Patterns & Paradigms | The Pattern Podcast
Patterns & Paradigms | The Pattern Podcast
Episode 014: 2020 - The Year in Review Part II at Pattern for Progress with Joe Czajka
We're taking time to reflect on this incredibly challenging year. This week we're exploring how Pattern for Progress, like so many organizations, had to pivot to the virtual world in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the impacts of the pandemic on government services, infrastructure, education, housing, the economy and what to consider as we move forward.
This week's episode features Joe Czajka, Senior Vice President for Research, Development & Community Planning at Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress and Executive Director for Pattern's Center for Housing Solutions and Community Initiatives.
We are experiencing a paradigm shift, a fundamental change in the way we usually do things. We are intentionally choosing to see the silver lining opportunity arises. We can shine a light on the things that weren't working well on those things that weren't really working at all, we can regroup reevaluate and re-engineer it's time to explore new patterns and paradigms those that inspire us to rise above the chaos and explore how the conditions of today can take us to a better tomorrow patterns and paradigms the pattern podcast from Hudson Valley pattern for progress. You're listening to episode 14, 20, 20 the year end review part two with your host pattern, president and CEO, Jonathan.
Speaker 2:This is episode two of patterns and paradigms wrap up for the year 2020. We hope you were able to join us for our episode with Marshall Gordon and Al Samuel's talking about the region, this episode, it's Joe and I talking in our virtual conference room about the year 2020 and the work that pattern focused on Joe. It was just another average year, right? It was no, no change. You know, we went into the office, we came out of the office, but Oh, wait a minute. That only lasted for two and a half months. Didn't it? Well, I think that's absolutely true. We probably back in January and we're, we just finished our work plan for next year. But back in January, we were sitting there going, okay, are out of alignment report. We're working on part to the solutions and we were pretty excited about some of them, some of them need some more development, but we were pretty excited and we were going to get that done by March, which we got our draft done. We did. And then, uh, the fellows, our pattern fellows, our regional training program was in full swing. It was one of our, one of our projects, um, down in newer show was just about ready to be released. Well, yes. And why do I have this recollection of you coming to me saying, uh, Jenny, I'm not certain that I want to go to new Rochelle. Yeah, it was sometime around March 13th and, uh,
Speaker 3:We were supposed to be in city hall, uh, giving a presentation to the council and to the mayor and the planning staff about some work we did on some housing policy. Well, things changed a little bit as we started to hear of newer shell as the epicenter and I walked into your office and I said, Hey, a J D I'm not so sure I want to put myself or the staff at risk in going into newer shell turns out it was a very good call.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. I don't think, I think by then everybody was starting to, um, feel like something was very different that the notion of a, a pandemic, which people may have written about some people in the healthcare field may have actually, um, uh, practice responses to it. But this was, um, uh, I think by then in March, we knew there was something very different, but, but that didn't stop us from going forward. I mean, you're, you know, you usually manage the research projects.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah. We, we did not skip a beat. You know, the, the, the pandemic obviously started, we were not able to go back into our office building is that we shut down and looking at all of the projects, not a single missed B. We, we just set ourselves up. And each of our homes, we conducted business almost as usual. We got used to the virtual world and doing things, uh, through zoom and other platforms. And I believe that our clients, if you will, they looked at us and said, wow, these guys are just moving straight ahead. And we did
Speaker 2:Well, you know, and I think that pivot to the virtual world, um, you know, fortunately, uh, Robin and Michelle and our staff were able to guide us rest assure I did not know what zoom or Slack was, and yet they were able to help set us up, which I think leads to a very interesting thing that an organization that had its staff in place and knew each other well, probably could have pivoted easier than organizations that needed to introduce staff and did it. Yeah. And I think that probably was something that had to be overcome in the beginning of the year. And I'm not certain that that was an easy thing to do. And then of course there are some businesses and the essential workers where they didn't have this option, which we had. And,
Speaker 3:And, you know, when, when I think back at, uh, at what happened and, and you're right, we had a well-oiled machine, you know, we've, we've got a good tight staff, they know their responsibilities, they know their roles. And if we had started, you know, a younger person on staff say in February, or even in, you know, even in January, they wouldn't have understood the corporate culture as small as we are. We still have a culture and they would have been probably just coming out of school, maybe starting their first or perhaps their second job, but this on the onboarding of a millennial, or you're even a, you know, a gen Z, that is a really critical part of someone's initial career. And without the ability to do that, I think puts people a little bit behind. Um, and then obviously an organization would suffer from that.
Speaker 2:You know, I had an opportunity to talk to my daughter's boyfriend who just started a job. And he said, it's really hard. There's no comradery. There's no like, Hey, I just got off the phone and you just step into the next office and you download what happened on the phone. And I think 20, 21 gel. And I think we should use part of this discussion to think, what, what do we think is going to happen? I think the redefinition of what work is like is going to go through tremendous changes between remote work and, you know, being in the office five days a week. I don't know where equilibrium is yet.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I, I totally agree. You know, and, and the ripple effect of, of not having an office, um, you know, clearly there's, there's a, there's a personal commitment that you have to make working out of your home. Uh, whether it's, uh, an apartment, um, a townhouse or a single family, you've got to, you know, you've got to give up some space and it, you know, it's, is it a major, major issue issue? No, but it's, but it's a difficult thing to absorb. It really is. Um, and, you know, thank thankfully all of our staff has, has done very well with this. Um, but you know, back a little bit to the communication of things, you know, so we created this, well, we didn't create it, but we joined this, this, um, this communication platform of Slack. And so that's how we do messages back and forth. And, you know, so you're typing, you're typing and all of a sudden you realize you, you can't really put your heart and soul into a text message within Slack. And that's that comradery. And that's that corporate culture that I think is being missed by young and old alike. It doesn't matter because you know, you get a phone call, a grant comes in, whatever it is you're like really excited and you want to share the news and then you've realized you have to just type it out. And how many ELA Wells and smiley faces and thumbs up. Can you possibly go
Speaker 2:Just where I was thinking that the whole, you know, that's always been the problem of email and then texting and everything is that nuance is lost because you can't see the person's expression. They could be saying something absolutely sarcastic to you and they make a face at you while they're saying it. But when they're typing, you have no idea that that was sarcastic. And that is an element of communication that maybe younger generations are better at. But I certainly, as, as someone, my age, uh, pivots to an all virtual world and, and that's one of our big changes for next year job. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And, and you know, that, that also makes me think about, you know, clearly over the last year, two years, three years, we've become an extraordinarily, um, you know, there there's a divisiveness in this country. There's a, there's a, there's a clear issue with this side versus that side. And it gives you a sense of paranoia to some degree. And so when you're looking through a Slack message or a text message or an email, you kind of think about reading between the lines a little bit more than you would have, and that's just an uncomfortable situation. It's almost like you start to have a sense of mistrust of, of, of other folks. And as they're typing their messages, they're not, they're not necessarily thinking about all of that. They're just putting information out. Um, but, but it's, uh, it's something that we're dealing with now and it, and it's kind of sad.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, given the number of issues that we have to address, and it just seems like, um, the incoming administration in Washington, the list just gets longer and longer, and they're going to have to address it in a context of a very divided nation. And, you know, the we've learned throughout this year, that when it comes all the way down to the mayors of small cities, which I think has been one of our most enjoyable convenings, we do a lot of convenings, but Joe you've ran most of that. And I think you admire them and it really doesn't matter Democrat or room.
Speaker 3:It really doesn't. So, you know, this, this weekly call that we've had since early April with eight mayors or in the mid Hudson, and, you know, th the cities that we're dealing with, port Jervis, Middletown, Newburgh, Kingston, Hudson Peekskill, um, Poughkeepsie Kingston, there, they're all small cities and they've got mayors, like you said, they're either Democrat or Republican. It doesn't matter. These guys just to do the very best that they can for their community. Um, many of them have lived there, you know, most of their lives or all of their life, and they care so much. And so that call gives them the opportunity to really go back and forth. And they've developed one heck of a comradery between, between the eight of them or their city managers or city administrators. They're, they're involved very much in these phone calls and they get on, and sometimes they vent their problems. Um, they all have a great sense of humor as they're going through this extraordinarily difficult time. And they, again, they just, they just care so much and we've got it now set up sort of as this, um, organic system. And I don't like that term too much, but it is very organic in the way that they communicate with one another. They're sending each other emails, they're borrowing documents and thoughts and narratives. Um, and you know, one of our cities, the city of beacon, um, they're their, a city administrator is, is going to be leaving the city and going to the County for a job with, within their health department. And it's great for them. Is it good for beacon? Not so much. This, this guy is just incredible. He, he operates the city and, uh, you know, he's, he's really good for the community. Um, but he shares so much information that some of the other city mayors and administrators said, what are we going to do without you on this call and this information that you share, we're going to have to like, you know, actually have to work a little bit.
Speaker 2:Well, I think w you know, there's no question that he has been an amazing resource to the other seven and what he does by being a city manager is also, he fully understands that he's not an elected official so that he is setting up the here's your decision matrix. These are your choices, but he never oversteps the line between being appointed and elected. And I think it's absolutely one of the ways that you have been so supportive of the eight of them has been where if he didn't have an answer, you have often said, well, I've got something that may be helpful to you. And we do that with all of our convenings. And I think it's been a real asset. Public probably doesn't know much about what our role has been in doing this, but we do with County planning, commissioners, workforce development heads, um, economic development heads and talent supervisors, and bridging them across the region, I think has been one of the great things that we have done this year in being connective tissue between the various parts of the region.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. There's, you know, that that's just one representation of the work that does behind the scenes. You know, there's, there's just so many things that, that we're involved with that you'll never see pattern for progress on a specific report or on the marquee of a project happening we're behind the scenes. We work quietly and, and very methodically push things forward. And it's always to benefit the community. It's not to benefit one side or another, and it's always done in a very balanced approach and that, and that's the joy of working at pattern. Um, and, and also it's, it's just wonderful, the way that these, all of these groups are interacting with one another, just last week, we're having a call with a workforce development folks, and they're were thinking to themselves, wait a minute. If, if, if we know what's going on in the economic development world and the economic development world knows what's going on the workforce development world, the blending of these two is going to make a better region. And so we're setting up a new meeting.
Speaker 2:It's funny. I think it's great that, that we're, you know, we're doing this, but I think it's also something that has to happen as we build back better. You know, as we start to talk about what does the region look like in 2021 and beyond the notion that the workforce, which sometimes was the stepchild to economic development now needs to be equal because it is often the case that, you know, do we have the right workforce to attract the right business? They're completely connected, or are we going to fill all the retirements as the boomers age out the workforce issues? And we've set up a separate committee just to address this on our board. Recently, we set up a actually seven committees that we're going to be looking at, um, from one building a pathway forward for the region, um, where we're going to look at critical issues that have to be solved. Uh, second, one of the working groups from the board deals with banking and communities, and, you know, you know, about CRA as well as anyone does, but trying to figure out how to banks play a role in moving us forward. Um, infrastructure, one of the critical things talk about an unseen part that keeps everything working infrastructure. Um, although we separated broadband, because one thing we learned from the pandemic, whether it's remote work, Calla medicine, um, virtual learning for K through 12, that the broadband that exists in the Hudson Valley has gotta be improved. And so there, you know, several other DEI, um, diversity, equity and inclusion, you know, one of the things that we have to pay careful attention to in rethinking the economy for next year is this whole issue of equity. So we're fortunate we're able to pivot and go online, but there are plenty of people without broadband who have jobs that don't enable them to do this. And they were the first to be in trouble as the pandemic hit. They were the first to, you know, they were living as, as you always point out to me, the incredible percentage of people living paycheck to paycheck, and you know, what an opportunity now to rethink equity in terms of all, um, programs that we need to deliver in the coming years,
Speaker 3:That's that's right. And, you know, the broadband issue. So the, so that makes me think immediately about this, um, the movement from, uh, from New York city up into the Hudson Valley. And there, there were, there were dozens, if not, maybe a hundred, a couple hundred, uh, people that have moved into the rural areas. And they come to find out after they bought a home, um, at a, at a price that is been skyrocketing. Um, they bought a home and there's very little broadband or there's, there's an insufficient or none. And, and it creates, uh, a problem for them because they, they can't do this remote work, as you were saying from home. And so now what do they do? They, they have a house, they have no broadband, and they have a job that requires them to be online. So it's, it's a very interesting issue, uh, to deal with. And, you know, we're, we're going to be definitely taking a look at that in 2021, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think there are a lot of different issues that we're going to have to take a look at in 2021. You know, the working groups were designed to try to bring the expertise of the board, to assist staff in thinking through some of these, uh, issues. But, um, we know that the federal government state government, New York city are going to be severely compromised in terms of their budgets and to the degree that, um, they are necessary to fund not-for-profits or other organizations that provide critical services. 2021 is going to be a hard year it's it's, it's kind of, we're going to end 2020 with the highest impact of the pandemic ever, and the most optimism possible because of the vaccine. And I think that juxtaposition between where we actually is going to have a lot to do with the next calendar year, that we're going to be dealing with things from two very divergent, um, points of view, if not multiple points of view, but we're going to also be doing it inside of a society that is fractured in half politically
Speaker 3:Well that's right, Judy. And if you look, you know, if you look at some of the communities from, um, well, some, some of the communities that we deal with on, on our phone calls, some of them, some of the cities, towns, villages, they've had a rainy day fund, and they're able to dip into that fund to help balance their books, balanced their budgets for this year and going into 2021 next year, without aid to municipalities from the feds to the States, to the local, the local governments, there's going to be a giant hole, and that's going to be a substantial issue for not just obviously the government operations themselves, but then eventually it's going to be a problem for the residents and the businesses, because there will have to be a make, you know, the, the revenue is going to have to be made up somewhere. Where does that get made up? It's gotta be made up in taxes or other fees. So there's going to be, uh, absolute upward pressure on the cost to live here in the Hudson Valley. And that's going to be a major problem going into 21 and probably into 2022.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think that, you know, if you think about the virus, I mean, to the degree, there are people cheering that the vaccine is here. They're absolutely right. It's something to be celebrated. It's good news for, and we'll have to see how it, you know, over time its effectiveness. But right now, you know, the governor has mentioned many times that we have to get to between 75 and 80, 85% people vaccinated. And the current polling suggests 50%. Don't want to take a vaccine for the people that don't think that we're going to be challenged by this pandemic for calendar year 2021. And I don't want to go beyond that because right now I find planning for tomorrow to be difficult, let alone an entire year, but this is a wrap-up show. I think it's pretty clear that we're going to be living with the virus, the pandemic, some of us are going to be still wearing masks because they don't know, you know, they may have underlying conditions. They don't know going into a room and that, um, but the good news, let's say per tourism, I'll pick that one is that, um, we had a major bump of people wanting to get out of the city and come up here to the parks, the open spaces, the green Greenland, um, the, uh, restaurants. And this'll be the second time that they have to pivot to outdoor dining, but they now know how to do it. So, um, unfortunately the virus will be with us, but we'll be smarter about how to handle the economics of it.
Speaker 3:Well, that's that's right. And, you know, since, since there is a very large percentage of our economy here in the Hudson Valley, that does deal with tourism, hospitality, retail, and, and the like, as people are not able to fly and go aboard abroad, people are not able to drive to different States because are different, you know, requirements and restrictions on visiting other States. And coming back to New York, they are likely to stay within this state and visit us here in the Hudson Valley. And we love to have visitors here in the Hudson Valley, come on in, spend your money and then go home
Speaker 2:Well, or, you know, as long as you're going to say go home, let's talk about the center for housing solutions and, you know, are there studies, or are there other things that you have planned for the upcoming year?
Speaker 3:Oh for the upcoming year? Well, you know, before we even get into 2021, there's a couple of really great studies that we're, we're working on now. Um, one, one of which we actually finished in September, I was for the city of Kingston and up in Kingston, you know, they've, they've got an issue with some abandoned and vacant properties, single family, two family through family homes. And we actually went through this study and identified and did what's called a windshield survey of over 380 different structures in the city working now with the city, um, city of Kingston's, uh, housing initiatives program and the land bank, uh, the identification of these buildings and an identification of an action plan with recommendations that we've made is really making, uh, the city of Kingston into a strong force, um, in dealing with these problems, um, and repurposing a lot of the buildings. And it's a, it's a, it's a slow go. It takes, it takes time. Each renovation is very expensive. All of construction is expensive at this point. Um, but they're, they're taking on the recommendations and our plan is really going to push things forward. So we're very happy about that. The, the other, uh, plan that we're putting together and we're doing the final touches on that right now is the Ulster County housing action plan, where we analyzed the entire County. We went municipality by municipality. We took a look at of their housing trends. We analyze the trends. We've done series of dozens of interviews, working with a great committee, um, a great, uh, County executive and planning department. And we're putting together a series of recommendations there for the County to absorb and really, uh, do something about, about the housing situation. And every time we do these housing plans and try to understand and grapple with the housing crisis, we have to realize that the impact of COVID-19 has really exacerbated every single one of the issues. Um, but the communities do realize this. And I got a very strong sense that the conversations are, are, are not only being had at the government buildings and government centers, but these conversations are starting to move the dial. People do care. And I think that the NIMBY attitude will slowly, and I'm, it's hard to say this after 30 years of doing it, but we'll slowly get into what is called the YIMBY, which is yes, in my backyard, because the impacts of COVID has really, they've really touched on so many people and has elevated the, the category of what we now call a central workers and the essential workers. Obviously, the people we count on every day, people drive in ambulance teachers, firefighters that people work in retail and the cafes, people that fill your coffee cup, take your dry cleaning. They are the workforce. And if they do not have safe, decent, affordable housing, they're alive, their lives are greatly impacted. And if that workforce has issues, then your everyday life is going to have issues. And it's a ripple effect. So these action plans that we're putting together are certainly not just reports that are sitting on the shelf, and these, these communities are taking these, um, these recommendations seriously, and they're starting to put money behind it. Um, and understanding that this is a crisis that has not gone away. And again, it has gotten worse, but I do have a very good outlook on this. And I, and I think that things will happen,
Speaker 2:Joe, you brought to my attention that there are, it seems to me that the number of communities that have now elevated housing to the point of doing housing needs, assessments, or understanding what they have to do to be a healthy community. It just seems like it's growing and growing throughout the Hudson Valley. And that there's, I think we know that the people moving up from New York city do put pressure on the supply of housing and occasion and will drive prices up. I think we look at it from the point of view of that is true. We don't deny it, but therefore the solution, it is not to tell them don't come. The solution is then to build affordable housing.
Speaker 3:Well, that's right. And the term affordable, you know, sometimes people look at the term affordable and they think, well, it's got a negative connotation, but you know, that the term affordable means it means something that's a little different to everybody. Um, but if, you know, if a family or household is spending more than 30% of their income towards housing, it's not affordable. Um, and, and you know, the, the issue is that there's a, there's a lack of inventory. And with the lack of inventory, as you were saying before, it pushes prices up. So what do we do? We build more housing, it's expensive to build more housing because so many builders are looking at building 2,500, 3000 square foot homes on three acre, four acre, five acre, lots. So what if we were to take that down a notch and build 1400 square foot home, or a 1500 square foot home on a half an acre or an acre, and you could do cluster development, you can keep open space available. You can create amenities within subdivisions. And ultimately the prices are going to be reduced by a lot. I don't know about that, but everything helps the other big help this year in housing is that the simple fact that interest rates are so low yesterday, the day before interest rates hit an all time low of 2.6, 7% for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage, that's extraordinarily low. It's almost like free money, uh, which is great for affordability. You know, you can, you can buy more or you could look at it as a simple thing I can buy. And that's a great thing.
Speaker 2:All homeowners that can look at it and also refinance, Oh, absolutely. We may have gotten it right. Who may have gotten caught back in 2007, 2008 at the height of the market when the interest rates were high and then collapsed. And then, you know, we have a chance now to actually be able to, um, uh, reduce people's mortgages and therefore re allocate money to other needs like education or food or other basic costs, but that the cost of housing by, you know, refinancing may be really, um, uh, helped by that. Let me jump to a couple of other, you know, there are, we have a number of, uh, research projects in the works. So one that I'm excited about that I wanted to look at for a while is, um, uh, in the town of Montgomery, there are four police departments plus the, um, the County sheriff. And there is actually a state police barracks. Now, no one's talking about consolidating doing away with any of them, but we were very excited that the town recently, um, hired us to take a look at shared services among those police departments. And it comes at a perfect time when actually three of the four police departments do not have a full-time police, chief, they have acting or other people in the position. And so that's going to be very interesting for the delivery of services to look at, um, to look at that project. And I'm, I'm pretty excited about it. I'm starting that work.
Speaker 3:The beauty of, of that project in an, all of our project is that what we learn and what we recommend in one community can be taken into a different community and put into play. Each community is slightly different for sure, but what we learn in the strategies may work in, in a different community. So everybody who does benefit from our work,
Speaker 2:Um, I know, and, and I think that the, the idea that we're self-funding, some of these initiatives are things that we've always wanted to look at, like once and for all figuring out the broadband problem. And I think we're going to, um, it starts with the working groups within pattern that we're going to be looking for people outside a pattern with expertise to join the various efforts that were focused on. I, I really liked the infrastructure project and the infrastructure working group, um, that, uh, we're going to be doing down in Westchester with, uh, assessing the needs of small infrastructure, not big projects, like, you know, the Tappan Zee bridge or the Mario Cuomo bridge. But, um, we're going to be looking at what are the water sewer and road needs in smaller communities, and be able to put that together. And I think it's really timely to be doing this because hopefully it's one of those issues in Washington, an infrastructure stimulus bill that can be agreed upon. And I'm pretty excited that that is going to be in our work plan for them
Speaker 3:Next year. That's right. And when we look at infrastructure, you know, look looking at water and sewer and bridges, the common denominator, really within infrastructure. Um, we also have to look at the other infrastructure. That's starting to come into play, um, a number of years ago and that's the green infrastructure. And it is absolutely critical that we understand all the elements in and around green and it, what does it do? Ultimately it creates jobs and it can create very high paying jobs, whether it's engineering or design or construction itself. And I think that the Hudson Valley can absolutely benefit from that, that initiative, so to speak
Speaker 2:Well. And then this year due to the, you know, social unrest, um, many organizations, including pattern, took a deep dive into diversity equity and inclusion. And as I mentioned earlier, we have a separate full time in our bylaws committee on this, but this is where I think we're going to try to look at, um, and use our convening authority. There are DEI officers in many organizations, and we're going to try to bring them together to try to figure out how do we translate DEI into this issue of equity and fairness, because especially when there's limited dollars, you're going to have to add that to part of the equation I used, I used to teach a course many years ago on how do you measure government services? And it was based on threes. It was based on efficiency and effectiveness. You know, how efficient a program is, how effective it is. Those were usually pretty easy to get to some metric for the tough one, the 30 equity. And it's been around for a long time. And, you know, I think COVID clearly showed us that we may not, um, have been giving a fair amount of thought to the way in which our society functions, equitably among all people.
Speaker 3:And, you know, so I think this would be actually a good time for you to tell us about the fellows program, because it captures what exactly what you're talking about right now. Well, so it was, it was the first thing
Speaker 2:We did when we went pattern formed its task force on DEI the summer, and then into the fall. And that, um, each year we decide a theme for the, our fellows program, which is our mid career training program. And we're in our 13th year and we chose the issue of institutional racism. And there are in fact next week's PRI uh, lecture, which will be on, um, uh, environmental racism. And, uh, look, I've known about this issues since my days, working in New York city, you know, about the siting of, uh, you know, plants that no community wants. And so it winds up in the poor community that can't fight back. Um, but the two projects that the fellows are going to be tackling is police community relations and trying to come up with some template and suggestions that can be applied in this dovetails nicely into the executive order, signed by the governor here in New York. And then the second one was trying to come up with a profile for diversity equity and that each of them to bring back to their respective organizations. But, you know, I think that in at least so far, we've had four sessions of the fellows program. I think that so far what we're doing is awakening people, um, even people who think that they are fair and just, and do the right thing and that there is one more step, there is another piece of their analysis that can say, but, but is it equitable? And, and while, you know, in the social unrest that often came up with black lives matter, it involves gender, it involves the Latino population or the Asian population, and it's not simply limited to the, you know, the black people in our community though. Clearly they helped bring this discussion to the forefront. Um, we, you know, and maybe it's because of the fact that you don't have to commute to Newburgh anymore, or maybe it was because of the subject matter, but, um, we had 35 people register and be accepted into the program this year. And that's the largest class we've ever had. Yeah. We have well over 300 alumni fellows program now, and we're working on, um, you know, the staff and myself, uh, working on how do we bring them back? It's an asset of patterns. There were 300 of them. If we can get to a third of them, we can get to 100 and mobilize them to work on certain components of this. You know, governor Cuomo uses bill back better. President elect Biden uses bill back better fine. Let's use the phrase, you know, which is okay. The pandemic opened our eyes to a number of things that were wrong and they'd been wrong for years. And they became under a magnifying glass so that anybody could see the differentiation with how some programs are operating and functioning. And I think that in building back better, this notion of how does it affect everybody, um, is going to be a major part of the discussion. What makes it so challenging is that we just went through 10 years of an expansion of the economy and you know it, and if we didn't fix it, then, you know, it's sort of like for our out of alignment report, you know, where I was quoted as saying, if these are the good times, what happens when the bad times occur? And I said that, you know, about a year ago before the pandemic, and I never had a pandemic in mind, but clearly we're going to have a couple of Rocky years and the pie is going to be smaller. And so ha and, and in a polarized society and therefore, how do we get people to accept their fair and equitable share of a smaller pie? It's easier when the pie is big.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And there were very, very difficult conversations to have. It makes a lot of people squirm in their chair and, and they, they just, some people just don't understand it, uh, the differences between the haves and the have nots and, and, and you're, you're absolutely right that the divisiveness over the last couple of years has really brought this conversation, um, to, to a level where it's, it's sometimes it's near impossible to have, because you've got people on one side and the other side in it, and they're so polarized. It's so difficult to get them back into the middle, just to have this conversation, but we've got to do it. We absolutely have to do it.
Speaker 2:You know, the, the notion of red States and blue States, it's like, you know, in a times you wonder if this really is the current modern version of the civil war and the note, and I don't want to, you know, hopefully this is not where we're heading, but I do want, you know, this appeal to go out to people to say the election is over. This used to be the period where, okay, one side Democrat, Republican, one that's who's in charge, how do we make things work for the majority of people? And we have to be the, one of the powers that pattern has is convening people. And we're going to have to use that. Like, we've never used it before to try to say, here is the problem we're trying to solve, and then bring people from many different, um, components of the regional society to the table. And we have to learn to listen more, um, you know, people like to talk, but they don't always listen. And I think that listening element is critical to understanding where people are coming from. You know, Joe, I always joke with the staff that I believe that you can go anywhere and have a conversation with anybody in this country about a couple of things. They need a job, they need a place to live. If they're sick, they want to know they have access to healthcare. And I think that whether you're in a red or a blue state, the majority of people, those three items, you can have a discussion with them and say, how do we make it just a little bit easier for you?
Speaker 3:That's right. And the, and the fourth item actually is food, which represents a big issue right now, but we'll, we'll
Speaker 1:Get there. I do have, I have a very positive outlook for the future, like you said before because of the vaccine. Um, and we will get there, uh, we're resilient. Uh, let's face it. This is the United States of America. We're not gonna roll over. We're gonna, we're going to make it work.
Speaker 2:No, and I think that's a good place to end up, which is really upbeat feeling, which is that despite the fact that there are such a plethora of issues, um, certainly, uh, the staff had pattern is ready to help anybody that has an issue. You know, you can contact us through email. You can call our office at eight four five five six five, four, 900. And we're willing to help because, you know, we, we do Bri bring this unbridled enthusiasm to the idea that any problem can be made better, not made worse, but made better. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you can solve it completely, but you can figure out how it's not quite as bad as it is. And I think that that's going to be the story of 2021, that if you got 2020 to compare it to, it's going to be better than that.
Speaker 1:That's right. Absolutely. It's going to be a good year. I know it will be
Speaker 2:All right, Joe, thanks for your time as always, thanks for everything that you and Michelle and Robin and Eric and Kate and the whole staff at pattern, even if we're going to be virtual next year, you'll know how to find us. This is patterns and paradigms on behalf of Joe Cheika and Jonathan draftin. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to patterns and paradigms the pattern podcast. For more information about this episode, visit our website pattern for progress.org forward slash podcast.