Building Inclusive Communities with Mike Miller

How do we create cities where dreams can flourish for everyone, regardless of ability? This episode, featuring Mike Miller, the city manager of Muskogee, Oklahoma, resonates with personal stories of Mike's experiences, particularly with Craig Hospital where his daughter received care.

Accessibility isn't just about ramps and regulations—it's about creating places where everyone feels welcome. Mike brings to light the importance of moving beyond ADA compliance to embrace truly inclusive design in public projects.

Join us as we explore the delicate balance of building communities that prioritize inclusivity and the role individuals play in shaping environments that allow everyone to thrive.

Learn more about Mike Miller's daughter, Annie, who after sustaining a spinal cord injury in a ski accident, fearlessly reclaimed her life and passion for music with the help of her Craig team, family and community.

Meet Annie | Extraordinary Determination

For more information, transcriptions and behind-the-scene photos, visit https://craighospital.org/unstoppable

Craig Hospital is a nationally recognized neurorehabilitation hospital and research center specialized in the care of individuals who have sustained a spinal cord injury (SCI) and/or a brain injury (BI). Located in Denver, Colorado, Craig Hospital is an independent, not-for-profit, 93-bed national center of excellence that has treated thousands of people with SCI and BI since 1956. Learn more: https://craighospital.org

Transcript

Jandel Allen-Davis 0:02

Welcome to Unstoppable at Craig, where we pull back the curtain on what makes healthy workplace cultures click and what happens when people are empowered to expand the boundaries of what is possible. We'll explore the perspectives of employees and leaders who have carte blanche to speak their truths, tell their stories and unlock uncommon ways of approaching challenges. I am Dr Jandell Allen Allen Davis, ceo and President of Craig Hospital, a world-renowned rehabilitation hospital that exclusively specializes in the neurorehabilitation and research of patients with spinal cord and brain injury. Join me as we learn from people who love what they do and what happens when fear doesn't stifle innovation. I don't know if you know Judy Heumann. Judy Heumann is not singularly, but she's one of the great leaders that got the American Disabilities Act passed in 1990, and she passed it last year.

Jandel Allen-Davis 0:57

So, she is a hero in the disability community and one of the things that she said is that part of the problems that we tend to think of equality, that it's about treating everyone the same, when it really isn't. It is about equity, it's about fairness and it's about equity of access, which was certainly obviously at the core of what the ADA is about. I also say that the Americans with Disabilities Act is necessary but hardly sufficient, that we've got miles to go, and you would know that better than many Mike and I am so thrilled and honored to get a chance to talk with Mike Miller, who has many connections to this work that he'll talk about, but he is the city manager of Muskogee, oklahoma, and has been doing that for over seven years. But there's other really cool things that you may want to share, so I'm just going to open up to you to tell us a little bit about yourself, your career and how it is that you and I get to hang together.

Mike Miller 1:52

Yeah well first, very generous of you to make the offer. I love to meet interesting people and we've already had a brief conversation and got to know people and talk about mutual acquaintances and what a small world it really is. And so I grew up in Oklahoma. My wife is named Holly Holly Rosser Miller and she's from Texas, and we have spent the last 24 years in Muskogee, oklahoma. Both of us grew up in much larger towns and we didn't ever anticipate living in a community Muskogee size it's about 40,000 citizens in.

Mike Miller 2:24

Muskogee. But when we lived in Muskogee it was because I was working for a Native American tribe, the Cherokee Nation, which was headquartered about 20 miles away, and I love working there, but it was a place of convenience. So we moved to Muskogee, this small town. It seems small but really became home for us. It's really a place of community there, where people get along, they pull together to make the community a better place. And it has its flaws, like every community, but it's got so much going for it and we really fell in love with it. So we've lived there for about 25 years work in Muskogee. I always commuted other places until I got the opportunity to work for the city of Muskogee and what we do there and what we like to say is we get to make our neighbors' lives better every day.

Jandel Allen-Davis 3:12

Oh, beautiful.

Mike Miller 3:13

Yeah, so what we mean by that is, pardon me, I was an English major in college, which of course prepares you for lots of things.

Jandel Allen-Davis 3:21

We have a daughter who's one of those and I actually would agree.

Mike Miller 3:27

Yes, I agree too. I am a strong believer we can get off on that tangent in in the humanities, making you a better person overall. But um, as a, and so um, the the words in that phrase are important. Making, it's an action verb, it's you don't something doesn't happen. You don't make something unless you're doing it and you take a positive, proactive action. Our neighbors we're talking about us together neighbors, the people around us make our neighbors lives better every day, and so, uh, that's what we get to do, and there's lots of ways that that we get to do it.

Mike Miller 3:59

Working for the city, and it's a lot of things that people take for granted. So you expect that the water comes into your house through the faucet and that it leaves, however it leaves, down the drain and you want it to leave efficiently, and all those things. And that the police come when they're called and the firefighters come when they're called and that the streets get you where you need to go and the trash gets picked up, and so there's a lot of things that we take for granted to go and the trash gets picked up, and so there's a lot of things that we take for granted and people don't always say, oh I'm sure, glad that worked right 100% of the time or 99.9% of the time. So that's one of the things. We just remind ourselves that that feeling of fulfillment comes from doing something good for the people around you, whether they know it or acknowledge it or not. I feel like when I come to Craig, that there's people that feel that way too.

Jandel Allen-Davis 4:44

So what brings you or brought you to Craig? Talk a little bit about that.

Mike Miller 4:53

So my daughter had a spinal cord injury while we were on spring break here in Colorado, and so she was 16 years old at the time. She was kind of emergency transferred to Children's Hospital here in Denver area and then she was in intensive care for a long time more than a month and then another ambulance ride across town. She was transferred here for inpatient and then some outpatient therapy and she captured our hearts right away. She has a way of doing that.

Jandel Allen-Davis 5:18

The irony that you have this role as a city manager and I don't know if Muskogee is city manager form of government so you run the city. Just for those who don't know, city manager forms of government are where you actually run it. They may have a mayor, mayor may be part of city council, but the real deal is you.

Mike Miller 5:38

Yeah, the council and mayor. They're the board of directors and the mayor's the chairman of the board, but then the person that has to go do everything is me, as the city manager, and you've been doing that for over seven years.

Jandel Allen-Davis 5:47

I know there are other things that may come up in story as we talk in this next hour, but the irony that the importance of placemaking I could imagine took on new importance or even just sort of new perspectives through the lens of Annie's injury and I'd love just to get some sense of how have your perspectives changed and what stories has your, just the way that this has personally touched you. How has it changed your perspectives about this whole idea of accessibility and disability rights and city and placemaking?

Mike Miller 6:18

Well, you're right, I think from my background, from my perspective, it changed dramatically two years ago, right, and so I can see the perspective of people that don't understand the challenges. And so one of my perspectives is that I work in a beautiful old city hall that's 100 years old, like literally 100 years old, and they do have an elevator that they didn't originally have, but my daughter is terrified of it because it is just about as wide as it's you know probably a 50 or 60 arrow, you know, well maintained elevator.

Mike Miller 6:52

But so my daughter used to come to my office a lot and she doesn't as much anymore because there's that, uh, even though there's an elevator, it's one she can't turn around and she can wheel in and then have to back out, and so you don't think about those things. We had and we do have at the city accommodations for people that can't get upstairs. You can understand from both perspectives, before her injury and after. It's kind of like different layers that you see and you're like oh okay, the things that I hadn't thought about.

Designing for Accessibility

Mike Miller 7:24

As far as you know the quote that you read earlier, it's not about fairness, it's about equity of access. Well, you know, there's lots of things. The fairness is there's an elevator. The equity of access is that it's not really feasible for people in wheelchairs, and so that change of perspective has been. I'll admit I feel a little guilty that I hadn't thought of those things before, right? I mean, you want to think of yourself as empathetic or caring or trying to help others, and you're like oh now it's more important to me because my daughter's situation, but maybe it obviously should have been even before that.

Jandel Allen-Davis 8:04

Well, I would say I'm here to the extent you need me to absolve you of the guilt that's why we're talking about this today is that there's this. What's that phrase? That which has been seen can't be unseen.

Mike Miller 8:14

Yes.

Jandel Allen-Davis 8:15

And I too, until five years ago, sort of considered myself someone who really thought about equity. But I can tell you that we didn't. We, the universal, we's, haven't thought about it through the lens of accessibility. Some of I could imagine that equity would be Annie could bounce into the building, take the stairs, probably, I hope unless you're on the a millionth floor.

Mike Miller 8:36

In that case I'd say, take the elevator too.

Jandel Allen-Davis 8:40

That equity is that? How do we make it as easy as possible and as welcoming, whether it's restaurants? Well now, I can't walk into restaurants without seeing. How would a power chair ever get around all these tables?

Mike Miller 8:53

Well, I had that experience, that exact restaurant experience. My brother and I were going to lunch the other day and I called my wife and my daughter and said, hey, come join us. And then we got to the restaurant about five minutes before and I'm like, oh, we can't go to this restaurant. It was an older restaurant. It had, you know, flagstone steps. It didn't have a ramp, wow, you know, even still, I hadn't noticed those things.

Mike Miller 9:20

So the people that are patients and friends of Craig I'm not illuminating them by saying those things, but one of the things you said earlier. It reminded me of something that I did learn here, that I stuck with me for the two years plus since Annie's been gone From the hospital. One of the I don't remember if it was a therapist or one of the people said go out and try to do stuff, even if it's hard, or you can't do it or you need help. And they said people will not know if you sit at home and don't try. Let people try and help you overcome those.

Mike Miller 10:19

You know, either in that day, in that moment or, by design, long-term. And that's what and I I thought of that here because it's hard, I will say from my daughter's perspective and me being with her. She doesn't want to be that person. She doesn't want to be the center of attention, trying something and not being able to do it, or publicly doing something that takes her five or 10 minutes longer than other people. How people look at her and she. You know she's a teenager anyway.

Jandel Allen-Davis 10:40

Yeah, I was going to say some of it is the adolescence. Yeah, absolutely, and it's valid.

Mike Miller 10:46

And so I learned that here and um and it stuck with me. Well, how?

Jandel Allen-Davis 10:50

has it changed your? If you know, you're back in your city manager role, putting that hat back on and driving about, walking, about experiencing Muskogee. How has it changed your agenda? Do you talk about this at council or with the mayor or others?

Mike Miller 11:10

So we do, and a couple of things that we're doing is just by design on our projects upfront even more so. So you talked about ADA as a necessity, right? Or is it as you?

Jandel Allen-Davis 11:22

use the good turn of phrase it's necessary, but not sufficient.

Mike Miller 11:25

Yes, and so we know, when we're designing something, what the necessity is. As we're looking at all these projects, we're trying to make sure that we're doing.

Mike Miller 11:34

We didn't have the right words for it but, ADA says this how do we do better than that? Right, and so we are building. We've had two new sidewalk projects in the last year that we made sure we tried to do with that. We had a trail project that I don't want to go into all the details, but we had struggles with a contractor who decided that ADA wasn't necessary, but much, much, yes, necessary.

Mike Miller 12:00

I guess that first bar let alone sufficient, and so we had some trouble with that and, working with some partners, we we figured out how to get through that. One thing that I'll say that I have I've learned from others is so you ask what? How it kind of changes the things that we do. My daughter's a freshman at the University of Tulsa and so she toured a bunch of colleges, you know, as one does before they, you know, make that large decision and we got to see accessibility from that perspective. And we got to see accessibility from that perspective and we saw lots of colleges and universities that had the necessary that you could get from point A to point B. But she went to some places that her college tour.

Mike Miller 12:45

They're like okay, well, you go around back and go there and we'll meet you up over here, and even one of them had like here's the welcome hall for the. Everyone get together. You have to. You can't come in the regular door, though, to get to the big welcome for the student orientation to the recruitment.

Mike Miller 13:04

But when she went to the University of Tulsa she remarked upon it. She's like it seems like where their ramps are right, where the doors are, all, everything gets me to the same place at the same time as the other people. I can go with my friends from class to class here, right, and we're not having to do the triangulation or I'll see you there. Yeah, it's like my destination in theirs is close by right.

Jandel Allen-Davis 13:29

You know that's equity and it was by design. You do it, tulsa.

Creating Inclusive Cities for All

Mike Miller 13:34

Hats off to Tulsa, and so that's kind of been a goal. For me is, as we do new things in our city, how can that be part of?

Jandel Allen-Davis 13:39

it. Yeah, you know, I've just sort of we've been working with this developer, who has gotten religion, I will say, in terms of having come over. We really walk the building in a really specialized, highly targeted tour with our occupational and physical therapists, and one of the things that he realized, which is what I wanted to ask you about, is it actually isn't much more difficult to think about design, as you're talking about, from the ground up, whether we're talking in commercial spaces, retail or certainly in our homes.

Jandel Allen-Davis 14:12

Sure, doors need to be respect, to be wider, these 36 inch, I think it is doors and making sure that you can actually clear turns in hallways and that kind of thing. So what's been, if any, the conversations with your teams or with city council or with the community around? What would it take if Tulsa, the university, can do that, to think about our city and our town that way?

Mike Miller 14:39

The conversations have been, I would say, somewhat organic, in that you just have that when we're talking about a project or talking about building something. One example is a housing group that we're working with. Again, we'll probably not Again, I don't, we'll probably not use the exact correct industry terms but basically they're like we don't need to design houses that have steps. You know everybody's got that little. You know one or two steps leading up. We got to build the pad up so it doesn't flood. We know that, but you know. So they're building and they're designing.

Mike Miller 15:10

Your path gently slopes up into your home instead of having you know steps. And, as you were talking earlier, when you have a big open floor plan and it doesn't, it's not a inconvenience, it's not and it's not a lot of additional development costs. It's usually maybe even not even more cost, it's less, depending on how they do it in the structure. And so those are the kinds of conversations that I am having now that I never would have had before. Is how can we do something that looks good, that is above and beyond what's needed, that is welcoming and provides a high quality of life, because that's what we're all after anyway, is that high quality of life, and the less you have to think about the daily things, the more you're able to enjoy life.

Jandel Allen-Davis 15:58

And even as you said with Annie, that not becoming the center of attention because of the difference in the way of trying to navigate around things, but the center of attention because she's like a rock star, right.

Mike Miller 16:11

She's pretty great. Everyone go watch the video.

Jandel Allen-Davis 16:15

Yeah, you should.

Mike Miller 16:15

It's amazing. I'm sure there's going to be a link in the podcast. We will make sure there's a link.

Jandel Allen-Davis 16:20

You know we talked about this budget thing. I kind of mentioned it. Have you yet come upon the time where you had to think about trade-offs and budgets in the city, or trade-offs or how you navigate the difficult conversations that you even referenced?

Mike Miller 16:37

Well, I mean, we're probably in some of those conversations right now. We're in the middle of trying to do a capital campaign, so we're trying to figure out. We've got a bunch of I alluded to our 100-year-old city hall so we've got a lot of buildings that need some TLC and that need some some repair, Uh. And so what does that look like, Right, and how much does that cost? And we've got different plans that we could build a whole nother entrance to the building on the East side. That would make it truly ADA accessible and compliant, because our current things are kind of grandfathered in, you know, like an old building, and so we could do a whole bunch of that, and but that would cost a lot more than if we just, you know, put a new coat of paint on it and, you know, a new roof and you know the things that you have to do on a hundred year old building. And so those are conversations.

Jandel Allen-Davis 17:31

Yeah, you know. Two things come to mind. The first is have you run into which? I will tell you just honestly, as an African-American woman who is of a certain age, I've lived through several decades of the work we know we have to do around social justice, in whatever way it plays out and it can sometimes be you have an agenda. You're doing this because you have an agenda, as opposed to this, is really good for everybody. I hope you haven't hit that with respect to people thinking, oh, you're just driving this because of Annie, but that this whole opening of eyes around seeing your community very differently, because you know mobility challenges are one but sight challenges are another, cognitive challenges sensory neural challenges.

Jandel Allen-Davis 18:15

it's all in there, so I hope nobody said that to you.

Mike Miller 18:19

No, and I do want to say again about my community that I think we are in general pretty disability friendly.

Mike Miller 18:26

We are home to the Oklahoma School for the Blind. So you talked about people that have visual challenges, and so we do have a you know a lot of youngsters that are learning how to deal with poor eyesight or no eyesight, and, um, we have white cane days and we have people you know we're moving downtown with, you know learning, you know some basics about how to, uh, how to, to navigate the world, and so we have a pretty high awareness of trying to trying to make our community accommodating to people who experience life differently than us. It's different now that I'm in the seat that I'm in and now that I'm experiencing life with Annie like I am.

Jandel Allen-Davis 19:07

And, by the way, maybe we all need to take Muskogee's population and double it, based on the wonderful ways you're talking about the town.

Mike Miller 19:14

We'd love everyone to move theregee's population and double it.

Jandel Allen-Davis 19:15

based on the wonderful ways you're talking about the town, yeah, it sounds like and really that is progressive to be able to say that you all are, you live because of circumstances, ie having that school there, for example. Do you think it's easier in small I don't know how often or how city managers come together nationally and but really come together to share.

Mike Miller 19:33

Yeah, so cities the size of Muskogee have problems that bigger cities have, and in Oklahoma that's Tulsa and Oklahoma City, but we don't have those resources that they have to do it. You get a kind of critical mass of employees and a critical mass of tax dollars and so I think in some ways harder, maybe in a much smaller town of five or 10,000 people you can focus on fewer things that you have to do. In Muskogee we're kind of a regional hub of Oklahoma and so we're the biggest fire department for 30, 40 miles, we're the biggest police department for 30 or 40 miles, so we're the one everyone depends on. So we have the extra resources. So we get called upon, our resources get stretched thin to help other communities and other people, and we don't mind that. That's been our identity for 100 plus years. You know city managers in much larger cities say our resources are stretched too. We have more money and more, but more stretching.

Mike Miller 20:29

So, I don't think anything in municipal government is super well-funded these days, and so I think we all have our challenges for sure.

Jandel Allen-Davis 20:38

We had an incident, an issue that happened here in Denver a year ago two years ago now, it was 22. There was for the mayoral election, so it was last year. There was one of those debates where all the candidates, a candidate forum that came together, was hosted in an historical building and, once deemed historical, you can't touch it, and actually the incident made the front page of the New York Times.

Jandel Allen-Davis 21:02

You saw that one yeah passed in both the Senate and the House this year in Colorado. That requires that for these political events, where there's going to be campaigns, that they have to be held or accommodations need to be made for disabilities. And so you know, the hard thing is that we do learn this stuff the hard way. How do we use creativity and innovation? And when you dream, what do you see in terms of future cities that you don't even have to think about this stuff?

Mike Miller 21:35

Wow, what a question. It's almost too big of a question. I get a little choked up. So probably why you do some of the things you do is you get to make a difference that's important in people's lives, and not just people, but a person that you see right, and you get to see a lot of great people here, every day, and you can see some of them that are just doing way better than they would be doing if it weren't for your help.

Mike Miller 22:06

And so, as a city manager, I don't always think of the big thing. It's not been my career. I remember I was an English major, so I haven't spent a lifetime thinking of what's a utopian city look like. I have spent some time in my life thinking about how do I make that person's life better, but what it means to me is how do we do that on a that empathy for the next person and make the next person's life better, knowing that they're not a payoff for me?

Mike Miller 22:40

The payoff is that you did the right thing.

Jandel Allen-Davis 22:42

It's those small things that matter, because the grandness of dreaming about big, beautiful cities that have a place for everybody, where you really sense and can feel that you belong, can feel overwhelming. But it is the small things. It is just if this helps, mike, the conversations and the courage of stepping in and looking differently through the lens of Annie's injury, at your city and your responsibility around how you make our neighbors' lives better every day. It is a game of inches and every single one of those inches influences something else, so I just applaud you for continuing to do this work. What advice would you offer to other city managers or leaders who are looking to enhance accessibility within their own communities?

Mike Miller 23:30

There's kind of philosophical and practical answers to that. There's kind of philosophical and practical answers to that, and so a practical answer that we've implemented in Muskogee is just using our eyes and we have a lot of people that are lower income, that are disabled as well, and just through circumstance or through an ability to find a workplace that is accommodating or all the things that can contribute place that is accommodating or all the things that can contribute and so what we found is that there are significant number of people that had accessibility problems, that couldn't get to the store without kind of rolling their wheelchairs in the street. There were people like we need to do something. So we used our eyes and we built a sidewalk. We're not heroes for that.

Mike Miller 24:12

We could have done that a long time ago, but that is a practical thing is that you can look through whatever sort of data set that you would like to use to benefit the most people in the most way. In a very fundamental way, because getting to the store to buy food is important and being able to do that in a safe way is important, and if your community can't do that for people, you're not doing a great job, and we weren't doing a great job and we're in the process of doing a better job. That's amazing. So that's kind of the practical.

Inclusive Design in Urban Development

Jandel Allen-Davis 24:41

I'm going to interrupt you there to say I love that, use your eyes and one of the things that just to sort of tag on to that or build upon that is the idea of doing accessibility walks. The bus stop is 15 minutes down the street. There are people who use transportation to get to the office. Depending on the weather, depending on the bus route, depending on the time, can they really make it to that nine o'clock appointment? And when they don't, are you blaming them? Are you thinking more broadly about the circumstances? Or is our wayfinding clear in buildings and that sort of thing?

Mike Miller 25:15

When you're making these decisions. Are there people that have that experience at the table? The circumstances?

Jandel Allen-Davis 25:20

or is our wayfinding clear in buildings and that sort of thing when you're making these?

Mike Miller 25:22

decisions. Are there people that have that experience at the table right?

Jandel Allen-Davis 25:24

Oh amen. So are there people that know what you're?

Mike Miller 25:25

talking about. We try not to build a park without having, you know, somebody with little kids give us some ideas, right? So we shouldn't try, and you know, build other things right. So we shouldn't try, and you know, build other things. We should include, when we're designing things, people, all the people that might use them and have different perspectives.

Jandel Allen-Davis 25:43

You know we think about just FYI in healthcare when we talk about within our hospitals or offices. A requirement and it's not a requirement legally yet and I hope it never has to be, because I hope we just do it is having patients, real consumers of your services, be part of your advisory committees or your patient safety committee or your quality committee. And what I've heard folks default to is well, we're patients in this system so I can represent. No, you can't. You know we need to totally be able to take our hat off, and so I just love that. That's the way you're thinking about it. Is that it's a nothing about me without me strategy as an employer and you are, if I can just ask that question as an employer, and I don't know if you know this, but the employment rate for disabled population is about 22.5%, so most people with disabilities have been frozen out of job markets because our eyes aren't open wide enough to see possibility and potential. How do you think about that as an employer? How does the city think about that?

Mike Miller 26:52

So we are open for business. Amen, so I think about that, so we are open for business Amen. So I think about it with two lenses. And one is, you know, in Oklahoma the job market is very much employee friendly right now.

Mike Miller 27:06

There's more people that need to hire people than are available in the workforce, and so we have that open door to try and make sure that we don't have things that keep people artificially from receiving jobs. That's a conversation I had this last week with our HR department. Who are we keeping out with our own rules? That are our rules that aren't necessary, and especially in an organization that's hours a hundred and plus years old. We've got the way we've always done things and we've always asked these questions. And if you have this and if you, if this is, if you can't do this or that, then you're not eligible and like so maybe that was a good rule when we had 10, 10 applicants for every job and now we have, you know, one applicant for every job.

Mike Miller 27:55

So, we need to make sure that we are widening our pool, that we are not excluding anyone, that we're not artificially.

Jandel Allen-Davis 28:05

Whatever accommodations, that and, by the way, that's another one of those ADA things that needs work reasonable accommodations, reasonable through whose lenses? Is another thing that we've got to.

Jandel Allen-Davis 28:15

that was the opening of of eyes, so I'm probably going to make you cry as we finish up this interview because your daughter, Annie, as we, started as a rock star and I just want to give you a few moments just to speak into whoever this void is or whoever's out there listening about what a special person she is and why you, through your role as dad and as community member and as city leader, are hell-bent on changing the trajectory around this.

Building Inclusive Cities for All

Mike Miller 28:48

You know, my goal is for Annie to have a good career. Right, I don't want her to have a 22% chance of being employed. Yeah, and so she's got career aspirations and life aspirations and you know, amazing and brilliant and making all the good grades, and and you know playing her musical instruments and performing, and so I'm a I'm a proud dad on all of those things. But I have been for 18 years now dad on all of those things, but I have been for 18 years now, so she's really amazing.

Jandel Allen-Davis 29:21

Everybody thinks their kid's the best, but my kid's the best. I don't know.

Mike Miller 29:23

We can arm wrestle, we can arm wrestle, but we've always, we've been blessed with her our whole life.

Jandel Allen-Davis 29:29

And yeah, yeah, we got to make a world that is more than big enough for Annie and the Annie's of the world. Yeah, and the Anthony's of the world, just so I can play on in English.

Mike Miller 29:43

Sure A way of thinking about it.

Jandel Allen-Davis 29:44

Yeah, I know To have that world open to them, and it sounds like you were there and this has just reinforced it which says a lot about you, Mike, as a person.

Mike Miller 29:53

Well, she's a fantastic girl and she's a woman, a fantastic young woman, very smart, and if you listen to this, I love you very much.

Jandel Allen-Davis 30:07

Yeah Well, I want to thank you for making time. It's going to be a real honor and privilege to pull this particular episode of Unstoppable through the lens of you guys who placemake and placemake and cityemake and city build and city imagine and city utopian. However, we want to put it yes. And dream big on behalf of those you serve and Muskogee's, blessed to have you, mike. I hope they know that.

Mike Miller 30:25

Thank you so much for taking time from me today. I thoroughly enjoyed becoming I feel like your friend now. You are.

Jandel Allen-Davis 30:32

So thank you, you are.