The Mulvehill Monologues, Part IV - Re-Posting from 2012 Courtesy of Michael Buczyner

Good morning, Wesley. Thank you for the supportive call last night. Yes, I did have a restful nights sleep. The transcription of Ms. Mulvehill's presentation before the commission is a daunting task. As with all major challenges, there will be ups and downs. Yesterday, I tried and experiment. As I was transcribing let my mind go completely blank. I didn't try to make sense of what I was listening to. Just let the words flow through my brain as if it were devoid of any serious matter. It worked! The only problem is I have to have someone around to awaken me from the trance state. Without further ado, I will continue. 

The Mulvehill Monologue continues with the last couple of sentences from the last Monologue Three:

...It became part of their overall plan of attracting business, of attracting investment, of green, providing green jobs. And it allows cities to take advantage of synergies between communities, even between departments, where they were solving the problem of, this isn't our, water, the water on the lake. So we're not going to use that money for it.

And it makes the unfamiliar familiar, there was a lot of discussion about we're not sure how to handle this. You know, this is, is the rise in natural disasters is something that, you know, when you look at it globally you can see that it's [stuttering] it's problematic. I mean, it's costing millions and millions of billions of dollars for people around the world to solve floods and tsunamis and hurricanes. And, ummm, working together on trying to come up with solutions was really one of the key themes. This was, hmmm, and I have a book right to you in my office, the World Disaster Reduction Campaign, it is an international, ummm, program that basically works to, it says, convince local governments, to really support local governments making your cities more resilient. Hmmm. If you go to the next slide this is the name of the campaign. It's called My City Is Ready Is Getting Ready campaign. It is something we could actually support as well. Ahhh. More than a thousand cities have signed up as of when I have prepared this. Hmmm. When I learned about it in May. It addresses issues of local governance and urban risk. And basically it provides a toolkit for governments to, to decide, am I ready to deal with a natural disaster? And there is a ten point checklist in, in this as well as a self assessment tool. So I will [mumbling] I have a book for each of you. OK. Hmmm. Now I wanted to also share some of the highlights of the presentation that I made, hmmm, I presented roughly to about a hundred people at the conference. I did speak at this conference and these are some of the highlights of my presentation. It was called Lessons Learned Using an Integrated Approach To Build A Resilient Sustainable City, The Case Of Lake Worth Florida. And, what we, what I expressed was how we were identifying our existing capacities. Hmmm. Basically having our power and [unintelligible] generation, waste, and waste management, historical preservation, umm, we are a, a artistic community with cultural and ethnic diversity, and that old Florida charm. Hmmm. We have a tropical climate  and, uhhh, which they were envious of! [giggling] A rainy day in a cold city! [laughter] And, ummm, a lot of natural resources. So, I talked about how, at the core, and I have to thank, really, Mr. Bornstein, our city manager, because he sat with me for about three hours and preparing this presentation. So I really do thank you for that. But we worked on nurturing, the nurture, nurturing of a conservation mindset and how that is what themes that we have here in our city. That we use education as a component of that, we develop policies and programs around that. 

Sorry, Wesley. Can feel myself getting weaker and weaker. This is mentally draining and I have to stop now. Sorry, just don't have the strength to continue. 

Anna