hurricane season and we see tornadoes in all kinds of strange and bizarre places with a heat index that's rising every single day. never mind the republicans in the house and senate who want to deny the science. the data is incontrovertible. something is wrong. so much of this is man-made when it comes to the way that our environment is mel treating us these days because we for so long have maltreated it. one of our guests tonight is the executive director of the sierra club. we brought in all the big boys and >> we are leaving this year with a reminder you can continue watching on c-span.org and i we continue live coverage of the u.s. conference of mayors annual meeting with a discussion on the impacts of weather. >> before i begin, did john

yunus or arnie to hanan come in? i want to give a call out to kate right. the executive director director of climate mayors. she will be on our sessions for the environment as well as many other awesome names and i encourage you to hang out with kate. i had too much coffee. i also want to recognize somebody that i fan girls over for years and years, to my right, gina mccarthy. special guest, former epa administrator. the country's first climate advisor. [applause] i think originally she was like, i will be in the background and i was like, or if you could sit next to me. i will kick it over to gina to say a few words. >> first of all, thank you. [laughter] it is a little creepy, but i can get over it. thanks for giving me a few minutes to chat with you.

i don't want to take too long because another is a big group and there is a lot to discuss. i wanted to begin by acknowledging that we live at a very disconcerting moment in time. i think that means that more than ever before we have to work together. we have to think about the strategies we can use to keep our country moving forward. and that means we have to consistently begin to rely more on more on what states and cities can do. if the federal government doesn't want to really focus attention, it is our job to get that done. certainly not me personally, but the mayors around this table that have always mattered, but matter now more than ever before. i just want to make sure to thank you because is difficult

as these days have been at least for me, i get to look at you guys and realize just how important the work is you are doing. and that you are standing up. not just solely as a mayor, but as allies more broadly. i think that is what is going to make a difference. because it is not about what any one individual does, it is about working together and for me, stop bemoaning what we don't like, get out of the doldrums and start celebrating the hope and opportunity of today. because it is real. we do have an opportunity to move forward together. we have an opportunity to grab a clean energy future and we should be spending time thinking not just about how we do it city by city or state by state, but think about how we can join

together to become that kind of force that we need in order to keep ourselves saying and keep our communities moving forward. so they have stability and excitement both at the same time. i want to thank you for everything you are doing. for me, it has been a difficult time. i also have spent so much time with local communities and states and the federal government that i know we will find a path forward. i think we need to figure out the strategy on how to do that so we can all set of celebrate with the opportunity of today. i'm excited to be sitting here is managing co-chair of america is all in which is the phrase nobody knows what and and neither do i but it is exciting. there is a group of us that have formed together to find a safe

place together and get together and figure out how we move forward. kate is one of the main drivers of this but it is really an assembly of folks that is not just mayors, but really an opportunity for cities and tribal nations and businesses and schools and faith leaders, anybody that wants to hang out and think about how best to ensure that the united states of america and its people prosper. i thank you for letting me be here. i thank you for letting me say a few words. most importantly, i thank you for the work we do. i have worked for like 40 years, i have worked for six governors,

two presidents. i have enjoyed working for myself most of all. [laughter] i'm here to basically just say thanks. just say stick together. just say don't get caught up in the doldrums, rise above. as i am and will always remain, filled with hope and filled with opportunity and frankly i do that because of you. i do that because i know i have people that care about one another and are doing everything humanly possible to make sure our communities can stay solvent. how much can we link together? how much can we actually act in unity? and adaptation and resilience. i'm excited to be here, thanks for giving me this opportunity. mayor, back to you, baby. [applause] >> thank you.

thank you, gina. i think that is the first time i've ever been told i was creepy. [laughter] gina: someone had to tell you. [laughter] >> i'm my own mean. -- me. i want to point out our intergovernmental liaison from the epa. john, do you want to say couple of words? you can stand awkwardly in the back, you don't have to. >> thank you, it's great to be here. i'm the principal deputy associate administrator from epa office of congressional and governmental affairs. our neta has been on our team for a while. thanks for letting me sit in and be a part of the conversation. >> appreciate the longest title ever and congratulations for that. we have a really good conversation today. i have awesome fellow mayors as

panelists. the reason why we are having these conversations is because what used to be every thousand years is now having -- happening every years. the conversation about resilience for communities as local leaders, we are the ones identifying new strategies to make us more resilient. these are no longer a coastal issue. when we had experiences in iowa, some events whatever the big windstorm that was basically a hurricane on land, they are experiencing these things and it is becoming more and more problematic. these are creating significant damage and these events are costly to us and our economy, we will talk about local leaders,

how we are working with residents and how we are working in our partnership with other communities. some of us have conversation with our community members. how do we educate our residents about these risks and convince them the efforts are worth it to do these actions? we have lots of local leaders working on this and i want to kick it over to mayor dyer from orlando. when we asked you to come in this, it is about innovative strategies and resilience. i wonder if you could share some conversation around that and i can't remember if you have slides. >> i think they are just going to run the slides randomly as i talk, but that is our mobility,

the resilience on the screen right now. i have been mayor for 22 years. i have done this work for pretty good while. in 2006 we had a meeting at city hall it made me think of chicago can do this, to be in the same space and we established what was to be the most sustainable city in the southeast united states. by my subjective standard, we have achieved that. some objective standards would also say we have achieved that. we take sustainability very seriously. resiliency is the brother or

sister of sustainability and they go hand-in-hand. we are publishing our first ever resiliency plan. we have the rockefeller foundations 100 resilient cities framework to do that to ensure equitable insurance. we want to make sure everybody has the ability to bounce back. in my tenure, we have had a lot of hurricanes. in 2004, we have been 40 years since we had a hurricane. i came out and said this is our once-in-a-lifetime hurricane. we are going to clean up and be good.

we had finished cleaning up from charlie where 10,000 trees came down. we went from zero hurricanes 23 hurricanes and we are not on the coast, but all three of them, the eye came through orlando or within 50 miles and since then, hurricanes, like mass shootings have become an everyday occurrence. one of the things that is part of our resilience plans are resilience hubs and we have three different types that we are implementing. we partnered with our university to create a solar powered trailer. after an event of some sort we

were able to take it into any of our neighborhoods. refrigeration's for perishables. and if somebody just needs to get in out of the heat, we have the ability to set up a tent with it. a little bit bigger space. we are preparing this training in various neighborhoods. people like to gather around and check it out. the second thing we are doing is large neighborhood center. we funded almost a $3 million grant from the florida department of economic opportunity and we are adding backup power to six of our neighborhood centers so that after hurricane, extreme events, extreme heat in our case in orlando, residents can go there

and have charging access, wi-fi access, and it also served as distribution points for whatever supplies we need to do. my favorite is our small resilience hubs and we found tables of connection and they are solar powered shaded picnic tables. we did pilot on two of them. and we are going to expand that to another 12 of our parks i will mention we got $20,000 from aarp they believe it supports our age friendly initiative in the city. mayor buffaloe: thank you.

next we have mayor cavanaugh from dubuque, iowa. the city has experienced devastating flood events resulting in six presidential disaster declarations and $70 million in damage. the city has worked alongside its residents to work on major infrastructure projects and prioritize with incredible results. >> thank you very much. i'm very excited to be with you here today. everybody having a good day so far? administrator, thank you for the positive message to start out with. i think you're absolutely right. it is easy to get stuck right now and to be able to talk about projects like this is incredibly exciting. so, what's that? i'm not going to say i'm a fan boy. that is not going to happen. i found out what happens when

you say that out loud. [laughter] everybody knows orlando and i think everybody knows mayor dyer who has become legendary when it comes to resiliency and sustainability so thank you for that. but not everybody knows dubuque but we were featured in the wall street journal and they officially said we are the place to be this summer and i'm not even kidding. that actually happened. it is the talk of the town. we are a city of about 60,000 right on the mississippi river. it is just beautiful, we have some of the widest points along the mississippi, we have big limestone bluffs that keep our downtown from the rest of the city and it is a beautiful place to be. it is a historic place, we are the oldest city in iowa. we are the ancestral land of tribes, but our founder of the city itself is a man named julian dubuque, who is french-canadian, that is him in the bottom right corner. i'm certain he wore that hat 24

hours a day because every picture i've ever seen of him, he is wearing that hat. we are really proud of where we live. it is a really great place. we are 20 miles away from the field of dreams, so that is a big deal for dubuque. when the 650 youth baseball teams come, they stay at dubuque. the bottom left is the mississippi river flooding and we have a floodwall. we have had very few problems with it. i'm going to talk about two things, the first one is the flooding on the other side of the floodwall. we have had a lot of flooding, we have had six presidential disaster declarations in between the years of 1999 and 2007. we had six presidential disaster declarations. this is a flood from 1999 that

occurred. the choice our residents had to make was to get away from a tornado in their basements or get away from the flooding in the basements. it was disaster after disaster. workforce housing, lower economic status, it is a difficult road for a long time. you see the picture in the upper left, that is a stewart -- sewer built, it was a b branch creek. part of that discovery was recognizing that would be to do happen was to change the way water was flowing. residents got upset and said we need to do something.

in 2007, the city put together a resident commission that started to come up with ideas and then we had multiple different consultants. we wanted to be able to come up with a better way forward. what was actually conceived was this concept and it was actually taking the creek and bringing it back out to the daylight and making it a creek again but that is not as far as the residents wanted to go. they came up with the concept of creating not just an engineering marvel that would move water and pump it out into the river, but also create a linear park that would become a centerpiece for an area of town that had had disaster after disaster and had had to deal with that for a long time. part of that was when they looked at the property values in a thing 2007 and saw that property values were going up except in this area where the flooding was happening.

in order to do this, they came together in 2000 eight, construction began on this. it ended up looking something like this. this is our flood mitigation project. there are two major retention ponds further north and west of this where the water is gathered first to be able to decrease the flow rate but what happens when it floods, right now if we have a major rainstorm, it floods the creek bed. it is built to do so. it completely goes up and then it goes down as the water proceeds. in those moments, it becomes very much a storm sewer. at the other times, as you can see here and you see the before and after picture in this one, it becomes part bike trail, which is actually 26 miles long.

it connects people by way of trails. there is an outdoor classroom, an amphitheater alongside it. we have natural wildlife there. i'm losing track of my slides. i'm just going to go to this one where you see people having a lot of fun. the city of dubuque likes to say we have a motto that we do things through people, planning, and partnerships. the people part was very clear. the people came together and demanded something and decided they were going to do it and it got done. we are still building parts of this and people have invested over and over again. it is the most expensive project dubuque has done in its history, costing us $250 million.

that cost literally broke the sound system. [laughter] i just want to stress, that is a lot of money, but it hasn't been quite that bad. [laughter] it did create this, so that is probably better, but thank you for the emphasis, i appreciate that. the other part of it for the planning, lots of planning, but the partnerships is kind of the message we open with. it takes partnerships at all levels of government and we built those partnerships. epa with a solid example of this. over 100 grants and loans to do this. the other thing i want to talk about is something that was newer and this was conceived by gina bell and the staff of our multicultural family center. the idea was to get a group of teenagers together that were going to be able to canvas dubuque neighborhoods and share

information related to climate change and climate action. we started in 2020 when the only thing people were talking about was climate action and climate resilience in 2020. [laughter] we quickly made it about covid. they were challenging neighborhoods in the city. and then obviously hit hardest by covid. we surveyed the residence and talk to joe -- talk to them about their experiences. 93% of residents reported the city was doing a good job. 68 percent said they were experiencing social isolation during that time. 88 presented -- 88% did not feel like they were connected to their neighbors.

and a small percentage that they were having logistical problems. the teams went out and did these things in 2020, 2022 and 2023. they knocked over 1000 doors, did a bunch of surveys. distributed 634 leds, talked about energy efficiency. it is a great example of putting some people in action who could become community leaders going forward. the focus has shifted one more time. we got a wonderful grant from the usda, u.s. forest service and it will transition into one of the next discussions but we call it are branching out initiative. we are hiring, i think it is eight.

they are going to be going out and doing some of this work working with residents to plant trees, do some of the pruning. helping to build our tree canopy . these are great example of where we need to be to put residents in leadership positions and building a new generation of leaders. it has been exciting. thanks for the time. mayor buffaloe: awesome, thank you, mayor. that was great. [applause] so now we are going to move from where it is wet to where it is dry and hot. our next speakers are going to talk about extreme heat which we know is the number one weather-related cause of death in the united states. more than hurricanes, flooding, tornadoes.

impacts are not felt equally. arvo honorable communities are most at risk while being the least prepared. i'm glad we are able to be joined by mayor mclean from boise. we are going to kick it off with bonita and then we will turn it over to mayor romero. bonita, the floors yours. >> for good company, i'm also a fan girl. i'm going to join you in that. [laughter] i don't want you to be embarrassed. thank you for noting the work you are doing. for folks who are not familiar with american forests, we are a 150-year-old conservation organization making us the oldest in the united states.

our focus has slowly been on extreme heat in the past 5-8 years. just grounding you with some data on extreme heat, heat related deaths over the last six years have increased by 117%. they are responsible for more deaths than any other weather event in the country and some places in the southwest we are seeing heat related deaths exceed deaths by homicide which is a wild statistic. when it is compounded with the fact that homicide rates and community violence increase incrementally with temperature increases, these two things are showing us this is a life or death issue and one that we need to address their number of interventions. so as mayor buffalo just said, we do view extreme heat as

intersectional, certainly rang on of the most vulnerable of all of our communities. those that lack cooling infrastructure and certainly the historically dis-invested communities. new research is showing us that heat related deaths can be cut by 30% just by putting in thriving tree canopies, planting new trees where they are needed, maintaining them in the long term. i would be remiss not to talk about the other benefits urban trees provide. we are here to address extreme heat, but we know they are also important for stormwater prevention and flooding. they are known as carbon sinks. they are carbon mitigation as well as resilience opportunities. reduction in crime we have already talked about, but also extreme importance around the jobs and volunteer opportunities

as well as the opportunity for reducing prison recidivism. and workforce programs in which we have worked with formerly incarcerated people and citizens, we are able to see a drop which is an incredible amount of savings. i certainly also want to talk about it we have friends who have looked at this work as supporting and addressing respiratory health in their communities as well because trees are both cooling and cleansing. so, through american forests data we have national data showing us, telling the story for us. archery equity score tool which i welcome people to take a look at one of their own is an open source map that maps cities across socioeconomic lines, allows us to see the tree income -- tree canopies, low income communities tend to be hotter

and have less tree cover and communities of color are 13 degrees hotter with less tree cover. statistics matter. this is tree equity score. encourage folks to take a look at whether city maps that. the green areas are high canopy areas. the ones where we need to drive investments and shoring we are seeing this equity issue. very quick look at a new data layer about shade. one form of decision-making. another way of splicing the data of how we invest in trees and communities. we did see so much mobilization from folks in this room, from our federal leaders and private

funders. it has been exciting for us to be able to say we have unlocked the usda forest service package that all went to city specifically. 500 plus cities were supported through these dollars all to advance tree equity. a number of those grantees are here in the room including dubuque. with the opportunity of increasing our tree canopy, 4000 jobs created an american forests has been helped to support through our grantmaking in that package, but also through our expertise in planning and planting. even with the certain movement of those dollars continuing to flow, we also want to offer new opportunities for financing for trees. before we turn it over to the mayors to my left, i want to name that there was also to the novation we are looking at in

terms of financing and funding this work. we are seeing communities funding this work through the general fund. we know tree funding and developer offsets are other opportunities. and philanthropic and utility partnerships. we are here to talk if anybody is interested with these mechanisms, we want to be able to offer expertise across the country. they want to make sure there is more. we have worked with boston on scaling tree equity through comprehensive master plan that invests where those high need under invested neighborhoods are.

our goal is to work with as many cities as we can to support these uncertain times. really excited to talk through some of the case studies from two of our champion mayors doing the work for much longer than even the ira dollars coming through. i want to turned over to them to provide their insights. >> mayor romero, you are going to be up first. >> i think the city of boise? >> all right. sorry. thanks. hi, i'm lauren mclean, the mayor of boise, idaho. i want to think american forests for the support and advocacy you provided for tree canopy. i'm sharing a little bit about what we are doing. i begin the mayor of boise in

2020 one of the goals we set was to double archery canopy by 2030. increasing volunteer activity, investing in open space and clean water, water habitat preservation, achieving 30% tree canopy cover and other things like that, but our city is located, just to kind of set this in context, it is called boise because legend has it that when french explorers came over, they just passed through the high desert, they saw a whole bunch of trees so they sent french for trees and we became boise, the city of trees. we are at the base of kind of rocky mountains foothills area, high desert. and then situated between those hills, a river, then more desert and another mountain chain in eastern oregon. while we have quite a bit of

tree cover along the river and that is why we have the name city of trees, there are quite a bit of our neighborhoods that don't. then the canopies agent when there is disinvestment. we heard from residents that are goals being powered by 100% of clean electricity by 2030 and being carbon neutral and then having a 2035 goal for citywide, the whole community and then 2050, citywide for carbon neutrality. it would take a whole bunch of partnership. our residents have said we want to partner with you. one of the goals was doubling the tree canopy. one of the things we are really concerned about in boise is while we are right next to the mountains, our summers are really hot. we have hot summers.

we are seeing those summers get hotter every year. more days over 100 degrees and each year there are more. i think it is really important to point out that our nights are getting hotter. what we used to be able to count on temperatures dropping because we are high desert at night to cool our neighborhoods and frankly our people, we don't see that in the same way. we can't cool down so trees become even more important because they do cool our neighborhoods. so we developed the tree challenge named after a long time city councilmember who talked about trees almost every meeting. [laughter] she just started talking and you would see the community and the council be like, here she goes. when she retired, i named the tree challenge after her. it relies on tree captains around the city counting trees, organizing their neighbors to

help us meet our goals. we received, we partnered with an organization called the treasure valley canopy network and the region. a two county region did receive $1.1 million from the ira for tree canopy work and that is particularly important for the cities other than boise to be able to do this work as we have started to figure out how we can institutionalize this with general fund dollars. what we know is that even with the canopy we have right now, we are saving, residents are saving $300,000 a year in cooling costs. so, when you thing about long-term, that means we increased the canopy, i like to say this is about the health of our residents and frankly it is about affordability. as our days get hotter and we are more reliant on air-conditioning at night instead of just during the day, the more we can cool our

neighborhoods and the more folks can save on electric bills. so, when we partnered with the treasure valley tree canopy network, i guess i should be moving these. sorry. let's see what the slides are. there is a lane at boise state. [laughter] that was a tree we did. this is what i just talked about. i didn't mention the air quality piece. health, finances, and frankly scrubbing our air. it is natural scrubbers for our region. we look at all of this in terms of why and why even in budget constrained times we would continue to do this is because of the impact that it has and i would say that we are on track to meet our goals. one goal we met early so not only did we set the goal of doubling our tree canopy by 2030, but i committed to plant a seedling for every boise resident in the national forest

above the city. so to take care of our rivers we need to take care of the high waters. we met that goal last year because we have had some any volunteers who are so excited about it. [applause] it was really cool, so think of those little, baby forest trees people have on arbor day, 140,000 of those were planted. none of this would be possible without the partnerships we have had. we are not going to stop at the dublin. when we hit those goals, we will keep going and we will use the infrastructure we have created in the progress we have demonstrated to pool our neighborhoods throughout the city. mayor buffaloe: thank you, mayor. [applause] mayor romero, tell us about

tucson. >> good morning, everyone, thank you. i'm the mayor of the city of tucson, arizona. thank you, mayor buffaloe for being a wonderful leader and really staying on track with sustainability in our environment. i am also a fan girl of gina mccarthy. >> we are going to get t-shirts. [laughter] >> no, but in reality, you have let this field and opened doors for many of us women wanting to talk about these important issues. i really appreciate joinall of you. for our cities and communities to understand the vital role of trees.

i served as a councilmember for 12 years. we understood as you start serving. and for me as a councilmember in my district is 70% latino. parks, infrastructure, roads, everything. part of that lack of infrastructure were trees. as you said, in arizona and the southwest we are dealing with 24 years now have a drought. we are seeing temperatures rise. and as was said, we are seeing

an incredible increase in heat related deaths. and so when i got elected in november, we started working immediately in declaring a climate emergency. that helped us put together the beginning or outline of a climate action and adaptation plan. we moved very quickly and i kicked off a million trees for the city of tucson. it is a challenge because we live in the desert and have desert adapted trees. we have desert adapted trees we can work with.

tucson is one of the most biologically diverse deserts that we have. we have the sonoran desert. we share the desert with mexico. it knows no borders. tucson comes from our ancestors and the original people of the sonoran desert. and then when it became mexico or spain, then mexico, it was tucson. and now it is tucson. [laughter] however, i talk about heat and climate change being a public

health crisis. it hits at the most vulnerable first and worst. children, seniors, low income communities and communities of color. killing hundreds of people every single year. it is the silent killer even though you don't see it as major disasters. it happens every single year. we have been seeing those 100 plus degree weather days becoming more and more and more. trees are one of the best nature based tools.

the million trees campaign is going good. we started it in 2020. it was a public nonprofit and private partnership. we raised more than $850,000 to kick off the campaign. during the biden administration. let me go back a little bit. american forests it was key to show in a map to the community what we were talking about. we showed through data that we had less tree canopy.

we used to data to tell people what was happening. we use the forest service, the city of tucson change the name of our landfill. we can reuse and reduce waste as well. we have our own goals by 2040. we grow our own trees are nurseries were not growing fast enough. we are training young people to be the stewards of now and into the future. we partner with a nonprofit organization, trees for tucson. we are using the equity map.

we pay for green stormwater infrastructure. how do you water trees in the desert? we are using funding to do that. the most need for tree canopies. we have combined with violence prevention programs. in the highest need areas of our cities. we are targeting low income areas. when infrastructure itself it is really working. people are part of it.

we have thousands of volunteers every year. that is it. i don't have any more. i want to thank everyone for the work that you are doing, completed successfully for federal grants. that have helped a lot. private investment from different companies. and that we are layering the community. when i showed this, i had the opportunity to show it before and after picture to president biden. he almost fell off his chair. what the before picture looked like was a road with the dirt on

the side. this is what we have been able to transform our community to. [applause] mayor buffaloe: that is awesome and a big thank you to all of our speakers today. i want to open it up to mayors around the table if you have any questions or comments either from what you heard from the mayor speakers or if you want to share something awesome happening in your community around this topic. >> something happening in our community that is awesome. livermore mayor, john marsh and, san francisco bay area. one of the things we are doing as we have a livermore area council and they are working with the qwest science center and they are doing heat mapping in our community. they are doing real-time heat maps in the community. they are working with these

groups. we have a very active arbor day program. one of the events we celebrated recently was we have a tree where the seeds went around the moon on the artemis rocket and those saplings were nurtured in livermore. we have two national laboratories. we had 14 kids submit the name luna. we had a big community celebration. mayor buffaloe: thank you for sharing and that is so unique that you have a tree that went around the moon. [laughter] >> well, it is livermore. mayor buffaloe: on your mayor

finger -- bingo card. >> we have an element named after us. one of the only six cities with that distinction. mayor buffaloe: ok, we are done with the bragging. [laughter] >> good afternoon, chelsey byers, mayor of west hollywood. last year, we adopted a plant-based default policy so all food is majority plant-based. to think differently about their own actions and make a strong statement of alignment. a major contributor to carbon emissions. the majority of food we purchased is plant-based. versus selecting vegan or vegetarian alternatives. we worked with that on other folks may be interested on that. mayor buffaloe: thank you for sharing that. mayor turk.

>> mayor turk, city of allentown. we were a recipient of climate funding and we activated college students to develop a tree curriculum for the allentown school district. they went into classrooms to help them understand between the communities. and how to plant trees in neighborhoods. they are in year two of that program now and we look forward to younger generations understanding the importance. mayor buffaloe: yes, mayor. >> i'm not too far from livermore in concord, california, the san francisco bay area, we don't have a moon tree or anything like that, but i wanted to say thank you for the discussion. we also received a u.s. forestry service grant and were very thrilled when that grant was unfrozen. we were one of those challenged

with that briefly. every year i do a september of service and we have five city council districts. we do our tree planting in the fall in california and it just makes more sense that way. we are going to be planting 200,000 trees in multiple parks across the city. you are absolutely right, mayor romero. there really can be quite a disparity. there are some parts of town that have beautiful tree canopies and other parts. there was an education that had to be done and it also really does impact your property values. not only her quality of life, but your property values. bringing the youth in as well. we have started at our local schools. i don't know if anybody is doing that. they are micro forests you can plant in a very small area so our school districts have been

providing some of the property at elementary schools and it is a great way to get children and their families excited about treeplanting and understanding the cycle of taking care of trees, the benefits provided by trees, etc. thank you. mayor buffaloe: thank you for sharing. yes? >> mayor redman, washington. we are known for trees all over our region but we are still investing significantly. it is great to hear all the options to ensure you are keeping that tree canopy and we did a climate vulnerability study a few years ago that really show deficits even in our area where trees are everywhere. that is a great tool for a lot of cities to take a harder look at where you have challenges in your city. i wanted to say your panel is fantastic. we have had people from all over the country with all different climates talking about it and i love the positive nature of this

to show what cities can really do when we have support. i think that was great. thank you. mayor buffaloe: thank you. mark? >> we have similar goals. i'm from here in california, neighbor of livermore and concord of course. we have similar goals with trees. we have been aggressively planting as many trees as we can. of course, not without politics and not without pushback. i was curious particularly like in tucson and boise, have you received pushback from neighborhoods about tree maintenance and who is going to water the trees? i have heard, i've gotten some really incredible nasty-grams about putting the tree in the front yard. >> that's a great question, mayor, because i kind of

mentioned it. people would ask me how are you going to water the trees? we are in a desert. we started with the community working on a climate action and adaptation plan. and it really came from the community. it was my vision and i put the idea on the table and started the process of climate action and adaptation. it really came from the community, understanding all of the benefits of trees and how it is a nature-based solution to bring down the heat throughout the city of tucson. and then we expanded the way we

respond to how are you going to water the tree in the desert? we have an incredible monsoon seasons and rain throughout the winter. our planting season is october through april, but we harvest the rain in a green infrastructure for the city to be able to water those trees. you really have to, you have the idea out there. a climate action and adaptation plan really helped build a strategy for us that was approved by the community. so, it is really something that you are doing based on what people, what the residents of your city are asking you to do. selling the benefits of trees, it is good for health, property values, it cools down neighborhoods. the point of sale i guess, i would say that is what mayors

and others help do. to be able to explain to a community why -- ike sometimes call myself the explainer in chief -- because we have to explain the process we are using is based on what people are telling us they want and what is good for our community. mayor buffaloe: mayor maclean, do you want to add anything? mayor mclean: my experience is very similar. we heard from folks, how do we get more of those trees and how do we record it because we've asked people to logon so we can count the tree and it has definitely been more of our experience. and then others can privately add trees and get counted in the neighborhoods that aren't as high priority. mayor buffaloe: based on that and thank you for all the questions and comments and to our awesome panelists.

we did this strategically to talk about the optimism and i think you heard a lot of examples of the way that the community can be involved because in the time that we are in right now, community members are thirsty not just because of drought, but they are thirsty for ways they can make an impact so all of the samples and ways community members can have an impact, and local government but also helping prepare for a already changing time it. thank you so much for joining me. i want to point out a few other environmental sessions that i think you should all come to because i will be there. so we have our luncheon plenary. we will talk about how cities are continuing climate efforts. gina will also be joining us in the environment standing committee, the best standing committee which i happen to chair. which is happening at 2:15 today and then the council at 2:30 and

then saturday at 10: 45, we are talking about how to finance climate and environmental efforts since we are seeing less federal investment stop i want to say i appreciate you being part of these conversations and with that, we are adjourned. [applause] [indistinct conversations] >> in a nation divided, a rare moment of unity. this fall, c-span presents cease fire. where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. in the town where partisan fighting prevails, one table, two leaders, one goal. to find common ground. this fall, cease fire on the network that doesn't take sides. only on c-span.

>> this afternoon, white house press secretary karoline leavitt will speak to reporters and likely give an update on the u.s. role in the israel-iran conflict. she may also be asked about ongoing immigration protests in los angeles and the federal reserve decision to leave interest rates unchanged. we will have live coverage of today's white house briefing on c-span. you can also watch on the free c-span now app or online at c-span.org. >> i ask ian amiss consent that the city -- that the committee on the judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the senate proceed. >> the clerk will report. >> senate resolution 259 conniving june 2 20 25 as the 39th anniversary of c-span chronicling democracy in the senate. >> by a unanimous vote, the

united states senate passed a resolution honoring c-span's four decades covering the senate. the resolution thanked cable and satellite operators for providing c-span as a public service to the country. >> c-span does not receive one penny of taxpayer dollars. it is funded primarily from satellite and cable providers. >> and called on all television providers including streaming services to deliver c-span as well. >> we are at a different stage in history and a lot of people are seeing their news this way so we need to expand it and make sure we are on all of those platforms, as well as the ones we already are on. so thank you again to senator grassley for working with me to highlight c-span's critical role and thanks to everyone who has had a hand in c-span's success.