2018 BAILEY STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS

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Mayor Rusty Bailey Riverside, California State of the City Address January 25, 2018 State of the City 2018 — Create Value for Future Generations Gratitude, Philosophy, Challenge. Hopefully, you all have figured me out by now. I begin my speeches with gratitude to others, provide a little philosophy for you to chew on, and end with some mayoral challenges to keep us motivated for another year. So, thanks again, first and foremost, to the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce, for hosting and producing this event. Your leadership, along with the Hispanic, Black and Asian Chambers, has taken this region to another level in terms of economic growth and job creation. I know this because Robert Kleinhenz, UCR's Business guru, recently told the Good Morning Riverside crowd that there is no recession on the horizon for our region. He also underscored that economic growth and opportunity through full employment exists -- especially in leading industries such as construction, logistics, and leisure and hospitality, and our growth in healthcare and educational employment is more than double California's growth. The state of our economy is strong and rising in our region, and the chambers are a big reason why. Another highly regarded economic think tank in the West, the Milken Institute, reported recently that the Riverside\San Bernardino\Ontario Metro Statistical Area jumped 24 spots to the 20th Best Performing Region in the entire United States. Their annual "Best Performing Cities" report shows that the Riverside region was 8th in the country in one-year job growth and 5th in wage growth. All this while being the third most populated region on the Top 25 best performing list, behind Dallas (#3) and Atlanta (#14). One hundred years ago, when my Grandpa Russ Bailey came to this city, both Dallas and Atlanta were over 10 times the size of Riverside. That is some incredible growth over the last 100 years. And that is some impressive company to keep in terms of comparing economic engines. UCR, the Milken Institute, and now your Mayor are here to tell you that there has never been a better time to invest in Riverside. Yes, that is partly because of the economists and think tanks that are touting our success, but it's mainly because of the video you just watched. I am confident in the future of this city because of the talent we have here -- especially amongst our youth. I have now visited almost every school in this city. Everywhere I went -- including Alvord's national award-winning health and wellness programs, Riverside Unified's top -scoring STEM Academy, Notre Dame's service projects -- I saw the incredible heart and talent of our youth. Page 1 of 9