kasim reed is mayor of atlanta, jerry sanders is mayor of san diego, r.t. rybak is mayor of minneapolis. bill white is the former mayor of houston and michael bloomberg is now serving his third term as mayor of new york estimate i'm please to do have all of them here at this im -table to talk about cities and the challenges they face. talk to me about how you see the challenge of being mayor, especially the budgetary decisions and pension reform. >> today cities face the same thing. revenues are down, pensions are up, particularly pension costs. federal government used to give you stimulus money. no longer and no prospect in the future. states have their own economic problem to the extent they're funding cities they've cut back as well. when you look at the biggest thing that most cities have to deal with, it is the pension costs. in new york city our pension costs used to be one and-a-half billion dollar. the reason pensions go up so much is in the public sector, you have defined benefit plans, and the private sector you have defined contribution plans. th