management practices. an example is we worked with the nypd to develop the first ever electronic crime mapping system in the 1990s, which was used for

the nypd to launch comstat. some of vera's early work designed comstat from inception. police oversight. in 2001, the vera institute developed the police resource center, which serves as a center to serve monitors to spur innovation. we focus on police community relations. in the 1980s, we worked with the nypd and then subsequently other police departments in order to develop models that served sort of as the backbone for community policing nationwide. finally policing in democratic societies worldwide. more recently, our work has focused on building police immigrant relations,

particularly post-september 11th. this was in response to the police and community concerns and the desire to improve registrati relations between law enforcement and new immigrants. in 2003, we focused forums designed to create regular channels of communication between police departments and unrepresented immigrant groups. we have also published a series of guide books on best practices for policing in immigrant communities and otherwise diverse communities including engaging police and uniting communities post-9/11. most recently, we released a series of publications written for and by police officers to guide building trust in a diverse nation. copies of these publications, you can find them in the back of this room. for those of you who are participating remotely, you can access the reports on vera's website. recently with an eye towards emerging issues in the field and

the president's 21st century task force, we have dedicated institutional resources to help scale up our policing work with a renewed focus on incubating and testi ining models for developing police reform. this is something that was discussed quite a bit in the prior panel. enabling police to be effective problem solvers. policing has always been a complex profession. never has this profession been at the center of political and social debates as it is now. we're asking police officers to solve all of our social problems. yet we don't understand whether or not that's an appropriate role for police officers to play. we need to have an honest conversation that is empirically guided through research and a very frank understanding of the resources that we have available to us within our localities to figure out which problems police can most successfully solve and

what falls outside of this. we're working to promote internal and external accountability. there are a number of 21st century task force recommendations that address the need to infuse community policing practices throughout police culture and operations, including by tracking and measuring changes in public trust of police over time, engaging community members in identifying problems and managing public safety, and collaborating with community members to design crime reduction strategies. additionally, action items include evaluating officers on community policing efforts as part of the performance evaluation process. my primary assignment while i worked with the police department was to help them redesign the police officer performance process. while there are a number of sort of best standards and sort of a guide post to help departments

figure out how to measure the performance of officers, it is so easy to establish a quota even without a quota. you have benchmarks. it makes it sort of easy and straightforward. you can't blame police departments for setting their standards in a way that you're asking officers to come up with numerical process for their efforts. write this number of tickets, stop this many cars. there's no sort of qualitative component of that. as a field, i think we need to spend a lot of time thinking about how we measure quality. quantity is easy, but measuring quality and defining quality is a much more difficult thing to do. ensuring access for disengaged and vulnerable and emerging

communities is the final area that we're focusing on. and the recommendations issued by the 21st task force include guidance on how law enforcement should engage vulnerable populations, including youth, people with physical and mental disabilities, people with limited english proficiency, the deaf and hard of hearing populations, the lgbtq populations, as well as others. like i mentioned before, with a focus on redesigning how officers performance evaluations are evaluated, ensuring equal access to urban and suburban areas, and determining the role of policing in the 21st century and right sizing their impact. our current efforts are managed

by a small team, including susan shaw, who is the director of programs and strategy at vera, myself, the director of policing, a retired chief who is serving as vera's senior adviser of policing, and our senior research associate. we'd love to learn more about the interests and the opportunities in the field that you all are pursuing, so please contact me at any point if you have ideas that you'd like to explore in regards to cost-benefit analysis or other types of research. and please feel free to ask any questions of me later on. we'd love to learn more about what you're doing in your work with local jurisdictions. thanks so much. speaking of local jurisdictions, here's the man. >> that would be me. thanks for having me. i'm very honored to be here to appear with major mchale.

i'm an old trial lawyer. as i sat and listened to him talk, i had this flashback to "my cousin vinny" in the opening statement. i just wanted to stand up and yell everything that guy just said is bull -- but i didn't because i like joe way too much. i also want to give a shout-out to a police chief. when i was elected and by virtue of being elected being a member of the board of police commissioners, the first real duty that we had within the first few months was to select a new police chief. and we laboriously went through the process, did a national search even though there were -- you know, it's really funny. you talk about distrust and you talk about the issues, but i'm going to -- you're going to find i'm going to be kind of real. when we did that and we were

looking at several candidates, the african-american community was upset with us because they thought the only time we had done a national search is when we had a viable african-american candidate. now that was obviously not true and we were able to say that, but it does go to show some of the depth and the level of distrust that exists between the civilian community and the police department. i am not going to be as informed by research as rebecca. i am not going to be as informed on matters of police policy as people who have been chiefs of police. my sole contact with actually doing police work was four years as a military policeman in the marine corps during the vietnam era, which i assure you was a different type of policing. i come from kansas city. it's a broad and beautiful city.

more boulevards than paris. more fountains than rome. some of the nicest people you'd ever want to meet, but totally racially divided and deliberately done so by the person who developed the plaza in kansas city. when it was a big economic center with where the folks had money lived and shopped, and as they began to migrate further south into the city in order to keep the jews and african-americans and other undesirables from moving with them, real estate covenants were put in to real estate deeds of trust, et cetera, that forbid selling to them. truce became that line on the east of which african-americans and jews lived and on the west side of which white folks lived. that line is still there.

and although we are doing a lot to obliterate the physical line, the emotional and psychological line still exists. if you can imagine a city that deliberately lly divided itsel along racial and religious lines and if you can imagine who controlled the power structure, including police, then you can understand how things have grown up in kansas city over a period of time. i'm happy to report, however, that they're significantly better than they used to be. kansas city is 318 square miles. i give you this information because we're going to talk about costs. then we have to talk about costs in the context of a city budget. it's 318 square miles. if you want a little bit of an understanding as to what that means, san francisco would fit into kansas city eight times. it has a population of 470,000, which is a density of about 1460 people per square mile.

when you do that, what you really need to be thinking is every person is a dollar of taxes or every person is a dollar for infrastructure. now compare that of course to san francisco which is a much smaller city, about 40 square miles. it has a density of 17,000 per square mile and 820,000 people or new york city, 27,000 per square mile or manhattan 22 square miles, 69,000 people per square mile. when you look at that and you understand the connection between density, population, dollars for taxes, et cetera without factoring in the various levels of tax schemes whether it is more property taxes related, you understand the constraints that we have. now, the reason i bring that up is because of the divided city situation. it has created and exacerbated

some of those underlying factors -- poverty, lack of access to quality educational institutions over the long term, et cetera, and created an area of town that is undereducated, free and reduced lunch at 95% or so, underemployed, incomplete homes. i won't say broken because there's not a particular party there doesn't mean the family is broken, but it is an incomplete home in that all the normal parts may not be present. and high crime. most of our violent crime sits in an area of 18 square miles, joe, or 13? 13 square miles in the city. and if you overlay poverty, information, educational information, it is pretty easy to see why it is in that 13 square miles.

that's where all of these factors have come home to roost and they've been present for a long, long time. all right. so getting to the issue of cost, our budget in the city is about 1.2, 1.25 billion. that's divided into three basic parts. on the one hand, we have enterprise areas. one of the enterprise areas is the airport. federal money, it goes in. it stays in. it doesn't come out. we can't use it to do streets, roads, bridges, or schools. the water department. it goes in. they generate their own funds. they use their own funds to regenerate the infrastructure. when we put in the streetcar, it would be good if the water mains did not blow up the day after we did that, so we replaced the water infrastructure at the same time. and in the process of doing so, we were pulling mains out of the

ground that were stamped 1878, 1872. when we did the power and light district immediately adjacent, there were some civil war wooden sewers that we pulled up. yada yada yada. that's not uncommon in large american cities to have that kind of infrastructure. it's kind of like we treat our houses. you want to sell the house. slap some paint on that puppy. put a new roof on there. hang some shingles up there and hope like heck they don't check the pipes. we've done that in cities a long time, deferred maintenance. the airport is locked in. the water department is locked in, which leaves the part that we get to play with. we have taxes, sales taxes, by the bunch. but sales taxes are always earmarked. we have a sales tax for the zoo.

we have a sales tax for fire safety. we have a sales tax for capital improvements. we have sales taxes, but every one of those sales taxes goes to a specific thing. and the only one that goes really to the city -- and it's not a sales tax. it's an income tax -- is the earnings tax. it is 1% of the profits of the people who live and work in the city. it's very important. it's under attack by the legislature. if i had those three extra sets of handcuffs that guy said he had, i would be dragging some legislators around with me. but this is actually being televised. my name is joe mchale. but at any rate, so of that $540

million general fund, 72% is allocated to fire, police, and ambulance. the rest is used for streets, curbs, sidewalks, yada yada yada, anything else. and it's beginning to be an issue. it's beginning to be an issue as we do our five-year projections the percentage keeps going up and up and up and up. as it goes further and further up, the pressure on us to do the things that the public wants to do, which are streets, roads, particularly sidewalks and curbs, is becoming greater and greater. and we have less and less money to do it. so we're going to try to do an $800 million go bond initiative in april to take the pressure and address those problems. that does not relief the pressure on the budget providing police services. should we provide police services? absolutely. definitely should.

definitely should provide them as effectively as we possibly can because our ridiculously high homicide rate is unacceptable. our high assault with deadly weapon rate is unacceptable. i guess from a relative layperson position my question is, do you solve that problem by more police officers or do you solve it in other ways? and i'm not sure i have the answer, but the one thing i do know is that as we're talking about reform, as we're talking about new methods of training, new modalities of training, new things that need to be done and the costs associated with those, i'm wondering how that is going to happen from a city standpoint because 90% of the police department's budget is spent on personnel. 90% is on personnel. the other 10%, uniforms, cars, other stuff they need, where is the money going to actually come from?

now, i believe that i have this attitude if it's going to solve our problem and it costs us a little more, let's find a way to do it. i guess what i'm wondering is somebody can show me having paint and a little more is going to solve the problem. there have been times when the police department's ranks have been higher than they are now and the homicide rate has been higher than it is now. so i'm not sure i see the direct causal link and correlation between number of police on the street and number of homicides or the reduction in the number of homicides. that's problematic for somebody who works eight, nine months of the year on budget with the city manager. because as you're trying to figure out how to pay for everything, one of the things that we always have to do is we have to look at what are the --

what's the data on success, what's the data on return on investment. now, if we didn't believe there was significant return on investment, police, fire, and ambulance, then it wouldn't be 72% of our general budget, but at some point it has to level off. it's creeping up. in the five years since i've been in office, it's gone from 69% to 72%, so it's been a rise. every year there's more, but every year when we get the budget from the police department they tell us that we're underfunding them. now here's a real twist. it's an anomaly that exists in kansas city and in the state of missouri that i would doubt exists any place else in the country and that is until recently kansas city and st. louis did not control their police departments. they're not our police departments. state operates the police

department or at least the statutes do. state doesn't actually do anything. the governor appoints a board of police commissioners, some of whom he might actually even know, and the board of police commissioners is supposed to govern the police department, but the board of police commissioners is selected on based on whether they're republican or democrat so that we have a balance, whether they're north of the river, south of the river, or east or west so that we have a balance, and every one of them is a good person but not necessarily coming from a place of knowledge about how to do policing work. none of us walked in there with any background in policing. we learned on the job. we went through the learning curve. and that's good. that's cool. the good news is that when we selected daryl forte, we selected a great partner to work with, and we've worked very well together.

and we were very conscious of what we were looking for. we wanted someone who would change the direction of the police department as it existed. believe me. from my perspective, it needed to be changed because of the fact that the police department was not responsible to the political structure of the city. they were really not accountable to anybody, and they kind of grew up a little arrogant. in the process of doing that, they became very distrustful of the city, so they thought we were incompetent. we thought they were arrogant. now we talk about things and solve problems by working together a lot more than we used to. that's a good thing. joe, you know how i love you, man, but i always keep it real and that's the way it is. our police department for the most part is extremely well trained, highly qualified, and highly competent. they do things in a way that i'm proud of them for doing.

when we had our marches and protests, our protesters marched down the street with police. and when they got to the end and they were tired, chief called the bus and had them picked up by a bus and taken back to their cars. it is hard to get mad about that if you're a protester. those who wanted their time on cnn to upgrade their level of protest were thwarted very effectively. when donald trump came to town and brought his traveling show, the protesters outside there, anti-trump protesters, were contained. some got very disobedient, but nobody got hurt. they got pepper sprayed and they did not like that. but when you look at the entire film, you can see what happened and why. it was like the police kept saying you need to stay here. you need to stay here. get back inside the barricades. get back inside. when they continued to surge outside of them, they pepper sprayed them and solved it and

that was the end of it. although they were very unhappy. they came to the board of police commissioners and made their position known. recently, we had another group of activists who came to the board of police commissioners with some very interesting demands. had to do with a shooting incident that is currently involved in litigation, but they wanted to know about -- they wanted us to divulge all of our military gear, which we don't have. they wanted to know why we used horses in crowds because horses can hurt people. my question to the young lady was, are you complaining about a specific incident or are you just concerned about horses in general? she was concerned about horses in general because nothing had really happened and other things like that. they left us with a long list of questions, which we have gathered together as a board and answered. we'll get them written responses. that's the atmosphere that we're dealing with and the atmosphere that we're all dealing with and

why the attention to the civilian population is both reasonable and necessary at this time. so in the process of dealing with all of this one of the things that we do know is that as we continue to need to look at how we provide police services, one of the things that we've learned from our work with kansas nova, which is a wonderful collaborative effort between my office and the police department, probation, parole, ukmc, u.s. attorney's office, atf, fbi, all together and all the heads of those various departments are the ones that are members of the board and we show up for our board meetings. but what we have learned is that we can do some things that we

haven't been very effective at by enhancing our intelligence capabilities and how we structure and organization our department. i'll give some credit to joe because joe was the very first guy that put together with nova and the chief and everybody else. he was our exec on this. i remember standing out out n t streets with joe. okay, what do we need to do? we need this. we need this. stuff gets done. he even got a promotion out of it against our reck men -- recommendations, but he still got a promotion. by the way, you owe me 10%. but there was more impact by how we used various people, information, shared information, disseminated information, brought more people into the fold, into the mission, than

there was just by simply throwing bodies at it. so you have to wonder from a cost-benefit analysis what's the best thing that we can do in order to make the life job situation of our police officers better and more productive while doing it at a cost that allows us to perform the other functions that we have as a city. you know, for example, we have 6300 lane miles of road. every time it snows in kansas city, we plow the equivalent of boston to san diego and back. when you have those types of things and you don't even know when they're coming, it puts real pressure on us to be efficient with our budget. now, we don't want to be so efficient with our budget that we're cutting our own throats by not providing the level of police enforcement that we need. and we also know from our

citizen satisfaction surveys a couple of things. number one priority for citizens, streets, roads, sidewalks. what's the organization they're most happy with? the police department. they love the police. so we have to satisfy both of those tremendous needs with the budget. what's the benefit? the benefit of what's happened in the five years that i've been in office -- and that's all i'll speak to except for some of the other stuff that happened before, but the five years i've been in office the benefit is we have a police chief who is focused on transforming the department in a number of ways, who is very focused on the issue of inclusion in the ranks, who was looking forward down the road to say if all of the minority officers leave -- who are on the command staff leave, there's not much there behind them to step in, so we get back

to a monochromatic command staff situation again, so how do we address and change that? a collaborative and police chief and people like joe mchale who are willing to drop all the nonsense about whose territory and whose jurisdiction and figure out it doesn't matter if somebody gets shot and killed in kansas city, everybody is going to suffer. how do we do that at a cost we can afford? the benefit of course is we have not had the things break out like in other cities. although you would be absolutely naive -- i would be absolutely naive to think i couldn't get a phone call right now that said something horrible had happened and there are people marching in the street and burning stuff because it can happen anywhere, but we know we have done some things to try to stop that. we know that our police chief and others are out there --

thank you -- are out there meeting the public in churches, in community centers, on a periodic and scheduled basis. we know daryl forte gets on his motorcycle and riding around the community. those things pay dividends because it's a change from what used to happen. and i'm not just talking sitting in a car. they're out talking to people, engaging with people, and creating those relationships that are necessary. so the benefit of having a police department that is aware of the current environment and making adjustments to fit into that environment and adjust to it absolutely priceless. the cost of doing that not necessarily always in money. maybe we need to be thinking of how do we deploy technology, how do we reorganize organizations, how do we tear down the walls and the silos inside departments so that information flows easier

and people collaborate so that there is a much more cohesive focused approach to the problem. and if we can do that, we can afford the cost and reap the benefit. thank you. [ applause ] >> okay. i think i have a presentation loaded up here somewhere. i'm not sure how to get to it. i'm fortunate to follow the mayor because he was so articulate in discussing the various demands on the city's budget. so because he was so articulate, that will allow me to kind of cut to the chase a little bit and maybe save a few minutes of time as well while i talk about

the cost and benefits of police reform. in the city of arlington, just like many other cities, the budget is impacted by the fiscal environment, the fiscal environment as well as the political environment.

but the police and what they do isn't the only important department and the only important contribution. i like to think of our librarians as crime fighters. downward pressures on crime. i like to think of the parks and recreation folks of being crime fighters because of the structured programming they provide for the young people in the community, especially, keeps them off the street during those hours where they could be engaged in a lot of mischief. so, while the police department places a high amount of demand on the city resources, so do other departments. we have to make decisions to balance the budget based on the

bigger whole, based on the whole, not just an individual department. throw into that employee pay raises, employee health, insurance costs, also places pressure on the city budget. when it comes to the cost that we are looking at and meeting, we see direct cost and indirect cost. when we look at the reform that is are recommended in the 21st century policing report, we see from implementing those reforms some direct cost, some direct benefit as well as some indirect cost as well. so, let me give you one quick example looking at body worn cameras. when we are presently looking at full implementation of body cameras in our city. we have gone through a 90-day

pilot project. just the cost of the cameras alone is a very small piece of the overall cost of the program. we have an equipment cost, installation cost, hardware and software cost, storage requirements and whether they are going to be in the cloud or local servers. we have rms and data collection issues. somebody earlier talked about the compatibility with legacy systems. we have to look at that. so what could be a $4500 body camera could turn into a $20,000 piece of equipment when you throw all the other costs associated with that equipment into the puzzle. that's not all but when we implement these new technologies and inevitably the business processes change. we have to make sure that the work flow is synchronized with the new technology and the old

technology and people in the training et cetera, et cetera. to make a long story short, we have a lot of work that goes into adopting new technology, policies, new discussions, new debate, new support, new publicity, new documentation, analysis on the front end and the back end as well as the data interpretati interpretation. so, when we look at local governments and i want to quick borrow a piece from emergency management and consequence management. local governments provide, for the health, safety and welfare of our people, and more than anything else, we want to be prepared for the critical incidents that occur. for my city and any other city, critical incidents could be weather events, a terrorism event, a catastrophic fire or

some other catastrophe, but we want to be prepared for these tremendousmatic events. when i look at what body worn cameras provide to us, i see that it's pretty much analogous to the weather radar. they don't stop the events from occurring, but they help us to see that something out there is happening and it's on the way and it helps to make sure that we know what's happening. critical incidents do happen in every city, the mayor said it. it's not a matter of whether or not they will, it's a matter of when they are going to happen. so, when they happen, we want to make sure that we are prepared for those incidents. so, that brings me to the word resiliency. you see here on the screen a definition of community resiliency. when we think of resiliency

normally, we think of resiliency in terms of consequence management of a major event or major incident. the aftermath of a major incident. since we know that these incidents are going to occur, then why don't we be more proactive? why don't we place the police in the position of being responsible for being prepared for these incidents so that the community, when they do occur have the ability to bounce back, they are able to return to their original form after these events happen. well, to me, procedural justice, community policing and citizen engagement strategies are another way of strengthening community resiliency against these unanticipated critical

disasters. so, if we are spending part of our budget on being prepared for the natural disasters, the hurricanes and earthquakes and so on and so forth, to me, as a manager, it makes sense that we also prepare for these other police disasters that will inevitably occur. when they do, we are able to avoid some of the disturbances and disruptions that communities often face because of the investments made through community policing procedural justice. and citizen engagement. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> i'm leonard matarese with the public safety management. we are the exclusive provider of

public safety technical services to the international city management association, icma, which is the worldwide association of public administrators, 101-year-old organization whose annual conference is going to be in kansas city next month. i'll have the opportunity to see the mayor and captain next month. i thought i would spend a few minutes talking about the human resource challenges presented by the 21st century policing recommendations. to give you a sense that this is not just a financial issue to implement the program, but it's much deeper than that. it's a bureaucratic organizational labor issue to address to achieve the reck men d dagss in the task force. i want to start looking at the diversity. 1.8 talks about law enforcement agencies strive to create a work force with a broad range of

diversity including race and gender and also language, life experience and cultural background and i add to that, age. but, i need to remind everybody here that we still have not fully achieved fully integrated police departments nationwide both on a racial basis and agenda basis. that's despite the fact that we have been involved in almost three decades worth of litigation, court orders, cone sent decrees, bargaining with collective bargaining agreements. we still haven't achieved that for race and gender, which are protected classes. how much more difficult, and i know this sounds like debbie downer, but how much more difficult is it going to be to expand the work force to include the issues we all think are critically important, language, life e