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"Thanks everyone for coming out. I hope that we can spend most of our time in conversation
that is what this is about. An opportunity to listen and get your ideas, your feedback,
your advice, your comments. I will just start by telling you or reminding you of the four
that in this second term we have been particularly focused on. They are jobs, in schools closing
the achievement gap, bringing the cost of healthcare down, and also issues of youth
violence. Job creation I think everybody here knows we have been going through the worst
economy in living memory, but because we have a strategy that is focused on education, innovation
and infrastructure. We are growing jobs faster than 46 other states, our unemployment rate
is well below the national unemployment level, we have moved up to the sixth best place in
the nation and wish to do business. We use that to market ourselves to businesses outside
of the Commonwealth and also those here. We are paying more and more attention to the
specific needs of small businesses which make up 85% of the businesses here in the Commonwealth
so issues around healthcare costs are access to capital. Frankly, if small businesses do
not start hiring we do not get a recovery it is as simple as that so jobs first and
foremost. In healthcare, last term we were able to through the efforts of a tremendous
partnership with a private sector to extent healthcare to over 98% of our residents. No
other state in America can touch that. I am very, very proud of that. In fact we are the
model for National Health Care Reform, but it still costs too much especially for working
families and small businesses. We have taken some steps already to start to level that
out, but there is a big fix here that we are working out to try to move from a fifer service
system to a paying for quality system, a medical home as it is sometimes called, and that is
pending in the legislature now. In education, I am proud of the fact even during the worst
economy in living memory with the help of Steve and Marcos and their colleagues in the
legislature we have continued to fund the schools indeed at the highest level in the
history of the Commonwealth even when the bottom is falling out of everything, our students
are responding and our teachers are responding. (Applause) Our students are number one in
America in student achievement for each of the last five years. We are in the top five
in the world in math and science, but we still have an achievement gap. Stuck in that gap
are poor children, children with special needs, students that speak English as a second language,
more often than not children of color and that is an educational and economic issues,
you all know that. To have that achievement gap for the eighteen years we have had, that
is a moral question. We have some tools now through the achievement gap bill that was
enacted last year and signed a year ago in January to reach those children, some new
ways and I hope we have a chance to talk about that. Finally, we are working on issues of
urban violence and this is one where I have been personally frustrated because I am not
sure I know what the strategy ought to be. We spent some time over the last several months
engaging with community groups, activists, members of the clergy in communities where
youth violence in particular seems to be a serious problem asking them what they thought
solutions would be. Trying to get a sense again just as in the case of in education
and healthcare not what one size fits all, but what strategy makes the most sense and
is going to make the most impact in a given community. The Legislature has given us some
extra resources to begin to apply now and we are excited and hopeful about making some
progress in what I think is one of the most challenging issues facing us here in the Commonwealth
and all around the country. Those are some of the things we are working on at the top
of our agenda is not to ignore other issues, but those are our primary focuses and I am
looking forward to hearing about yours.">>Question:"Hi my name is Grace Marie Thomaselli and my sister
Joyce Thomaselli. I am a former State employee for thirty years.">>Governor:"Where did you
work?">>Answer:"I worked for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare
and Medicaid and I was the assistant program and policy trainer and the reason I have so
much background now is that I am able to see it in reality. You see the elder population
being prematurely institutionalized there are many issues that are out there for example,
the new federal poverty level. There are a lot of things out there but people do not
always know that these programs are there. I happened to learn first-hand, my mother
was ninety-nine she passed away in May of this year and we were able to keep her at
home for eleven years which saved the State an incredible amount of money and made her
happy.">>Governor Patrick:"How many people prefer, your all young like me, how many people
would prefer to age in place as we say?, how many people expect that they are going to
go into long-term institutional care? When Grace was talking about, the first point she
made this idea about being able to get long term care, so not everybody can stay at home.
Some people do need nursing facilities, but the idea of preferred at home care turns out
to be one of those great confluences where the preference of the general public is also
cost-effective. So the community first initiative which is what we talked about is what you
talked about, we have been trying to capture the savings; maybe I should put it the other
way, respond to the preference of people but also capture the savings in doing so.>>Question:"Just
about thirteen and I hate to say this but one of the detriments to me right now, because
the State's unemployment rate is much lower than nationally the benefits are being chipped
away at. I think it is down to something like eighty-seven weeks now rather than the ninety-nine
weeks that the rest of the country is at and is there any plan to help those of us that
are still unemployed? Number two I just want to give you thanks. I am also on the board
of North shore Community Health Center and I want to say, that it is all volunteered
by the way, but I want to thank you for your support and Senator Kerry and Senator Brown
as well. The support of the community health centers people do have a place if they cannot
go anywhere else, the community health centers throughout the state are a place they can
go to get good, quality healthcare. "Pam, let me take the second comment first because
on the community health centers what experience has taught us or ought not to be the place
of last resort. It is in fact one of the most cost-effective settings in which to get high
quality care, so when I talked in the introduction about the health care reform bill, the next
stage of health care reform, we call it payment reform. The idea of medical home or accountable
care organizations has very much this model of more community based care because all the
evidence is high quality and cost-effective. On the first point, does everyone know what
Pam was asking about in terms of unemployment benefits? So because our unemployment rate
comes down, the extended benefits trim back which makes some sort of theoretical sense,
but for folks who have been out of work a long time it is a scary thing. Let me just
say to you that I do not think that the solution is going to lie in the unemployment benefits,
the solution is going to lie in getting you back to work. I do not know whether you are
using the jobs center up this way, but why don't you let us take a name and number.">>Question:"We
want to hear about the kind of jobs that we have and the kind of people who need these
middle, skilled jobs yet. And how workforce investment boards are working with the colleges
and the adult-ed folks, like John, to help people get to a point where they can finish
high school and then go on to train for some of these jobs that they can get. The race
to the top was really great">>Governor Patrick:"The race to the top was really exciting and for
those who may not know, the race to the top was a federal competition for extra resources
for the public schools and we were the nation’s top scorer, we won a quarter-billion dollars
to use over the next five years. Again, to help on the team end, mainly.""It includes
the purposes, as you know it includes dogs and education.">>Governor:"So I am coming
around to this because when Pam was making the point about being out of work for thirteen
months. One of the realities that I think we are going to have to deal with is that
folks who have been long-term unemployed are unlikely to go back to the job they use to
have. The jobs that are being created, in the life sciences, in IT and clean tech, they
are not all PhD jobs by the way, you know that. But they require a set of skills that
are going to suggest that people are going to go back for training. So my wish and I
wish frankly that I had the direct authority to do this and I don't so I am working on
this. We have community colleges that are really good about training for the work force
needs in the region, some see themselves as two-year versions of four-year colleges, and
some are hybrids of the two. Without a value judgment what I am about to say is not a value
judgment, but what I would like to see is that the community colleges have more of a
common mission about workforce development. We have a limited amount of workforce training
money as you know. Imagine being able to take that and park that at the community colleges
and have the community colleges serve as the platform for training for someone like Pam."