Mayor Sylvester Turner delivers the 2016 State of the City address

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- The devastating floods last month changed the lives of many Houstonians. It also altered the trajectory of Mayor Sylvester Turner's first State of the City speech. The speech was originally scheduled for the day of the floods, but it was cancelled and rescheduled.

In front of a crowd of 1,200, Turner focused on how to solve Houston's flooding problem.

"I believe there should be a person that reports directly to me, the Mayor, and who has the sole responsibility of developing and maintaining draining and flooding strategy," he said.

That person, whom Turner is calling the Chief Resilience Officer or Flood Czar, is former Houston City Council Member and civil engineer Stephen Costello. His focus will be flooding.

"I'm confident that the city is doing something, reacting to the flood, what the mayor would like to do is to figure out a way to mitigate the problem and prevent those types of floods," he said.

Turner also said that no matter what happens, he doesn't believe anyone can solve all of Houston's flooding woes.

"We can never claim we can eliminate flooding completely, quite frankly that remains in God's hands," Turner saids. "But we can as governmental leaders, do everything we can to mitigate the risk."

The Mayor also ran down a laundry list of city must-dos, including closing the 160 million budget gap and fixing the pension problem. His biggest applause line, though, came when he talked about the thousands of potholes filled over the past four months by city workers.

Turner brought on stage a group of city Public Works employees whose job day in, day out, is to make Houstonians' drive a little smoother. Those workers got a standing ovation.

"I want to personally thank each and every one, and your colleagues who stand here representing and worked to make this a resounding success," he added.