00:00:00
Speaker 1: 805 55 care cd talk station happy wednesday pleased to welcome the 55 care c morning show he is running for county commissioner you have three choices and my next guest jonathan pearson is one of those choices jonathan great to have you on the show this morning.
00:00:15
Speaker 2: Welcome well good morning brian thank you.
00:00:18
Speaker 1: And i'll encourage my listeners uh to the extent they want to hear what the candidates for county commissioner have to say there's a really i would say a well done wvxu morning edition uh article out there when they talk to each one of the candidates and about their policies and what they're, you know, what you want out of the commission and what you plan on changing, addressing the concerns. But I just wanted to start off by the last point you made in your conversation. I am old school. You have questions. Just call me and you post your phone number. 513-562-0611 or email Pearson for transparency at gmail.com. You have an open door policy and you haven't even been elected yet, Jonathan. I think that's very cool.
00:00:58
Speaker 2: Well, I figure that if this is about the citizens and it's their money, we don't have nuclear codes in the Hamilton County, so I've never understood the secrecy that goes on in government anywhere in Cincinnati or the county.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: Or candidates that refuse to debate their opponents. That's not you, Jonathan. Well, that's true. Anyway.
00:01:18
Speaker 2: I've actually had a lot of people give me a direct phone call, and I'm glad that they have. And they've texted me, and thanks. I'm happy to respond to them.
00:01:25
Speaker 1: Perfect. rarely do we hear from a politician or a candidate for political office that is that open and willing to talk to folks of any political stripe that want to call them up. So Jonathan, I salute you for that. Now, what are you here? Why are you running for County commissioner? And what are you hearing that people want addressed by Hamilton County commissioners? Because there's only a finite amount of responsibility that County commissioners have, but it does extend into most of our lives in some way, shape or form.
00:01:53
Speaker 2: Well, what I always tell people is it's the most boring, important job in the county because it deals with our money. And nobody ever talks about it. That means every dime of tax and property dollars eventually flow through there. And that's a lot of money. And people just kind of like, oh, yes, it does this, this, and this. And, you know, it's okay as long as they can go to work in the morning. You know, they never think twice about it until January and July when they have to pay that tax bill. And that's the big one. the property tax bills are just getting crazy. Mine has literally doubled in 16 years in Fairfax. I mean, doubled. In 16 years, you know, now, that's my big thing. My simple proposal to that, Brian, for your taxes on your property tax, and this affects renters. I want everybody to know this. Renters pay property tax. There's no such thing as a benevolent landlord that says, nah, I won't add the property tax to my building onto that. So renters pay property tax, and I hate hearing people say renters don't pay it. And if it's a four-unit or bigger in Hamilton County, there's a premium put on top of that property tax. So renters of four units or bigger are actually paying more property tax percentage-wise than I or you are. So my simple proposal is this. What you paid for your house is what your taxes are based on. That's it until you die or leave. It's not complicated.
00:03:20
Speaker 1: There's not that capital gains penalty that people are dealing with right now. I'd like to express it in terms of that you don't pay any taxes until you sell your investments and you pay taxes on what you earn.
00:03:32
Speaker 2: Exact same principle. We thought it was stupid when Kamala offered it for stocks. Why do we go home and say, yeah, but it's not stupid for our house?
00:03:40
Speaker 1: It's a great point. And, you know, this whole issue to me centers around seniors. You know, at least I'm still making a salary. My wife is. We can afford the outrageous property tax bill, but we've got a source of revenue. Seniors many times are on a fixed income, and you're basically taxing them right out of a place that they own outright. That's sinful, if I can call it that.
00:03:59
Speaker 2: Brian, many years ago, I sat in a council meeting at a particular city. I'll be kind to the city. I was going to mention them by name, but I won't. A couple came in. They've been living there for many years, and they said their tax bill is $ 9, 500. And they said that's more money than we paid in any year paying our mortgage, our insurance, and our property taxes then. A councilman stood up at that meeting, looked at that elderly couple dead in the eye, and said, you can move.
00:04:28
Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
00:04:30
Speaker 2: We don't need that kind of BS anymore. said to our citizens, I'm sorry, I don't care whether you're a Democrat, a Libertarian, an Independent, or a Republican. We don't need that kind of BS being said to them. If you want to live in a particular community, there's no excuse that the government's taxing you out of living there. And that just irritates me.
00:04:50
Speaker 1: It's sort of a form of not forced loyalty, but if you're loyal to where you live, You're less inclined to move if you know you're not going to have to continue to pay inflated property taxes each and every year they raise them. So, you know, there's incentive to stay, which I would think many counties would want.
00:05:07
Speaker 2: Well, see, that's what I want is say you redo your kitchen and you actually paid, legitimately paid $ 35, 000 to redo your kitchen. That's great. But they come along and say, well, since you redid your kitchen, we think it added $ 90, 000 in value. They add $ 90, 000 to your value of your tax base. not the $ 35, 000 you actually paid. That's what I want. So that way, if you do a renovation, it's only the actual monies you spent on that renovation to your contractor if you did it yourself.
00:05:36
Speaker 1: Fair enough.
00:05:37
Speaker 2: Not there. And that, to me, is very fair. But the biggest thing this does, Brian, if I have a 3.7 mil levy against my house... They come back in seven years and say, well, we're not raising your taxes. It's going to stay 3.7. Well, of course, my house raised $ 200, 000. Of course, you're going to get triple what you were making before. Well, now they actually have to come back and say, we want 7.4. And nobody votes for a 7.4 levy. And this changes how they have to ask for a tax. This changes the idea that schools are getting $ 20, 000, $ 25, 000 per student tax. in the public school system to educate them with, you know, in Cincinnati is, I'll be honest, it's pure crap. You have a 19% readiness rating to go to college from the 52% graduates. That's awful. 9% of the people that go through Cincinnati schools are ready for college. How awful is that? And yet we're paying a fortune and they're asking for another ton of money.
00:06:40
Speaker 1: They are, and that's the kind of thing I was speaking of earlier this morning. Are you going to reward the Cincinnati Public Schools when that's the type of education outcome you get in return for what may be very well a lot more money out of your pocket if the levy passes?
00:06:54
Speaker 2: The one thing commissioners have by fiscal solvency, fiscal responsibility, is this. In any neighborhood that you have issues with finances, you see crime. And if we can start to help to stabilize it through something, through getting through the state to change the tax base of how we tax homes and properties, and including apartment complexes, I include those in that because renters are citizens too. People tend to act like they're some pariah. They're not. And I think that we've missed that. But if we can tame down the economy in that way, crime starts to tame down. And guess what happened? Businesses look at Hamilton County and go, I like it. Because honestly, the first job of a Hamilton County commissioner is to be the cheerleader for the county. Because I tell people, you go from Cleves to the east side, it's like going through three different states in this county. This is an awesome county. I love going through Hamilton County. And ironically, not those three different states, but it's like three different sets of people from, you know, go clear to the west side, middle, clear to the east side. It's kind of funny. We always joke about don't crossing the wall at 75 from east to west. But there is a distinct difference, and I think that's a beautiful reality of our county. But people don't look at it that way because we're so worried about the crime that's happening in the dead center of it, right, mainly in Cincinnati itself. But, you know... Through that, we can start to tame that down because the other thing that the commissioners do take care of is the budgets that go through the sheriff's department. It goes down to the prosecutor's office to jail, other things like that. And those are all things that affect the safety and the willingness of citizens to want to stay or leave. But businesses want to come in. And guess what happens when we have more businesses? We have better tax bases and we can keep our taxes lower. So commissioners have a great effect on this county about its safety and its fiscal responsibilities.
00:08:48
Speaker 1: Well, you even acknowledge, I suppose, when you're talking to WBXU, you have limited authority to change the current tax structure insofar as property taxes are concerned. That would be.
00:08:57
Speaker 2: A state issue. The voice of a commissioner is very big. It's very big because, you know, old school methodology of the state was that the commissioners of counties were very powerful. Well, the irony is that old school didn't change. They still are. We just got new technology and new things, but that voice is still very powerful and carries a lot of weight. And Hamilton County is one of those heavyweight counties that can throw a lot of voice to Columbus. And Columbus doesn't immediately respond and say, oh, because they said this. No, but it makes a lot of people think. Plus the bully pulpit by being able to come on shows like yours, TV and others and say, hey, we really should make this better for the citizens. You start getting the grassroots efforts of people talking to their citizens. representatives and saying, hey, that's a good idea.
00:09:48
Speaker 1: We're talking with Jonathan Pearson this morning, or I'm talking with Jonathan Pearson. We are all enjoying the benefits of insight into his campaign for county commissioner here in Hamilton County. Early voting's going on right now. You can get in there and vote for Jonathan. I think it's a strong bet. Don't go away, Jonathan. I'm going to get some more of your campaign platforms. What are you going to do when you are elected county commissioner? Talk station. It's 819 at 55KRC, the talk station. Very happy Wednesday to you. Talking with Jonathan Pearson, running for Hamilton County Commissioner. Feel free to call him directly 513-562-0611 or shoot him an email, pearson4transparency at gmail.com. Open door policy he has. I love that out of the gate. And one of the other things we have to deal with in Hamilton County, we have a real sewer problem, Jonathan. I feel terribly sorry for folks whose basements flood with sewage and the cleanup. And this has been going on for a long, long time. Is there any control the Hamilton County commissioners have over getting projects accomplished and alleviating this problem that we have over and over again, Jonathan?
00:10:52
Speaker 2: Well, the reality is the county owns the sewer department. It's run by the city. Therein lies part of the problem. The city is so tied up in making sure that we do quotas, DEI and all the other... DEI stands for doing everything idiotically. Let's just be honest with you. That's exactly what that stands for. They actually have to order parts individually at the sewer department and Metro sewer from a DEI supplier who only deals with subsidiaries that are DEI. I can go to Grainger and get the same part within a day or a week when they're waiting six weeks to six months for the same part. Now, what do you think that does to getting a job done?
00:11:33
Speaker 1: Oh my Lord.
00:11:35
Speaker 2: And what do you think that does to the cost? But they won't tell you that that's why the delay is. They'll just say it's because of this or that. So they're, The absolute stupidity of when we start putting all these things in there, if we actually ran the city and the county on meritocracy as opposed to making sure that we did a certain subset, did this or that, we would stop 90 percent of our problems. But for all of us, our bills went from three months to one month, and we're paying the same in one month that we used to pay for three months.
00:12:05
Speaker 1: Tell me about it. Oh, my word. Every time I get that bill, I just my mouth falls open in disbelief.
00:12:10
Speaker 2: And it's ridiculous. But, you know, they figured they could pull a fast one on us. Well, they won't notice that. Yeah, they tripled our bills. Now, add that to the property tax and everything else. And people are wondering why they can't afford to stay in their homes. I don't care that we've seen inflation come down. The real person isn't sitting out there going, well, at least inflation is only 2.9. Well, who gives a damn at this point? Because you're just trying to figure out how to pay your bills.
00:12:37
Speaker 1: Bills that won't go down.
00:12:39
Speaker 2: Well, they won't go down because we're allowing too many of these subset ideas to be thrown into the mix that have nothing to do with the production of the job. And so what I would like to do is sit down and look at that budget, have a meeting every single Monday morning with MSD and say, what are you doing this week and what did you get done last week? And where's our cost factor in this? And if we hold them to the fire every week, not once a quarter, whatever else they're doing, I don't even know what their schedule is. But my thing, I used to work for a private estate that I helped subdivide. I was the general foreman for the property. It was 200 acres. Real simple thing. You know what we did? Every Monday, okay, what are we doing this week? What are we going to get done? You think this is going to be done in time? Are we going to stay within the track of our budget this week? And you know what happened every Friday? We could have a checklist of, well, we need to make sure we get this done. Or we did. We're ahead of time. It wasn't complicated. We did the same thing on the golf course when I was helping run golf courses. It's not complicated. So, well, you can't do it because they're just a big department. Well, what does size mean? Size doesn't mean anything. It just means there's more people. You still have a few people who control it. So you sit down with them and say, what's going to go on this week? And we always act all surprised. They're just so big. You know, it's really hard to get everything together. We're not trying to get every single worker in the sewer department together every Monday. We're getting the core people saying what's going on.
00:14:12
Speaker 1: Makes sense.
00:14:13
Speaker 2: It's not complicated.
00:14:14
Speaker 1: Best practices. What you're suggesting is they're not engaging in best practices. They're not reflecting on the inefficiencies that surround them each and every day and doing something about it. Jonathan.
00:14:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, on the flip side, though, I will say the citizens do have to step up to their part. You know, when MSD comes through and says, we need to dig up your front yard to do this, don't be sitting there and saying, yeah, but that's my front yard. So don't dig here. Why do you think Fairmont, which is a poor neighborhood, got a beautiful drainage system and Mount Lookout, Hyde Park and all the other places that got flooded? Because I go to church at St. Cecilia's in Oakley and it was actually on a festival night that that massive rain came through. Thankfully, we're here. We've mitigated the flood in our own buildings here at the campus of St. Cecilia's. But a lot of people did lose a lot of stuff. Why? Because a lot of the residents of these areas said, I don't want you digging up my yard. You'll tear down my favorite tree. You'll do this. Well, unfortunately, there is a reality to the citizen side. We are going to lose some shrubs and bushes to get this stuff split apart. So we just have to accept that there are certain realities of living in a densely populated neighborhood. that certain things are going to have to change just because of reality. When you dig up the ground to get to those pipes, you can't just simply slide these through like you do your dog fence. It isn't the same thing.
00:15:32
Speaker 1: It's a nymph-y action, not in my front yard.
00:15:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. But unfortunately, it does have to be in your front yard or your backyard or your side yard. And once we can get past that, but I think if we can let people realize that MSD is being accountable to the budget, we suddenly get a little less tense about what they're doing. Again, it gets back to fiscal responsibility.
00:15:57
Speaker 1: Jonathan Pearson, running for county commissioner. He's on the ballot. I encourage you to get out and vote, as I have been. I know I'm a broken record when it comes to that, but I'm going to have Vivek Ramaswamy on the show tomorrow, and I think he's going to say the same thing, as will every other guest, as we fast approach November. Jonathan Pearson, it's been a pleasure talking with you. Appreciate your open-door policy. I love what I'm hearing. And I hope that, you know, if you're elected county commissioner, and we can only pray for that, that you do make some inroads with the state government on taxes. That's a huge issue for so many people. And that crosses party lines, doesn't it, Jonathan?
00:16:29
Speaker 2: Oh, I haven't found a single person of any party, persuasion, anything that's looked at me and said, that's crazy. No, they all said the same thing. Oh, if you could get that through, I'll come and kiss you.
00:16:41
Speaker 1: I'm working on it.
00:16:42
Speaker 2: That was my favorite, funniest one I had a response from.
00:16:46
Speaker 1: Trust me on that one, Jonathan. Look, hey, bipartisanship exists. Lower our damn property taxes, Jonathan Pearson.
Speaker 1: 805 55 care cd talk station happy wednesday pleased to welcome the 55 care c morning show he is running for county commissioner you have three choices and my next guest jonathan pearson is one of those choices jonathan great to have you on the show this morning.
00:00:15
Speaker 2: Welcome well good morning brian thank you.
00:00:18
Speaker 1: And i'll encourage my listeners uh to the extent they want to hear what the candidates for county commissioner have to say there's a really i would say a well done wvxu morning edition uh article out there when they talk to each one of the candidates and about their policies and what they're, you know, what you want out of the commission and what you plan on changing, addressing the concerns. But I just wanted to start off by the last point you made in your conversation. I am old school. You have questions. Just call me and you post your phone number. 513-562-0611 or email Pearson for transparency at gmail.com. You have an open door policy and you haven't even been elected yet, Jonathan. I think that's very cool.
00:00:58
Speaker 2: Well, I figure that if this is about the citizens and it's their money, we don't have nuclear codes in the Hamilton County, so I've never understood the secrecy that goes on in government anywhere in Cincinnati or the county.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: Or candidates that refuse to debate their opponents. That's not you, Jonathan. Well, that's true. Anyway.
00:01:18
Speaker 2: I've actually had a lot of people give me a direct phone call, and I'm glad that they have. And they've texted me, and thanks. I'm happy to respond to them.
00:01:25
Speaker 1: Perfect. rarely do we hear from a politician or a candidate for political office that is that open and willing to talk to folks of any political stripe that want to call them up. So Jonathan, I salute you for that. Now, what are you here? Why are you running for County commissioner? And what are you hearing that people want addressed by Hamilton County commissioners? Because there's only a finite amount of responsibility that County commissioners have, but it does extend into most of our lives in some way, shape or form.
00:01:53
Speaker 2: Well, what I always tell people is it's the most boring, important job in the county because it deals with our money. And nobody ever talks about it. That means every dime of tax and property dollars eventually flow through there. And that's a lot of money. And people just kind of like, oh, yes, it does this, this, and this. And, you know, it's okay as long as they can go to work in the morning. You know, they never think twice about it until January and July when they have to pay that tax bill. And that's the big one. the property tax bills are just getting crazy. Mine has literally doubled in 16 years in Fairfax. I mean, doubled. In 16 years, you know, now, that's my big thing. My simple proposal to that, Brian, for your taxes on your property tax, and this affects renters. I want everybody to know this. Renters pay property tax. There's no such thing as a benevolent landlord that says, nah, I won't add the property tax to my building onto that. So renters pay property tax, and I hate hearing people say renters don't pay it. And if it's a four-unit or bigger in Hamilton County, there's a premium put on top of that property tax. So renters of four units or bigger are actually paying more property tax percentage-wise than I or you are. So my simple proposal is this. What you paid for your house is what your taxes are based on. That's it until you die or leave. It's not complicated.
00:03:20
Speaker 1: There's not that capital gains penalty that people are dealing with right now. I'd like to express it in terms of that you don't pay any taxes until you sell your investments and you pay taxes on what you earn.
00:03:32
Speaker 2: Exact same principle. We thought it was stupid when Kamala offered it for stocks. Why do we go home and say, yeah, but it's not stupid for our house?
00:03:40
Speaker 1: It's a great point. And, you know, this whole issue to me centers around seniors. You know, at least I'm still making a salary. My wife is. We can afford the outrageous property tax bill, but we've got a source of revenue. Seniors many times are on a fixed income, and you're basically taxing them right out of a place that they own outright. That's sinful, if I can call it that.
00:03:59
Speaker 2: Brian, many years ago, I sat in a council meeting at a particular city. I'll be kind to the city. I was going to mention them by name, but I won't. A couple came in. They've been living there for many years, and they said their tax bill is $ 9, 500. And they said that's more money than we paid in any year paying our mortgage, our insurance, and our property taxes then. A councilman stood up at that meeting, looked at that elderly couple dead in the eye, and said, you can move.
00:04:28
Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
00:04:30
Speaker 2: We don't need that kind of BS anymore. said to our citizens, I'm sorry, I don't care whether you're a Democrat, a Libertarian, an Independent, or a Republican. We don't need that kind of BS being said to them. If you want to live in a particular community, there's no excuse that the government's taxing you out of living there. And that just irritates me.
00:04:50
Speaker 1: It's sort of a form of not forced loyalty, but if you're loyal to where you live, You're less inclined to move if you know you're not going to have to continue to pay inflated property taxes each and every year they raise them. So, you know, there's incentive to stay, which I would think many counties would want.
00:05:07
Speaker 2: Well, see, that's what I want is say you redo your kitchen and you actually paid, legitimately paid $ 35, 000 to redo your kitchen. That's great. But they come along and say, well, since you redid your kitchen, we think it added $ 90, 000 in value. They add $ 90, 000 to your value of your tax base. not the $ 35, 000 you actually paid. That's what I want. So that way, if you do a renovation, it's only the actual monies you spent on that renovation to your contractor if you did it yourself.
00:05:36
Speaker 1: Fair enough.
00:05:37
Speaker 2: Not there. And that, to me, is very fair. But the biggest thing this does, Brian, if I have a 3.7 mil levy against my house... They come back in seven years and say, well, we're not raising your taxes. It's going to stay 3.7. Well, of course, my house raised $ 200, 000. Of course, you're going to get triple what you were making before. Well, now they actually have to come back and say, we want 7.4. And nobody votes for a 7.4 levy. And this changes how they have to ask for a tax. This changes the idea that schools are getting $ 20, 000, $ 25, 000 per student tax. in the public school system to educate them with, you know, in Cincinnati is, I'll be honest, it's pure crap. You have a 19% readiness rating to go to college from the 52% graduates. That's awful. 9% of the people that go through Cincinnati schools are ready for college. How awful is that? And yet we're paying a fortune and they're asking for another ton of money.
00:06:40
Speaker 1: They are, and that's the kind of thing I was speaking of earlier this morning. Are you going to reward the Cincinnati Public Schools when that's the type of education outcome you get in return for what may be very well a lot more money out of your pocket if the levy passes?
00:06:54
Speaker 2: The one thing commissioners have by fiscal solvency, fiscal responsibility, is this. In any neighborhood that you have issues with finances, you see crime. And if we can start to help to stabilize it through something, through getting through the state to change the tax base of how we tax homes and properties, and including apartment complexes, I include those in that because renters are citizens too. People tend to act like they're some pariah. They're not. And I think that we've missed that. But if we can tame down the economy in that way, crime starts to tame down. And guess what happened? Businesses look at Hamilton County and go, I like it. Because honestly, the first job of a Hamilton County commissioner is to be the cheerleader for the county. Because I tell people, you go from Cleves to the east side, it's like going through three different states in this county. This is an awesome county. I love going through Hamilton County. And ironically, not those three different states, but it's like three different sets of people from, you know, go clear to the west side, middle, clear to the east side. It's kind of funny. We always joke about don't crossing the wall at 75 from east to west. But there is a distinct difference, and I think that's a beautiful reality of our county. But people don't look at it that way because we're so worried about the crime that's happening in the dead center of it, right, mainly in Cincinnati itself. But, you know... Through that, we can start to tame that down because the other thing that the commissioners do take care of is the budgets that go through the sheriff's department. It goes down to the prosecutor's office to jail, other things like that. And those are all things that affect the safety and the willingness of citizens to want to stay or leave. But businesses want to come in. And guess what happens when we have more businesses? We have better tax bases and we can keep our taxes lower. So commissioners have a great effect on this county about its safety and its fiscal responsibilities.
00:08:48
Speaker 1: Well, you even acknowledge, I suppose, when you're talking to WBXU, you have limited authority to change the current tax structure insofar as property taxes are concerned. That would be.
00:08:57
Speaker 2: A state issue. The voice of a commissioner is very big. It's very big because, you know, old school methodology of the state was that the commissioners of counties were very powerful. Well, the irony is that old school didn't change. They still are. We just got new technology and new things, but that voice is still very powerful and carries a lot of weight. And Hamilton County is one of those heavyweight counties that can throw a lot of voice to Columbus. And Columbus doesn't immediately respond and say, oh, because they said this. No, but it makes a lot of people think. Plus the bully pulpit by being able to come on shows like yours, TV and others and say, hey, we really should make this better for the citizens. You start getting the grassroots efforts of people talking to their citizens. representatives and saying, hey, that's a good idea.
00:09:48
Speaker 1: We're talking with Jonathan Pearson this morning, or I'm talking with Jonathan Pearson. We are all enjoying the benefits of insight into his campaign for county commissioner here in Hamilton County. Early voting's going on right now. You can get in there and vote for Jonathan. I think it's a strong bet. Don't go away, Jonathan. I'm going to get some more of your campaign platforms. What are you going to do when you are elected county commissioner? Talk station. It's 819 at 55KRC, the talk station. Very happy Wednesday to you. Talking with Jonathan Pearson, running for Hamilton County Commissioner. Feel free to call him directly 513-562-0611 or shoot him an email, pearson4transparency at gmail.com. Open door policy he has. I love that out of the gate. And one of the other things we have to deal with in Hamilton County, we have a real sewer problem, Jonathan. I feel terribly sorry for folks whose basements flood with sewage and the cleanup. And this has been going on for a long, long time. Is there any control the Hamilton County commissioners have over getting projects accomplished and alleviating this problem that we have over and over again, Jonathan?
00:10:52
Speaker 2: Well, the reality is the county owns the sewer department. It's run by the city. Therein lies part of the problem. The city is so tied up in making sure that we do quotas, DEI and all the other... DEI stands for doing everything idiotically. Let's just be honest with you. That's exactly what that stands for. They actually have to order parts individually at the sewer department and Metro sewer from a DEI supplier who only deals with subsidiaries that are DEI. I can go to Grainger and get the same part within a day or a week when they're waiting six weeks to six months for the same part. Now, what do you think that does to getting a job done?
00:11:33
Speaker 1: Oh my Lord.
00:11:35
Speaker 2: And what do you think that does to the cost? But they won't tell you that that's why the delay is. They'll just say it's because of this or that. So they're, The absolute stupidity of when we start putting all these things in there, if we actually ran the city and the county on meritocracy as opposed to making sure that we did a certain subset, did this or that, we would stop 90 percent of our problems. But for all of us, our bills went from three months to one month, and we're paying the same in one month that we used to pay for three months.
00:12:05
Speaker 1: Tell me about it. Oh, my word. Every time I get that bill, I just my mouth falls open in disbelief.
00:12:10
Speaker 2: And it's ridiculous. But, you know, they figured they could pull a fast one on us. Well, they won't notice that. Yeah, they tripled our bills. Now, add that to the property tax and everything else. And people are wondering why they can't afford to stay in their homes. I don't care that we've seen inflation come down. The real person isn't sitting out there going, well, at least inflation is only 2.9. Well, who gives a damn at this point? Because you're just trying to figure out how to pay your bills.
00:12:37
Speaker 1: Bills that won't go down.
00:12:39
Speaker 2: Well, they won't go down because we're allowing too many of these subset ideas to be thrown into the mix that have nothing to do with the production of the job. And so what I would like to do is sit down and look at that budget, have a meeting every single Monday morning with MSD and say, what are you doing this week and what did you get done last week? And where's our cost factor in this? And if we hold them to the fire every week, not once a quarter, whatever else they're doing, I don't even know what their schedule is. But my thing, I used to work for a private estate that I helped subdivide. I was the general foreman for the property. It was 200 acres. Real simple thing. You know what we did? Every Monday, okay, what are we doing this week? What are we going to get done? You think this is going to be done in time? Are we going to stay within the track of our budget this week? And you know what happened every Friday? We could have a checklist of, well, we need to make sure we get this done. Or we did. We're ahead of time. It wasn't complicated. We did the same thing on the golf course when I was helping run golf courses. It's not complicated. So, well, you can't do it because they're just a big department. Well, what does size mean? Size doesn't mean anything. It just means there's more people. You still have a few people who control it. So you sit down with them and say, what's going to go on this week? And we always act all surprised. They're just so big. You know, it's really hard to get everything together. We're not trying to get every single worker in the sewer department together every Monday. We're getting the core people saying what's going on.
00:14:12
Speaker 1: Makes sense.
00:14:13
Speaker 2: It's not complicated.
00:14:14
Speaker 1: Best practices. What you're suggesting is they're not engaging in best practices. They're not reflecting on the inefficiencies that surround them each and every day and doing something about it. Jonathan.
00:14:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, on the flip side, though, I will say the citizens do have to step up to their part. You know, when MSD comes through and says, we need to dig up your front yard to do this, don't be sitting there and saying, yeah, but that's my front yard. So don't dig here. Why do you think Fairmont, which is a poor neighborhood, got a beautiful drainage system and Mount Lookout, Hyde Park and all the other places that got flooded? Because I go to church at St. Cecilia's in Oakley and it was actually on a festival night that that massive rain came through. Thankfully, we're here. We've mitigated the flood in our own buildings here at the campus of St. Cecilia's. But a lot of people did lose a lot of stuff. Why? Because a lot of the residents of these areas said, I don't want you digging up my yard. You'll tear down my favorite tree. You'll do this. Well, unfortunately, there is a reality to the citizen side. We are going to lose some shrubs and bushes to get this stuff split apart. So we just have to accept that there are certain realities of living in a densely populated neighborhood. that certain things are going to have to change just because of reality. When you dig up the ground to get to those pipes, you can't just simply slide these through like you do your dog fence. It isn't the same thing.
00:15:32
Speaker 1: It's a nymph-y action, not in my front yard.
00:15:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. But unfortunately, it does have to be in your front yard or your backyard or your side yard. And once we can get past that, but I think if we can let people realize that MSD is being accountable to the budget, we suddenly get a little less tense about what they're doing. Again, it gets back to fiscal responsibility.
00:15:57
Speaker 1: Jonathan Pearson, running for county commissioner. He's on the ballot. I encourage you to get out and vote, as I have been. I know I'm a broken record when it comes to that, but I'm going to have Vivek Ramaswamy on the show tomorrow, and I think he's going to say the same thing, as will every other guest, as we fast approach November. Jonathan Pearson, it's been a pleasure talking with you. Appreciate your open-door policy. I love what I'm hearing. And I hope that, you know, if you're elected county commissioner, and we can only pray for that, that you do make some inroads with the state government on taxes. That's a huge issue for so many people. And that crosses party lines, doesn't it, Jonathan?
00:16:29
Speaker 2: Oh, I haven't found a single person of any party, persuasion, anything that's looked at me and said, that's crazy. No, they all said the same thing. Oh, if you could get that through, I'll come and kiss you.
00:16:41
Speaker 1: I'm working on it.
00:16:42
Speaker 2: That was my favorite, funniest one I had a response from.
00:16:46
Speaker 1: Trust me on that one, Jonathan. Look, hey, bipartisanship exists. Lower our damn property taxes, Jonathan Pearson.
