Scott Wardle for Tooele County Council

[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, we're welcome to political head trauma. Holly's running late. She's getting ready for the convention where she's going to have to manage that. So she's got to, I don't know, do whatever girls do before they have a big thing. [00:00:16] Speaker B: She's got a busy day. [00:00:18] Speaker A: Yeah, she does. She does. Hopefully it calms down when this is done. But she signed up for all the political stuff, and that's going to strap her, but we're going to start without her. We got Scott Wardle in water or wardle. [00:00:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:34] Speaker A: Okay. Every time I get that wrong, and I'll tell you why. Because years and years ago, I had a friend named. Spelled the same, but she liked it. Wardle. And she would correct me. So now I've got to get corrected every time. And then if I ever run into her again, she's going to say no, it's this. [00:00:54] Speaker B: So now tell her you got the right. [00:00:59] Speaker A: But, yeah. Um, anyways, so you are the incumbent for the, uh, the county council. [00:01:07] Speaker B: Correct. [00:01:08] Speaker A: And, uh, district one. [00:01:10] Speaker B: Yes. [00:01:10] Speaker A: And you're running to retain that seat. And we've had you on before. You talked about the fiscal stuff that you guys have done, which to me sounds, um, heavenly. Matter of fact, if I could bundle you up right now and ship you to DC and have you straighten them out, I would, but that would just poison you. [00:01:31] Speaker B: I think it's sad that we're in that position because our nation's been founded upon good principles. And I think whether you're a Republican or whether you're a Democrat, pull that. [00:01:43] Speaker A: Microphone right up to the edge of. [00:01:45] Speaker B: The table, whether you're Republican or Democrat, we have gone against what is just basic sound fiscal doctrine. [00:01:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:01:54] Speaker B: And until we get back to that, I don't know how we. We recover the trajectory we're on, because you can't be everything to everyone. And that, to me, is one of the. I think one of the hardest parts of these discussions is there has to be a time when you say no, and we don't like no. [00:02:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Or a time when you say, that's not in our purview as correct. This body. [00:02:22] Speaker B: Yes. [00:02:23] Speaker A: You know? [00:02:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:24] Speaker A: It'd be like. It'd be like if. If my street alone wanted the county to take on just my street. Not even my street, just my block, you know, my little strip from other cross street to cross street to say, just us. We want trees, take care of us. And you guys go, okay, we're going to turn and. And take all of the county budget, which is broader. I'm inside of a city which is separate from the county. I mean, it's together, but it's separate. [00:02:59] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:03:00] Speaker A: But we're going to take all of our resources and focus on this one little area that's just going to affect these few people to buy votes, you know, say you want. And that's exactly what it, what we're getting with the federal government. Like with Joe Biden on the college debt, you know, he's going to for, keeps teasing it. I don't know if he will or can, but that's a problem that was initiated under FDR. When FDR started taking over stuff, he really initiated taking over stuff outside of federal government purview, spread it out eventually under Clinton, he said, okay, I think it was Clinton. Yeah, we said, we're going to federally guarantee student loans. The colleges said they all bet they had parties. I'll bet every college administration just had blowout parties that night because they said, we can build a new building and staff it with degrees that don't matter, that don't pay because morons are going to be showing up and studying whatever. [00:04:07] Speaker B: You know, it's interesting because I was going to school during that time, and I came from a family that didn't have wealth. I had done some things that allowed me to have scholarships my first two years, and then I decided to retire or stop doing that. And I had student loans going into my, for my bachelor's degree. And the thing that was really helpful to me is I had to own my education. Then it was mine, and I wasn't going to, my parents weren't going to bail me out. So I took it really seriously. I had a lot of fun in college, but I think there's something to be said when you invest in you and not worry about someone saying, well, you made an investment, so I'm going to bail you out. I think that's what got us in trouble in 2008 when we had the second worst economic collapse in the United States history, when we started bailing out some companies that, to be very honest, may have been better off going away. [00:05:16] Speaker A: It would have definitely been better off for our economy. [00:05:19] Speaker B: And so when we talk about these different things, it's problematic. Now there will be some who will say, yeah, but, Scott, you've always voted for rdas and other things. I've got my critics on that. And my reply to that would be, but we never made deals that sold our city down the river. So, for instance, when Cabela's came in to get Cabela's to come to Tooele county, there had to be incentives because that's how the game works. And we offered them decreased land prices. But most of what happened was post performance. If you were going to receive tax increment that was going to be held in reserve, you had to perform and hire a certain amount of people at a certain amount at a certain wage, and that it would be guaranteed and you wouldn't receive anything until after. I think we saw the problem with that on front loading Ati with their incentives. And then I look at those things. I think we see him through a different mindset at times. I've heard my critics say, well, we've been recruiting businesses to come to Tooele county for the last four years, or to Tooele City or Gransville City, and we didn't give them any incentives. And I almost think that's too nuanced because, no, they didn't receive cash, but they did receive write down in property. So if I'm buying the property, I'm going to write it down, $20,000 an acre. Yeah, I'm going to give water as an incentive. So again, it's not cash, but do you know what water sells for an acre foot right now? [00:07:10] Speaker A: I don't, but it's never, it hasn't been cheap in ever. [00:07:14] Speaker B: No, it's 35,000 an acre foot. So if a business needs 100 acre feet of water, well, you've just written down three and a half million dollars, $350,000. [00:07:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:26] Speaker B: Does that make sense? Yeah, if I've got my math right and there's a good chance I don't have my math right. But, but, so I think that when we sit down and we talk about what do we do as a government, I think not only do you have to look at return on investment, you have to look at what the cost benefit analysis is. You also have to understand that when you make investments with businesses, you make investments in people, that you are guided by good vision and principles and not by emotion entirely. [00:08:02] Speaker A: I don't feel as much heartburn when, when the city or the county makes a deal to bring in a business, because a business employs people and also business sell stuff, so they get to pay some taxes on sales, which hopefully down the line leads to my taxes not having to go up to afford a growing city with more. Because I'm not saying that, you know, property taxes and that are a waste, but sales tax help offset the taxes to maintain the region you're in. [00:08:40] Speaker B: Well, as you say that, Jared, one of the things that's important to understand with economics, and the economics of. Of this county and cities is for. It has been. It's about $1.40 for every home built to provide the service. And the only way you really do write that down is by having sales tax, or you bring in businesses. And I'll use Cabela's as the example, because I think we're a county that really supports that business. Not that we don't support others. But they invested $55 million, which includes all of the products, the shelving, the manufacturing, the forklifts. All of that is property tax. So when you've got this imbalance of too much housing and not enough sales tax and not enough manufacturers or business tax, professional plazas, then you're going to have that higher subsidy come out of the citizens own property tax. And that's an imbalance we have got to fix. I was in some meetings last week with the aerospace, defense, and drone industry, unmanned aircraft industry. And I've got to say I feel bad because I missed something, and I've been missing it for 15 years. [00:10:07] Speaker A: What's up? [00:10:09] Speaker B: 20% of our state's income comes from aerospace industry. [00:10:14] Speaker A: Really? [00:10:14] Speaker B: Do you know how much of our local area business products are from aerospace? [00:10:22] Speaker A: We used to have Tekoi out in Skull Valley. Do we even have any of that? [00:10:27] Speaker B: We are missing it. I would say we're less than 2%. [00:10:31] Speaker A: So how do we get Northrop to build a warehouse out here to put together rockets? [00:10:36] Speaker B: I think that that's what we'll be doing for the next four years. So I was tasked with. [00:10:41] Speaker A: I mean, it's perfect. Or even south area. [00:10:45] Speaker B: Well, you've got south area. So when we talk about defense and aerospace manufacturing components, 3d printing, when we talk about Northrop Grumman, I toured a facility that makes the flashing on the outside of the wing that bends into where the flaps are. And those are the products that we can build within our area. The other thing is, when we look at, you know, tech industry, I know that we've got the tech corridor in Lehigh and some other places, it's popping up. Semiconducting has always been a water intensive process. [00:11:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:26] Speaker B: I toured a facility last week where hardly any water is needed. [00:11:31] Speaker A: Really? [00:11:32] Speaker B: That's how we can. [00:11:34] Speaker A: How are they cooling it? [00:11:35] Speaker B: They're using internal cooling. It is a technology that has been developed in Asia. And so if we can bring those sort of industries here, get our people off the roads, we have 74% of our workforce that commutes to Salt Lake. [00:11:51] Speaker A: I know that's killing us. Salt Lake's getting, they're getting our gas money. [00:11:56] Speaker B: Correct. [00:11:56] Speaker A: They're getting our lunch money. They're getting all of that. And so, yeah, that is killing us. I would like to, I mean, if they've got a new way to cool, it could be whatever it is, oil. [00:12:08] Speaker B: Or it's a proprietary tech, but it's working. And it's working in place places like Taiwan and in some of the new places that have been designated by the government as tech corridors. Texas, for instance. And so we've got to go look. And as a government, I, you know, I am running. [00:12:28] Speaker A: So I'm going to talk about some. [00:12:29] Speaker B: Things that I think we need to do. That's been part of my task assignment for my fellow council members is to go look at this, figure out how we can incorporate it into our economic development plan. How do we incorporate it to our areas of manufacturing? And one of the most important things that we need to do is partner with our defense partners in Dugway particularly. And this one was really kind of cool. I was having discussions with a company that builds unmanned vehicles. And are you ready for possibly one of our big developmental areas? [00:13:09] Speaker A: What do we got? [00:13:10] Speaker B: The historic Wendover airport. [00:13:12] Speaker A: Oh, perfect. [00:13:13] Speaker B: To test those kind of vehicles in that environment that then can build manufacturing. [00:13:20] Speaker A: Housing, parts and give Utah, Wendover a little bit of life. [00:13:24] Speaker B: Exactly. So those, that, those are areas, when I talk about economic development that we're focused on, we also talk about recreation. We had a great discussion last time when I was here about recreation echo development. And we've made, you know, just incredible investments in that area. And hopefully within two years, we'll have all the improvements taken care of and we'll see our sports teams succeeding off the charts because we're not limited on field space for people to practice on that we'll be able to have teams that can come here and we can host weekend tournaments, that sell out our hotels, all of our parking places, that eat at all of our restaurants. Those are the things that we're really looking at. So. [00:14:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Make us kind of a tourist area. [00:14:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:15] Speaker A: I heard once upon a time they tried building a ski resort over here on this side of the mountain. [00:14:23] Speaker B: I was actually, I was on city council when that discussion happened. [00:14:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:27] Speaker B: So there was a discussion, at least during my time frame, around 20, 2005. [00:14:32] Speaker A: I heard years earlier, sixties or seventies. [00:14:35] Speaker B: Ski hill up settlement canyon. Have you ever been up to Ski hill? [00:14:38] Speaker A: I have. Well, I'm sure I've been up there, but they talked about building a ski resort. But where ski resorts are very cost intensive. Yep. But there's no reason why we can't open up some sports venues out here. [00:14:55] Speaker B: Well, I. And I think we'll. We'll see more of that. In fact, the Griffith family has made a great investment not too far from your house in their recreation, indoor recreation. That's got astral turf. [00:15:07] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Right over there by the TATC. [00:15:10] Speaker B: And one of the things that I think is a value that. That we. We believe as a council. I know. I firmly believe it is. Private sector does it better than government, and what private sector can do, we should let them do, because they do it better. And government, when we do it, it costs us more. It is more labor intensive, and at the end of the day, we just don't run it as well. [00:15:33] Speaker A: That is also true because you've got other objectives. [00:15:36] Speaker B: Correct. [00:15:38] Speaker A: Whereas if a, the Griffiths open this building up and they say, okay, here's the needs we're going to meet. We're going to hire people that can facilitate meeting those needs and control it, where at the same time, if you were to do it, you've also got to go, all right, how's our trash pickup doing? How's our. How's our, you know, county protection, security and law enforcement house? You know, all this and everything else you've got to do, you've got other things on the table. So I agree with that. [00:16:08] Speaker B: And we see, you know, when one of the discussions when I first got into government was, we should build a rec center, and I understood all the reasons why it failed on a bond vote, and the discussions continued. And here's what's happened because of those discussions, in every community, we now have a business that people can go and work out at. We have private industry, whether it's down on the old army depot or here in Twila City, who have now opened facilities for practice fields, for indoor playing fields to help our teams grow, those people are employing people. And regardless of what happens, government building those kinds of facilities, they do not make money. No. But in this other way, not only is a company making money, they're adding investment to the community. They're investing in people who are employed there. And then on top of it, they're able to help people grow in a way that government's limited because government is limited in what they can do. [00:17:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, even on that, it would be cheaper for the government to find an existing privately owned rec center and say, we'll make an investment so that you maybe lower the price for. For our citizens, a dollar or whatever, that'd be even cheaper because you don't carry the liability of it all that. [00:17:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Public private partnerships are so critical. And, you know, I looked at one in northern Utah where they had taken an old smaller grocery store that they just couldn't get anyone to come in and rent it and release the space. So the city and, and a private owner went into business together and put indoor pickleball courts. [00:17:56] Speaker A: That's a hot, that's a hot commodity right now. [00:17:59] Speaker B: That's a great idea. [00:18:00] Speaker A: I've never played pickleball, but that, everyone talks about it like it's the, you know, the best sport to come along since hacky sack or something. [00:18:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And, and Utah is one of the capitals of the United States with it. So. So there's some. Just initial thoughts on those topics. [00:18:18] Speaker A: David says, I suggest making alcohol a private industry if you want the normal population to live in Utah. Agree or disagree? I don't know how much poll a county councilman would have on the DaB. See? [00:18:36] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, the state. We have no poll. [00:18:40] Speaker A: That's what I'm saying. [00:18:41] Speaker B: I'm pretty familiar with those who run DABC. And I think the loosening of those restrictions has helped businesses over the last little while. [00:18:49] Speaker A: And they keep loosening a little bit. Every. We had that wall that popped in. [00:18:54] Speaker B: What was it, the Zion curtain. [00:18:57] Speaker A: Yeah. What was that, 20 1617. [00:19:00] Speaker B: And they started pulling that back. [00:19:02] Speaker A: But then there, then they saw. [00:19:04] Speaker B: Yeah. One. [00:19:06] Speaker A: It's, it's a terrible burden on the restaurants. It's a burden on, you know, everything. So they've started drawing that back and I think we'll see that fully go away soon. Holly is here now, so I'll bring her on camera here in just a second. 1st she will obviously want to headphones on today. You're not gonna, you're not gonna mess up your hair today? [00:19:33] Speaker B: Well, Holly, I thought the same thing about me. I wasn't gonna mess up my hair. [00:19:36] Speaker C: I'm glad that you took the risk for you. You're such a venture. [00:19:44] Speaker A: But yes, Holly's here. I'm gonna turn on her microphone. [00:19:49] Speaker C: Can everybody hear me? [00:19:50] Speaker B: Yep. [00:19:51] Speaker A: They'll be seeing you here in just a second. All right. Boom, Holly's in. [00:19:55] Speaker C: So if I could just say hi, everybody, and hello. Thank you, Councilman Wardle. I appreciate you being here. And please accept my apology. I have got an errand. Full day. [00:20:06] Speaker A: And what shoes you wearing today? [00:20:08] Speaker C: All the red wine blues. [00:20:10] Speaker A: Okay, perfect. [00:20:11] Speaker B: Well, I want to thank you because I know how busy my day is in preparing for a convention. I cannot. Can't even imagine yours. So thank you for being willing to sit down. [00:20:19] Speaker C: Oh, my goodness. It's. I love it. I'm not gonna lie. I love serving this community. I know you have been in service to this community. Community for so long. How many years in total? And if we don't count your teaching, but more like your public service. [00:20:34] Speaker B: I've been in public service for 19 years. [00:20:36] Speaker C: 19 years. [00:20:38] Speaker B: So I spent 15 years on the Twilla city council, and then I've been in this position. I'm in my fourth year right now. [00:20:48] Speaker C: So I listened to the show on my way in, and I just. I didn't want to, like, double question you about stuff I know you guys talked about, about the economics and this stuff. I don't know how much you dove into all the work that you got. [00:21:01] Speaker A: We haven't gotten into any of that. I steered them away till you got here. [00:21:06] Speaker C: I would love to kick it off by saying that. And you know this because I was very upfront about this on behalf of the party. I went to all the changing of the government meetings. I was highly vocal because of my concerns of, you know, the reasons behind it. And did this change actually prohibit those reasons behind it? And the party, I think, was pretty split, and the public was not. So it won. It won. And I support the people. That's who I represent as the Republicans, voters. I was blown away because, I'll be honest, I expected chaos. I expected. I mean, I know what it's like with three county commissioners, and I. I've seen them at their worst and at their best because they're people. And I thought that we would be lacking in seat at the table on the state's point of view. And you know that because I address that right up front. I know you all have full time jobs. I also know that you're putting in far more hours than I think the public realizes, more than a part time. And I know you're not making what the average counsel is making. I have to know because I know it's collaboration. I know it's teamwork. I know you all have different opinions, but I have to eat the humble pie because I watched five men come together, disagree behind closed doors, which it really never was. You guys have been transparent. You have your business meetings in public view, which are usually the ones that you're not voting. It's the discussion, and it's the. It's the bickering or debating, I like to call it. [00:23:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:01] Speaker C: So it's out there for everyone to see. I've attended many of those. And then you have your public meetings at 07:00 p.m. On the third Tuesday of every month, right. [00:23:10] Speaker B: First and third, yeah. [00:23:12] Speaker C: And yet you come together, and I think that chairman, you know, Hemner has done great job, and you have a cohesive group, and I guess this is a long down, way down the rail, but will you walk me through this? Because I'm still baffled to this day how you guys started a brand new change of government, adding two more people going part time. [00:23:38] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I think that. I love the question because the process was really important. And in our first two or three meetings, we came to a certain agreement. Here was the agreement. The citizens are always first. It's not us. It's not political agendas. It's the citizenry. Number two, we believe that good policy comes from good debate, which comes from good data and data that contradicts our personal opinions. So we take all things into consideration. [00:24:10] Speaker C: You. You basically use data to prove you wrong. [00:24:14] Speaker B: Either prove what we believe. [00:24:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:24:16] Speaker B: To be true. [00:24:17] Speaker C: Show me how I'm wrong. [00:24:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Or we see that we're wrong and we change our minds. [00:24:21] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:24:23] Speaker B: We also agreed that. And I, you know, I learned this in, in my last term on city council, and. And I'll be the first one to say that I always didn't behave and didn't understand this. I think wisdom comes with age. [00:24:37] Speaker C: That's true. It's very true. Well, for some of us, I'm a. [00:24:43] Speaker A: Young man here, so. [00:24:45] Speaker B: But I learned that you didn't have to dislike the person just because you. [00:24:51] Speaker A: Disagreed with the idea or dislike the idea because you dislike the person. [00:24:57] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, and that's been something that I really wish I would have known my first term on city council. I would have, because I believe this. I believe in the market, in the public space. You have to have debate. Good policy comes from good debate, which comes from differing ideas. But you can't just debate just because it's debate the difference between opinions. And I think everyone has an opinion. Everyone's entitled to an opinion. I think that's critical. [00:25:32] Speaker C: That's America. [00:25:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:33] Speaker C: That's what a republic is. [00:25:35] Speaker B: But it's the obligation of elected officials to move beyond opinion, to data and be willing to be questioned and be willing to have data challenged. And if your data and your decision is correct, the data you're challenged with will not bear out. And so that's been something. I think the other thing that we decided is. And this is something that you know, Holly, you and I had a couple of conversations early on that were hard conversations. And I remember going home, and my wife will tell you this. I stay up very late when I've had hard conversations replaying them. But I said, if there was a vote to change the government, there was a reason why, and we are not trusted. Therefore, we have an obligation in how we discuss, where we discuss who's involved in the discussions to be as transparent as possible so no one can question where. There was a lot of questioning prior how to deals were being made. And we have done that. We've, you know, all of our budget meetings are online, and I would encourage anyone to watch our budget meetings. They're. They're informative. There's great debate at times in them. You'll see us disagree, and I believe, as elected leaders, that it is our obligation to passionately argue the case for our citizenry. [00:27:08] Speaker C: Well, and you have a lot of different departments. [00:27:10] Speaker B: We do. [00:27:11] Speaker C: That have to come before and figure out their budgets, bring them into. You guys. You guys are legislators. You're no longer administrators. So now that change of government that we have allows for our county council to focus on the legislation part, and it allows our electeds to focus on their own departments and then come together at these budget meetings. And even when the commission was there, I would be sitting in on budget meetings. And, yes, those are sparks, and there's a lot going on, and every department's fighting for their budget. Right. [00:27:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:43] Speaker C: But I watched again, even through our county commissioners, and now through this, there's a come together moment, and it's almost like it's a light where you go, we did it. We balanced. Not only did we balance, we cut and we saved, and we're going to be in good shape when we revisit this in July. And what's so funny is if our federal government, even our state government. [00:28:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:12] Speaker C: Ran their budget the way our county council does, we would be in phenomenal shape. [00:28:18] Speaker B: Well, as you say that, I think it's important to know that we're stuck in an antiquated mode of budgeting right now in government and academia. And those who look at how to run governments do not agree with what many are stuck in. It's called incremental budgeting. [00:28:37] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:28:37] Speaker B: And the incremental budgeting is. [00:28:39] Speaker A: This is the r rated part of the show, folks. [00:28:43] Speaker B: So incremental budgeting takes place. When you look at what the cost of living index is and you say, okay, we're going to add 2% because the cost of living went up 2%. I'm using that as an example because it's been horrible the last three years. So we're going to increase every department's line item and bottom line by 4%. But what we haven't done is we haven't looked at those increases based upon what are our goals, are our priorities and what are we accomplishing and what are the measurables for those accomplishments. [00:29:14] Speaker C: Right. How can we show the data again? [00:29:18] Speaker B: So in our second budget, it was a fireworks meeting. I loved every minute of it. I think our county staff was shocked at the bluntness that we had with one another and with our manager's office. And we appreciate our manager's office. I want you to know, totally tangentially, our elected officials are wonderful to work with. I don't know if we always communicate the best way when we talk, and we've gotten a lot better the last two years, but when we introduced priority budgeting, everyone was skeptical. [00:29:52] Speaker C: Yeah, well, it's. It's government. What are you doing? You're changing the way things are done. [00:29:56] Speaker B: You're going to change and we're going to lay people off. I mean, those are the concerns, and those are real valid concerns. But what we showed is we did a test case just with one department. We found a 20%. I don't want to say it, savings, but we found 20% of the money that had been allocated wasn't being spent year over year over year. [00:30:19] Speaker C: Don't most. [00:30:20] Speaker B: 20%, 20%. [00:30:22] Speaker C: That is one thing in business. Don't they usually are in government? Don't they rush to spend it so they get the same amount next year? [00:30:29] Speaker B: They're supposed to. Yeah, that. That's what. Incremental budget. [00:30:32] Speaker C: But I don't love it. I don't love it. They rush it. I. I like you guys where you're kind of looking at that. [00:30:39] Speaker B: In that one department, overall, we found between 15 and 20%. And here's why the philosophy was sound. Is that because politics can play into budgeting? Departments were worried that they would not receive money in an emergency situation. [00:30:56] Speaker A: They were afraid they would fall short. Correct. Because someone was grandstanding. Or, or two people just had a disagreement up on the OR. [00:31:06] Speaker B: Let's say that we have hard goods, tractors go down, and so they would use that as a protection. So what we set up is we said, first of all, we will guarantee your emergencies. [00:31:23] Speaker C: There you go. What, in like a rainy day fund? [00:31:25] Speaker B: Yeah. We have a fund balance, and then within that fund balance, we have a fund. We allocate those funds for capital projects and other items. So when people get up and say, well, I'm going to change budgeting, that's nuance. You just can't say that. [00:31:41] Speaker C: You've got to be able to advise people. [00:31:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And so when we did that, and then we said, now state your goals. If you go on our website, every department's goals are listed in our budgeting documents. [00:31:53] Speaker C: Transparency. [00:31:53] Speaker B: Transparency. And then the measurables. [00:31:56] Speaker C: Right. So you're actually keeping track of the data. [00:31:59] Speaker B: So quarter by quarter, like, for instance, I can go to you and say, this. Here were the accomplishments in 2021 measurables. Okay. [00:32:08] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:32:09] Speaker B: We set up a new government, hired a county manager, successfully transfer, transferred the commission's administrative responsibilities. We created equitable contracts with municipalities for services. So county dollars were not being used to underwrite city services in any city. [00:32:28] Speaker C: Okay, guys, this is important because if you showed. If you watched our Wednesday night show, this is what I'm talking about. When I had mentioned the. What I noticed when people, when these townships became cities and they weren't even sure what they wanted to do, and they were coming to the county, and the county's like, wait, you became a city. This money now is allocated to our Stansbury park and our. [00:32:58] Speaker B: Unincorporated areas. [00:32:59] Speaker C: Unincorporated areas. [00:33:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:00] Speaker C: Because they're county. You're now a city. And that's. And so that right there is all of those funds get answered for. You lose that revenue from that city, but you also save that. [00:33:12] Speaker B: So then what we did is we charged for services, and because we were running a government, if you're doing an enterprise outside your jurisdiction. So when I was with Twilla City and we were providing sewer for Deseret Peak, it was outside the city limits. You charge a premium? [00:33:30] Speaker C: Sure. [00:33:31] Speaker B: We receive at least eight to 10% back on all those contracts. [00:33:35] Speaker C: I think Grantsville charges a premium to UMC. [00:33:39] Speaker B: So here's. We retired two bonds early, which allowed us to set up the bonding for Deseret Peak last year. [00:33:45] Speaker C: Yeah. Without raising taxes. [00:33:47] Speaker B: Without raising taxes. We did temporary agreements to increase public safety in the south end of the valley with each of the fire stations, because they are going out on calls and they weren't receiving the money that should. Should have been and rightly been adjusted to them. [00:34:01] Speaker C: By who? [00:34:02] Speaker B: From the county. [00:34:03] Speaker C: Okay, I see. [00:34:04] Speaker B: So, for instance, if Vernon City, which this is what happens if they respond to a call that is getting close to the county line of a vehicle that is rolled over. [00:34:18] Speaker C: Yeah. Like an off roading tourist or something. [00:34:20] Speaker B: Then that's a cost to their city. Well, but it's in the county. [00:34:25] Speaker C: It's. And isn't it under sheriff's. Isn't that sheriff's department? [00:34:29] Speaker B: But their fire department's responding, and they were getting so little per call. So we did a fire study, and we set a certain new base rate, which allowed them to buy equipment, do training, upgrade facilities so that they're getting that income stream that they should rightly get right. [00:34:47] Speaker C: And in the long run, you're saving. [00:34:48] Speaker A: Money because they might be responding out there on 36. [00:34:52] Speaker B: Correct. [00:34:53] Speaker A: By the railroad tracks, which is well outside of their city. [00:34:56] Speaker B: Correct. And so then I think it's important to understand, and you guys have said this on your program before, and I really appreciate. We are very much a data driven counsel. [00:35:07] Speaker C: You are. [00:35:08] Speaker B: We have done 13 master studies. [00:35:10] Speaker A: I know. I'm surprised you haven't, like, pushed your. Your glasses up on your nose yet or any nerd. No pocket protector. You've shown up just not representing. Well, you guys really are. [00:35:22] Speaker B: We are nerds, and we are data nerds, and we dig in very hard. So once we finished 2021 and setting up the new government, so it took us 2020 and 2021. [00:35:33] Speaker C: Can I add something? We're missing the fact that COVID is going on through all of this. And I'm curious because I know that municipalities got funding for COVID. And how did that fit in? When you guys were going through all of this? Did you separate the funds so that you aren't still working off of COVID budgetary times, or are you pre COVID times? [00:35:56] Speaker B: So our value is this one time funds are for one time projects. [00:36:00] Speaker C: Oh, that's kind of logical. [00:36:03] Speaker A: So, everyone, let's remember, the United States Marine Corps this year passed its audit. It is the only thing in the Department of Defense that has in 28 years, I think. [00:36:18] Speaker C: But most budgets right now are still on COVID level budgets because they put. [00:36:24] Speaker B: It into their day to day ops. [00:36:26] Speaker C: Yep. And they like it. [00:36:27] Speaker B: And then you see taxes increase. So our principle was, no, we're not doing that well. [00:36:32] Speaker A: And also, they fold and do things that say the federal government wants some weird thing done. They're like, oh, we'll keep doing that. [00:36:40] Speaker B: Absolutely. But then it comes with the cost, because you're always paying. I don't care what you do. There is no free government money. [00:36:48] Speaker C: Folks, we need to repeat that. Your student loans aren't free. [00:36:52] Speaker B: So when we do road projects, for instance, we got $18 million to redo the road from IPA to IpA paw. From the Wendover. That was a significant amount of money, but we're still putting up money for that. [00:37:04] Speaker C: Yeah, a significant amount. [00:37:06] Speaker B: When we. We've just received a $5 million grant to Widen Drew Bay. And when we say widen, we're not putting a new lane down. We're going to widen each of the shoulders. We will be putting a paved trail down. So it goes to another one of our goals and values, and that is that we create recreation opportunities for our citizens within the county that connect everyone in the county. [00:37:26] Speaker C: That's brilliant. [00:37:27] Speaker A: People love jogging on Druby. And. No, that's a good idea, because right now. Right now, you've got it. You've got to have a leg shorter than the other, and you've got to really like staring at alpacas. [00:37:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And, you know, when you say that, Jared, we want safety. One of the things that government should be really good at, and this is at the bottom of all of our resolutions. It's at the bottom of all of our ordinances. It was that way at Twilla City, is that anything we do should be for the health, safety, and welfare of our citizens. [00:38:01] Speaker C: Again, logical. [00:38:03] Speaker B: And so, if you use those as governing principles, it helps to weed things out. And so when we talk about accomplishments, you'll sit in a budget meeting, and we'll look at our manager and say, okay, is this doable? We've done some things that are different. We no longer do in house project management. On large projects, we build that into the contract because it's more economical. And if you think about it, you're not tying up your employee. [00:38:36] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:38:36] Speaker B: That should be doing something else. And so you're becoming more efficient, and. [00:38:41] Speaker C: You'Re probably getting a few bids, and you're contracting local. Probably. [00:38:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:46] Speaker C: And you're help establishing our economy, and you're saving the taxpayers money, and you're running this. You're running. This is something I really love about. I find it in all of you. It's always we, we, we. Incredible. Because you all are in charge of certain departments. You all, you all advise. You all have your own tasks. But it is so rare when I talk to Jared about anything, it's we, we. [00:39:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:39:15] Speaker C: You have said we probably 30 times. [00:39:18] Speaker B: Well, and, you know, each council member has a specialty. Like, I'll give you this. When Ty Hoffman came to the council with the. The county cleanup. But we work on it together. But I'm going to give ty props. That was his idea. [00:39:32] Speaker C: Yeah, we need to advertise that, too. I promised him after convention. We'll get you on here to talk more about that. [00:39:38] Speaker B: You know, one of the areas that I spent because I got challenged on it was this, this change from incremental budgeting to priority based budgeting. And one of my favorite parts of it is when I got challenged, I said, okay, I started going to academia, and I went through academic journals to see what they said in a variety of journals. So I wasn't picking and choosing my position. And I don't know if anyone's ever read an academic journal. [00:40:10] Speaker C: Sounds I'm already. [00:40:14] Speaker B: But not only did we build the case for it, we learned so much in how to do it. And so when you ask about ARPA funds, the governor asked us when the ARPA funds first came in 2021 or 2020. No, 2021. But it's right at the end of there. It was October. He said, build legacy projects. Deseret Peak, $14 million that are going into the $40 million investment are from those funds. Legacy funds for legacy projects for our. [00:40:48] Speaker C: Kids, for all of the county to enjoy. [00:40:51] Speaker B: Yes. And then we also built the business model around it and the strategy, which was it would become the center of eco tourism for our county. [00:41:01] Speaker C: Is that where we're talking about the Romney property or across the street? Across the street, yeah. [00:41:07] Speaker B: So ecotourism is where you use recreation. [00:41:10] Speaker C: Right. [00:41:10] Speaker B: So all of our ecotourism flows out of Deseret Peak. We have trails that will flow to every community. Romney's, if you go by their property, you'll see they have a trail, a paved trail, where it connects with our paved trail. Last year we paved the five mile stretch in Tooele City that now allows you to get on and ride on those back areas. We're going to continue to go through that. [00:41:32] Speaker C: Stampsbury was always meant to have walking trails around it from the very beginning, and they'll just tie right in then. [00:41:39] Speaker B: Absolutely brilliant. So now you're seeing, we're connecting communities. I think the other thing that became very, very, very important to us when we talk about transparency, and I, you know, I think that sometimes people mistake conflict for contention. [00:41:58] Speaker C: That's fair. Well, and you're, let's just be honest, if anyone knows, Scott, you're a very passionate person. Highly passionate. [00:42:08] Speaker B: Yes. [00:42:10] Speaker C: I think that that is something that comes out in you and it's, it's something that if people don't know it, they're kind of shocked by it because you normally are very soft spoken and reasonable and thoughtful. And when you get passionate, it can, I mean, I know if you can look pretty hard like that. Yeah. [00:42:28] Speaker B: You know, I found this quote from a political scientist. Can I just share it with you, please. He said this. The finest friends must sometimes be stern sentinels who will insist that we become what we have the power to become. The no. Of such stern sentinels is more. Is more to be prized than the yes of others. If we are going to stand as vanguards for the taxpayer. And we believe this, and I think you see it in the culture of the county, the government doesn't exist because the county needs it. No, the government exists because the county exists. [00:43:14] Speaker C: Right. [00:43:15] Speaker B: And anytime. [00:43:16] Speaker C: And you need the people and. [00:43:18] Speaker B: But when we take tax dollars, they're not ours. So we have to stop talking about it as well. This is our general fund. No, it's not. It's the taxpayers. And we take it by force. [00:43:30] Speaker C: Right. [00:43:31] Speaker A: We are so clipping. It's not ours. [00:43:34] Speaker C: It's gonna. [00:43:35] Speaker A: I'm just gonna send that to everyone. You know, government beyond this county, we take it by force. That's another thing that I don't think is recognized outside of. Outside of our bug. Small governments. [00:43:50] Speaker C: This is the thing. I don't know how often you watch the show, but we find that a lot of the people who watch our show, not that, don't live in our county, they literally think we're making it up, that we feel like we are in a really special place. Because, I mean, you look at this election, we've got one race. We've got a tremendous county clerk. And her department is tremendous. [00:44:16] Speaker B: Yep. [00:44:17] Speaker C: We've got an amazing county manager. Our county council has done incredible things. Our sheriff has done incredible things. The surveyor, now the assessor, she's new to the office. And I'd appreciate if they would just bring the assessment a little bit down because tax is hurt. But it's such a cohesive and it feels like everyone's on the same team. And even our. I mean, I was in a meeting yesterday with the. Just with the chamber that Jared hosted with all the legislators going over session. And I know you guys work with these legislators closely. [00:44:54] Speaker B: Well, and the accusation that. And this is a good accusation, and I'm first going to. I've got to say this. Our elected leaders differ with us, but we are differing in good ways with differing because they should. Their job is to passionately advocate for their office. [00:45:14] Speaker C: It's true. [00:45:15] Speaker B: But when we sit down and we talk about, okay, you're a part time government, so we're not on the hill. And I heard this comment recently. No, I am on the hill. I'm on the hill twice a week. But I'm also staying at work for an extra 3 hours so I can be on the hill. I'm on the hill in Zoom meetings. As I'm doing other things in my paperwork, I am constantly talking. I'll share this with you. I taught so I'm a religious educator by trade and I teach at the university adjacent to the University of Utah. I'm the associate director of the Institute of Religion which we have almost 3000 students. I'm in charge of all the curriculum, I'm in charge of all the class scheduling, I'm in charge of all the budgeting, I am in charge of daily building operations. [00:46:06] Speaker C: It seems like a nightmare to be working in a college even though it's in a faith based job. It feels like it would be a nightmare. [00:46:12] Speaker A: Honestly, faith based college sounds like an even bigger nightmare because you're getting battled from two directions from, I love everything from the religion and from the, the education side of it. And those two especially over the last 40 years have been at each other's throats. [00:46:36] Speaker B: Well, I will say this, we have great partners and have worked very hard with our partners at the University of Utah. [00:46:43] Speaker C: Go you. [00:46:43] Speaker B: So when I say this, what I'm going to say, I don't say this. So anyone looks at me and goes, well, you're too busy to serve in government or poor Scott, it's hot. I get to work on Mondays about eight in the morning and I finish teaching about 08:00 that night. And my tradition is if I make it through that day I get to have a double cheeseburger from McDonald's. [00:47:07] Speaker C: If you make it through that day. [00:47:10] Speaker B: So I was, I was in the drive through at McDonald's ordering my double cheeseburger and I got a call from the legislature. It was on a night of an extremely controversial topic that Tooele county had been brought into. I canceled my order and I was on the hill within five minutes and I was there for another hour. [00:47:31] Speaker C: You don't want to tell us what it was? [00:47:32] Speaker B: I do not. [00:47:33] Speaker C: Okay. Can I just say though, and this is for people and I don't know if I, this county council had, because they are part time and have full time jobs, they had covered their bases by having someone lobby for them and give them that seat at the table. But that lobby is near merely there to be the guide for you because the lobby, the lobbyists will call you and say, hey, toll counties on the docket today, we're going to need you to come up and those of you that can be there are there. It's not like you just sit back and get a report at the end of session. I know that you are up there. [00:48:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And oftentimes the way that we work is we work with one on one phone calls. We'll meet for lunches. And so, you know, to say that that Twilight county and Holly, I think your criticism of the new form of government was taken very seriously by us. And I appreciated it because what it said is, and I'd been in government before, I had been on the hill a little bit as a city councilman. Not a lot, but we were on the hill. And one of the examples is, and I hope the citizens understand this is last year we had our funding for phase two and phase three of mid Valley highway taken away from us from the transportation commission, and it was pushed out to 2038. [00:48:54] Speaker C: Why? [00:48:56] Speaker B: There were a lot of reasons. [00:48:57] Speaker C: They rank it on level of importance, which we learned through another project and. [00:49:02] Speaker B: Prepared, being prepared to beach, shovel ready. And we weren't able to get an agreement between a lot of people on where the routing should be on phase three or phase two, which is really the south end. [00:49:16] Speaker C: Yikes. [00:49:17] Speaker B: And so as soon as that money was taken, I sit on the Wasatch front, regional council's board of directors. We immediately came back. We met, we created a strategy. We used the lobbyists to help us implement that strategy. We had the transportation commission here in November. We are so grateful for the mayors who came and spoke on behalf of that. And hopefully that that funding will be restored and our timeframe is going to come back. We believe it will this year. [00:49:45] Speaker C: Well, that got fast tracked on its own because it was supposed to be a 20 year project and it did take great collaboration. I know there's a lot of, a lot of hands in that mid Valley highway. [00:49:55] Speaker A: They started in the seventies. [00:49:57] Speaker B: Well, the planning, they planned it. But when we, when you talk about being a part time councilman, even when I was with Twilla City, it was never part time. No, I remember there was a period of about three months where I worked 40 hours a week at my job. I'd get off at three in the afternoon and I'd work till nine or ten at night on how we would work to solve some fiscal problems that came about because of a lawsuit. [00:50:27] Speaker C: You guys had a lot going on. [00:50:29] Speaker B: We did. [00:50:30] Speaker C: And I, like I said in the last interview regarding Twill city council, my mother lives in Tooele City. And so when she did move here, that's when I started to pay attention. And that's when the taxes went up. And the one thing that is pretty extraordinary to me is here. I'm ready to fight for these veterans and these people on Social Security and their property taxes and their houses paid off. I don't have to. She gets a benefit for the veterans and she gets a benefit being Social Security. So property taxes are not something that she is losing sleep over or going in debt over. And that's in Twilight City. [00:51:12] Speaker B: And yeah, I think you know our philosophy as a council, we're in agreement on this and we debate these things every year. What are our principles, what are our values? What are we going to guide the budget with? So, for instance, our opening value on budget and still is this is we will make the most effective and efficient use of the taxpayers dollar and now we will have excellence in services. So we're building and we have great employees that assist in that. We don't have perfection. I don't know if you ever get to perfection, but I do know this, that we are striving for excellence every single day in our county government. And that when we fall short, we go through, I call it a postmortem. When we fall short, we're going to go look at why, we're going to see how it fell apart or what didn't work. We're going to go fix it. And that doesn't mean that people are bad, it just means we're progressing. The term I love, and I write about this a lot. I'm in the middle of a doctorate in strategic leadership and business, that's all. But I write about full time job. [00:52:22] Speaker C: County council full time, and he's getting a doctorate. [00:52:25] Speaker B: Well, my wife will tell you, if I'm not busy, I'm a menace. [00:52:28] Speaker C: Does your wife even know you? Do you guys see each other? You guys are probably like teenagers dating. You're like once, a couple times she's. [00:52:35] Speaker A: Got a day off and she's like, you need to get out of this house. [00:52:38] Speaker C: Yeah, she's too used to it being. [00:52:40] Speaker B: Actually, she's the one who really encouraged me to get this doctorate. [00:52:43] Speaker C: I have no doubt. [00:52:44] Speaker B: And she said, but the term that I really use and I write a lot about is failing forward, brilliant. If you're not innovating, you're not failing forward. [00:52:54] Speaker C: That is brilliant. That is such an easy way to tell people to keep going. And failure is a lesson. It's not defeat. [00:53:01] Speaker B: So when you see, and you're going to see that county governments made mistakes, I will tell all the citizenry, and I hope this is broadcast on radio stations and on tv and everywhere else, we will post mortem it, we will find out where the problem was. It will be corrected so we never walk that road again. And that's why I think, you see, when we do budget, we're going to put money in a place, we're going to say we're going to do it, we're going to do it. If we don't do it, then we're not doing our jobs. [00:53:34] Speaker C: Can I just say that this is why, and this is probably me just, and my beliefs and the stuff I personally believe in as a Republican. This is why I like it being a partisan race, because everything you just lined up is absolutely the principles of our platform. And that's easy to do. And you can represent an entire community, regardless of their political beliefs, based on those simple principles. And you're fair to everyone, and you're looking out for everyone because everyone needs fiscal responsibility, even if they want more things or more, you know, things more, what is it, social programs or whatever. [00:54:21] Speaker B: But when we look at that, you know, when I left the Twilla city council that last year, I ran two resolutions that I, and I had written a lot of law when I was with them, and we passed a lot of law on housing, on development, on. We wrote a law, my daughter asked a question one day about smoke shops, and we wrote the first law west of the Mississippi on them because of my daughter's question. But two of the most important things, and they really do fall in line with the republican principles. We wrote a resolution, and it was about the sanctity of life. And it was during, I heard you say the other night, the summer of love. Yeah. When the riots were happening, and how important life is for every person born unborn. Race, color, creed, sex. Every way that we talk about religion, life is important. The second one was, and I love the writings of Arthur Brooks on this, about civility versus contempt. Civility is a term that we use to say that you and I are going to get along. That's not civility. Civility is in the moment of disagreement that I'm going to honor you as a human being. [00:55:48] Speaker C: Right. [00:55:49] Speaker B: Contempt is, I'm going to destroy you as a human being. That is so much ingrained in our politics right now that we can't get anything done. [00:55:59] Speaker C: It's true. [00:56:01] Speaker B: Just implementing those sort of things changes us. Now, that doesn't mean we don't have differing viewpoints. You know, I, as I listened the other night about the protests during that summer, and I appreciate Tony's statement that he stands up for the First Amendment. I will fight to the death for any man on the first amendment, especially if we disagree. Especially. But he and I disagree on that. And we disagreed because of nuance. [00:56:31] Speaker C: You disagreed on walking in protest? [00:56:35] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:56:35] Speaker C: And rather than, I know this is something, too, that I know from the county commission at the time, they reached out, I mean, to the sheriff's office. The sheriff definitely wanted to be a part of this just to keep the peace, because we were just coming off of, you know, in Salt Lake City. We'd never seen riots in Salt Lake before. And I had people I love dearly on the front line of that that were injured by rioters and these law enforcement officers. And I know the sheriff had sent all of his free deputies to go cover, UhP, who had to be. This was a scary, scary time, and people were getting killed. This was, this was serious. And a lot of people were getting killed throughout that summer. And then for it to be coming to Tooele county, people were invited to come and speak, and you had decided against it. [00:57:31] Speaker B: So what had happened, though, and this is the nuance that most people don't know, is this was the week after Salt Lake. [00:57:38] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:57:39] Speaker B: The intelligence was the groups that incited the riots in Salt Lake were coming to Twila. We had been quietly warning businesses of this, and businesses had been moving fixed assets away from their companies, boarding up windows, and we had been asked not to, as elected officials go to those protests. [00:58:02] Speaker C: Well, you would be a target. [00:58:04] Speaker B: Exactly. And the police would have to be working to protect us, or we could incite it because we were there. So I absolutely understand why Tony did what he did. This is where I think he and I would disagree. I not only stayed away, but we worked behind the scenes with the groups who came to find better ways. And that is one reason why the resolution on the sanctity of life was written. And so we do differ. And I really appreciated what Tony talked about, and this may sound odd in politics. I'm glad he's running because I think that as an elected official, you should have people challenge you. I agree with you, and challenge the thought process and challenge what the results are. Unfortunately, I disagree that he's the better candidate. I believe I am. And I think that over the course of my service, whether in the city or on the county, we've approached it the same way. And my wife has been such a great asset in this. When we sit down, we don't say we're going to run. We start out with, okay, if we want, if we run, what are we going to accomplish? [00:59:21] Speaker C: Yeah, what are our goals. [00:59:23] Speaker B: And in every race I have ran, I have outlined four goals to be accomplished. This is my fifth campaign, second for this office. In that amount of time, there are only two goals we haven't accomplished. [00:59:40] Speaker C: Are you going to share? [00:59:41] Speaker A: Yeah. What are those goals? [00:59:42] Speaker B: The two goals? The first one was in 2001. I want to say it was 2001, 2000 in that area. We flooded and water went down 700 south and divided the community. Because it was a river. My goal was to get that piped, to go underground, to put much like they do in Salt Lake with Snow. [01:00:07] Speaker A: Creek, and maybe build a cistern at the bottom and collect. [01:00:12] Speaker C: That's an expensive goal, though. [01:00:13] Speaker B: It wasn't, and it was too expensive. And so what we did do is by the time, I think in my 13th or 14th year, we worked with our city engineer, Paul Hansen, and he did a great job planning this. Our city attorney and our public works department, and bought properties where we could curb both sides so that the water wouldn't go into people's yards. It had happened during that flooding. I knew all of those people very well in my church responsibility. I was the bishop of that area. And I will never forget the damage to homes. And these were new homes and people who couldn't afford it. And in a lot of ways, insurance didn't take care of it. That was one goal. The second goal that I have yet to accomplish is. And we're not done, is the connecting of water systems within this valley. Yeah, we thought we were there when I was here last time. We thought we were there within weeks. We're not. We've taken two or three steps backward, but we're working towards that with our federal officials, our state officials, and we will continue talking with our local officials. But we have to understand one very important principle. Every day we don't do this is a day we get closer to the edge of catastrophe and development. And when I say catastrophe, the catastrophe is the state is going to come in and mandate zoning. Because how can they do that? Because they do. They've done it on affordable housing. And that we are the overflow community for the Salt Lake economic engine. [01:01:59] Speaker C: So they can override you guys. [01:02:03] Speaker B: We face this the last five years in every session that they can come. The zoning process, they do it in a lot of different ways. We don't want that. And we appreciate our legislators not doing it, but we've got to come with a solution. Number two, we have to understand that growth is going to come to this county. So we must be responsible and proactive. When we were in Washington, DC, one of the tell alls is we deal with a lot of things when we go to DC. We deal with transportation, we deal with national defense, we deal with security. In my first breakfast with a member of one of our senator staff, his first question is, where are you on water? [01:02:47] Speaker C: And that's your first question to them, where are you on our water? [01:02:50] Speaker B: And that was. And when we said, we've taken a step back, they were stunned, and they said, what are you going to do to get it back on track? And we are working very hard. We'll go back into discussions, but there is so much that has to be done. [01:03:07] Speaker C: Collaborations. [01:03:08] Speaker B: Collaborations are difficult. [01:03:09] Speaker C: They are, and especially when we're in a county as big as we are and as different. See, I don't think a lot of people understand that we're not a county where everyone's the same. I mean, Jared and I are opposites in almost everything, but we are all luscious hair, we're all free thinkers. We all love our small town mentality, feel we love our neighbors, we love our community, but we're all individuals that are highly. I mean, we'll put the flag see in and we'll hold our ground. So I can only imagine just with me being in an unincorporated area and me having an issue with my taxes and going to Jared and saying, look, I need you to step in here. And he's like local government first, and he helped us collaborate, and we're still not really happy. But the collaborations are not easy, as much as people think that, oh, well, you all should just be on the same page for the betterment of Twilla county. We should be, but there's a lot of sacrifice that gets involved in that, and there's a lot of promises, and you got to make sure you can keep promises. It's not easy. [01:04:19] Speaker B: And one of the things that I believe that we've really tried to hold to is our word is our bond, and that's cost us some money because there were agreements made prior to us coming here, but our word is our bond, and we will continue to work to get water taken care of. We will continue to work with the cities on roads. I don't know if the citizenry knows this, but there has been an unprecedented investment in partnership between the cities and the counties, in roads, in fixing them, improving them, or building them of $6 million in the last three years for the whole county. That that's for cities. That's just what we've done in cities. [01:05:05] Speaker A: That's just helping out that's just helping out inside the cities. [01:05:09] Speaker B: Correct. [01:05:09] Speaker A: If anyone has any questions, we got them for a little under ten more minutes. Feel free to shoot questions at us. We're going to keep chatting. [01:05:17] Speaker B: And then, you know, when it comes to the school district, we're working with the school district on, as we rebuild the Deseret peak pool to be able to cover it so that schools can move in there. And we're working on that collaboration and. [01:05:30] Speaker C: Have their sporting events and unifying the county. [01:05:33] Speaker B: So collaboration, to me, is one of the most important things. And I saw the power of it when we built the educational corridor. And I think anyone who watches this, if you go to a neighbor or go to your street and say.