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Related: » Houston Chronicle: Grow This Idea: The Urban Gardening Program turns abandoned lots into veggie plots.

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Houston continues to move forward since I first began meeting you here like this.

» In the last five years we’ve led the nation with 380,000 new jobs. These employment gains exceed those in sixteen states combined. Houston remains America’s great city of opportunity.

» Houston is safer. Our overall crime rate has dropped to the lowest in two decades or more. We’ll reduce those rates even more as we add hundreds of new officers to HPD.

» We’ve improved the quality of life in our neighborhoods, with public services at record levels. In the last five years we more than doubled the number of neighborhood health clinics supported by the City and increased the number of primary care sites from zero to nine. We have added to our park space and expanded our library system. And we have accomplished all this while cutting the property tax rate every year.

» City government has become more efficient. For example, last year’s State of the City Address set goals for more efficient use of energy. I have good news. In the City of Houston itself, our region’s single largest consumer of electricity, over the last five years we have cut our power consumption by almost six percent even though we have expanded our services to accommodate the needs of double-digit population growth.

» With good work by our City Council and Controller, we managed the City’s finances with foresight and discipline. We used surpluses to increase cash balances, which have prepared us well for natural disaster and economic downturns. Our bond ratings have been consistently been upgraded.

Before Hurricane Ike, the upper Texas Gulf Coast was already at the center of a storm -- the crisis of unreimbursed medical care provided to working people and children not covered by health insurance.

After Ike decimated UTMB in Galveston, the storm surge receded but other medical institutions in the region have been flooded by the patient case load displaced from this historic, invaluable Texas asset.

UTMB serves several critical functions. It has educated a large percentage of practicing physicians in Texas. The medical school also is an important research institution, with state research dollars supplemented by federal grants and private gifts.