Anthony Johnson - Independence City Council Candidate | Indy Central Episode 9

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So. Like
like I, I got my, I got my packets.

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Um, all the stuff is
filled out and turned in

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and you know,
I got to go get my 36 signatures.

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And, shortly after that,
I get a message from,

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Evan Sorce and he's like, hey, would
you like to sit down and meet? I'm.

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I'm like, okay, yeah, that'd be great.

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And it's really funny.

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I, I chose to run for a position
for purely random like I had.

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No, I didn't know anybody.
I knew nobody in government.

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I knew I, I'm not even
the kind of person is really known.

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A ton of people around town,
you know, I've got my neighbors,

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I've got a few people
I meet here and there.

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I know all the people at the grocery store
I go to,

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but I don't even know,
like a ton of people. Right?

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I'm not like, it's not

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anything I've really thrown myself into,
even though I've been here 13 years.

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So anyways,
like, I chose the position at random

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and he just happened to engage with me
and we sat down and we talked.

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And that's kind of when I realized, like,
he's he's

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actually brought some of the stuff
to my attention, like,

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like what's going on with this stuff.

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And we didn't really talk about it a lot,
but then it kind of clicked.

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I was like, started researching. I'm like,
what the.

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They're going to close our parks
if this thing happens, right?

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And then shortly after that.

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Greg Ellis got all the signatures
for the referendum and like, it was like

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everything was on. And I realized, like,

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yeah, just some of the issues
that the city is having.

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Right.

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And, and, and I kind of started

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I started going to meetings right around

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when I first had
my first meeting with Evan.

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And so I started going to council
meetings, and I started seeing

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like how the council interacts
with each other.

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And I realized a major deficiency
with what's going on.

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And so,

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yeah, I've just

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I've been taking the last few months
and I've just been learning

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as much as I possibly
can about everything.

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Well, I just want to announce you
so that we can officially start.

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All right, Anthony Johnson.

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City council position 4 candidate.

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And of course, me, Dana Sharman.

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All right, that's done. Okay.

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Yeah.

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I just want
to make sure we get the names out there.

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So you said you lived in town
for 13 years.

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Yeah, 13 years.

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My son, actually, yeah,
my son just turned 13, and we moved here.

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Right before his first birthday,
so I guess, I guess 12 years.

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So I grew up in Seattle, like.

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Yeah, grew up in Seattle, like the
the neighborhood of Ballard, which was

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when I was a kid, was a very,
very Norwegian community, very like,

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very like there were still.
That was a thing.

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Yeah. No, there were still people who.

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Norwegian people
that, had English as a second language.

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Right. Like, really? Yeah. Oh, wow.

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Like, a lot like a lot of them.

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Like it was.
It was a big part of that community.

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A big part of the culture there
was, was Scandinavian culture, right?

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There was a,

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a town square called Leif Erikson Square.

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Right. Like all this stuff.

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Yeah.

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I don't go up there very often.

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So really, really Scandinavian.

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And, just over the,
over the course of time.

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Right.

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Seattle became very expensive.

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Right. Like, like my dad was a plumber.

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He was he's very much blue collar.

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And so, like, us going to college,
there was never going to be money

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for that.

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And just growing up, like like as I,

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as time went on, like,
like Seattle got more and more expensive

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and I slowly moved further
and further away. And,

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at a certain point,
you know, I met my wife

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and we were living in Kent, which
is actually pretty far away from Seattle.

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Like, it's it's a good drive.

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It's, it's it's a 45 minute

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hour drive to get into Seattle from Kent
where we lived.

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And, you know, you kind of realize that,

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like, it wasn't working there for us.

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We lived in a really rough part of town.

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I was I was bartending,
so I wasn't making good money.

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Our rent was expensive.

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Everything.

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We had a small child, right? Like.

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And it wasn't working for us.

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So her dad one day was like, well,

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why don't you come down here
and check out where I live?

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And so we came down.

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We we we took a long weekend
and we drove all over the place like,

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he he'd recently bought a little house.

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It's a little
it was manufactured on his own lot.

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He bought that and he'd re remodeled.

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The whole thing made it really nice
and really, like, cozy.

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And him and his girlfriend,
you know, like, like they they brought us

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and they said,
come down here and check it out.

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We drove around and
and we decided we were going to move here.

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And so we moved into one of the back
bedrooms and, I got a job at the factory.

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Like over the counter.

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Oh the cabinet factory.

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Yeah. It was a at the
time. It was Medallion.

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Now it's Cabinetworks. You might
have worked with my brother then.

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Daniel Schorsch.

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He he worked there for
I don't know, ten years or something.

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All right.

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Like in the last like so
I haven't been there for five years.

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Yeah, I know it was like 2012 to 2022,
I want to say.

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Okay.
So maybe it's a big it's a big place.

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I've never been in.

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There like like, 150, 200 people
depending on.

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Really? Yeah. Did he work in supply?

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I think he did like,
like giving out materials or something.

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Ordering stuff.

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Okay. Right.

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I don't know, I've never been in there.

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Like I said, I worked at
Marquis Spas for a while, but.

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Okay. I think everybody
has worked at Marquis Spas.

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I talked to
a lot of people have worked there. Yeah.

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Anyway, so, yeah, we we moved down here.

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I got a job there and, Yeah, it's,

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eventually,

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after about, I think 5 or 6 months,
David looks at us and goes, okay,

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so we're going to move out of here and
you're going to buy this house from us.

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And they went down and they bought a house
a few blocks away.

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This was when the market was still
when houses were still really cheap,

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kind of in that time frame,

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you could buy a fixer upper house
for like 100, 104,000.

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Like the one thing,
this would have been probably 2015.

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Okay. Yeah.

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So you could still buy

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because the market right from 2008,
all that stuff, it was still.

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Yeah. Yeah. Affordable.

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Right.

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And so they, Yeah.

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So they he helped. He helped.

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Basically his girlfriend, Catherine,
he helped her buy a house

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and they bought that and fixed it up.

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And I was over there painting
and doing all the stuff.

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Yeah. And we basically bought that house
from him.

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That's cool. Yeah,

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yeah.

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Sorry. I'm.

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I drew a blank there.

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I did a podcast earlier today,

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so it's hard for my brain to
shift gears, but—fair enough.

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Yeah. No.

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It's so.

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God, we just talked about
why he has to run for city council, too.

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We ran through a lot of things
there. Yeah.

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Okay, let's get right to that.

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So I, two years ago, right on the ballot
when I went to fill in my ballot for,

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for the election,
there was only one candidate for mayor.

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Right?

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I knew at that point that that the service
I could do would be just to run, right.

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Even if it's not, like, super serious,
like, like a big effort, right?

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Having somebody,
a second person to at least make.

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Some options.
To make the conversation happen.

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Right.

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Like, like if you have a ballot with one
person, that's not even a ballot, right?

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Yeah.

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And so I knew then that
that I wanted to run for a position, just,

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if anything, just to offer choice
because and it's happened years

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before too,
where there's been a lot of other years

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where like, there's
nobody there's no opposition.

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Yeah. Notice that in our town.

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It's really funny, the

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I think it's water district,
like nobody ever runs for those.

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I noticed that, yeah.

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Like how much do they make
because they get paid.

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I was like, if I just ran for it.
Yeah, yeah.

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Really? Yeah.

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The Luckiamute watershed.

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Conservation manager
or something. Position.

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I was like, nobody's running for that
last time I looked. Yeah.

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And there's like.

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Yeah, it's it's
it's it's it's interesting.

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And I thought about it. Years ago
just running for that.

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I just was like,
oh, this be kind of interesting.

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I'll be the only person
out of all these positions, right?

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Yeah.

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So anyways, I decided I was going to run,

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so, you know, the next year
was not an election cycle and,

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but I did a little bit of research,
so I knew that.

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Okay, I need to June
is when things kind of start happening.

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So I actually put that on my calendar,

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and I actually marked it down there
at June like city council.

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And yeah, I got an alarm at the beginning
of June saying city council.

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I was like, oh, I need to go do this.

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And so, right around the same time,
the city actually did do an announcement

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about it, and I came down
and got a packet and, yeah.

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And that's,

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kind of how it all started for me. Right.

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And then just look at the process,

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just the whole process of process of it
is really interesting.

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So like I kind of mentioned,
like I haven't met

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a lot of people in town, you know, my,
my neighbors and stuff like that.

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But I haven't been like super outgoing.

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Has this helped you meet more people?

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Oh my God, it's amazing. It's amazing.

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It's I have met some of the coolest people
walking around like like I thought

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at first I thought the whole idea
of getting signatures,

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I thought,
oh, this is gonna be super easy, right?

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But it turns out like, not that many
people are home all that often.

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There's a lot of those
that have no solicitors on it.

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You have to pick the right time of day,
which doesn't always coincide

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when I'm able to.

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But some of the people I met
were really cool.

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Really, really cool people, people
that have similar opinions to me.

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People
that have completely opposite opinions.

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I met one guy who actually was
a city manager for Florence, Oregon.

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Okay. And it was interesting
because he would not sign a petition.

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We talked for over 45 minutes, me,
him and his wife.

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We talked a long time and,

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he wouldn't

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sign my petition because I had told him
that I,

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signed the petition for the referendum.

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And so he said, I don't agree with that.

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I believe that the city councilors
should be the ones to govern and that they

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if you don't like them,
then you vote them out.

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And to a certain extent
I do agree with that.

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But then you also have situations
where not everybody gets these positions

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actually ran against somebody. Right?

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They're just kind of

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put into the positions or,
or they're nominated into the position.

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Or maybe they ran, they lost
and then they got nominated.

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I mean, you naming anybody
specific there? I don't.

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I don't need to name names.

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People can do their own research.

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But yeah.

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So it's just kind of interesting. Right.

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It's it's not always a perfect system.

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It's not always super representative
of the people that are here.

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Right.

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So I think we have this process to have
referendums to give people a chance.

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And one really interesting thing
about this process, right.

239
00:09:44,050 --> 00:09:47,286
The fact that it takes like
650 signatures and Independence

240
00:09:47,286 --> 00:09:50,323
to get on the ballot is huge.

241
00:09:50,723 --> 00:09:51,791
It is. It is huge.

242
00:09:51,791 --> 00:09:55,595
I look at the fact that for me
to get 36 signatures right, took hours

243
00:09:55,695 --> 00:09:57,997
and hours of walking around
knocking on doors.

244
00:09:57,997 --> 00:10:02,368
So to get 650
signatures is a huge effort, right?

245
00:10:02,401 --> 00:10:03,936
I mean, it's it's a big chunk of.

246
00:10:03,936 --> 00:10:05,571
Yeah, I couldn't believe they got that
that quick.

247
00:10:05,571 --> 00:10:06,939
It was like two weeks or something.

248
00:10:06,939 --> 00:10:08,774
Yeah, it's a big chunk of the population.

249
00:10:08,774 --> 00:10:10,376
You need to get that. And

250
00:10:11,611 --> 00:10:12,445
you know it's interesting.

251
00:10:12,445 --> 00:10:15,448
There's a lot of shade thrown towards
Greg Ellis because of whatever.

252
00:10:16,816 --> 00:10:19,218
But because they're saying that, oh,
he caused all this.

253
00:10:19,218 --> 00:10:20,686
But the truth is
there's not that many people

254
00:10:20,686 --> 00:10:22,888
who can pull something like this off,
because you need to have

255
00:10:22,888 --> 00:10:24,657
the knowledge of the process.

256
00:10:24,657 --> 00:10:26,926
You need to have the knowledge
of how to write it.

257
00:10:26,926 --> 00:10:29,328
And then you also
you kind of need to be either

258
00:10:29,328 --> 00:10:32,331
retired or self-employed
or to have the time to be able to do it.

259
00:10:32,331 --> 00:10:36,135
So there's not that many people that could
that could even attempt this.

260
00:10:36,202 --> 00:10:37,737
And I talked to a lot of people that said,

261
00:10:37,737 --> 00:10:39,305
yeah, they wish
they would have been the ones to do it.

262
00:10:39,305 --> 00:10:41,674
And I thought about it and I was like,
I have no idea how.

263
00:10:41,674 --> 00:10:42,274
I have no idea.

264
00:10:42,274 --> 00:10:45,511
I didn't even know what a referendum
was prior to him filing it.

265
00:10:45,578 --> 00:10:47,413
Yeah, I was I was totally taken.

266
00:10:47,413 --> 00:10:50,216
I mean, how do you word it correctly?
How do you do the whole thing? Right.

267
00:10:50,216 --> 00:10:52,084
And then getting that many signatures
right.

268
00:10:52,084 --> 00:10:54,887
It sounds. Like,
oh, like 900 and something like that.

269
00:10:54,887 --> 00:10:57,590
You got a lot 700, some. Over 750.

270
00:10:57,590 --> 00:11:00,259
I think we're, we're actually confirmed
because there's a lot of

271
00:11:00,259 --> 00:11:02,395
I think there's a lot of
signatures that aren't confirmed.

272
00:11:02,395 --> 00:11:06,966
Yeah, yeah, I ended up
I got, I ended up with like 48 or 50

273
00:11:06,999 --> 00:11:08,034
and I thought, oh I got plenty.

274
00:11:08,034 --> 00:11:10,636
And like it turned out
I had exactly enough.

275
00:11:10,636 --> 00:11:15,841
Like right when I ran in 2024,
for city council, I lost by like 61 votes.

276
00:11:15,841 --> 00:11:18,778
But yeah, it was pretty close.
But it was a three way race. So,

277
00:11:20,012 --> 00:11:21,113
yeah, but same

278
00:11:21,113 --> 00:11:24,116
thing like when I did my petition to run.

279
00:11:24,950 --> 00:11:29,021
I think I got like 55 or something, and
they came back and said I was three short.

280
00:11:29,121 --> 00:11:30,423
I'm like, really? Wow.

281
00:11:30,423 --> 00:11:32,191
So I had to go like it was last day.

282
00:11:32,191 --> 00:11:34,260
I had to go, like run around town
and get those signatures.

283
00:11:34,260 --> 00:11:36,529
And it was funny because this
year I was going to run too

284
00:11:36,529 --> 00:11:38,564
and this year was a totally different
story.

285
00:11:38,564 --> 00:11:41,500
Like, I didn't knock on a single door
and I had 30 signatures already.

286
00:11:41,500 --> 00:11:43,936
So I think it's definitely the more people
you know. Right.

287
00:11:43,936 --> 00:11:46,005
Like and that's
I think that's why they make it

288
00:11:46,005 --> 00:11:47,873
a little harder for people
that are already in government. Right?

289
00:11:47,873 --> 00:11:50,943
They have like a week less because it is
easier the more people, you know.

290
00:11:50,976 --> 00:11:52,678
I mean, I'm sure

291
00:11:52,678 --> 00:11:56,382
the some of the city councilors could have
easily just walked around City Hall.

292
00:11:56,382 --> 00:11:58,417
Shot 36 messages. Exactly.

293
00:11:58,417 --> 00:12:00,720
Yeah. Because you definitely
you become more connected.

294
00:12:00,720 --> 00:12:03,355
And the more connected you are,
the more in the community you are.

295
00:12:03,355 --> 00:12:05,524
It's just like it's like yard signs,
right?

296
00:12:05,524 --> 00:12:07,226
Like I thought,
oh, I'm going to find all these people.

297
00:12:07,226 --> 00:12:09,261
So I bought 20 yard signs and like,

298
00:12:09,261 --> 00:12:11,564
and I'll admit,
I haven't put a ton of effort

299
00:12:11,564 --> 00:12:14,400
into knocking on doors and saying, hey,
can I put a sign in your yard?

300
00:12:14,400 --> 00:12:16,535
But I thought it was going to be
a little easier.

301
00:12:16,535 --> 00:12:18,237
Yeah. It's, you know, I thought, oh.

302
00:12:18,237 --> 00:12:20,272
I mean, a lot of people are just like,
I don't want anything

303
00:12:20,272 --> 00:12:22,341
to do with government.
Don't don't come knocking on my door.

304
00:12:22,341 --> 00:12:23,676
At least I got that.

305
00:12:23,676 --> 00:12:24,877
Most people are that way.

306
00:12:24,877 --> 00:12:26,812
Most people, they just want it to work.

307
00:12:26,812 --> 00:12:29,448
They just want government to work.
They want they want the parks open.

308
00:12:29,448 --> 00:12:32,251
They want the library open.
They want a museum.

309
00:12:32,251 --> 00:12:34,920
They want all these things to just work.

310
00:12:34,920 --> 00:12:37,056
And I said the same thing too. I was like,

311
00:12:38,190 --> 00:12:39,658
because
because that's been brought up a lot.

312
00:12:39,658 --> 00:12:41,994
People are like, well,
they need to come down here and speak.

313
00:12:41,994 --> 00:12:44,263
And I'm like,
what if they don't want to, though,

314
00:12:44,263 --> 00:12:46,298
you know, like, what if they just
legitimately don't want to

315
00:12:46,298 --> 00:12:48,134
and they want us to take care of it
for them? Yeah.

316
00:12:48,134 --> 00:12:50,169
Like maybe
we should be looking at it that way.

317
00:12:50,169 --> 00:12:52,805
Or what if they feel like their voice
isn't being heard when they speak?

318
00:12:52,805 --> 00:12:54,006
Nothing's going to happen, right?

319
00:12:54,006 --> 00:12:56,208
Like that's most people,
they feel that way. Yeah.

320
00:12:56,208 --> 00:12:59,211
And I understand that now too, because now
that I'm on the budget committee,

321
00:12:59,478 --> 00:13:02,715
I have a better understanding of how
things work than I did two years ago.

322
00:13:02,848 --> 00:13:04,216
Yeah.

323
00:13:04,216 --> 00:13:08,621
It's it's more complicated
and just as simple, like,

324
00:13:08,654 --> 00:13:12,258
in a lot of ways, you know, it can be made
as complicated as you want it to be.

325
00:13:12,358 --> 00:13:14,193
It is a complex system.

326
00:13:14,193 --> 00:13:17,263
But, you know, from where I started,
where you're at.

327
00:13:17,363 --> 00:13:19,899
Same thing. Like it,
it is what it looks like.

328
00:13:19,899 --> 00:13:23,135
You know, we should be able to keep
the parks, museum and library open.

329
00:13:23,169 --> 00:13:24,003
Oh, definitely.

330
00:13:24,003 --> 00:13:24,503
Definitely.

331
00:13:24,503 --> 00:13:27,840
And I feel my,
my personal opinion is right.

332
00:13:27,873 --> 00:13:30,409
Like I'm not I'm going to vote no.

333
00:13:30,409 --> 00:13:31,610
I'm going to vote no on the referendum.

334
00:13:31,610 --> 00:13:34,313
I don't want the fees. Right. I'm working
class person.

335
00:13:34,313 --> 00:13:36,515
Like I struggle with my bills
as it is, right?

336
00:13:36,515 --> 00:13:37,483
I have two kids.

337
00:13:37,483 --> 00:13:40,486
I give their mom a ton of money.

338
00:13:40,486 --> 00:13:43,155
I have all the bills,
all the things. Right.

339
00:13:43,155 --> 00:13:46,158
And so I'm personally I'm going to vote
no on it.

340
00:13:46,258 --> 00:13:48,460
But I think it's important for people
to have the choice, right?

341
00:13:48,460 --> 00:13:52,298
And if they vote yes and I'm elected
in, I will, man, I will.

342
00:13:52,832 --> 00:13:54,200
That's we'll do it.

343
00:13:54,200 --> 00:13:55,968
That's the way we'll do it. Right.

344
00:13:55,968 --> 00:13:58,470
Because I will respect people's
decisions on that.

345
00:13:58,470 --> 00:14:01,340
And I think that's one of the
important things too, right, is

346
00:14:01,340 --> 00:14:05,044
there's like, definitely the feeling
that we have a city council right now

347
00:14:05,177 --> 00:14:09,915
that just doesn't
go with the will of the people, right?

348
00:14:10,015 --> 00:14:10,482
They, they.

349
00:14:10,482 --> 00:14:11,483
They I brought that up too.

350
00:14:11,483 --> 00:14:14,253
I'm like, they got 900 signatures.
You can't say that.

351
00:14:14,253 --> 00:14:16,288
This was not something people support.

352
00:14:16,288 --> 00:14:18,190
Like. Yeah, there was there was a comment.

353
00:14:18,190 --> 00:14:19,458
Well, that's only 10% of the people.

354
00:14:19,458 --> 00:14:22,962
I'm like 10% of the registered voters,
but it's like it's

355
00:14:22,962 --> 00:14:26,232
a huge amount of the people
that actually voted a huge amount.

356
00:14:26,365 --> 00:14:30,035
And that's and that's the kind of thing
like you have to look at that.

357
00:14:30,102 --> 00:14:32,872
Right? Like like, okay, me signing it,
that doesn't matter, right?

358
00:14:32,872 --> 00:14:34,039
Why are you arguing with me about it?

359
00:14:34,039 --> 00:14:36,976
There's like all these other people
that also signed it.

360
00:14:36,976 --> 00:14:38,210
Right? Right.

361
00:14:38,210 --> 00:14:39,378
And I think there's a lot more people

362
00:14:39,378 --> 00:14:41,180
that would have signed it
if they would have had the opportunity.

363
00:14:41,180 --> 00:14:42,314
There's a lot of people
that didn't even know

364
00:14:42,314 --> 00:14:44,316
there's a referendum being passed around.

365
00:14:44,316 --> 00:14:46,719
Like a lot of people
I talked to didn't know anything about it.

366
00:14:46,719 --> 00:14:50,856
So it's it's just the whole process is
really it's really interesting that way.

367
00:14:51,090 --> 00:14:53,993
The city seems to have a communication
problem in that department.

368
00:14:53,993 --> 00:14:56,662
Like, do you have a different approach
for how you'd reach out to people,

369
00:14:56,662 --> 00:14:58,430
get this information out?

370
00:14:58,430 --> 00:15:00,032
You know,
that's a really tough one, right?

371
00:15:00,032 --> 00:15:05,571
Because because, they stopped doing
the print in, in the, the, the mailer.

372
00:15:05,604 --> 00:15:07,039
Right. Which was was pretty cool.

373
00:15:07,039 --> 00:15:10,809
And I thought that was a really cool way
to find out what was going on around town.

374
00:15:10,843 --> 00:15:11,076
Right?

375
00:15:11,076 --> 00:15:13,846
You get your you get your, your water
bill, you open it up and like, oh,

376
00:15:13,846 --> 00:15:14,980
there's a list of activities,

377
00:15:14,980 --> 00:15:17,950
a list of things going on, a
list of like to-dos, whatever.

378
00:15:18,083 --> 00:15:20,052
I personally thought that was really cool.

379
00:15:20,052 --> 00:15:22,888
They do the email version of it
now, but I don't really like it.

380
00:15:22,888 --> 00:15:25,724
I think it's very, Go straight to my spam
folder.

381
00:15:25,724 --> 00:15:26,792
It's very.

382
00:15:26,792 --> 00:15:28,494
Well, it's it's very one sided.

383
00:15:28,494 --> 00:15:30,329
I feel that it's there's no op-ed on it.

384
00:15:30,329 --> 00:15:33,332
It's all just the point. Yeah.

385
00:15:33,499 --> 00:15:34,033
It's the view.

386
00:15:34,033 --> 00:15:36,402
It's the viewpoint that the mayor one
should want you to hear. Right?

387
00:15:36,402 --> 00:15:39,405
Like they said, there was overwhelming
support for the fee.

388
00:15:39,405 --> 00:15:41,240
Right. But there wasn't. To be fair.

389
00:15:41,240 --> 00:15:44,043
There was like I was on the budget
committee and but that's the thing.

390
00:15:44,043 --> 00:15:47,646
Like, well, two people came
and spoke in favor and one spoke against.

391
00:15:47,646 --> 00:15:51,216
And so from their view,
you know, it's 11 to 1, it's pretty clear.

392
00:15:51,216 --> 00:15:55,888
But of those 11 people, 7 or 8 of them
were friends of the councilors.

393
00:15:55,955 --> 00:15:58,958
Yeah,
it's like a small sect of the population.

394
00:15:59,124 --> 00:16:00,459
But there was
there was three different meetings,

395
00:16:00,459 --> 00:16:02,861
three different meetings
where people got to speak. Two of them.

396
00:16:02,861 --> 00:16:03,762
It was overwhelming.

397
00:16:03,762 --> 00:16:05,898
It was a lot of people for the fee.

398
00:16:05,898 --> 00:16:08,033
Oh, are you talking about
the ones in January or.

399
00:16:08,033 --> 00:16:09,601
I'm talking about the ones
the budget committee. Okay.

400
00:16:09,601 --> 00:16:10,970
Like I pulled up the minutes and was able

401
00:16:10,970 --> 00:16:12,738
to see read all the comments
and stuff like that.

402
00:16:12,738 --> 00:16:16,575
So the first two, right,
there was a lot of support for the fee.

403
00:16:16,608 --> 00:16:16,875
Right.

404
00:16:16,875 --> 00:16:20,813
And like you said, there are people
that very adjacent to these these things

405
00:16:20,846 --> 00:16:22,448
right at the library.

406
00:16:22,448 --> 00:16:23,782
And on the third one,

407
00:16:23,782 --> 00:16:26,752
the third Budget Committee,
there was a lot of people against it.

408
00:16:26,752 --> 00:16:28,253
Yeah, right. And so,

409
00:16:30,222 --> 00:16:30,522
you know,

410
00:16:30,522 --> 00:16:34,493
when you see the mayor's letter
saying overwhelming support, it's

411
00:16:34,493 --> 00:16:37,997
not exactly true because there were people
there was a lot of.

412
00:16:37,997 --> 00:16:39,631
People like saying, we're winning a war.

413
00:16:39,631 --> 00:16:40,432
Yeah.

414
00:16:40,432 --> 00:16:44,803
And I feel that like like the an op-ed
piece in there would be really good.

415
00:16:44,837 --> 00:16:49,074
Like, like if they included,
a community member that's a good writer.

416
00:16:49,074 --> 00:16:51,877
There's a couple of people that I've been
reading so much stuff, they're good,

417
00:16:51,877 --> 00:16:55,781
and have them go to the council meetings
and have them write what they saw.

418
00:16:55,814 --> 00:16:58,250
I think that would help.

419
00:16:58,250 --> 00:17:00,886
I, like I said, I really did like the fact
that our water bills

420
00:17:00,886 --> 00:17:02,855
had the thing,
but a lot of people go paperless.

421
00:17:02,855 --> 00:17:05,958
I get that, and, you know, it's
not really the way things are now.

422
00:17:05,991 --> 00:17:07,960
Cost money to, you. Know.

423
00:17:07,960 --> 00:17:09,661
Lot more expensive than an email.

424
00:17:09,661 --> 00:17:10,396
It'd be nice.

425
00:17:10,396 --> 00:17:13,999
It'd be really, really nice
if our website was searchable.

426
00:17:14,166 --> 00:17:16,168
Like it's not very searchable.

427
00:17:16,168 --> 00:17:19,438
When you search, all it pulls up
is just the news articles, right?

428
00:17:19,471 --> 00:17:22,875
It doesn't you can't just search
for specific information.

429
00:17:22,875 --> 00:17:25,444
So, I mean, it'd be really nice
if we could get a website

430
00:17:25,444 --> 00:17:27,413
that was just easier
to find things. Right?

431
00:17:27,413 --> 00:17:31,250
And not just like the big like, oh, here's
where this is and here's what, but like,

432
00:17:31,450 --> 00:17:34,453
like where you could actually search
for specific information.

433
00:17:34,453 --> 00:17:35,487
That's one of the things

434
00:17:35,487 --> 00:17:38,891
that kind of has gone around a lot
on, on the internet right now.

435
00:17:39,491 --> 00:17:42,494
And Facebook specifically, that's where
most of this conversation is happening,

436
00:17:42,528 --> 00:17:45,330
is you mentioned something
and say, well, it's in this.

437
00:17:45,330 --> 00:17:46,899
And then, okay, well, how do I get that?

438
00:17:46,899 --> 00:17:49,301
Well, you have to request it. Yeah.

439
00:17:49,301 --> 00:17:52,838
Well it's in the budget
and that's 150 page document.

440
00:17:52,838 --> 00:17:53,038
Yeah.

441
00:17:53,038 --> 00:17:55,874
It's in the water master plan
which is 300 page document.

442
00:17:55,874 --> 00:17:58,444
Yeah. And you got a lot
in a lot of these documents.

443
00:17:58,444 --> 00:18:00,079
You're gonna have to specifically request
that.

444
00:18:00,079 --> 00:18:01,980
You're gonna have to know what to request.

445
00:18:01,980 --> 00:18:03,248
That's for the average person.

446
00:18:03,248 --> 00:18:05,250
That's not entirely possible, right?

447
00:18:05,250 --> 00:18:08,253
You have to entrench, start
getting yourself into the system

448
00:18:08,320 --> 00:18:10,289
just to be able to know what to ask
for. Right?

449
00:18:10,289 --> 00:18:11,123
Right, right.

450
00:18:11,123 --> 00:18:14,726
Like, like unless you get into the system
and you start asking people where

451
00:18:15,094 --> 00:18:17,096
I want this information,
and then they're going to tell you, well,

452
00:18:17,096 --> 00:18:19,198
ask this for this and ask for that, right?

453
00:18:19,198 --> 00:18:21,967
Like so I think that's one of the problems
we have.

454
00:18:21,967 --> 00:18:24,169
Like why,
why isn't this stuff just on the website?

455
00:18:24,169 --> 00:18:27,005
So what stuff specifically
are you talking about though?

456
00:18:27,005 --> 00:18:29,842
Well, like, okay, there's
been a lot of talks about a lot of talk

457
00:18:29,842 --> 00:18:33,812
lately about where does all of our money
for the parks go.

458
00:18:33,879 --> 00:18:36,782
Right. And there's the budget
only has a couple pages. Right.

459
00:18:36,782 --> 00:18:38,517
It doesn't tell you any details.

460
00:18:38,517 --> 00:18:39,084
Right. Yeah.

461
00:18:39,084 --> 00:18:41,753
No, it doesn't tell you any details. Well,
not many anyway.

462
00:18:41,753 --> 00:18:42,454
Not many.

463
00:18:42,454 --> 00:18:43,922
Like not specific stuff, but like.

464
00:18:43,922 --> 00:18:45,357
Like, where's the stuff?

465
00:18:46,458 --> 00:18:47,893
Who's the landscaping art?

466
00:18:47,893 --> 00:18:49,761
The people doing the landscaping.
What companies?

467
00:18:49,761 --> 00:18:51,063
You can't get any of that information.

468
00:18:51,063 --> 00:18:54,032
So you have to ask for all this stuff,
right?

469
00:18:54,700 --> 00:18:57,703
Like one thing
I know a lot of people in wanting is

470
00:18:57,936 --> 00:19:00,806
where's the revised budget like they have
they released that yet?

471
00:19:00,806 --> 00:19:01,640
I don't believe they have.

472
00:19:01,640 --> 00:19:04,843
I mean, the last time I looked a couple
of weeks ago, a week or so ago, it.

473
00:19:05,043 --> 00:19:05,811
Revised budget.

474
00:19:05,811 --> 00:19:08,814
Well, I mean, obviously there
since there wasn't a fee

475
00:19:08,981 --> 00:19:13,218
and they moved people around
like the budget is not the same.

476
00:19:13,252 --> 00:19:15,154
It is not what was voted on. Right.

477
00:19:15,154 --> 00:19:18,957
It's where they're working with a yeah,
a completely different budget

478
00:19:18,957 --> 00:19:20,993
than what was originally voted on. Yeah.

479
00:19:20,993 --> 00:19:24,897
And it's a large enough chunk of cash
that there should be another vote or.

480
00:19:24,930 --> 00:19:26,331
Considering they move

481
00:19:26,331 --> 00:19:28,634
like the most expensive employee
from the parks department

482
00:19:28,634 --> 00:19:30,636
to a completely different department,
that money is coming out

483
00:19:30,636 --> 00:19:31,336
of a different place.

484
00:19:31,336 --> 00:19:32,471
The city manager.

485
00:19:32,471 --> 00:19:37,176
Or, well, I mean, they had one, one role
from the parks department was moved.

486
00:19:37,242 --> 00:19:38,610
Okay. Like they didn't.

487
00:19:38,610 --> 00:19:39,778
That person wasn't let go.

488
00:19:39,778 --> 00:19:42,614
When the fee didn't pass, they moved them
to the transportation department.

489
00:19:42,614 --> 00:19:46,218
But which is only information you can
really get if you sit through meetings.

490
00:19:46,251 --> 00:19:46,518
Right.

491
00:19:46,518 --> 00:19:49,488
And that only came up because
somebody asks a thing, right, like right.

492
00:19:49,488 --> 00:19:52,457
And then you have to sit
through our two hour, three hour meetings.

493
00:19:52,457 --> 00:19:54,660
And that's the only way
to get the information.

494
00:19:54,660 --> 00:19:54,893
Yeah.

495
00:19:54,893 --> 00:19:56,395
You know, it's funny
you mentioned something earlier

496
00:19:56,395 --> 00:19:59,932
and that was kind of the thing
that led me to running too was I.

497
00:20:00,632 --> 00:20:02,534
I jumped into it kind of like you did. I,

498
00:20:03,735 --> 00:20:04,836
I started

499
00:20:04,836 --> 00:20:07,806
looking into city stuff in March of 2024,

500
00:20:07,806 --> 00:20:11,843
and then by June, I decided to run
because I saw what was going on.

501
00:20:12,010 --> 00:20:16,715
I saw the behavior and the attitudes,
and the only time I went

502
00:20:16,715 --> 00:20:20,819
and spoke at City Council
was, was to tell them it was embarrassing.

503
00:20:21,153 --> 00:20:25,891
I'm like, this is truly embarrassing
to watch people bicker and argue and, and,

504
00:20:26,358 --> 00:20:29,328
you know, somebody would speak
and then somebody else would be like,

505
00:20:29,328 --> 00:20:32,631
well, you know,
and I'm like, we're adults, right?

506
00:20:32,698 --> 00:20:35,634
Like, you guys are in charge
of a $58 million budget, in

507
00:20:35,634 --> 00:20:38,737
charge of 11,000 people,
and you're going to sit up there

508
00:20:38,737 --> 00:20:42,474
and, like, squabble,
like I got to do something.

509
00:20:42,574 --> 00:20:44,676
Obviously,
it didn't work out in my case, but,

510
00:20:44,676 --> 00:20:48,213
you know, it'd be good to have some people
on there who have a different approach.

511
00:20:48,480 --> 00:20:51,550
Yeah, I think I think that's
one of the things I've noticed by

512
00:20:51,650 --> 00:20:52,551
like going to some of these meetings.

513
00:20:52,551 --> 00:20:54,620
Right. It's
not a very collaborative process. Right.

514
00:20:54,620 --> 00:20:58,023
And I feel that the way it's right
now, the way everything's

515
00:20:58,023 --> 00:21:00,993
kind of driven, is the city
manager presents something.

516
00:21:00,993 --> 00:21:03,562
They might talk about it,
but they will always vote on it.

517
00:21:03,562 --> 00:21:04,997
They will always vote yes on it. Right.

518
00:21:04,997 --> 00:21:06,398
And I feel that

519
00:21:06,398 --> 00:21:10,002
we kind of need to get to a point where
maybe there's more opposition, right?

520
00:21:10,035 --> 00:21:15,641
Like, one of the councilors, Dawn Roden,
she's the only one that ever votes no.

521
00:21:15,674 --> 00:21:16,041
Right.

522
00:21:16,041 --> 00:21:19,244
And every motion she presents,
she doesn't get a second.

523
00:21:19,411 --> 00:21:19,811
Right.

524
00:21:19,811 --> 00:21:22,614
And so, like, we can't move
any of these conversations forward.

525
00:21:22,614 --> 00:21:23,849
We met with her.

526
00:21:23,849 --> 00:21:25,017
A lot, actually, quite a bit.

527
00:21:25,017 --> 00:21:26,885
She really interesting story.

528
00:21:28,120 --> 00:21:29,888
At one
point, you know, trying to get signatures,

529
00:21:29,888 --> 00:21:32,524
I actually posted on Facebook, hey,
I'm going to be downtown

530
00:21:32,524 --> 00:21:36,295
and I like posted a picture of myself
with, with the whiteboard, like, hey,

531
00:21:36,361 --> 00:21:37,663
come down and sign my petition.

532
00:21:37,663 --> 00:21:39,331
And nobody came down, right?

533
00:21:39,331 --> 00:21:44,036
Like, but she actually messaged me
about the time I was done and said, hey,

534
00:21:44,102 --> 00:21:46,238
you should come over
and I'll get you signatures.

535
00:21:46,238 --> 00:21:49,274
Me and my kids and
and so I went over and talk to her

536
00:21:49,274 --> 00:21:52,044
and it turns out she was like
six doors away from me. Oh, really?

537
00:21:52,044 --> 00:21:52,377
Yeah.

538
00:21:52,377 --> 00:21:55,380
Well, then you're probably six doors
away from me because I live.

539
00:21:55,681 --> 00:21:57,416
I don't say it on camera, but.

540
00:21:57,416 --> 00:22:00,118
Yeah, yeah, I live,
I live like a block from her, so.

541
00:22:00,118 --> 00:22:00,819
Oh, yeah.

542
00:22:00,819 --> 00:22:02,321
No way I do. Yeah. Okay.

543
00:22:02,321 --> 00:22:04,990
I, I live right next to Pioneer Park.
Oh. Do you okay.

544
00:22:04,990 --> 00:22:07,125
Yeah. I'm over on Sixth Street.

545
00:22:07,125 --> 00:22:09,328
Monmouth. So.

546
00:22:09,328 --> 00:22:10,362
Okay. Yeah. All right.

547
00:22:10,362 --> 00:22:12,397
I guess people know where I live now.
I don't.

548
00:22:12,397 --> 00:22:13,398
Know, I live.

549
00:22:13,398 --> 00:22:16,001
I live, I live one door away.

550
00:22:16,001 --> 00:22:18,036
One door away from from Pioneer Park.

551
00:22:18,036 --> 00:22:19,204
That's cool. Yeah.

552
00:22:19,204 --> 00:22:20,605
So like I said,
it was really interesting stuff

553
00:22:20,605 --> 00:22:22,140
on one of those things, like,
I, I met her,

554
00:22:22,140 --> 00:22:24,443
she was like,
hey, I'd like to sign a petition.

555
00:22:24,443 --> 00:22:27,212
Because I think she was looking for
for some friendly voices.

556
00:22:27,212 --> 00:22:27,379
Right.

557
00:22:27,379 --> 00:22:31,283
Some people that might potentially
support her when she raised her

558
00:22:31,316 --> 00:22:32,884
hand and says, hey, I make a motion.

559
00:22:32,884 --> 00:22:35,620
And I think that's important, right? Like,

560
00:22:38,290 --> 00:22:40,726
you know, that was and that's
one of the things I, I noticed, like

561
00:22:40,726 --> 00:22:42,861
at some of these city council meetings

562
00:22:42,861 --> 00:22:45,364
and then going back
and like reviewing minutes. Right.

563
00:22:45,364 --> 00:22:46,698
And seeing like a lot of these votes,

564
00:22:46,698 --> 00:22:49,368
like she's the only person
voting against anything.

565
00:22:49,368 --> 00:22:50,035
Right.

566
00:22:50,035 --> 00:22:52,871
And they don't give the minority

567
00:22:52,871 --> 00:22:55,941
opinion a chance to really say why.

568
00:22:56,007 --> 00:22:58,143
Right. To really listen
and then reevaluate, okay.

569
00:22:58,143 --> 00:22:59,778
Why did this person vote against this?

570
00:22:59,778 --> 00:23:01,413
Like, maybe there's a reason.

571
00:23:01,413 --> 00:23:03,582
It's just kind of like
they voted against it and move on.

572
00:23:03,582 --> 00:23:07,319
And so I think that's one of the things
that a problem that we have.

573
00:23:07,352 --> 00:23:07,619
Right.

574
00:23:07,619 --> 00:23:10,489
Like, like
if one person is voting against something,

575
00:23:10,489 --> 00:23:13,492
there's got to be a reason
why we should try to figure that out.

576
00:23:13,658 --> 00:23:15,293
So that makes sense.

577
00:23:15,293 --> 00:23:15,560
Yeah.

578
00:23:15,560 --> 00:23:20,332
No, it it's such a struggle there
because I think it's possibly

579
00:23:20,332 --> 00:23:25,337
a communications issue, you know, because
I, I respect Dawn, I appreciate Dawn,

580
00:23:25,337 --> 00:23:30,475
but the way she approaches it sometimes
makes people resistant in and of itself.

581
00:23:30,675 --> 00:23:32,244
Well it can get frustrating, right?

582
00:23:32,244 --> 00:23:35,781
Like if, if people are always
voting against you and or

583
00:23:37,182 --> 00:23:39,818
if you're never having a chance
to get your motions out there,

584
00:23:39,818 --> 00:23:43,555
or you're never having a chance to
to say your piece

585
00:23:43,555 --> 00:23:46,892
without getting cut off, like, eventually,
yeah, you're going to get

586
00:23:46,925 --> 00:23:48,293
you're going to get competitive, right?

587
00:23:48,293 --> 00:23:51,096
I mean, it's just the way it goes,
right? Like, I mean, it's.

588
00:23:51,096 --> 00:23:51,797
Both ways, though.

589
00:23:51,797 --> 00:23:54,599
I mean, that could be why the
the rest of the council looks down on.

590
00:23:54,599 --> 00:23:56,902
It's like when somebody
is always voting against you.

591
00:23:56,902 --> 00:23:58,003
Yeah.

592
00:23:58,003 --> 00:24:00,071
Then you should wonder why.

593
00:24:00,071 --> 00:24:01,173
You should wonder why.

594
00:24:01,173 --> 00:24:02,774
I mean, because if you're.

595
00:24:02,774 --> 00:24:03,975
And also you should wonder why.

596
00:24:03,975 --> 00:24:06,812
Why are you always, always voting for.

597
00:24:06,812 --> 00:24:07,045
Right.

598
00:24:07,045 --> 00:24:08,480
Like,
I mean, at some point there has to be

599
00:24:08,480 --> 00:24:10,615
something that you're like,
maybe this isn't right.

600
00:24:10,615 --> 00:24:11,950
I hear it get brought up a lot.

601
00:24:11,950 --> 00:24:15,287
They're like,
you know, City Manager West is a expert.

602
00:24:15,320 --> 00:24:17,656
She's a lawyer. She knows city management.

603
00:24:18,757 --> 00:24:19,157
So for

604
00:24:19,157 --> 00:24:22,160
the most part, they respect her opinion.

605
00:24:22,194 --> 00:24:23,462
Which makes sense to me.

606
00:24:23,462 --> 00:24:26,698
Yeah, but there definitely needs
to be some level of criticism,

607
00:24:26,698 --> 00:24:30,702
because not just city manager,
city managers don't run the city.

608
00:24:30,735 --> 00:24:32,637
You know, they don't set policy.

609
00:24:32,637 --> 00:24:34,973
Yeah, but that's the problem. That's
where we're at right now though, right.

610
00:24:34,973 --> 00:24:39,611
Is is she is setting policy
and she is running the city.

611
00:24:39,678 --> 00:24:42,814
And the truth is like
the council should be the ones

612
00:24:42,814 --> 00:24:46,451
setting the policy and directing
how they want things done.

613
00:24:46,618 --> 00:24:52,257
One thing that I think is really for me,
really, really frustrating is since

614
00:24:52,257 --> 00:24:56,928
the parks were closed, not a single motion
has been brought up to open the parks.

615
00:24:57,262 --> 00:24:57,863
Right?

616
00:24:57,863 --> 00:25:01,833
At some point somebody could have said,
I make a motion to open the parks.

617
00:25:02,367 --> 00:25:03,168
You know what?

618
00:25:03,168 --> 00:25:05,770
Maybe it wouldn't have been
a very thought out motion, right?

619
00:25:05,770 --> 00:25:08,273
Maybe. But it would have brought up
discussion. Yeah.

620
00:25:08,273 --> 00:25:11,276
And it could have showed like, hey,
we want this to happen.

621
00:25:11,343 --> 00:25:11,643
Yeah.

622
00:25:11,643 --> 00:25:14,279
Realistically,
if the council voted to open the parks

623
00:25:14,279 --> 00:25:16,882
like city manager
have to deal with it. Yes.

624
00:25:16,882 --> 00:25:18,316
You know. Exactly.

625
00:25:18,316 --> 00:25:20,552
I guess we're liable for,
you know, damages.

626
00:25:20,552 --> 00:25:23,021
But that's what the council wants
because that's what the people want.

627
00:25:23,021 --> 00:25:24,289
So. Exactly.

628
00:25:24,289 --> 00:25:27,526
And if the city council said
we make a motion

629
00:25:27,526 --> 00:25:32,497
to transfer the money from here to there
in order to do this at that point.

630
00:25:32,531 --> 00:25:34,733
Right. Like,
I mean, it has to happen, right?

631
00:25:34,733 --> 00:25:37,168
And that's that's
how the city council gets stuff done is is

632
00:25:38,670 --> 00:25:40,205
by making motions.

633
00:25:40,205 --> 00:25:41,573
But there's also the side too,

634
00:25:41,573 --> 00:25:44,075
you know, not to interrupt you there,
but there is the side of

635
00:25:44,075 --> 00:25:45,310
fiscal responsibility.

636
00:25:45,310 --> 00:25:46,578
And that's one of the reasons I'm

637
00:25:46,578 --> 00:25:49,581
going to be pushing back on you
today, is just want to make sure that

638
00:25:49,581 --> 00:25:52,417
not only the other councilors,
but people in town can hear,

639
00:25:52,417 --> 00:25:54,719
like your honest thoughts
and the ways you'll know.

640
00:25:54,719 --> 00:25:56,221
Definitely.

641
00:25:56,221 --> 00:25:58,990
You know,
there's the fiscal responsibility aspect

642
00:25:58,990 --> 00:26:03,862
and that if there's not enough money,
we either borrow money

643
00:26:03,862 --> 00:26:08,433
from the other funds or take money
from the other funds, or we charge a fee.

644
00:26:08,600 --> 00:26:10,969
So how do you feel about that?

645
00:26:10,969 --> 00:26:13,038
Like, do you think that borrowing money

646
00:26:13,038 --> 00:26:16,041
or taking money from other funds
is a better solution or.

647
00:26:16,174 --> 00:26:20,011
I think I think I, I do personally
think it is better than a fee I do

648
00:26:20,011 --> 00:26:24,382
because, you know, we live in
we don't live in a very wealthy town.

649
00:26:24,416 --> 00:26:26,318
I mean,
I think it's getting wealthier over time.

650
00:26:26,318 --> 00:26:29,321
I think some of these new developments
that bringing in people that are that,

651
00:26:29,554 --> 00:26:34,092
that do better than, than the people
in Independence have historically done.

652
00:26:34,159 --> 00:26:35,594
But this is a working class town.

653
00:26:35,594 --> 00:26:39,297
This is a town
that has people that work on the farms.

654
00:26:39,331 --> 00:26:41,733
Right? This is a town
that has people that work in factories.

655
00:26:43,168 --> 00:26:45,670
Right. And

656
00:26:45,670 --> 00:26:47,439
this is a town has a Dollar General.

657
00:26:47,439 --> 00:26:50,875
I'll tell you what that is not
that is a sign of a town.

658
00:26:51,142 --> 00:26:52,043
Not a Whole Foods.

659
00:26:52,043 --> 00:26:54,512
Yeah, we have a Dollar General,
not a Whole Foods. Right.

660
00:26:54,512 --> 00:26:58,917
And so,
you know, people, $20 can be a lot.

661
00:26:59,017 --> 00:27:04,856
There's, when we at one point,
after David and Catherine had moved out

662
00:27:04,856 --> 00:27:08,693
and it was just me and Rebecca and Maddox,
and we had a dog and a cat and,

663
00:27:08,893 --> 00:27:10,128
you know, money was tight.

664
00:27:10,128 --> 00:27:12,731
It was really, really tight.

665
00:27:12,731 --> 00:27:15,800
Like, I was making $11.50 an hour

666
00:27:15,834 --> 00:27:18,837
at the cabinet factory as a starting wage.

667
00:27:19,371 --> 00:27:22,173
And, you know,
it was like one of those weird things

668
00:27:22,173 --> 00:27:24,609
where we didn't
quite qualify for food stamps,

669
00:27:24,609 --> 00:27:27,646
so we couldn't quite get government
assistance or if we'd got it

670
00:27:27,846 --> 00:27:29,814
or if we got it, like it would go away

671
00:27:29,814 --> 00:27:31,916
as soon as I got
any kind of raise or whatever.

672
00:27:31,916 --> 00:27:34,419
And so like, money was tight
and there was a month,

673
00:27:34,419 --> 00:27:37,489
where my MINET bill went up $5 and it was

674
00:27:39,057 --> 00:27:40,091
devastating.

675
00:27:40,091 --> 00:27:41,159
Like that was $5.

676
00:27:41,159 --> 00:27:42,761
And it was like because we were
we were literally

677
00:27:42,761 --> 00:27:43,662
we would get our paycheck

678
00:27:43,662 --> 00:27:46,765
and we would put it into a spreadsheet
and we would allocate every single dollar.

679
00:27:46,798 --> 00:27:49,734
And that $5 was like, it just seemed
like all the money in the world.

680
00:27:49,734 --> 00:27:52,570
Right? And so like,
now I do better, right?

681
00:27:52,570 --> 00:27:53,271
I'm doing okay now,

682
00:27:53,271 --> 00:27:56,408
but I know there's people out there
that have that same problem that have

683
00:27:56,441 --> 00:27:59,511
that are at that point in their life
where they like $20 extra

684
00:27:59,511 --> 00:28:02,514
a month is a significant amount, right?

685
00:28:02,514 --> 00:28:02,981
Yeah.

686
00:28:02,981 --> 00:28:03,381
I mean,

687
00:28:03,381 --> 00:28:04,215
and it's easy to say

688
00:28:04,215 --> 00:28:06,317
it's just one subscription, but,
you know, there's people out there

689
00:28:06,317 --> 00:28:08,086
that don't subscribe to very many things,
right?

690
00:28:08,086 --> 00:28:10,088
There's people out there
that maybe they have Amazon

691
00:28:10,088 --> 00:28:12,390
and that's what they get for that.
And they watch YouTube. Right?

692
00:28:12,390 --> 00:28:14,959
I mean it's it's.

693
00:28:14,959 --> 00:28:18,496
So one of the things that led to me voting
yes for the fee was

694
00:28:18,530 --> 00:28:23,034
I looked into the medium—median
household income for Independence.

695
00:28:23,034 --> 00:28:25,470
And it's $85,000 a year. Okay.

696
00:28:25,470 --> 00:28:29,674
The median mortgage in
town is $2,100 a month.

697
00:28:29,874 --> 00:28:32,877
And so for people paying an average

698
00:28:32,877 --> 00:28:35,780
in an average household
and in an average home,

699
00:28:36,781 --> 00:28:37,082
you know,

700
00:28:37,082 --> 00:28:40,085
they've got almost $2,000
a month of expendable income.

701
00:28:40,318 --> 00:28:44,723
And just to clarify on there,
I grew up in a poor house.

702
00:28:44,756 --> 00:28:47,892
I, I, me
and my mom used to split a box of macaroni

703
00:28:48,159 --> 00:28:50,095
twice
a day, like we'd make it in the morning.

704
00:28:50,095 --> 00:28:52,230
We'd each eat half the box,
like in the morning,

705
00:28:52,230 --> 00:28:55,366
and then at night we'd split the other
half the box like that was poor.

706
00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:59,170
And I, I've spent most of my life
that way, and I totally understand

707
00:28:59,471 --> 00:29:01,372
the strain that it puts on people.

708
00:29:01,372 --> 00:29:03,174
Not everybody is average, you know.

709
00:29:03,174 --> 00:29:07,312
But at the same time I was like, well,
but most people can afford it.

710
00:29:07,378 --> 00:29:10,381
You know, 50% plus of town can afford it.

711
00:29:10,381 --> 00:29:14,119
Not everybody, though, and I get that,
like I understand that.

712
00:29:14,519 --> 00:29:17,322
I understand what it's like to be stuck,
that extra $20 bill

713
00:29:17,322 --> 00:29:20,358
and just being like, cool, I guess
I'm shutting off my power, you know?

714
00:29:20,492 --> 00:29:22,560
Yeah. I mean, it's

715
00:29:23,528 --> 00:29:26,364
yeah, like
you said, like 50% can afford it, right?

716
00:29:26,364 --> 00:29:28,533
The other 50%, though, struggle with.

717
00:29:28,533 --> 00:29:30,602
It quickly goes downhill on there.

718
00:29:30,602 --> 00:29:31,169
It does it.

719
00:29:31,169 --> 00:29:36,174
And it's also like I just feel that
that should be paid for with taxes.

720
00:29:36,207 --> 00:29:36,875
Right?

721
00:29:36,875 --> 00:29:41,045
I guess and I know this argument,
this is like not the best argument,

722
00:29:41,179 --> 00:29:44,983
but the fact that fee was attached
to the parks, library and museum, right?

723
00:29:45,016 --> 00:29:47,919
It could have been attached
to other parts of the general fund.

724
00:29:47,919 --> 00:29:48,319
Right.

725
00:29:48,319 --> 00:29:51,389
And that's but they put it on the parks,
library and museum because they knew

726
00:29:51,422 --> 00:29:52,757
people would fight for them. Right.

727
00:29:52,757 --> 00:29:54,526
I guarantee you,
if you said, well, we're going to put this

728
00:29:54,526 --> 00:29:57,128
on the finance department,
we're going to pay for the finance.

729
00:29:57,128 --> 00:29:58,163
You're speaking my language, man.

730
00:29:58,163 --> 00:30:00,532
These are all arguments I've made.
So this is.

731
00:30:00,532 --> 00:30:02,967
Yeah, like like like, you
know, you put that fee, okay.

732
00:30:02,967 --> 00:30:05,403
We're going to do the finance department
and the planning department.

733
00:30:05,403 --> 00:30:06,237
They're there.

734
00:30:06,237 --> 00:30:08,740
Those are the services
that were provided with that fee.

735
00:30:08,740 --> 00:30:10,175
Right. Nobody's going to fight it.

736
00:30:10,175 --> 00:30:11,843
So of course it's not going to go
there. Right?

737
00:30:11,843 --> 00:30:11,976
Yeah.

738
00:30:11,976 --> 00:30:14,245
I was like, we could have put it
on janitorial, but we didn't.

739
00:30:14,245 --> 00:30:16,614
You know, we could have put it
on the police again, but we didn't.

740
00:30:16,614 --> 00:30:19,617
Yeah, honestly, because I was like, yeah,
we could have just left the public

741
00:30:19,617 --> 00:30:22,053
safety fee up
and that would cover it, you know. But.

742
00:30:22,053 --> 00:30:23,521
And one of the other problems too, right.

743
00:30:23,521 --> 00:30:25,690
With the fee is that

744
00:30:27,358 --> 00:30:30,461
there's this whole huge spin about it
being a $12 fee.

745
00:30:30,495 --> 00:30:30,762
Right.

746
00:30:30,762 --> 00:30:33,765
It's a $12 net, $12 net fee.

747
00:30:33,832 --> 00:30:34,566
Yeah.

748
00:30:34,566 --> 00:30:37,569
But if they put it on my bill
today is $20.

749
00:30:37,635 --> 00:30:39,604
Yeah, right. Is that.

750
00:30:39,604 --> 00:30:41,573
Because my bill right now is $7.

751
00:30:41,573 --> 00:30:44,409
And if they it will be adding $12, $20
to it.

752
00:30:44,409 --> 00:30:44,876
Right, right.

753
00:30:44,876 --> 00:30:47,812
It was a net fee before
because it would happen at the same point.

754
00:30:47,812 --> 00:30:50,815
The other one lowered
the public safety fee by $7.

755
00:30:50,849 --> 00:30:53,952
And then this one was going to
be $19.65 or something like that.

756
00:30:54,085 --> 00:30:56,087
So it was only a net $12 increase.

757
00:30:56,087 --> 00:30:58,423
Yeah. And I just I felt
that was just a weird way to spin it.

758
00:30:58,423 --> 00:31:00,525
Right. It was, it was it was trying.

759
00:31:00,525 --> 00:31:03,494
I don't know if you saw me on Facebook,
I immediately thought, yeah.

760
00:31:03,494 --> 00:31:05,797
Oh yeah. No, I've seen
I've seen quite a bit of your stuff.

761
00:31:05,797 --> 00:31:06,097
Okay.

762
00:31:06,097 --> 00:31:08,833
It's Yeah, it's
so I just, I felt that was like,

763
00:31:10,168 --> 00:31:11,502
I don't know, just not.

764
00:31:11,502 --> 00:31:13,805
It was a weird way to promote it, right?
Like, like.

765
00:31:13,805 --> 00:31:14,839
I told them. That it wasn't.

766
00:31:14,839 --> 00:31:16,474
It wasn't a very honest way
to promoting it.

767
00:31:16,474 --> 00:31:19,777
And so, you know,
and like I mentioned before.

768
00:31:19,811 --> 00:31:20,478
Right.

769
00:31:20,478 --> 00:31:22,814
Like if the referendum passes, great man.

770
00:31:22,814 --> 00:31:23,915
I would respect that.

771
00:31:23,915 --> 00:31:24,983
And hey, this is the way

772
00:31:24,983 --> 00:31:27,952
this is the way the residents
would want to want to pay for stuff.

773
00:31:27,952 --> 00:31:28,953
Let's do it.

774
00:31:28,953 --> 00:31:31,556
If it doesn't pass, you know what?
You figure out other ways, right?

775
00:31:31,556 --> 00:31:35,159
Like like, one of the things out there
that's going around

776
00:31:35,193 --> 00:31:38,529
is that in a couple of years,
like a lot of this debt comes off.

777
00:31:38,930 --> 00:31:39,697
So, you know what?

778
00:31:39,697 --> 00:31:43,501
We could do some of these inter—interfund
transfers until that point.

779
00:31:43,534 --> 00:31:46,237
Right. We could get by until that point.

780
00:31:46,237 --> 00:31:49,774
I am not going to propose
that I know anything about,

781
00:31:51,643 --> 00:31:53,411
all the different cuts
that we could make in the city, right?

782
00:31:53,411 --> 00:31:57,282
Because, I mean, that's
been gone over a million times online.

783
00:31:57,282 --> 00:32:01,452
And and you're trying to find an attorney
and a finance director on

784
00:32:01,552 --> 00:32:02,754
you knowing better.

785
00:32:02,754 --> 00:32:04,722
Yeah. That's a that's a rough stuff. Yeah.

786
00:32:04,722 --> 00:32:07,959
So you know and I'm not going to
I do know that that, you know at one point

787
00:32:07,959 --> 00:32:09,928
we had a lot less employees
working for the city.

788
00:32:09,928 --> 00:32:11,462
And we could
probably get back to that point.

789
00:32:11,462 --> 00:32:13,998
But I'm not going to claim
to know all that kind of stuff.

790
00:32:13,998 --> 00:32:16,734
I, I just know that there's always a way

791
00:32:16,734 --> 00:32:19,737
to make things work,
and to say that this is the only way

792
00:32:20,738 --> 00:32:23,241
doesn't do a service to the people
that are coming up with it, right?

793
00:32:23,241 --> 00:32:26,010
That doesn't do a service
to the city council, to the the budget

794
00:32:26,010 --> 00:32:28,846
committee, to any of these people,
because there's always other ways.

795
00:32:28,846 --> 00:32:29,180
Right?

796
00:32:29,180 --> 00:32:31,049
I mean, you just you have to work on it.

797
00:32:31,049 --> 00:32:32,617
You have to collaborate and talk about it.

798
00:32:32,617 --> 00:32:35,019
And there's another point
that I like to bring up.

799
00:32:35,019 --> 00:32:38,256
Like, I feel that like the City council

800
00:32:38,256 --> 00:32:42,060
work sessions, like it's just educational.

801
00:32:42,060 --> 00:32:44,595
They're not actually doing work.
They're not talking and collaborating.

802
00:32:44,595 --> 00:32:47,565
It's just a lot of it is just like,
okay, we're going to talk about

803
00:32:47,565 --> 00:32:48,967
urban renewal districts today.

804
00:32:48,967 --> 00:32:51,569
And that's what was talked about,
which is cool.

805
00:32:51,569 --> 00:32:52,971
I think education is great.

806
00:32:52,971 --> 00:32:56,140
But like, they could have been talking
about how how to open the parks

807
00:32:56,441 --> 00:32:59,277
at least brainstorming
that a little bit or something.

808
00:32:59,277 --> 00:33:03,481
So if you get elected in November
and let's say the fee doesn't pass

809
00:33:03,614 --> 00:33:06,617
and we close the parks,
we close the library, we close the museum.

810
00:33:06,918 --> 00:33:12,323
What's your plan if you have one to
to attack that, get them back open.

811
00:33:12,357 --> 00:33:14,525
First off, I'll listen to people
that are smarter than me.

812
00:33:14,525 --> 00:33:16,394
There's other people out there
that are much smarter than me.

813
00:33:16,394 --> 00:33:17,295
There's people.

814
00:33:17,295 --> 00:33:20,698
We have two people that live in this town
that have been city

815
00:33:20,698 --> 00:33:23,935
managers of other cities
for a lot of years, right.

816
00:33:23,935 --> 00:33:24,836
I would listen to them.

817
00:33:24,836 --> 00:33:27,372
I would listen to them. On
how to go about doing it right.

818
00:33:27,372 --> 00:33:28,606
I would listen to,

819
00:33:29,941 --> 00:33:31,409
just anybody because.

820
00:33:31,409 --> 00:33:33,611
Because it wouldn't be just me, right?
I don't have to have a plan.

821
00:33:33,611 --> 00:33:35,279
I don't have to have all the answers.

822
00:33:35,279 --> 00:33:35,580
Right.

823
00:33:35,580 --> 00:33:39,283
I'm one of six people
and a mayor, and a city,

824
00:33:39,417 --> 00:33:41,819
and a city manager and a finance director,

825
00:33:41,819 --> 00:33:44,288
and all these people
that should be working together.

826
00:33:44,288 --> 00:33:46,124
So it doesn't have to be my plan, right?

827
00:33:46,124 --> 00:33:49,327
I would I would try to listen
to all the different options,

828
00:33:49,660 --> 00:33:52,630
and that would be the primary way
I would go.

829
00:33:53,164 --> 00:33:54,399
It's smart way to go about it.

830
00:33:54,399 --> 00:33:55,199
I think, you know,

831
00:33:55,199 --> 00:33:58,202
knowing your own limitations,
knowing what you do and don't know.

832
00:33:58,536 --> 00:34:00,671
I think that's pretty intelligent.
Way to go about it.

833
00:34:00,671 --> 00:34:02,140
Thank you. Yeah.

834
00:34:02,140 --> 00:34:05,376
So do you play pool? Not.

835
00:34:05,410 --> 00:34:06,177
Not well. Not.

836
00:34:06,177 --> 00:34:09,614
Well I have I was so back in the days
when I was a bartender.

837
00:34:09,814 --> 00:34:11,082
My game of choice was darts.

838
00:34:11,082 --> 00:34:12,750
Darts? Yeah. Really? Yeah.

839
00:34:12,750 --> 00:34:14,052
Do you ever play in a league?

840
00:34:14,052 --> 00:34:16,220
I did, yeah, darts league.

841
00:34:16,220 --> 00:34:18,656
For a lot of years.
We did. We did a soft tip.

842
00:34:18,656 --> 00:34:21,192
Electronic darts,
big boards and stuff like that.

843
00:34:21,192 --> 00:34:21,759
Pretty good.

844
00:34:22,894 --> 00:34:24,429
I don't I haven't played for a long time.

845
00:34:24,429 --> 00:34:25,096
Yeah.

846
00:34:25,096 --> 00:34:27,632
My favorite drunk thing, but I'm terrible.

847
00:34:27,632 --> 00:34:30,001
Okay. Because I'm drunk, so.

848
00:34:30,001 --> 00:34:33,738
Yeah, I, I mean, I won a
state championship once,

849
00:34:33,838 --> 00:34:37,742
but it was on
one of the very low levels of play, right?

850
00:34:37,775 --> 00:34:39,410
It was a novice novice division.

851
00:34:39,410 --> 00:34:40,878
But I won a state championship once.

852
00:34:40,878 --> 00:34:43,815
I've been—I've won tournaments I do okay.

853
00:34:43,815 --> 00:34:44,682
I mean it's a handicap.

854
00:34:44,682 --> 00:34:47,819
So as long as you can shoot your handicap
or better, you're do okay.

855
00:34:47,852 --> 00:34:51,823
But yeah,
I played APA League for a lot of years and

856
00:34:52,156 --> 00:34:55,460
I don't know if you know that it's pool
league, American Poolplayers Association.

857
00:34:55,493 --> 00:34:57,095
I have some friends
that are really into it. Okay.

858
00:34:57,095 --> 00:34:57,595
Yeah, yeah.

859
00:34:57,595 --> 00:34:58,696
Pool was always my thing.

860
00:34:58,696 --> 00:35:00,832
I, I went and played nationals.

861
00:35:00,832 --> 00:35:04,001
I took 17th in the nation and. Wow. Yeah.

862
00:35:04,001 --> 00:35:06,070
So I used to play pool.
That's why I was asking.

863
00:35:06,070 --> 00:35:07,872
I'm like you said,
you worked at bars and stuff.

864
00:35:07,872 --> 00:35:09,540
I was like, maybe he plays pool.

865
00:35:09,540 --> 00:35:10,808
Pinball, pinball. And.

866
00:35:10,808 --> 00:35:11,943
Oh, I love pinball. Oh, man.

867
00:35:11,943 --> 00:35:14,278
You never find pinball anymore?

868
00:35:14,278 --> 00:35:14,579
Yeah.

869
00:35:14,579 --> 00:35:17,448
I mean, there's Coin
Jam downtown has some.

870
00:35:17,448 --> 00:35:17,915
Okay.

871
00:35:17,915 --> 00:35:18,883
There's one in Dallas.

872
00:35:18,883 --> 00:35:21,452
I want to get to a there's a few places.

873
00:35:21,452 --> 00:35:23,521
They're not out there a lot. So I have a

874
00:35:24,856 --> 00:35:25,523
Meta Quest

875
00:35:25,523 --> 00:35:28,526
headset, and there's actually a pinball

876
00:35:29,127 --> 00:35:29,927
on that.

877
00:35:29,927 --> 00:35:32,130
It's a VR headset. It's amazing.

878
00:35:32,130 --> 00:35:33,631
Yeah. I mean, it's amazing.

879
00:35:33,631 --> 00:35:36,801
You. You hold the controllers like that,
and you can, like.

880
00:35:37,301 --> 00:35:38,503
Can you bump it?

881
00:35:38,503 --> 00:35:40,271
There's a toggle switch
to bump it. I'm not.

882
00:35:40,271 --> 00:35:41,205
I don't bump when I play.

883
00:35:41,205 --> 00:35:42,140
No, not at all.

884
00:35:42,140 --> 00:35:44,275
No, I'm just strictly, strictly.

885
00:35:44,275 --> 00:35:45,676
By the rules.

886
00:35:45,676 --> 00:35:47,612
No cheating.
I just don't bump. Just not my thing.

887
00:35:47,612 --> 00:35:50,281
I never got into it. So I'm just.
I just tapped the buttons.

888
00:35:50,281 --> 00:35:52,750
You know what? They don't have
enough of anymore shuffleboard.

889
00:35:52,750 --> 00:35:54,652
There needs to be more shuffleboard
places.

890
00:35:54,652 --> 00:35:55,520
Yeah, there used to.

891
00:35:55,520 --> 00:35:57,522
There was one at the,

892
00:35:57,522 --> 00:35:59,824
the Three Legged Dog had. Was there. Yeah.

893
00:35:59,824 --> 00:36:01,993
Okay. Yeah. Know if I ever went there?

894
00:36:01,993 --> 00:36:04,061
I went there a couple of times.
It was good. It was nice.

895
00:36:04,061 --> 00:36:06,430
It was a cool place.
So what are you doing for work now?

896
00:36:07,598 --> 00:36:08,766
I work at a paint factory.

897
00:36:08,766 --> 00:36:11,102
Okay. Yeah.

898
00:36:11,102 --> 00:36:11,369
Yeah.

899
00:36:11,369 --> 00:36:16,340
Just the other day, I sent out a 2000
gallon batch of water based white primer.

900
00:36:16,674 --> 00:36:17,608
Fun. Yeah.

901
00:36:17,608 --> 00:36:18,042
What is it?

902
00:36:18,042 --> 00:36:20,645
Just go out by the truckload. Or is it?

903
00:36:20,645 --> 00:36:23,114
Yeah. There's a tanker. Trucks.
We do some tanker trucks.

904
00:36:23,114 --> 00:36:25,850
We do a 250 gallon totes.

905
00:36:25,850 --> 00:36:28,152
Drums. What?

906
00:36:28,152 --> 00:36:28,920
Most of. Its.

907
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:31,455
Most of this is, industrial coatings.

908
00:36:31,455 --> 00:36:34,091
Okay, so it's going to go to some
of it goes to cabinet factories.

909
00:36:34,091 --> 00:36:37,094
And that's how I actually got into
this. Was

910
00:36:37,595 --> 00:36:40,031
talking to the service technician

911
00:36:40,031 --> 00:36:42,833
at the cabinet factory,
and I was working in the paint

912
00:36:42,833 --> 00:36:45,836
vault at the time, which is mixing up
the colors and making sure everything's

913
00:36:45,870 --> 00:36:49,640
the viscosities are good, making sure that
all the spray lines have what they need.

914
00:36:49,774 --> 00:36:52,276
And yeah, I got to talking to the service
technician.

915
00:36:52,276 --> 00:36:56,013
So he's the guy that works
for the paint company, the,

916
00:36:56,581 --> 00:37:00,051
at the factory, making sure
that we're doing everything proper.

917
00:37:00,051 --> 00:37:02,420
And he's like, you should get
to work for a paint company.

918
00:37:02,420 --> 00:37:06,724
And so, this was right, at the tail
end of the

919
00:37:07,358 --> 00:37:11,262
the pandemic, and, I was burnt out
working at the cabinet shop.

920
00:37:11,262 --> 00:37:12,797
We our orders never slowed down.

921
00:37:12,797 --> 00:37:15,499
We lost a lot of employees,
but orders never slowed down.

922
00:37:15,499 --> 00:37:17,735
And it got really,
really brutal. For a while. There it was.

923
00:37:17,735 --> 00:37:19,737
It was like,

924
00:37:19,737 --> 00:37:23,374
they just passed a law saying that
employees couldn't work more than 55 hours

925
00:37:23,374 --> 00:37:26,477
a week unless they signed a little thing
and everybody signed the thing.

926
00:37:26,477 --> 00:37:28,579
So we were doing like 60 hour weeks.
Oh, wow.

927
00:37:28,579 --> 00:37:32,116
Yeah, like volunteer Saturdays,
like all the stuff.

928
00:37:32,416 --> 00:37:34,218
I'm a spa doing that.

929
00:37:34,218 --> 00:37:37,355
Like, we're all gonna come together
this Saturday and do an extra day.

930
00:37:37,355 --> 00:37:37,855
It's like.

931
00:37:37,855 --> 00:37:38,823
Yeah, great.

932
00:37:38,823 --> 00:37:40,891
Yeah. Don't
you be on your boat, won't you?

933
00:37:43,194 --> 00:37:45,129
Yeah. So.

934
00:37:45,129 --> 00:37:45,463
Crap.

935
00:37:45,463 --> 00:37:48,432
I had a question
I was going to ask you about that.

936
00:37:48,499 --> 00:37:52,036
You have some experience
working in manufacturing

937
00:37:52,103 --> 00:37:53,571
and that particularly,

938
00:37:53,571 --> 00:37:57,541
you understand what it's like
when they require more hours out of you.

939
00:37:57,575 --> 00:38:00,478
More work, less people, less pay.

940
00:38:00,478 --> 00:38:04,482
Putting the city in that position,
you know, cutting staff, things like that.

941
00:38:04,815 --> 00:38:07,718
How do you feel about that? Morally?

942
00:38:07,718 --> 00:38:09,854
You just do it. You just do it.
You do it right.

943
00:38:09,854 --> 00:38:11,155
You do what your boss asked you to do.

944
00:38:11,155 --> 00:38:12,957
It's just the way it goes, right?

945
00:38:12,957 --> 00:38:16,294
I mean, if you physically
can't do it, then, then that's then.

946
00:38:16,294 --> 00:38:17,261
That's one thing, right?

947
00:38:17,261 --> 00:38:21,098
Or or if it gets to the point where, like,
okay, dude, I run out of hours

948
00:38:21,098 --> 00:38:24,335
or right then,
then then that's one thing, right?

949
00:38:24,635 --> 00:38:26,037
But you just do it. There's.

950
00:38:27,371 --> 00:38:29,073
Yeah, it trust me, it happens.

951
00:38:29,073 --> 00:38:30,007
It happens a lot.

952
00:38:30,007 --> 00:38:31,175
Like in manufacturing. Right?

953
00:38:31,175 --> 00:38:34,278
Like that was one thing that happened
at the at the cabinet shop was like

954
00:38:34,412 --> 00:38:36,647
it would all of a sudden be like, dude,
we are going to get this done.

955
00:38:36,647 --> 00:38:39,483
Like they would say, dude, we have ten
more cabinets to do before we go home.

956
00:38:39,483 --> 00:38:42,486
And that's that's what we did, right?

957
00:38:42,753 --> 00:38:45,156
At the that's one of the reasons
I actually switched jobs.

958
00:38:45,156 --> 00:38:49,794
So. Right was because, the paint factory
is a little, little slower paced that way.

959
00:38:50,561 --> 00:38:50,995
But still.

960
00:38:50,995 --> 00:38:53,297
Yeah, when they say, hey,
we have this stuff to do, right?

961
00:38:53,297 --> 00:38:56,734
We need you guys to really focus on
getting your stuff done right.

962
00:38:56,734 --> 00:38:58,102
It doesn't mean you have to work
more hours.

963
00:38:58,102 --> 00:38:59,870
Sometimes you just have to focus
a little bit more on on

964
00:38:59,870 --> 00:39:02,206
actually on the job, on the task at hand.

965
00:39:02,206 --> 00:39:03,774
Or less this. A little.

966
00:39:03,774 --> 00:39:04,809
Yeah. A little less that.

967
00:39:04,809 --> 00:39:06,811
I mean, just
sometimes you just have to focus. Right.

968
00:39:06,811 --> 00:39:11,682
And so, yeah, I, I have no problem saying,
yeah, we need to do more with less.

969
00:39:11,682 --> 00:39:12,917
That's that's standard.

970
00:39:12,917 --> 00:39:14,819
That is standard in all industries.

971
00:39:14,819 --> 00:39:18,556
I think government is one of the only
industries that that's not standard.

972
00:39:18,622 --> 00:39:19,557
Yeah.

973
00:39:19,557 --> 00:39:21,092
Just continuously expanding.

974
00:39:21,092 --> 00:39:23,094
I mean, I'm a bit of a libertarian.

975
00:39:23,094 --> 00:39:24,762
And same here. Are you? Yeah.

976
00:39:24,762 --> 00:39:26,397
Okay. Well, pleasure to meet you.

977
00:39:26,397 --> 00:39:28,099
There's two of us now in town.

978
00:39:28,099 --> 00:39:29,367
Oh. There's there's more of us.

979
00:39:29,367 --> 00:39:31,168
Just there's
no point in us talking about it

980
00:39:31,168 --> 00:39:33,170
because we can't get anything done
that way. Right?

981
00:39:33,170 --> 00:39:36,874
Yeah, I know nobody's ever voted
for a libertarian around here, so.

982
00:39:36,974 --> 00:39:39,777
Yeah, I mean, based on that Partizan.

983
00:39:39,777 --> 00:39:40,778
Yeah. But,

984
00:39:42,113 --> 00:39:42,880
yeah.

985
00:39:42,880 --> 00:39:47,017
Yeah, it's
it's tough because as a city councilor,

986
00:39:47,084 --> 00:39:50,121
you don't have any direct influence
on what city manager does.

987
00:39:50,121 --> 00:39:52,690
So shaping policy though, you know,

988
00:39:52,690 --> 00:39:55,693
how would you like to see
Independence in ten years?

989
00:39:56,460 --> 00:39:58,129
I mean, I think we're on a good path,
right?

990
00:39:58,129 --> 00:40:01,031
Like, I don't

991
00:40:01,031 --> 00:40:03,367
I'm not necessarily
for like massive growth.

992
00:40:03,367 --> 00:40:03,634
Right.

993
00:40:03,634 --> 00:40:05,803
Like I don't necessarily
want to see us growing, but like,

994
00:40:05,803 --> 00:40:08,939
you know, I think giving other people
the opportunity to move here is is cool.

995
00:40:08,973 --> 00:40:09,240
Right.

996
00:40:09,240 --> 00:40:11,976
And I'd like to see more working
class homes. Right.

997
00:40:11,976 --> 00:40:14,378
Like I think

998
00:40:14,378 --> 00:40:17,081
it's been brought up quite a
bit about the SCDs being really,

999
00:40:17,081 --> 00:40:18,416
really expensive to build here.

1000
00:40:18,416 --> 00:40:21,152
So that means you're only going
to get more expensive houses,

1001
00:40:21,152 --> 00:40:25,089
which makes it harder for working class
people to be able to move here.

1002
00:40:25,122 --> 00:40:25,489
Right.

1003
00:40:25,489 --> 00:40:27,358
Like,
I mean, somebody with a job like mine,

1004
00:40:27,358 --> 00:40:29,293
there's no way
I could afford to buy a house here.

1005
00:40:29,293 --> 00:40:30,861
Like if I
if I didn't get the screaming deal

1006
00:40:30,861 --> 00:40:31,962
I did from my father in law,

1007
00:40:31,962 --> 00:40:34,799
there's no way I could have afford
to actually buy a house in this town.

1008
00:40:34,799 --> 00:40:35,833
Right.

1009
00:40:35,833 --> 00:40:38,202
And so.
They've all been priced out at this point.

1010
00:40:38,202 --> 00:40:39,036
Yeah, at least me.

1011
00:40:39,036 --> 00:40:41,872
I mean, there's no way
I can buy another $500,000 house.

1012
00:40:41,872 --> 00:40:42,440
Yeah.

1013
00:40:42,440 --> 00:40:45,476
And it's so I mean, I'd like to see, like,
more of that.

1014
00:40:45,476 --> 00:40:45,743
Right?

1015
00:40:45,743 --> 00:40:49,380
Like, how do we get more, like,
genuinely affordable houses?

1016
00:40:49,380 --> 00:40:51,649
Like. Not like where it's artificially

1017
00:40:53,150 --> 00:40:56,120
where the prices
are, like, artificially brought down low.

1018
00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:56,320
Right?

1019
00:40:56,320 --> 00:40:59,356
Where, like, how do we get builders
to want to build cheaper houses, right.

1020
00:40:59,390 --> 00:41:01,559
How do we how do we go that direction?

1021
00:41:01,559 --> 00:41:02,526
Like, you know,

1022
00:41:02,526 --> 00:41:03,694
there was a,

1023
00:41:03,694 --> 00:41:05,196
the building code
recently has been changed

1024
00:41:05,196 --> 00:41:07,531
so that the lots can be a
little bit smaller, right?

1025
00:41:07,531 --> 00:41:09,533
Which I think is a really good start.

1026
00:41:09,533 --> 00:41:09,800
Right?

1027
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:12,803
I think that personally I think
that's a really good start because,

1028
00:41:13,337 --> 00:41:15,639
you know, I think

1029
00:41:15,639 --> 00:41:17,875
like it's got to be affordable
for people to build.

1030
00:41:17,875 --> 00:41:18,209
Right.

1031
00:41:18,209 --> 00:41:21,212
And it's got to be affordable for,

1032
00:41:21,645 --> 00:41:22,680
to purchase the land.

1033
00:41:22,680 --> 00:41:24,849
Just all,
all the things need to be cheaper, right?

1034
00:41:24,849 --> 00:41:26,417
There's a lot of undeveloped
land in the city.

1035
00:41:26,417 --> 00:41:30,521
But like, obviously if if it's not going
to be economically feasible

1036
00:41:30,521 --> 00:41:33,123
for them to make cheaper houses,
then they're not going to do that.

1037
00:41:33,123 --> 00:41:34,658
Yeah, that makes sense.

1038
00:41:34,658 --> 00:41:37,461
Because, you know, that's been one thing
City council has talked a lot about

1039
00:41:37,461 --> 00:41:39,563
is providing affordable
housing for the city.

1040
00:41:39,563 --> 00:41:40,564
But you're right. Like

1041
00:41:41,899 --> 00:41:44,768
do prevent they
lock out anybody from building affordable.

1042
00:41:44,768 --> 00:41:46,971
Housing mean if it costs $50,000
just to get started.

1043
00:41:46,971 --> 00:41:48,873
Right. Like, I mean, that's a huge amount.

1044
00:41:48,873 --> 00:41:52,376
Of money turns $150,000 house into 200
before they even break ground.

1045
00:41:52,409 --> 00:41:54,612
Like a starter
home. Used to be two bedrooms, right?

1046
00:41:54,612 --> 00:41:57,248
And maybe garage. Maybe
there's a space for a garage.

1047
00:41:57,248 --> 00:41:58,249
Or maybe you know what?

1048
00:41:58,249 --> 00:42:01,252
Like, like, like a two bedroom house
with a on a modest lot.

1049
00:42:01,252 --> 00:42:02,653
And, like, you don't see those anymore.

1050
00:42:02,653 --> 00:42:04,755
They're always townhouses, which are okay.

1051
00:42:04,755 --> 00:42:05,890
But I think

1052
00:42:05,890 --> 00:42:08,559
the way that people really get a chance
to, like, get something of their own

1053
00:42:08,559 --> 00:42:11,161
is that they can have four walls
that are their own. Right.

1054
00:42:11,161 --> 00:42:13,397
And and the way you do that.

1055
00:42:13,397 --> 00:42:15,232
All the way around it. Yeah. Yeah,
yeah. Exactly.

1056
00:42:15,232 --> 00:42:17,368
Right. Like a yard
and all that kind of stuff.

1057
00:42:17,368 --> 00:42:17,535
Right.

1058
00:42:17,535 --> 00:42:20,771
And like, you get something
where they can invest in that property

1059
00:42:20,771 --> 00:42:23,774
and be able to build on it and stuff
like that, you know, like it's funny.

1060
00:42:24,141 --> 00:42:27,011
My dad's the house that I grew up in
in Ballard.

1061
00:42:27,011 --> 00:42:28,879
It would have been considered a starter
home.

1062
00:42:28,879 --> 00:42:29,380
Right? It was.

1063
00:42:29,380 --> 00:42:30,848
It was pretty small.

1064
00:42:30,848 --> 00:42:31,682
It was pretty small.

1065
00:42:31,682 --> 00:42:32,449
Not on a big lot.

1066
00:42:32,449 --> 00:42:35,052
I think it was a 4,000 square foot lot.

1067
00:42:35,052 --> 00:42:37,154
It was not a terribly big house.

1068
00:42:39,857 --> 00:42:40,491
Right.

1069
00:42:40,491 --> 00:42:42,092
But in my dad, he bought it in.

1070
00:42:42,092 --> 00:42:46,196
My mom and dad bought it,
I wanted to say in 78 for like $30,000.

1071
00:42:46,297 --> 00:42:46,730
Right.

1072
00:42:46,730 --> 00:42:49,500
And and even at that point,
it was pretty expensive.

1073
00:42:49,500 --> 00:42:52,002
Like, they thought it was all the money
in the world, right?

1074
00:42:52,002 --> 00:42:54,438
When it was finally sold.

1075
00:42:54,438 --> 00:42:57,808
It was a tear down, and
it sold for $650,000.

1076
00:42:57,841 --> 00:43:00,844
Really? As a tear down. Wow. Yeah.

1077
00:43:01,111 --> 00:43:03,847
But, you know, my dad was able to get that
because he was able to buy

1078
00:43:03,847 --> 00:43:05,249
cheap house, right?

1079
00:43:05,249 --> 00:43:07,751
And that's interesting
how generational wealth comes

1080
00:43:07,751 --> 00:43:10,321
from that property ownership
or at least has historically.

1081
00:43:10,321 --> 00:43:14,491
Because same thing like think my
mom bought her house for $68,000

1082
00:43:14,525 --> 00:43:17,795
and my ex-wife, her parents
bought their house here in town

1083
00:43:17,795 --> 00:43:20,798
for $25,000 back in the 80s, 80s.

1084
00:43:20,798 --> 00:43:22,399
And it's on a quarter acre lot.

1085
00:43:22,399 --> 00:43:26,437
You know, it's four
bedroom, three bath, $25,000.

1086
00:43:26,470 --> 00:43:29,340
And it's crazy that just 40 years ago,
that was the price.

1087
00:43:29,340 --> 00:43:32,810
Now it's six, eight,
$800,000, something like that.

1088
00:43:33,010 --> 00:43:36,880
I don't even know what it would cost for
somebody to get into a brand new house

1089
00:43:36,981 --> 00:43:37,781
in this town, right?

1090
00:43:37,781 --> 00:43:39,650
Like, I mean, it's it's

1091
00:43:39,650 --> 00:43:41,452
you look at how much a mortgage is
for, like,

1092
00:43:41,452 --> 00:43:43,454
something for, like,
even a couple hundred thousand.

1093
00:43:43,454 --> 00:43:45,956
And that's like,
I mean, you have to have really,

1094
00:43:45,956 --> 00:43:47,858
really decent job
to be able to afford that, right?

1095
00:43:47,858 --> 00:43:50,527
I have a decent job
and I couldn't afford that.

1096
00:43:50,527 --> 00:43:50,861
Yeah.

1097
00:43:50,861 --> 00:43:51,996
I know, you've got to be bringing in like

1098
00:43:51,996 --> 00:43:55,899
ten grand a month in your household
to be able to afford a $400,000 house.

1099
00:43:55,966 --> 00:43:57,401
Yeah. So yeah.

1100
00:43:57,401 --> 00:43:58,969
I think me yeah.

1101
00:43:58,969 --> 00:44:01,038
Same here.
I mean, that's not most people, right?

1102
00:44:01,038 --> 00:44:03,607
I mean, it's it's
yeah. It's interesting. Right.

1103
00:44:03,607 --> 00:44:05,275
And then you end up with,

1104
00:44:05,275 --> 00:44:08,278
the only people who can buy them
are the private equity firms

1105
00:44:08,278 --> 00:44:11,248
that buy all the houses and then they
rent them for whatever they want.

1106
00:44:11,248 --> 00:44:12,182
And then, you know.

1107
00:44:12,182 --> 00:44:14,084
It's $2,000 a month rents.

1108
00:44:14,084 --> 00:44:15,452
Yeah, yeah.

1109
00:44:15,452 --> 00:44:17,287
The urban renewal district down there.

1110
00:44:17,287 --> 00:44:20,791
I mean, I've heard people talking about
the rents 1400, 16.

1111
00:44:20,791 --> 00:44:21,091
Hundred

1112
00:44:22,159 --> 00:44:23,494
places where they're not.

1113
00:44:23,494 --> 00:44:24,094
And it's nice.

1114
00:44:24,094 --> 00:44:24,461
Right.

1115
00:44:24,461 --> 00:44:27,431
Like, I personally, I,
I thought the, the gravel pit

1116
00:44:27,431 --> 00:44:29,333
like where was pretty cool, right?

1117
00:44:29,333 --> 00:44:30,434
I thought it was really cool.

1118
00:44:30,434 --> 00:44:32,369
I used to go play there
when I was a kid. Yeah.

1119
00:44:32,369 --> 00:44:32,803
I thought it was.

1120
00:44:32,803 --> 00:44:35,472
It was pretty cool. And, you know,
I mean, I get it, right.

1121
00:44:35,472 --> 00:44:36,206
You need to.

1122
00:44:36,206 --> 00:44:38,776
It's it's
a, it's a, it's a desirable area to build.

1123
00:44:38,776 --> 00:44:40,277
And and those people,
they get cool houses,

1124
00:44:40,277 --> 00:44:41,412
they get to live in a cool neighborhood.

1125
00:44:41,412 --> 00:44:43,914
They get right by downtown.

1126
00:44:43,914 --> 00:44:46,550
But it's still it's kind of like you lose
some of that small town character.

1127
00:44:46,550 --> 00:44:47,851
The more you build things like.

1128
00:44:47,851 --> 00:44:50,721
That, even if you make it brick, it's
new brick, you know what I mean?

1129
00:44:50,721 --> 00:44:52,423
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can tell.

1130
00:44:52,423 --> 00:44:54,558
I mean, downtown, it's nice.

1131
00:44:54,558 --> 00:44:56,694
It looks historic, but it's all new,

1132
00:44:56,694 --> 00:44:59,697
you know, the lamp poles,
that everything's new. So.

1133
00:45:00,097 --> 00:45:03,701
Yeah, that's that's been interesting
watching the city change every.

1134
00:45:03,801 --> 00:45:07,137
Because I've lived here
pretty much 34 years.

1135
00:45:07,171 --> 00:45:07,571
Okay.

1136
00:45:07,571 --> 00:45:09,473
So I've been here a long time.
And it's funny

1137
00:45:09,473 --> 00:45:11,575
because I've noticed there are three
different cultures in town.

1138
00:45:11,575 --> 00:45:14,678
There's the Airpark people, there's
the historic district people,

1139
00:45:14,845 --> 00:45:17,481
and then there's everybody else
who lives down Seventh Street.

1140
00:45:17,481 --> 00:45:19,083
And so, yeah.

1141
00:45:19,083 --> 00:45:21,285
And and they've got their own thing
going on.

1142
00:45:21,285 --> 00:45:22,920
The historic district, people like us,

1143
00:45:22,920 --> 00:45:25,923
you know, we we view the world one
way and then the Airpark people.

1144
00:45:26,023 --> 00:45:27,157
I love where I live, right.

1145
00:45:27,157 --> 00:45:28,392
Like where I live is amazing

1146
00:45:28,392 --> 00:45:31,762
because like when the 4th of July happens,
which is so much fun here.

1147
00:45:31,995 --> 00:45:34,198
Like, I'm like a five minute wagon walk.

1148
00:45:34,198 --> 00:45:36,166
I haul my wagon with
all my stuff down there.

1149
00:45:36,166 --> 00:45:37,701
I'm like five minute walk down there.

1150
00:45:37,701 --> 00:45:39,870
Do you stake out a spot for the fireworks?

1151
00:45:39,870 --> 00:45:42,039
Sometimes. Yeah,
sometimes. Yeah. We'll go down there.

1152
00:45:42,039 --> 00:45:45,142
I mean, most last few years
I go down there just

1153
00:45:45,142 --> 00:45:48,312
whenever and I get a lot of friends
that that want to do it.

1154
00:45:48,312 --> 00:45:50,581
And I'm like, dude, park at my house.
We'll, we'll hang out.

1155
00:45:50,581 --> 00:45:52,216
We can go down to the park
for a few hours.

1156
00:45:52,216 --> 00:45:52,583
We do

1157
00:45:52,583 --> 00:45:55,285
too. We can come back, we can barbecue
and then we'll go back down later.

1158
00:45:55,285 --> 00:45:57,221
And so we kind of we make it a whole day
nice.

1159
00:45:57,221 --> 00:45:58,422
It's, Yeah, it's fun.

1160
00:45:58,422 --> 00:45:58,856
And like,

1161
00:45:58,856 --> 00:46:01,391
I think the last few years,
we'll, we'll get a spot

1162
00:46:01,391 --> 00:46:05,562
and we might do something, but it's not
really a big, big stress to stake out.

1163
00:46:05,596 --> 00:46:07,931
We've done it before and it's so funny.

1164
00:46:07,931 --> 00:46:10,000
I had some friends who were like,
oh, people are gonna steal your stuff.

1165
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:11,568
I'm like, people don't steal here.

1166
00:46:11,568 --> 00:46:13,237
It's really it's small town.

1167
00:46:13,237 --> 00:46:14,571
Like, yeah, it'll be okay.

1168
00:46:14,571 --> 00:46:16,974
It's probably our biggest source of crime
is theft.

1169
00:46:16,974 --> 00:46:20,477
But, you know, biggest relative
to a town of 10,000 people.

1170
00:46:20,511 --> 00:46:21,178
You know what I mean?

1171
00:46:21,178 --> 00:46:22,246
Like, not.

1172
00:46:22,246 --> 00:46:24,281
Yes, but it's not really a problem.
Exactly.

1173
00:46:24,281 --> 00:46:27,251
I, I don't have a right now.

1174
00:46:27,251 --> 00:46:29,720
My my fence is like half
gone. I took off the the,

1175
00:46:30,954 --> 00:46:33,090
took off the part where the driveway is
and it's wide

1176
00:46:33,090 --> 00:46:36,260
open and I keep stuff in my yard,
and I've never had that right.

1177
00:46:36,293 --> 00:46:38,328
I lived,
I lived in a really nice neighborhood

1178
00:46:38,328 --> 00:46:41,331
in Auburn, Auburn, Washington,
and it was a nice little neighborhood,

1179
00:46:41,365 --> 00:46:42,766
kind of a downtown area.

1180
00:46:42,766 --> 00:46:46,537
And like, you could have a fully
fenced, six foot fence around your yard,

1181
00:46:46,603 --> 00:46:49,239
and if there was a bike in there,
it would be gone, right?

1182
00:46:49,239 --> 00:46:50,407
If it wasn't locked down.

1183
00:46:50,407 --> 00:46:51,542
Yeah. You're coming from Seattle.

1184
00:46:51,542 --> 00:46:53,777
You know, about real theft and real crime.
Oh, yeah.

1185
00:46:53,777 --> 00:46:54,444
People actually.

1186
00:46:54,444 --> 00:46:56,413
Yeah, like lawnmowers, man.

1187
00:46:56,413 --> 00:46:58,682
Forget about it. If you leave a
lawnmower in your yard, it is gone.

1188
00:46:58,682 --> 00:47:00,284
If you leave a bike in
your yard, it is gone.

1189
00:47:00,284 --> 00:47:03,287
To be fair,
I had my bike stolen out of my yard.

1190
00:47:03,353 --> 00:47:05,722
Eight years ago. Really? Yeah, yeah.

1191
00:47:05,722 --> 00:47:06,456
And it was.

1192
00:47:06,456 --> 00:47:08,292
It's only the second or third time my

1193
00:47:08,292 --> 00:47:10,994
my stepdad had his four-wheeler
stolen out of our garage there.

1194
00:47:10,994 --> 00:47:11,395
Really?

1195
00:47:11,395 --> 00:47:13,497
Yeah, that was 25 years ago.

1196
00:47:13,497 --> 00:47:16,633
But, crime has actually
come down since the 90s.

1197
00:47:16,700 --> 00:47:17,034
It was.

1198
00:47:17,034 --> 00:47:19,703
It was pretty rough around here
in the 90s, really?

1199
00:47:19,703 --> 00:47:24,341
Yeah, it was like, because the town was
kind of run down at the time.

1200
00:47:25,843 --> 00:47:26,176
Yeah.

1201
00:47:26,176 --> 00:47:29,513
There was just a lot more gang activity
and crime and theft and stuff like that.

1202
00:47:29,513 --> 00:47:33,116
Maybe it was just my perspective,
but I remember getting jumped a lot, so.

1203
00:47:33,150 --> 00:47:33,717
Oh, really?

1204
00:47:33,717 --> 00:47:34,418
Yeah.

1205
00:47:34,418 --> 00:47:34,818
Yeah.

1206
00:47:34,818 --> 00:47:37,821
They they didn't like me very much.

1207
00:47:38,121 --> 00:47:40,057
But yeah, with that said the bike story.

1208
00:47:40,057 --> 00:47:41,558
So somebody stole my bike.

1209
00:47:41,558 --> 00:47:44,761
My, my friend or my roommate
or somebody came upstairs

1210
00:47:44,761 --> 00:47:47,331
and told me, hey, your bike's gone
outside. I'm like, oh, whatever.

1211
00:47:47,331 --> 00:47:48,832
You know, you can't.

1212
00:47:48,832 --> 00:47:50,133
How do they say it in Argentina?

1213
00:47:50,133 --> 00:47:51,602
Don't give papaya.

1214
00:47:51,602 --> 00:47:54,471
Like, don't, don't put yourself out there
if you don't want people to steal it.

1215
00:47:54,471 --> 00:47:55,572
Yeah, don't invite it.

1216
00:47:55,572 --> 00:47:58,876
But like a week later,
the dude knocks on my door

1217
00:47:58,876 --> 00:48:01,812
and he's got my bike back and he's like,
I'm sorry, man.

1218
00:48:01,812 --> 00:48:05,415
I was drunk that night and I saw your bike
and I just needed to get home.

1219
00:48:05,415 --> 00:48:06,817
And then I felt really bad.

1220
00:48:06,817 --> 00:48:11,121
So I brought your bike back and my
I think somebody was living with me

1221
00:48:11,121 --> 00:48:12,556
and they're like,
are you gonna call the cops on them?

1222
00:48:12,556 --> 00:48:13,991
And I'm like, no.

1223
00:48:13,991 --> 00:48:15,158
Like, he brought it back.

1224
00:48:15,158 --> 00:48:16,593
Like, that's the coolest
thing anybody has ever

1225
00:48:16,593 --> 00:48:20,197
done is steal something and give it back,
you know how happy I am, why would I?

1226
00:48:20,230 --> 00:48:23,300
Why do I persecute him for that? So. Yeah.

1227
00:48:23,800 --> 00:48:26,870
But yeah, theft for the most part,
isn't really a huge issue here, you know?

1228
00:48:26,970 --> 00:48:29,640
No, it's really not. I mean, it's it's.

1229
00:48:29,640 --> 00:48:30,741
Violent crime either.

1230
00:48:30,741 --> 00:48:33,410
So how do you feel
about the increase of the police then?

1231
00:48:34,912 --> 00:48:37,314
You know, I, I mean, I get it right.

1232
00:48:37,314 --> 00:48:40,317
I get it like it's it's.

1233
00:48:41,251 --> 00:48:42,419
Necessary evil, right?

1234
00:48:42,419 --> 00:48:44,922
Like, I'm
not I'm definitely not for a police state.

1235
00:48:44,922 --> 00:48:46,957
Right? I'm definitely with libertarians.

1236
00:48:46,957 --> 00:48:48,725
Yeah,
I'm definitely not for the police state.

1237
00:48:48,725 --> 00:48:50,527
Like I'm not I'm not into

1238
00:48:50,527 --> 00:48:53,931
I know when you say Flock cameras,
people get on you, but they're not Flock.

1239
00:48:53,931 --> 00:48:55,198
But that's the.

1240
00:48:55,198 --> 00:48:58,001
That's the that's the
genericized term is Flock.

1241
00:48:58,001 --> 00:48:58,435
Right.

1242
00:48:58,435 --> 00:48:59,569
I'm not into those. Right.

1243
00:48:59,569 --> 00:49:02,172
I don't believe
we need a nanny state that way.

1244
00:49:02,172 --> 00:49:03,407
But at the same point. Right.

1245
00:49:03,407 --> 00:49:07,311
Having a strong police force, it's
kind of nice knowing that that

1246
00:49:08,011 --> 00:49:09,012
it is a safe place.

1247
00:49:09,012 --> 00:49:10,681
And we we do have patrols, right.

1248
00:49:10,681 --> 00:49:13,417
And like, it does slow
people down a little bit on the driving

1249
00:49:13,417 --> 00:49:16,553
because it's people
if given the chance to speed through town.

1250
00:49:16,553 --> 00:49:19,156
Right. It's I mean it's a right.

1251
00:49:19,156 --> 00:49:21,591
That's, that was one of my,
my big things. Right. Like and

1252
00:49:22,893 --> 00:49:25,329
one of my, one of my platforms
was gonna be more crosswalks

1253
00:49:25,329 --> 00:49:26,830
and they're actually already
working on that,

1254
00:49:26,830 --> 00:49:29,800
which I think is really cool that that's
happened in the last couple of months.

1255
00:49:29,800 --> 00:49:31,501
You know,
I live like right off of seventh.

1256
00:49:31,501 --> 00:49:35,339
And so we cross me and my kids,
we cross seventh on Monmouth Street

1257
00:49:35,339 --> 00:49:36,640
there really regularly.

1258
00:49:36,640 --> 00:49:38,008
And it's sketchy,

1259
00:49:38,008 --> 00:49:40,444
like people are starting to pick up
speed there and they aren't looking.

1260
00:49:40,444 --> 00:49:41,678
And, yeah.

1261
00:49:41,678 --> 00:49:46,850
So it is nice knowing that there are
police out there that are trying to like,

1262
00:49:46,917 --> 00:49:47,918
keep that stuff under control.

1263
00:49:47,918 --> 00:49:51,121
I loved when they did that,
sting operation earlier this summer.

1264
00:49:51,154 --> 00:49:55,325
Like they were pulling people over all day
for two days, and I, you know, I guess

1265
00:49:55,359 --> 00:49:57,260
I'm not for a police state, but.

1266
00:49:57,260 --> 00:49:59,096
Yeah, you know, my mom's got Alzheimer's.

1267
00:49:59,096 --> 00:50:00,697
She's. I take care of her.

1268
00:50:00,697 --> 00:50:04,735
And, when people go ripping through town
like that, it literally makes her cry.

1269
00:50:04,835 --> 00:50:07,237
Yeah,
and I gotta deal with that. Like she.

1270
00:50:07,237 --> 00:50:10,007
When they were doing the construction
out there on the the curbs,

1271
00:50:10,007 --> 00:50:12,809
she still gets up in the middle of
the night going like, what are they doing?

1272
00:50:12,809 --> 00:50:16,413
You know, it's just been so hard for me
because, yeah,

1273
00:50:16,713 --> 00:50:20,083
you know, not only the traffic outside,
but the construction and everything.

1274
00:50:20,083 --> 00:50:22,219
It's just been driving her up the wall.
So. Yeah.

1275
00:50:22,219 --> 00:50:25,222
And it's, you know, it's funny,
like when I was a knocking on doors.

1276
00:50:25,255 --> 00:50:25,956
Right.

1277
00:50:25,956 --> 00:50:29,359
Going, I went down Seventh Street
and, and, so I went down seventh and I

1278
00:50:29,926 --> 00:50:33,196
did a dog leg and went down Sixth, and
two different people were like, dude,

1279
00:50:33,263 --> 00:50:34,698
there's too much traffic on this road.

1280
00:50:34,698 --> 00:50:37,567
We need we need speed bumps or stop signs
or we need something.

1281
00:50:37,567 --> 00:50:38,969
People tear up Sixth Street.

1282
00:50:38,969 --> 00:50:41,972
I mean, people will be doing
40 or 50 miles an hour up there.

1283
00:50:42,039 --> 00:50:42,372
Nuts.

1284
00:50:42,372 --> 00:50:42,873
This one guy,

1285
00:50:42,873 --> 00:50:44,041
and he was on a

1286
00:50:44,041 --> 00:50:45,442
smaller section of the road

1287
00:50:45,442 --> 00:50:47,711
and he said, the cars are going so fast
down this thing.

1288
00:50:47,711 --> 00:50:50,514
And like I'm like, yeah, maybe they should
put a stop sign like right there.

1289
00:50:50,514 --> 00:50:52,883
And you know, they have to do
there's like things that to do,

1290
00:50:52,883 --> 00:50:54,151
they have to do,

1291
00:50:54,151 --> 00:50:57,220
you know, they had to put the speed
monitoring and all that kind of stuff to,

1292
00:50:57,254 --> 00:50:58,121
to be able to get to that point.

1293
00:50:58,121 --> 00:50:59,723
But I'm like, I don't like, you know,

1294
00:50:59,723 --> 00:51:02,626
I don't know if there's anything
I can do about that. But I mean, it's.

1295
00:51:02,626 --> 00:51:07,164
We just put all those nice bike markers
on the street back there on G Street,

1296
00:51:07,164 --> 00:51:08,331
I think, or.

1297
00:51:08,331 --> 00:51:10,700
I don't, I don't, I don't know what it.

1298
00:51:10,700 --> 00:51:12,002
Yeah, I.

1299
00:51:12,002 --> 00:51:12,969
It's like.

1300
00:51:12,969 --> 00:51:15,372
I. Don't know
they could ride their bikes down there.

1301
00:51:15,372 --> 00:51:17,374
Do they. Like,
how does this change anything.

1302
00:51:17,374 --> 00:51:19,543
It doesn't change anything.
I think it's the encouragement.

1303
00:51:19,543 --> 00:51:22,079
You know, I know that
they want to make this more walkable city.

1304
00:51:22,079 --> 00:51:25,515
And so by laying that stuff out there,
even if it doesn't change anything,

1305
00:51:25,515 --> 00:51:28,452
it puts the idea of biking into people's
minds more

1306
00:51:28,452 --> 00:51:29,853
almost like subliminal messaging.

1307
00:51:29,853 --> 00:51:31,855
My to my perspective.

1308
00:51:31,855 --> 00:51:33,990
Okay. I don't know what you think.

1309
00:51:33,990 --> 00:51:34,591
Yeah, I don't know.

1310
00:51:34,591 --> 00:51:37,160
I mean,
I think they probably got a grant for.

1311
00:51:37,160 --> 00:51:37,994
That makes more sense.

1312
00:51:37,994 --> 00:51:38,762
They probably got a grant.

1313
00:51:38,762 --> 00:51:40,797
They probably got a grant
for putting in bike lanes.

1314
00:51:40,797 --> 00:51:44,167
And that's what they did is they put
bike lane markers on Seventh Street,

1315
00:51:44,167 --> 00:51:47,204
which they what they really need is
more stop signs on Seventh Street and.

1316
00:51:47,237 --> 00:51:48,004
Speed bumps.

1317
00:51:48,004 --> 00:51:50,373
Yeah. Speed bumps.
Well, speed bumps are hard.

1318
00:51:50,373 --> 00:51:51,241
I've heard about speed bumps.

1319
00:51:51,241 --> 00:51:52,876
The reason they're hard is that

1320
00:51:52,876 --> 00:51:55,612
they have to be built a certain way
so school buses can go over them.

1321
00:51:55,612 --> 00:51:57,047
And emergency vehicles. Yeah.

1322
00:51:57,047 --> 00:51:59,883
It's it's it's yeah, yeah.

1323
00:51:59,883 --> 00:52:01,451
So you can't just put a speed bump
anywhere.

1324
00:52:01,451 --> 00:52:03,720
It's it's it's pretty tough. But,

1325
00:52:04,754 --> 00:52:06,022
you know, seventh is a busy street.

1326
00:52:06,022 --> 00:52:09,092
It feeds a huge, huge part of this city.

1327
00:52:09,159 --> 00:52:10,927
Has to use seventh to get out of town.

1328
00:52:10,927 --> 00:52:13,930
And so that is definitely something
we should like.

1329
00:52:14,231 --> 00:52:15,699
They've done small improvements, right?

1330
00:52:15,699 --> 00:52:18,435
Like, like putting a left turn
lane was a huge help.

1331
00:52:18,435 --> 00:52:19,703
Yeah, but anybody that really knows

1332
00:52:19,703 --> 00:52:23,340
what you're doing, you go over to
Sixth and go around or you drive.

1333
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:25,876
So that's why I'm getting all the traffic.
Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah.

1334
00:52:25,876 --> 00:52:27,477
Because if you want to make a turn. Yeah.

1335
00:52:27,477 --> 00:52:28,211
You go over to Sixth.

1336
00:52:28,211 --> 00:52:30,247
That way
there's less traffic that any given time

1337
00:52:30,247 --> 00:52:33,083
there's going to be 5 or 6 cars
lined up there in any given time.

1338
00:52:33,083 --> 00:52:33,283
Right.

1339
00:52:33,283 --> 00:52:35,919
And I'm always coming
from the other direction on seventh,

1340
00:52:35,919 --> 00:52:38,221
and you could just see the dirty looks.
I'm gonna take my right turn.

1341
00:52:38,221 --> 00:52:39,156
And they're just like.

1342
00:52:39,156 --> 00:52:41,491
What kills me is I got this truck.

1343
00:52:41,491 --> 00:52:44,127
I don't know if you saw it out there.
That big white one. Okay. And,

1344
00:52:45,295 --> 00:52:45,929
yeah,

1345
00:52:45,929 --> 00:52:49,533
since they put that turn lane
in, I like turning right onto

1346
00:52:49,566 --> 00:52:52,903
Seventh Street has been a nightmare for me
because it's just such a tight all time.

1347
00:52:52,969 --> 00:52:53,670
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

1348
00:52:53,670 --> 00:52:55,605
Especially if there's a car parked
there or something like that.

1349
00:52:55,605 --> 00:52:56,273
But it is good

1350
00:52:56,273 --> 00:52:59,676
because I don't know how much longer
that could have lasted without something.

1351
00:52:59,976 --> 00:53:01,244
Yeah, it was a tough one.

1352
00:53:01,244 --> 00:53:04,481
I mean, the cars would get lined up
for a really long, long ways, right?

1353
00:53:04,514 --> 00:53:06,616
And then people tear out into traffic too,

1354
00:53:06,616 --> 00:53:08,652
you know, because they've been waiting
for five minutes.

1355
00:53:08,652 --> 00:53:09,853
They just gun it.

1356
00:53:09,853 --> 00:53:12,522
It just I, you know, stop
signs aren't expensive.

1357
00:53:12,522 --> 00:53:16,359
And I think
putting a stop sign on Monmouth at seventh

1358
00:53:16,493 --> 00:53:18,929
would be a super easy
solution. Yeah. Just stop.

1359
00:53:18,929 --> 00:53:20,931
Yeah. Put a stop sign there. Right.
You know what?

1360
00:53:20,931 --> 00:53:23,600
As as they're pulling out of the historic
district, stop.

1361
00:53:23,600 --> 00:53:25,335
Right. And then at least.

1362
00:53:25,335 --> 00:53:27,571
And it would also probably help
slow down traffic a little bit, too.

1363
00:53:27,571 --> 00:53:30,574
I mean, I think one of the best things
this town did

1364
00:53:30,574 --> 00:53:33,877
was putting one at the
intersection of River Road here.

1365
00:53:35,545 --> 00:53:36,613
I, I love it.

1366
00:53:36,613 --> 00:53:38,481
I think it was the best thing
ever, because, like,

1367
00:53:38,481 --> 00:53:41,451
there was a few times
I would come in from Salem coming home

1368
00:53:41,451 --> 00:53:45,088
and there'd be a line 30, 40 cars
long trying to get into Independence.

1369
00:53:45,288 --> 00:53:46,289
Oh, that's still the case.

1370
00:53:46,289 --> 00:53:49,392
I mean, last time I tried to come in to
or from Salem during rush

1371
00:53:49,392 --> 00:53:52,395
hour, I was backed up all the way
over the bridge because of the stop sign.

1372
00:53:52,529 --> 00:53:54,998
I thought it was because of the stop
sign. Really.

1373
00:53:54,998 --> 00:53:58,001
Not because that's
that's actually stopping the cars on.

1374
00:53:58,235 --> 00:54:00,337
And it's stopping them on the crossway.
Yeah.

1375
00:54:00,337 --> 00:54:02,839
But I think it gives everybody.
A turn. Turns.

1376
00:54:02,839 --> 00:54:04,241
Yeah. It gives everybody a turn, at least.

1377
00:54:04,241 --> 00:54:06,009
Where before. You're right,
you're right. Yeah.

1378
00:54:06,009 --> 00:54:07,777
Before you have to, before
you would have to wait

1379
00:54:07,777 --> 00:54:10,180
until there was a gap
and like, cars and stuff off.

1380
00:54:10,180 --> 00:54:11,014
So I don't know.

1381
00:54:11,014 --> 00:54:13,316
I feel it's better, but.
You're probably right.

1382
00:54:13,316 --> 00:54:14,684
I mean, maybe they wouldn't have done it

1383
00:54:14,684 --> 00:54:17,120
unless some study showed that
it was the right way.

1384
00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:19,222
So mean stop signs I think are just.

1385
00:54:19,222 --> 00:54:20,657
Yeah, they're they're not expensive.

1386
00:54:20,657 --> 00:54:23,660
I know that we're talking about putting
a stoplight in on Seventh Street,

1387
00:54:23,693 --> 00:54:27,097
but it was going to cost like $2 million
or something like that.

1388
00:54:27,163 --> 00:54:29,699
Or they can just put stop
signs. Yeah. Stop signs. Pretty cheap.

1389
00:54:29,699 --> 00:54:30,834
Just just try it.

1390
00:54:30,834 --> 00:54:32,969
Put a stop sign up
there, do all the stuff to make.

1391
00:54:32,969 --> 00:54:34,337
A temporary one, see what happens.

1392
00:54:34,337 --> 00:54:36,973
You know, just see.
Let's turn this into a four way stop.

1393
00:54:36,973 --> 00:54:40,243
I just I think it would help
I really do, I think it would help traffic

1394
00:54:40,443 --> 00:54:42,979
coming off of Seventh
onto the main streets

1395
00:54:42,979 --> 00:54:45,282
so those people can get
where they need to go.

1396
00:54:45,282 --> 00:54:47,851
And it would slow down traffic on Monmouth
a little bit.

1397
00:54:47,851 --> 00:54:50,153
So I mean it's it's just ideas right.

1398
00:54:50,153 --> 00:54:52,856
Like and
but then the big problem is right.

1399
00:54:52,856 --> 00:54:55,859
How do you get those ideas to the people
that can actually implement them.

1400
00:54:56,059 --> 00:54:59,129
Even as a city councilor, it's
not like you have the opportunity.

1401
00:54:59,162 --> 00:55:01,197
You don't you don't.
You don't get to do that.

1402
00:55:01,197 --> 00:55:05,635
You have to kind of like maybe through
influence or maybe through just access.

1403
00:55:05,702 --> 00:55:06,002
Right?

1404
00:55:06,002 --> 00:55:09,139
But it's still I mean, you still have
to get those ideas out there.

1405
00:55:09,205 --> 00:55:09,873
Yeah.

1406
00:55:09,873 --> 00:55:13,410
And being able to sit up on the council
dais and, and,

1407
00:55:14,177 --> 00:55:16,179
I always thought that
was a weird word. Dais.

1408
00:55:16,179 --> 00:55:18,048
But, being able to sit up there

1409
00:55:18,048 --> 00:55:20,317
and talk about it
with the rest of the councilors in public,

1410
00:55:20,317 --> 00:55:22,118
you know, and have the city manager
hear you.

1411
00:55:22,118 --> 00:55:24,254
Well, that's where maybe the work sessions
could be more productive.

1412
00:55:24,254 --> 00:55:25,922
It could be people spitballing ideas.

1413
00:55:25,922 --> 00:55:27,324
Right. A little bit more of that.

1414
00:55:27,324 --> 00:55:30,527
I mean, just a little bit like, hey, like,
any ideas have would have.

1415
00:55:30,560 --> 00:55:32,395
What have you heard from people. Right.

1416
00:55:32,395 --> 00:55:32,996
That kind of stuff.

1417
00:55:32,996 --> 00:55:35,999
Instead of the kind of the route
that it goes now

1418
00:55:35,999 --> 00:55:39,002
I think could be more productive
use of the time.

1419
00:55:39,169 --> 00:55:42,038
So aside from Evan, have you met
with any of the other councilors?

1420
00:55:42,038 --> 00:55:43,540
No. I haven't, I haven't. No.

1421
00:55:43,540 --> 00:55:45,408
No, I think it's cool that you sat down
with your opponent.

1422
00:55:45,408 --> 00:55:48,411
I did the same
thing with, Bill. Yeah, yeah.

1423
00:55:49,679 --> 00:55:52,982
We met too, during our campaign.

1424
00:55:53,083 --> 00:55:55,518
All right. So, yeah. No, I just
I think that's a cool thing to do.

1425
00:55:55,518 --> 00:55:57,253
I don't think a lot of people do that,
you know?

1426
00:55:57,253 --> 00:55:59,055
It's like,
oh, you're my opponent, you're my enemy.

1427
00:55:59,055 --> 00:56:01,157
But we're all in the same town together,
you know?

1428
00:56:01,157 --> 00:56:02,292
We're all neighbors at the end of The day.

1429
00:56:02,292 --> 00:56:04,060
Yeah. No, it was I mean,
I thought it was really cool.

1430
00:56:04,060 --> 00:56:06,162
Like I was brand new.
Like I was just like.

1431
00:56:06,162 --> 00:56:07,764
Just like,
all right, dude, I'm gonna get thrown.

1432
00:56:07,764 --> 00:56:09,766
And, you know, he's
actually a really cool guy, right?

1433
00:56:09,766 --> 00:56:11,601
We have different opinion
on a lot of things,

1434
00:56:11,601 --> 00:56:14,137
and I think he's a lot more
politically minded than I am.

1435
00:56:14,137 --> 00:56:15,638
I think he's definitely more into that,

1436
00:56:15,638 --> 00:56:19,576
that sphere, right, of the
the political aspect of the politics.

1437
00:56:19,576 --> 00:56:21,778
And I'm more into like, I don't know,

1438
00:56:21,778 --> 00:56:24,414
I just I'm a guy that lives here
that wants to get involved.

1439
00:56:24,414 --> 00:56:24,848
Right.

1440
00:56:26,316 --> 00:56:27,650
So yeah, but no, it was it was cool.

1441
00:56:27,650 --> 00:56:31,521
I had a really nice conversation with him
and, you know, it was it was a

1442
00:56:32,655 --> 00:56:34,924
an interesting way to get thrown into it.

1443
00:56:34,924 --> 00:56:35,859
Well, it'll be interesting.

1444
00:56:35,859 --> 00:56:40,263
Interesting to see which way voters
go this year, because you're right, Evan.

1445
00:56:40,730 --> 00:56:42,499
Evan is the on paper expert.

1446
00:56:42,499 --> 00:56:44,634
You know, he's
chief of staff for Paul Evans.

1447
00:56:44,634 --> 00:56:45,769
He works at the university.

1448
00:56:45,769 --> 00:56:47,670
He's got a master's
degree in public policy.

1449
00:56:47,670 --> 00:56:50,073
He's he's on paper. The guy. Yeah.

1450
00:56:50,073 --> 00:56:53,543
And obviously he's sitting there on on
council now, but

1451
00:56:53,810 --> 00:56:56,813
there's this other part of the community,
the historic district people,

1452
00:56:57,414 --> 00:57:00,450
some of the Airpark people
who who don't necessarily

1453
00:57:00,650 --> 00:57:03,753
put that on the same pedestal
that a lot of other people do.

1454
00:57:03,887 --> 00:57:04,220
Yeah.

1455
00:57:04,220 --> 00:57:07,056
So, yeah, it'd be kind of interesting
to see which way this goes this year.

1456
00:57:07,056 --> 00:57:08,758
I mean, there's kind of this
kind of the two camps, right?

1457
00:57:08,758 --> 00:57:10,560
There's like like a

1458
00:57:10,560 --> 00:57:11,528
those of us that are,

1459
00:57:11,528 --> 00:57:14,798
that are trying to get into the council
and into the government this year,

1460
00:57:14,798 --> 00:57:16,032
and then there's people
that are on the council.

1461
00:57:16,032 --> 00:57:19,035
And so you can have the two
different sides and it's yeah, it's, it's

1462
00:57:19,235 --> 00:57:21,604
there's like a couple of different
philosophies going on.

1463
00:57:21,604 --> 00:57:23,039
So it's yeah.

1464
00:57:23,039 --> 00:57:26,075
And I think it's good to have that
mix of philosophies on council too

1465
00:57:27,444 --> 00:57:28,445
bring opinions.

1466
00:57:28,445 --> 00:57:28,978
Definitely.

1467
00:57:28,978 --> 00:57:31,514
Because like that's the collaboration
part of it. Right.

1468
00:57:31,514 --> 00:57:34,317
Like like if everybody is just
doing the same thing, you get the

1469
00:57:34,317 --> 00:57:35,552
groupthink of like, oh,
this is what we had to do.

1470
00:57:35,552 --> 00:57:37,420
This is how we're going to vote,

1471
00:57:37,420 --> 00:57:38,955
then you're never going to get new ideas,
right?

1472
00:57:38,955 --> 00:57:41,491
You're only going to do
what this person tells you to do, right?

1473
00:57:41,491 --> 00:57:43,760
And I think if there's
a little bit of resistance there,

1474
00:57:43,760 --> 00:57:46,095
maybe you come up with something
better, right?

1475
00:57:46,095 --> 00:57:48,798
I've done a I've done
quite a bit of committee work. Right.

1476
00:57:48,798 --> 00:57:49,732
It's actually interesting.

1477
00:57:49,732 --> 00:57:52,001
So we're we're here at the event center.

1478
00:57:52,001 --> 00:57:55,672
So, five years ago, I got sober,
I threw myself into the community

1479
00:57:55,805 --> 00:58:00,276
and started working with groups
that throw events and functions

1480
00:58:00,276 --> 00:58:00,977
and stuff like that.

1481
00:58:00,977 --> 00:58:05,014
And, actually the first year of that,
we actually threw a conference.

1482
00:58:05,014 --> 00:58:07,550
300 people showed up, and
it was actually here at this event center.

1483
00:58:07,550 --> 00:58:08,551
Oh, okay. Yeah.

1484
00:58:09,953 --> 00:58:10,353
So yeah.

1485
00:58:10,353 --> 00:58:13,957
So I, I've done a lot with that, with the,
the recovery community.

1486
00:58:14,691 --> 00:58:16,526
And so you're dealing with, you know,
some of these committees are like

1487
00:58:16,526 --> 00:58:18,194
13, 14 people and like,

1488
00:58:18,194 --> 00:58:21,097
you have all these different ideas
and you have to come to a consensus.

1489
00:58:21,097 --> 00:58:23,633
And that's tough. It
is. It can be really tough.

1490
00:58:23,633 --> 00:58:25,568
And, it's really interesting.

1491
00:58:25,568 --> 00:58:27,637
So I kind of mentioned the minority
opinion.

1492
00:58:27,637 --> 00:58:31,007
It's a huge aspect of this
with the Robert's Rules

1493
00:58:31,174 --> 00:58:34,177
that we would use is that,

1494
00:58:34,210 --> 00:58:38,114
after a vote, the minority opinion
got to state their opinion,

1495
00:58:38,114 --> 00:58:41,918
and then everybody had a chance to revote
based off of what they heard

1496
00:58:42,552 --> 00:58:44,020
so that you had a chance to like.

1497
00:58:44,020 --> 00:58:47,557
And there were so many times where, like,
just somebody actually having just

1498
00:58:48,992 --> 00:58:49,792
the forum to

1499
00:58:49,792 --> 00:58:52,962
like, just, okay, I'm going to say
exactly why I voted against this.

1500
00:58:53,096 --> 00:58:54,197
A lot of people go, oh, wow.

1501
00:58:54,197 --> 00:58:56,165
Because they they were
able to get out of the

1502
00:58:56,165 --> 00:58:59,969
groupthink and like go, okay, maybe
that is actually a different way.

1503
00:58:59,969 --> 00:59:02,872
And I hadn't thought of that
because people can get really enthusiastic

1504
00:59:02,872 --> 00:59:06,276
about a vote and just go for it
without thinking of all the stuff.

1505
00:59:06,342 --> 00:59:09,612
Right. And so, yeah, yeah.

1506
00:59:09,612 --> 00:59:12,615
When I met with Shannon
and did the podcast,

1507
00:59:12,615 --> 00:59:15,618
I think it was last week
or the week before,

1508
00:59:15,718 --> 00:59:19,122
she hit me with a real alternative opinion
that I hadn't really thought of

1509
00:59:19,155 --> 00:59:23,526
because she brought up a case where
I think Tom, the previous city manager

1510
00:59:23,526 --> 00:59:27,397
here, wanted to bring in
prison labor to do the parks.

1511
00:59:27,630 --> 00:59:29,165
And he was like, it's cheap.

1512
00:59:29,165 --> 00:59:32,535
You know, they don't get paid
a lot, like, gets the parks cleaned up.

1513
00:59:32,602 --> 00:59:34,370
You know, it's a great solution
for the city.

1514
00:59:34,370 --> 00:59:37,140
And she was like,
I am not voting for that.

1515
00:59:37,140 --> 00:59:38,675
And I was like, really? Why?

1516
00:59:38,675 --> 00:59:40,577
Like it seems like a beneficial thing,
you know?

1517
00:59:40,577 --> 00:59:42,979
And she's like,
because I don't believe in slave labor.

1518
00:59:42,979 --> 00:59:46,983
Like, I don't think it's fair to pay
somebody two bucks an hour and be like,

1519
00:59:47,016 --> 00:59:48,952
oh, I'm doing them a favor, you know?

1520
00:59:48,952 --> 00:59:51,154
And I was like,
that makes sense to me, too, you know?

1521
00:59:51,154 --> 00:59:55,658
Because in a way, you're just
exploiting somebody for your gain.

1522
00:59:55,959 --> 00:59:59,596
And, you know, in a sense, it's
public service and it's community

1523
00:59:59,662 --> 01:00:00,496
service for them.

1524
01:00:00,496 --> 01:00:02,799
But like, it made me rethink it, you know?

1525
01:00:02,799 --> 01:00:04,767
So it's kind of interesting
when you hear somebody's opinion

1526
01:00:04,767 --> 01:00:06,369
on why they vote the way they do.

1527
01:00:06,369 --> 01:00:08,404
Yeah. It can change your mind. Yeah.

1528
01:00:08,404 --> 01:00:09,472
I mean in my opinion on that.

1529
01:00:09,472 --> 01:00:12,008
I've, you know, I've worked in bars
and restaurants.

1530
01:00:12,008 --> 01:00:14,110
I've known some
I've known people that have been to jail.

1531
01:00:14,110 --> 01:00:16,212
And a lot of them
actually like those work duties. Yeah.

1532
01:00:16,212 --> 01:00:18,915
So they actually like having a chance
to go off and do other things.

1533
01:00:18,915 --> 01:00:21,250
But yeah, I mean,
I do agree with the slave labor thing.

1534
01:00:21,250 --> 01:00:24,454
It ends up being we have
obviously different laws in Oregon.

1535
01:00:24,454 --> 01:00:25,955
And like some of the southern states,

1536
01:00:25,955 --> 01:00:27,991
those places down
there is very, very different.

1537
01:00:27,991 --> 01:00:28,891
Chain gang still

1538
01:00:29,859 --> 01:00:30,727
breaking rocks.

1539
01:00:30,727 --> 01:00:32,895
And here they're actually,
I think I believe

1540
01:00:32,895 --> 01:00:35,965
they're actually required
to give them jobs.

1541
01:00:36,232 --> 01:00:38,635
So I mean,
so it's just it's things for him to do.

1542
01:00:38,635 --> 01:00:41,270
But yeah, I mean,
it is a valid point, right.

1543
01:00:41,270 --> 01:00:44,273
But yeah. And

1544
01:00:44,474 --> 01:00:45,074
Oh go ahead.

1545
01:00:45,074 --> 01:00:46,743
Oh, I was just going to say yeah,
it is a valid point.

1546
01:00:46,743 --> 01:00:47,677
And that is where, like I said,

1547
01:00:47,677 --> 01:00:49,679
minority opinion
can sometimes be really important

1548
01:00:49,679 --> 01:00:51,981
because it gets that
that other perspective.

1549
01:00:51,981 --> 01:00:54,317
Yeah. Because I'm sure she wasn't
in the majority there.

1550
01:00:54,317 --> 01:00:57,320
I mean and it is interesting
how some of them

1551
01:00:57,453 --> 01:00:59,455
do push back on the city manager now.

1552
01:00:59,455 --> 01:01:01,357
It's it just doesn't seem to be

1553
01:01:01,357 --> 01:01:03,393
I mean, I'm not trying to inject my own
opinion here.

1554
01:01:03,393 --> 01:01:05,528
I have a hard time with that. But

1555
01:01:06,496 --> 01:01:08,431
yeah, I agree with you on a lot of stuff.

1556
01:01:08,431 --> 01:01:09,532
You know, that's.

1557
01:01:09,532 --> 01:01:09,966
Yeah.

1558
01:01:09,966 --> 01:01:10,833
So it's difficult for me

1559
01:01:10,833 --> 01:01:14,137
to not put my opinion in there
because I agree, you know.

1560
01:01:14,170 --> 01:01:15,605
Yeah. It's.

1561
01:01:15,605 --> 01:01:16,005
Yeah.

1562
01:01:16,005 --> 01:01:17,607
As far as the city manager goes, it was

1563
01:01:17,607 --> 01:01:20,777
there was actually a really interesting
one where the city manager told

1564
01:01:20,843 --> 01:01:23,479
the city council,
no, the parks are closed because of you.

1565
01:01:23,479 --> 01:01:23,913
Right.

1566
01:01:23,913 --> 01:01:25,448
And I thought that was
a really interesting

1567
01:01:25,448 --> 01:01:28,518
kind of a moment for
everybody. Like, yeah.

1568
01:01:28,618 --> 01:01:30,720
Because they were like, oh well yeah.

1569
01:01:30,720 --> 01:01:31,654
Like well yeah.

1570
01:01:31,654 --> 01:01:33,923
From what I've talked, you know,
I've talked to the city manager

1571
01:01:33,923 --> 01:01:36,559
or sorry, I've talked to the city council,
I've talked to the mayor.

1572
01:01:36,559 --> 01:01:40,463
And so far nobody I've talked to said that
that was what was going to happen.

1573
01:01:40,496 --> 01:01:42,598
They're like, we didn't know
they were going to put fences up

1574
01:01:42,598 --> 01:01:45,435
like we knew they were going to
close them. We knew they'd go, feral.

1575
01:01:45,435 --> 01:01:46,703
You know, that was the words used.

1576
01:01:46,703 --> 01:01:49,272
But once again, if they

1577
01:01:50,406 --> 01:01:50,807
said,

1578
01:01:50,807 --> 01:01:53,810
I make a motion to take the fences down,
it could happen.

1579
01:01:53,843 --> 01:01:55,278
Yeah, it.

1580
01:01:55,278 --> 01:01:58,081
I mean, it could. They set the policy so.

1581
01:01:58,081 --> 01:02:00,216
And that's, that's the thing
I guess that's the thing is just

1582
01:02:00,216 --> 01:02:03,453
having somebody with the guts to say that,
and then you then you need the second.

1583
01:02:03,519 --> 01:02:08,257
And even if it's not voted
for just having the discussion.

1584
01:02:08,324 --> 01:02:08,691
Right.

1585
01:02:08,691 --> 01:02:09,892
Like, like there hasn't the fact

1586
01:02:09,892 --> 01:02:12,295
there hasn't been any discussion on
how do we open these parks.

1587
01:02:12,295 --> 01:02:12,595
Right.

1588
01:02:12,595 --> 01:02:15,331
Like, like that's the frustrating thing.

1589
01:02:15,331 --> 01:02:17,166
Yeah I think it, it takes some leadership.

1590
01:02:17,166 --> 01:02:18,101
I mean it takes somebody

1591
01:02:18,101 --> 01:02:20,837
willing to step up and say hey
I want to talk about this.

1592
01:02:20,837 --> 01:02:23,573
Yeah. You know
and I'm not saying they lack leadership.

1593
01:02:23,573 --> 01:02:25,575
I don't want to insult
the whole council here. But

1594
01:02:26,676 --> 01:02:29,112
but it's hard to get in order for somebody
to do that though.

1595
01:02:29,112 --> 01:02:31,314
Right?
Then you have to have a second. Right?

1596
01:02:31,314 --> 01:02:33,049
So you have to have one person
that's to say, hey,

1597
01:02:33,049 --> 01:02:35,518
I make a motion for this
and then there's another person seconds.

1598
01:02:35,518 --> 01:02:39,055
Then you can actually have the discussion
or you have to have a council.

1599
01:02:40,423 --> 01:02:43,392
You have to have a mayor that's
willing to let that happen too.

1600
01:02:43,392 --> 01:02:45,328
Right. Like let's have this discussion.

1601
01:02:45,328 --> 01:02:47,964
I mean, it's something
it could be put on the agenda, right?

1602
01:02:47,964 --> 01:02:51,567
They could put it as an agenda item,
opening the parks discussion.

1603
01:02:51,601 --> 01:02:51,901
Right?

1604
01:02:51,901 --> 01:02:54,670
I mean, there's a lot of different ways
you can go about doing it, right?

1605
01:02:54,670 --> 01:02:57,240
I mean.

1606
01:02:57,240 --> 01:02:59,776
Yeah. So

1607
01:02:59,776 --> 01:03:02,879
so let's see, November is coming.

1608
01:03:03,179 --> 01:03:04,914
Yeah, November is
coming. How are you feeling?

1609
01:03:06,015 --> 01:03:07,650
It's interesting.

1610
01:03:07,650 --> 01:03:09,485
Up until this point,
I've done a few things right.

1611
01:03:09,485 --> 01:03:12,421
I was doing some Facebook stuff,
and I kind of got off of that.

1612
01:03:12,421 --> 01:03:13,956
I've kind of really.

1613
01:03:13,956 --> 01:03:17,093
It's not the healthiest environment
for discussion, right?

1614
01:03:17,126 --> 01:03:18,294
Like, it's a it's

1615
01:03:18,294 --> 01:03:19,562
it's a very small group of people

1616
01:03:19,562 --> 01:03:22,165
kind of controlling the narrative
and kind of having the discussion

1617
01:03:22,165 --> 01:03:24,100
and the debates
and all this kind of stuff.

1618
01:03:24,100 --> 01:03:27,136
And I don't feel there's like,
I don't know how many people

1619
01:03:27,436 --> 01:03:28,871
that's really reaching.

1620
01:03:28,871 --> 01:03:31,541
And so I just kind of I've realized, okay,
I'm pulling back from that.

1621
01:03:31,541 --> 01:03:36,045
Like, I, I will comment and interject
if I feel I really have something valuable

1622
01:03:36,045 --> 01:03:36,679
to bring to it.

1623
01:03:36,679 --> 01:03:40,416
But backing off of that, been doing
door hangers, which is kind of cool.

1624
01:03:40,449 --> 01:03:42,151
So we started doing that last weekend.

1625
01:03:42,151 --> 01:03:44,654
I went with my son
and we hit a whole neighborhood and did

1626
01:03:44,654 --> 01:03:49,292
stuff, and there was a whole controversy
about attribution on the the things.

1627
01:03:49,292 --> 01:03:51,360
And it turns out and it turns out,
guess what?

1628
01:03:51,360 --> 01:03:53,262
They were perfectly legal.
Everything was good.

1629
01:03:53,262 --> 01:03:54,797
No problem. So it wasn't a.

1630
01:03:54,797 --> 01:03:57,099
Did you call the election
committee about that?

1631
01:03:57,099 --> 01:03:57,800
Was that.

1632
01:03:57,800 --> 01:03:58,935
No, that wasn't me okay.

1633
01:03:58,935 --> 01:03:59,969
No, no, no.

1634
01:03:59,969 --> 01:04:00,603
Somebody else did.

1635
01:04:00,603 --> 01:04:03,239
Somebody, it was brought to a.

1636
01:04:03,239 --> 01:04:06,542
So Greg Ellis had bought a whole bunch
of door hangers with some of the, the

1637
01:04:06,576 --> 01:04:07,810
new candidates on it, and,

1638
01:04:08,811 --> 01:04:11,380
it didn't have anything saying paid by.

1639
01:04:11,380 --> 01:04:14,050
And, so some people on Facebook

1640
01:04:14,050 --> 01:04:17,486
made a huge thing about it and like,
it became this whole thing, right?

1641
01:04:17,653 --> 01:04:20,523
Did you see that one post where they took
a picture of it in the trash can?

1642
01:04:20,523 --> 01:04:21,390
Yeah, yeah.

1643
01:04:21,390 --> 01:04:22,525
I was like.

1644
01:04:22,525 --> 01:04:23,125
That's fine.

1645
01:04:23,125 --> 01:04:26,128
Like, really these people. Yeah.

1646
01:04:26,329 --> 01:04:29,799
You know, just what have you never seen
a political door hanger before?

1647
01:04:29,832 --> 01:04:30,433
Yeah. Yeah.

1648
01:04:30,433 --> 01:04:33,236
It's it's I mean, the only way
to get your name out there, right? Right.

1649
01:04:33,236 --> 01:04:35,171
You either do Facebook ads, right,
which are expensive,

1650
01:04:35,171 --> 01:04:38,074
and you're only going to reach people
that are on Facebook. Right?

1651
01:04:38,074 --> 01:04:40,009
Or you do door hangers or you do mailers.

1652
01:04:40,009 --> 01:04:41,844
And mailers
are really prohibitively expensive.

1653
01:04:41,844 --> 01:04:44,447
But if you're going to do do mailers like,
that's at the point

1654
01:04:44,447 --> 01:04:46,916
where you're doing a PAC and you're
getting lots of contributions.

1655
01:04:46,916 --> 01:04:48,451
But, you know, door hangers are like,

1656
01:04:48,451 --> 01:04:50,052
I mean, they're as grassroots
as you can get

1657
01:04:50,052 --> 01:04:52,722
because you have to physically
put them on a door.

1658
01:04:52,722 --> 01:04:55,324
You have to find people to either help you
or you have to do it by yourself.

1659
01:04:55,324 --> 01:04:56,525
Right.

1660
01:04:56,525 --> 01:04:58,194
So yeah, I've got a few days off.

1661
01:04:58,194 --> 01:05:00,830
I'm taking over the next month
to kind of focus on that stuff.

1662
01:05:00,830 --> 01:05:03,299
There's some forums coming up
which I think are going to be a lot of,

1663
01:05:04,934 --> 01:05:06,602
not fun, but like really interesting

1664
01:05:06,602 --> 01:05:10,573
to go on these forums and, and
talk about some of these things.

1665
01:05:10,573 --> 01:05:12,808
So that'll be cool.

1666
01:05:12,808 --> 01:05:13,042
Yeah.

1667
01:05:13,042 --> 01:05:14,210
And then I'm going to try
to get out there,

1668
01:05:14,210 --> 01:05:15,645
try to get a few more signs in some yards.

1669
01:05:15,645 --> 01:05:17,013
That's going to be kind of a goal.

1670
01:05:17,013 --> 01:05:19,015
I'm going to try to put myself out there
a little more and just, you know,

1671
01:05:19,015 --> 01:05:20,049
mostly talk to people, right.

1672
01:05:20,049 --> 01:05:23,286
Like I'm still learning as much as I can
about this whole process.

1673
01:05:23,352 --> 01:05:26,355
It's really interesting because like

1674
01:05:27,156 --> 01:05:27,957
the city council, right?

1675
01:05:27,957 --> 01:05:29,191
There's like, I know I can do the job.

1676
01:05:29,191 --> 01:05:31,727
I know for a fact
I can do a job, do that job. Right.

1677
01:05:31,727 --> 01:05:33,095
That's not that's not the issue.

1678
01:05:33,095 --> 01:05:35,798
But like the actual running
for city council is.

1679
01:05:35,798 --> 01:05:37,199
Convincing others. Yeah.

1680
01:05:37,199 --> 01:05:39,769
Convincing other people
that I can do the job. Right. And like.

1681
01:05:39,769 --> 01:05:40,970
And how do you do that? Like

1682
01:05:41,938 --> 01:05:42,738
talking to people.

1683
01:05:42,738 --> 01:05:44,140
That's all you can do is talk to people,
right?

1684
01:05:44,140 --> 01:05:46,842
Face to face conversations,
that kind of stuff.

1685
01:05:46,842 --> 01:05:47,576
And so that's kind of

1686
01:05:47,576 --> 01:05:48,911
what I'm really trying to do,
is just get out there

1687
01:05:48,911 --> 01:05:51,280
and talk to people as much as I can,
and it's it's.

1688
01:05:51,280 --> 01:05:53,683
Have you been taking donations?
Are you doing it full grassroots?

1689
01:05:53,683 --> 01:05:56,686
It's just me. It's just me. I'm

1690
01:05:57,119 --> 01:05:57,954
like I said.

1691
01:05:57,954 --> 01:06:00,122
Greg had bought some some door hangers,
so I'm using those.

1692
01:06:00,122 --> 01:06:02,558
I was going to do my own,
my own hand printed ones.

1693
01:06:02,558 --> 01:06:05,394
I bought, like, I bought a box of, blanks.

1694
01:06:05,394 --> 01:06:07,163
And I was going to print some and do that,
but I'm like,

1695
01:06:07,163 --> 01:06:09,565
I've got these ones, have my name on it.
I think this is good.

1696
01:06:09,565 --> 01:06:12,401
Like, I don't need to dump. You guys
coordinate on those hangers or.

1697
01:06:12,401 --> 01:06:13,135
Not really.

1698
01:06:13,135 --> 01:06:15,871
I mean, there's, I mean, there's
a little bit of discussion, right?

1699
01:06:15,871 --> 01:06:18,975
Like there's definitely,
a consensus among us that

1700
01:06:18,975 --> 01:06:22,912
that what's important right now is
we need to get a, we need to get at least

1701
01:06:22,912 --> 01:06:28,451
one more person on the city
council that can vote with Dawn.

1702
01:06:28,718 --> 01:06:30,619
As far as just to get motions
passed. Right.

1703
01:06:30,619 --> 01:06:32,288
If we get one more person,

1704
01:06:32,288 --> 01:06:34,857
at least then we can have a discussion
on some of this stuff.

1705
01:06:34,857 --> 01:06:38,594
And so there's like it's not
really coordinated, but there's it's it's

1706
01:06:40,296 --> 01:06:41,630
we have talked like

1707
01:06:41,630 --> 01:06:45,601
a group of us have talked
and there's a little bit of like there's

1708
01:06:45,601 --> 01:06:48,604
definitely that consensus that we need
to get at least one more person.

1709
01:06:48,604 --> 01:06:51,407
Right. And so we're kind of
working towards that a little bit.

1710
01:06:51,407 --> 01:06:53,609
So that was one thing
that worried me with the door

1711
01:06:53,609 --> 01:06:55,077
hanger was seeing all four of your names.

1712
01:06:55,077 --> 01:06:55,444
I'm like,

1713
01:06:55,444 --> 01:06:58,814
I hope because it can end up
being a situation

1714
01:06:58,814 --> 01:07:00,216
where
if somebody doesn't like one of them,

1715
01:07:00,216 --> 01:07:03,452
they're not gonna like all of you
because of the ties, you know?

1716
01:07:03,819 --> 01:07:06,555
Yeah.
Is that something you worry about or.

1717
01:07:06,555 --> 01:07:10,126
You know, I don't,
because I know I'm definitely like, I'm.

1718
01:07:11,494 --> 01:07:12,661
I don't know what the term would be like.

1719
01:07:12,661 --> 01:07:15,364
I'm definitely like the dark horse, right?

1720
01:07:15,364 --> 01:07:18,367
I'm the one that's like, I'm
the one that's like the least likely.

1721
01:07:18,401 --> 01:07:21,237
And and I'm fully willing to admit
that I'm the least likely. Right?

1722
01:07:21,237 --> 01:07:24,240
Everybody else has more experience
in this stuff and knows more people,

1723
01:07:24,673 --> 01:07:26,409
more money,
more access, all that kind of stuff.

1724
01:07:26,409 --> 01:07:29,211
Right? I, I have the least right.

1725
01:07:29,211 --> 01:07:31,814
I do think I'm pretty decent.

1726
01:07:31,814 --> 01:07:33,115
If I can get face to face with somebody

1727
01:07:33,115 --> 01:07:35,551
explaining my viewpoints,
and I'm willing to talk about

1728
01:07:35,551 --> 01:07:38,354
talk in front of people,
I'm willing to stand up and say things,

1729
01:07:39,822 --> 01:07:40,456
so I don't

1730
01:07:40,456 --> 01:07:43,459
yeah, there's not a fear for me on that.

1731
01:07:43,526 --> 01:07:45,394
Because people are going to do that.
That's what they're going to do.

1732
01:07:45,394 --> 01:07:46,529
I think most people

1733
01:07:46,529 --> 01:07:50,766
hopefully are going to try to choose
candidates based off of what they want.

1734
01:07:50,800 --> 01:07:52,501
And I think I think

1735
01:07:52,501 --> 01:07:54,303
what you're going to end up
with anyways on this

1736
01:07:54,303 --> 01:07:56,172
election is you're going to end up
with people that are pissed off,

1737
01:07:56,172 --> 01:07:59,208
the parks are closed, and they're
going to vote nonincumbents,

1738
01:07:59,208 --> 01:08:01,043
and you're going to get people
that are like that,

1739
01:08:01,043 --> 01:08:02,912
think the city council
made the right choice,

1740
01:08:02,912 --> 01:08:05,081
and you're going to get—they're
going to vote that way. Right.

1741
01:08:05,081 --> 01:08:07,116
So it's all about undecideds.

1742
01:08:07,116 --> 01:08:08,250
You got to go after.

1743
01:08:08,250 --> 01:08:09,251
Yeah, exactly.

1744
01:08:09,251 --> 01:08:10,619
And I think.

1745
01:08:10,619 --> 01:08:11,287
Yeah.

1746
01:08:11,287 --> 01:08:12,955
And I mean, how do you find those people?

1747
01:08:12,955 --> 01:08:15,191
You got to talk to them, right? Doors.

1748
01:08:15,191 --> 01:08:16,292
They aren't on Facebook.

1749
01:08:16,292 --> 01:08:18,294
They're not following the political pages.

1750
01:08:18,294 --> 01:08:19,195
Those people.

1751
01:08:19,195 --> 01:08:21,797
Yeah. And it's tough, right? Like,
I mean, how do you get stuff out there?

1752
01:08:21,797 --> 01:08:22,498
Like, you have an idea.

1753
01:08:22,498 --> 01:08:24,400
You have this this thing, like,
oh, hey, like,

1754
01:08:24,400 --> 01:08:25,935
this is something I just thought of,
right?

1755
01:08:25,935 --> 01:08:26,435
Like the fact

1756
01:08:26,435 --> 01:08:30,206
that, like, like, all right, here's,
here's a really good example of something,

1757
01:08:31,173 --> 01:08:33,008
you know, like, so the.

1758
01:08:33,008 --> 01:08:33,976
Yes Indy. Right.

1759
01:08:33,976 --> 01:08:36,212
Like that whole campaign
I think is I think it's cool, right,

1760
01:08:36,212 --> 01:08:37,680
that they came together,
these people came together.

1761
01:08:37,680 --> 01:08:39,582
But it's really interesting that,

1762
01:08:39,582 --> 01:08:42,618
two of the, the, the, the lead people on
that are on the city council

1763
01:08:42,885 --> 01:08:45,921
and they both voted to close the museum
or vote to sell it.

1764
01:08:46,021 --> 01:08:48,324
So I thought that was interesting. Right.

1765
01:08:48,324 --> 01:08:49,525
And that's just the kind of thing. Right.

1766
01:08:49,525 --> 01:08:53,529
Like, like, I mean, I don't think selling
the museum was a bad idea, but

1767
01:08:53,529 --> 01:08:56,799
I think it's interesting that two people
that are fighting so hard to keep a museum

1768
01:08:58,100 --> 01:08:59,502
voted to sell it. Yeah.

1769
01:08:59,502 --> 01:09:01,770
Last year
they've I've had that thrown back

1770
01:09:01,770 --> 01:09:05,574
at me too,
because I've been very anti fee this year

1771
01:09:05,608 --> 01:09:08,811
and and people have brought up like well
you literally proposed

1772
01:09:08,811 --> 01:09:12,781
a fee last year and I was like
yeah for the museum, you know like museum.

1773
01:09:12,781 --> 01:09:15,918
And I have ties going back
to like the early 2000s.

1774
01:09:15,951 --> 01:09:16,652
You know.

1775
01:09:16,652 --> 01:09:18,020
I think there's definitely there's,
there's

1776
01:09:18,020 --> 01:09:19,655
a couple of different schools
of thought on that. Right.

1777
01:09:19,655 --> 01:09:20,890
I think the museum is one of those things.

1778
01:09:20,890 --> 01:09:23,159
It's like a cherished thing
if you grew up with it. Right.

1779
01:09:23,159 --> 01:09:25,661
Like you probably do school events
and stuff. Like that out of town, I.

1780
01:09:25,661 --> 01:09:26,529
Probably yeah, like,

1781
01:09:26,529 --> 01:09:28,697
like for me, I've been to it
a couple times since I've been here and,

1782
01:09:28,697 --> 01:09:31,567
and it was really cool
when it was in the old church.

1783
01:09:31,567 --> 01:09:34,970
The one exhibit I liked the most was
there was a cow with a thing on the side.

1784
01:09:34,970 --> 01:09:37,006
It was like, it was a taxidermy cow.

1785
01:09:37,006 --> 01:09:38,274
I thought it was just the coolest thing.

1786
01:09:38,274 --> 01:09:42,111
And I took my kids to the museum
before it closed, obviously.

1787
01:09:42,178 --> 01:09:44,513
And I was like, I just wanted to
show them the taxidermy cow, and.

1788
01:09:44,513 --> 01:09:46,115
It wasn't there. So I thought.

1789
01:09:46,115 --> 01:09:46,782
Yeah, I haven't.

1790
01:09:46,782 --> 01:09:49,818
I had never went to the new museum,
the one that they put down there,

1791
01:09:49,818 --> 01:09:52,021
I kept meaning to go
and now it's too late.

1792
01:09:52,021 --> 01:09:53,022
It was okay.

1793
01:09:53,022 --> 01:09:54,990
I mean, it was
I mean, here's the problem, right?

1794
01:09:54,990 --> 01:09:58,594
Like with a with a museum dealing
with with that kind of pioneer culture.

1795
01:09:58,661 --> 01:09:59,795
Right.

1796
01:09:59,795 --> 01:10:01,931
There's a lot of museums
doing that kind of stuff.

1797
01:10:01,931 --> 01:10:04,533
So it's like not a lot of breaking
a lot of new ground.

1798
01:10:04,533 --> 01:10:06,235
Right? But I mean, it was cool.

1799
01:10:06,235 --> 01:10:08,804
It was my kids. They found a couple things
that were kind of neat.

1800
01:10:08,804 --> 01:10:13,142
My, my son really thought the, the wagon
with all the blacksmithing stuff in there.

1801
01:10:13,142 --> 01:10:14,410
I thought that was kind of neat.

1802
01:10:14,410 --> 01:10:15,511
Yeah, yeah.

1803
01:10:15,511 --> 01:10:17,179
Ever get to get in the wagon?

1804
01:10:17,179 --> 01:10:19,315
No, no. No, I never did that.

1805
01:10:19,315 --> 01:10:21,417
So I, it's it's it's it's interesting.

1806
01:10:21,417 --> 01:10:23,219
So the neighborhood
I grew up in, Ballard, like,

1807
01:10:23,219 --> 01:10:25,688
like I mentioned, was a Scandinavian
neighborhood. And,

1808
01:10:26,755 --> 01:10:27,723
the elementary school I was

1809
01:10:27,723 --> 01:10:30,726
supposed to go to was Webster Elementary.

1810
01:10:30,759 --> 01:10:32,361
And the year before I went there,

1811
01:10:32,361 --> 01:10:36,599
they closed down an elementary school
and a museum organization took it over.

1812
01:10:36,732 --> 01:10:39,335
And so they actually did
the Nordic Heritage Museum.

1813
01:10:39,335 --> 01:10:43,439
And so growing up out in the back 40,
it was a,

1814
01:10:44,273 --> 01:10:46,175
the playground was all concrete
and out in the back

1815
01:10:46,175 --> 01:10:49,678
40 of the, of the playground,
there was a Viking longship,

1816
01:10:50,479 --> 01:10:54,950
like just tarps over like this, this
like 400-year-old Viking longship

1817
01:10:54,950 --> 01:10:57,253
that was just tarped over
just in the back 40. Right.

1818
01:10:57,253 --> 01:10:59,054
And so it was kind of
so that was kind of like,

1819
01:10:59,054 --> 01:11:01,724
I guess that would be my museum that like,
yeah, yeah, they closed that.

1820
01:11:01,724 --> 01:11:06,462
I would probably be, oh, I would
probably would have feelings about it.

1821
01:11:06,495 --> 01:11:07,730
Right. Because I grew up with that one.

1822
01:11:07,730 --> 01:11:11,133
So I get I get the people that grew
up here with the Independence Museum.

1823
01:11:11,133 --> 01:11:12,568
Right. It's it makes sense.

1824
01:11:12,568 --> 01:11:15,537
It's probably not as big of a draw,
though, to all the new people to town,

1825
01:11:15,537 --> 01:11:18,173
you know, and that's
that's something I've struggled with here.

1826
01:11:18,173 --> 01:11:20,075
It's like we are growing. Every town
grows.

1827
01:11:20,075 --> 01:11:22,411
Every town goes through this. It's
all growing pains.

1828
01:11:22,411 --> 01:11:24,013
I mean, we hit a point.

1829
01:11:24,013 --> 01:11:28,250
Every town hits a point where they go
from 1000 to 10,000 and 10,000 to 100,000.

1830
01:11:28,284 --> 01:11:30,853
It's like there's always resistance
from the old people.

1831
01:11:30,853 --> 01:11:32,621
And I'm one of the old people here.

1832
01:11:32,621 --> 01:11:35,190
And in terms of long time living. Yeah.

1833
01:11:35,190 --> 01:11:38,794
And so it's it's been rough
seeing the city change in some ways.

1834
01:11:38,794 --> 01:11:39,895
In other ways. It's been great.

1835
01:11:39,895 --> 01:11:41,397
You know, it's cool
that the crime went down.

1836
01:11:41,397 --> 01:11:45,501
It's cool that the downtown area
looks beautiful like it does like

1837
01:11:45,601 --> 01:11:48,537
I remember when they built this,
I was absolutely appalled

1838
01:11:48,537 --> 01:11:51,607
because they were over
where Parallel 45 was.

1839
01:11:51,640 --> 01:11:53,475
Yeah. And that was City Hall.

1840
01:11:53,475 --> 01:11:56,645
And they went from the
1,100 square foot building

1841
01:11:56,679 --> 01:11:59,782
to a 36,000 square foot mansion, you know.

1842
01:11:59,815 --> 01:12:00,215
Yeah.

1843
01:12:00,215 --> 01:12:02,051
And on taxpayer dime.

1844
01:12:02,051 --> 01:12:04,320
And that that kind of hurt me.
That is a tough one.

1845
01:12:04,320 --> 01:12:05,220
That is a tough one. Right?

1846
01:12:05,220 --> 01:12:07,323
Because like, I mean,
how much building do you need, right.

1847
01:12:07,323 --> 01:12:08,557
Like, I mean, there's probably

1848
01:12:08,557 --> 01:12:10,526
20 employees here, you know. Yeah.

1849
01:12:10,526 --> 01:12:14,596
I mean it's and I and I get like the idea
of this lots of room for stuff.

1850
01:12:14,596 --> 01:12:15,898
Right. But at the same point. Yeah.

1851
01:12:15,898 --> 01:12:18,534
Do you need that much space? But,
you know.

1852
01:12:18,534 --> 01:12:21,537
I know the civic center here was supposed
to, make some money.

1853
01:12:21,537 --> 01:12:24,440
And, I mean, I think, Independence
Hotel manages it.

1854
01:12:24,440 --> 01:12:25,974
Yeah, it's a tough one, though, right?

1855
01:12:25,974 --> 01:12:28,977
It's it's pretty far away from the hotel,
so, like, it's, the,

1856
01:12:29,078 --> 01:12:31,880
like I mentioned the conference
that we threw here a few years back.

1857
01:12:31,880 --> 01:12:34,683
That's why they chose not to do it here
this year.

1858
01:12:34,683 --> 01:12:36,151
They're throwing the
conference again this year.

1859
01:12:36,151 --> 01:12:39,221
We decided to go with different hotel
just because it is pretty far right.

1860
01:12:39,621 --> 01:12:41,156
It's a few blocks away
and you're going through

1861
01:12:41,156 --> 01:12:42,758
now you're going through
a residential neighborhood before

1862
01:12:42,758 --> 01:12:45,994
at least it was kind of like kind of open
four years ago.

1863
01:12:45,994 --> 01:12:49,331
But, I wonder if the idea
behind that is to make everybody

1864
01:12:49,331 --> 01:12:51,934
walk by the shops downtown.
Yeah, that sounds like.

1865
01:12:51,934 --> 01:12:53,802
But you don't you walk down the side road.

1866
01:12:53,802 --> 01:12:56,405
Yeah, that's the easiest way to get there.

1867
01:12:56,405 --> 01:12:57,773
That hotel is expensive, too.

1868
01:12:57,773 --> 01:13:00,075
I was trying to book somebody a room there
the other night.

1869
01:13:00,075 --> 01:13:02,077
It was like $190 a night.

1870
01:13:02,077 --> 01:13:03,278
Something? Yeah. That's pretty.

1871
01:13:03,278 --> 01:13:05,981
That's a little expensive. It's.
It's pretty common, though.

1872
01:13:05,981 --> 01:13:08,984
I mean, yeah, it's it's, I mean, the.

1873
01:13:09,218 --> 01:13:13,222
I don't rent hotels very often
but like to be expecting like Seattle.

1874
01:13:13,222 --> 01:13:14,156
Not. Yeah.

1875
01:13:14,156 --> 01:13:17,659
I go to quite a few
conferences in like $140, $150

1876
01:13:18,260 --> 01:13:20,329
for like a room block rate is pretty good.

1877
01:13:20,329 --> 01:13:22,197
So I mean yeah.

1878
01:13:22,197 --> 01:13:25,200
So it's not unheard of nowadays I guess.

1879
01:13:25,434 --> 01:13:26,368
The hotel is pretty cool.

1880
01:13:26,368 --> 01:13:29,071
It's pretty cool having one here,
I think. Have you stayed there?

1881
01:13:29,071 --> 01:13:30,205
No, I haven't.

1882
01:13:30,205 --> 01:13:33,609
I mean I live in town, so like even,
even when we did our conference here,

1883
01:13:33,609 --> 01:13:37,045
I was just like, I went home, so
which I wish I would have gotten a room.

1884
01:13:37,045 --> 01:13:39,481
I think it would have been cool to kind of
had that experience.

1885
01:13:39,481 --> 01:13:42,017
But at the same point, there were
so many people from out of town.

1886
01:13:42,017 --> 01:13:47,156
It's not that terribly big of a hotel
that the yeah, it got filled up so well.

1887
01:13:47,222 --> 01:13:50,192
I feel like I didn't ask
you hard enough hitting questions today.

1888
01:13:50,592 --> 01:13:52,494
Well, I, I don't really have any.

1889
01:13:52,494 --> 01:13:55,497
I mean, we've talked about
how you handle city staff

1890
01:13:55,531 --> 01:13:58,500
and how you handle policy
and your approach to governance.

1891
01:13:58,500 --> 01:14:01,003
I mean, your history, your background.

1892
01:14:01,003 --> 01:14:03,572
I just wish I had
more things to drill into on.

1893
01:14:05,340 --> 01:14:05,808
I mean,

1894
01:14:05,808 --> 01:14:08,710
we could talk about the fee, but
like, kind of already did, you know?

1895
01:14:08,710 --> 01:14:09,011
Yeah.

1896
01:14:09,011 --> 01:14:12,014
I mean, yeah, we talked about that and
that's kind of been talked to to death.

1897
01:14:12,014 --> 01:14:14,483
Right? That's one of those things
at this point. Like it's it's.

1898
01:14:14,483 --> 01:14:17,019
It feels like
just rehashing everything at this point.

1899
01:14:17,019 --> 01:14:20,155
It is like I think at this point
in the whole process, that's it's.

1900
01:14:20,289 --> 01:14:21,256
Arguments are out there.

1901
01:14:21,256 --> 01:14:23,859
People pretty much know what they're going
to do at. This point.

1902
01:14:23,859 --> 01:14:24,960
At this point, it's just names.

1903
01:14:24,960 --> 01:14:26,929
It's just getting your name out there,
right? For sure.

1904
01:14:26,929 --> 01:14:27,563
So. Well,

1905
01:14:27,563 --> 01:14:30,899
do you have anything else you want to say
to the community, to the voters, to Evan?

1906
01:14:30,899 --> 01:14:33,001
I know Evan will be watching.

1907
01:14:33,001 --> 01:14:34,203
Hi. Evan.

1908
01:14:34,203 --> 01:14:35,337
My name is Anthony Johnson.

1909
01:14:35,337 --> 01:14:37,606
I'm running for council position 4.

1910
01:14:41,643 --> 01:14:42,778
Now. That can happen.

1911
01:14:42,778 --> 01:14:45,781
Oh, that's fine. With that.

1912
01:14:46,281 --> 01:14:48,350
We will.

1913
01:14:48,350 --> 01:14:50,319
Yeah, yeah.

1914
01:14:50,319 --> 01:14:50,752
It's there.

1915
01:14:50,752 --> 01:14:52,855
Thank God it's almost over. Yeah.

1916
01:14:52,855 --> 01:14:54,356
Audio work at least.

1917
01:14:54,356 --> 01:14:56,058
Yeah, it'll just be locked on me.

1918
01:14:56,058 --> 01:14:57,459
All right, well, there you go.

1919
01:14:57,459 --> 01:14:59,928
That's fine.
I was probably fidgeting too much.

1920
01:14:59,928 --> 01:15:00,162
Yeah.

1921
01:15:00,162 --> 01:15:01,129
My name is Anthony Johnson.

1922
01:15:01,129 --> 01:15:04,032
I'm running for council position 4.

1923
01:15:04,032 --> 01:15:05,567
All right. Yeah.

1924
01:15:05,567 --> 01:15:07,936
Let's try. That again. I'm
so professional. I'm sorry.

1925
01:15:07,936 --> 01:15:09,071
My name is Anthony Johnson.

1926
01:15:09,071 --> 01:15:12,074
I'm running for Independence
City Council position 4.

1927
01:15:12,207 --> 01:15:13,976
I would like the chance to represent you.

1928
01:15:13,976 --> 01:15:16,979
I will listen, I will try to,

1929
01:15:18,380 --> 01:15:20,582
hear all different opinions on things,

1930
01:15:20,582 --> 01:15:23,552
and, Oh,

1931
01:15:23,819 --> 01:15:25,320
well, that didn't go nearly as well.

1932
01:15:25,320 --> 01:15:28,323
Perfect. We're done.
All right, we're done.

1933
01:15:28,524 --> 01:15:30,592
Well, hey,
I do appreciate you coming down. Yeah.

1934
01:15:30,592 --> 01:15:33,695
And, we'll have to get another chance
to talk after the election.

1935
01:15:33,762 --> 01:15:34,530
Yeah, definitely.

1936
01:15:34,530 --> 01:15:36,331
All right. Like,
we're practically neighbors.

1937
01:15:36,331 --> 01:15:37,232
So I know, right?

1938
01:15:37,232 --> 01:15:39,568
Just come over and grab a beer sometime,
or you don't drink.

1939
01:15:39,568 --> 01:15:40,102
You don't drink.

1940
01:15:40,102 --> 01:15:43,005
Sorry, I don't drink either,
so I don't know why I said that.

1941
01:15:44,239 --> 01:15:45,541
Well, we'll hang out and do something.

1942
01:15:45,541 --> 01:15:46,408
Barbecue. How about that?

1943
01:15:46,408 --> 01:15:47,342
Sounds good. Cool.

1944
01:15:47,342 --> 01:15:49,978
Thanks for coming.
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. All right.