where we go. Okay. Well I guess let's go back a little bit to your history. When
did you first run for school board? School board. I believe it's late 90s,
98, 99. I had completed a two-year study with the Wisconsin World Leadership
Program and that had exposed you to lots of different policy, public policy roles
in the state and federal government relative to transportation, education,
government regulation, wetlands. I mean it just, it was a two-year program that
basically we got together every eight, nine weeks for about five days and it
was just a very great explore to think. They put that group of people together
by I think hand-picking them. They purposely had people that were far right,
far left, central, centrist, blatant Republicans, blatant Democrats, blatant
independence. All walks of life, it was called the World Leadership Program but
probably most everybody came from either a small community, a number of us were
farmers, but it was it was it was small cities, small communities, villages and
there were a few people from from the cities. So so we had a great diverse group
of people that would meet and while the subjects were very insightful, I think
the challenging discussions that we had privately at night were probably the
most rewarding because I was trying to figure out your perspective and you were
trying to figure out my perspective and why I saw it that way or why you you
know I you saw it that way I saw it this way. I mean when we we had most of
those seminars were in the state of Wisconsin. We we had a couple that were
out of the state. We had one up in northwestern United States in the Columbia
River area. We had one in Washington DC and we had an international program. The
elk growth of that was to become more involved. I was definitely at a different
perspective. A couple of the earlier program participants had become
representatives. One was a senator, one was an assemblyman that I was aware of.
And my daughter had reached the age of going to school and my school didn't
offer all day kindergarten and we felt she should be an all day kindergarten
and motivated me to run. And we had used school choice to put my daughter in a
full-day kindergarten program and we did the same thing with my son. And that
irritated some of my fellow board members on the school board while my
children were no longer in the school district even though I was on the board
and we had finally gotten five-day all-day five-year-old kindergarten in
place. And I said well that's illustrative of the risk that we share
when we don't offer maybe a program into parents want. They can take their
children publicly someplace and then they find a school they like and it's
like then they have to decide when they change that location. We did
eventually bring them back into the Fort school district but they stayed a
little bit longer in the building we had them in because we liked the staff and
our children liked it and so we made the extra effort for that time period. But
you know it was just there's a matter given back to the public. In my youth I
couldn't have imagined myself having done that. There was probably a time
period when I was courting my spouse that we had a great discussion over
whether family and size of family or if there'd be family. If you can imagine
young people growing up not necessarily liking the parenting that they're
receiving and you know your parents go from being maniacal overlords to gifted
with wisdom as you go from 15 to 30 and you go from not understanding them to
loving them for everything they gave you going at the time they were giving it
to you you didn't think it was enough. So when you were on the school board you
got on for reasons you know for a lot of people personal reasons and to see
some change when did you start to understand the financing system and
some of the challenges that are presented? Well budgeting is is always an issue
it wasn't uncommon from the get-go that you had to work with revenue caps
because they were in place for some five six years before I got on board and it
was always interesting to you know listen to the business manager make his
presentation and and he would talk about we were Fort Atkinson was in this
tertiary aid situation at the time and dependent upon where we went with our
spending level we could either be penalized or ingratiated because of the
tertiary aid so if you were spending a little bit too much you might get you
might lose some of your funding that you were otherwise eligible for so it was
kind of a balancing game. It was it was also a challenge to go through the
negotiation process with with staff and it was it was very challenging when
when you understand that this is about what we can do I think at that time the
revenue cap was still allowing it to grow with inflation and so if you knew
that inflation was two percent or five percent you knew you weren't going to be
able to work much different than that and so you had to work within that and
there was a time period years ago where unions were getting monumental benefits
relative to negotiations because they didn't seem to cost much health care
didn't cost much and you could offer health care you could offer on standing
health care and that was starting to change health care was starting to ramp
up its premium charge the the there were some other costs that were starting to
increase along with with health care but retirement benefits not everybody was
putting in what they needed to be putting in to properly fund that
retirement well long-term as an issue I mean that's that's part of the problem
what this legislature dealt with with the city of Milwaukee this this by
Neil session was some I'll call it some miss miss planning or mismanagement of
their retirement system and the numbers they were using to project whether or
not they were saving enough or putting enough aside further the commitments they
had made to their future retirees so I enjoy numbers I've you know it wasn't
uncommon for me to to get into that minutiae and when someone would consider
a one percent change I could okay so that's about $500,000 in budget yeah
and the manager would agree to that yeah that's that's about right and so I
could understand those so it was you wanted to do things but you wanted to
do a very balanced assessment and and is that really the best place to invest
that next piece of improvement say to that educational system and if it was
well then that's fine but you have to convince the other board members that
that's maybe the place to do it too because not everybody necessarily sees
it that way the the 5k programming was a motivator to get on the board the
first time we brought that out we still had to retain a couple sections of what
we'll call half-day 5k program because their parents that didn't want to give
their children up they wanted their children at home and so we offered that
and I don't think it lasted but one year maybe maybe we had a section left in the
second year but while the parents were just they were up in arms to a degree
that we were going the full day it didn't take very long for them to
recognize the educational benefit that their children got out of the out of the
all-day 5k so that was that was the start of it the the it was just you would go
into negotiation and you could have the best plan and say well here's what we're
going to get we're going to get a 4% increase and if we do this 4% increase
here's our cost of property in our buildings you gotta get it this is what
we can offer and you make that off and you get suddenly rejected like a half
armor and you're like wow that was well received they want more no we can't
get it it isn't available and then that dance would take place over the next
eight nine months and you'd spend a lot of time in committing these meetings
negotiating and you go round and round and round and about the time it was time
for the contract to be signed when there was no you know the drop dead date and
low behold be almost be back right where we started a few changes a few
nuances perhaps but it was disappointing that we had to go through that dance
process knowing ultimately we're going to end up in the same place so if we
flash forward to today how well do you think most of your colleagues understand
school financing from from the inside point of view not just the state budget
but from having served and be observing a local budget you're speaking of my
colleagues here in this building yes
many do not understand it it's a convoluted challenging system because
one of my disappointments on the school board was of all the regulatory
mandates that are out there that you have to comply with you could come up with a
good idea and then be informed that oh no we can't do that because we got to do
this instead we've got so much time committed to this we got so many
dollars committed to that no that's not going to work that's in conflict with
some other ruler regulation I don't know that there's many in this building that
have served extensively on the school board there are those that have don't
get me wrong I think there's there's a number of members have served on
school boards whether or not they got involved in the detail of budget
development do not know because every district is different and I think the
level of commitment that a school board member might make to understanding that
can change quite can be quite varied as well so your question was how many
understand it and I would say few it because it's so challenging and so
convoluted it's tough to communicate that to the public because you got this pot
coming here for that you got this pot coming from there that this oh we got
this regular and then oh yeah that's what's coming from the state and then
you're allowed so much from the from your local taxpayer it it's just a very
challenging thing to put together and the public sees their property tax bill
and you can affect the mill rate you can lower the mill rate and their
tax bill still goes up and they're like how can that be well their assessments
changed there's just it's just a very challenging way of community it's far
easier to sell the message vote no don't increase taxes or it's a simple
message and if I don't want my tax bill to go up voting no seems to be a simple
way of controlling my tax what the vote no doesn't tell you is you're gonna
lose this you're gonna lose that you're gonna lose this you're gonna lose that
those are what you're gonna lose and you don't tell the public in advance of
what the reductions are gonna be because that's that's that's basically then
cannibalizing your own system because those who are on the chopping block know
they're on the chopping block and those who are safe have no concern because
you've already identified them so the the it's just if school funding was just
X amount per child period doesn't matter what it's spent on where it's going what
it's doing okay it's coming from GPR funds and it's $20,000 a child so be
it dog it's not that simple
you want me to wake that up yeah so me it can be the same as it's love to the
rest of the interview okay so you want me to do that you can get back on that
page that it wasn't I know what I did wrong let's try it now
so when you see what happened at Fort Atkinson the last few times they tried
to pass a referendum what happened there what in your opinion what was the the
message from the school about the need and what was the the answer from the
public about their ability to pay I don't think a vote yes or no has much
people might think it has to do with their ability to pay I think it's
willingness but in our people that that tax bill is monumental I think of
seniors with fixed incomes or whatever reduced incomes from what they had when
they're in their working years the I think the the last defeat that took
place might have been a couplefold one was for the first time I think the
community had two referendums on the ballot one was for fire in EMS and one
was for the school district and they were both what I'll call fairly
significant endeavors and I think the public it just psychologically said I
can't afford both I've given the school a bunch in the past we're gonna do fire
in EMS this time I think that's one way of looking at that they made a choice
they'd fund one referendum but not the other I also think that in today's media
world we no longer have our local newspaper we have the Jefferson Daily
Union don't get me wrong but it's it's been bought out by APG and that newsroom
and the hordes building is basically vacant that used to be filled with with
staffers for the Daily Union and the paper doesn't appear to give those
local communities near the print that that paper used to provide that's nothing
against APG it's just part of the economics of the world same thing
happened with our local radio station there used to be a gentleman there that
did a lot of work in keeping the public informed on their local government
officials and that time is no longer dedicated to daily weekly basis for the
public to get their information so there's a challenge to get the message out and
communicate that message and where do you put that message where do you if you
go digitally where do you boost it and then who's looking for it are the
seniors on the on the computer searching you out or the seniors reading what
little hard-print media they can still get a hold of because that's what they
grew up with so it's challenging to get that message out and I think that was
part of the deal that that the administration and the school board had
was the challenge to communicate their message and the value of what they were
desiring and and I think between that lack of ability to communicate that
message and the competition from a first-time referendum on fire and EMS
services was just it made it a different environment than what they had been
exposed to in the past so I want to go back to 2001 and when the legislature
was passing that particular budget and at the time the argument from Robin
Voss and Republicans was that there doesn't need to be any more dollars per
pupil in funding from the state because of a large amount of Essar funds coming
in from the federal COVID relief facts you're talking 2021 not yes I'm
about 2021 to 2023 the budget before 2001 I think even predates Robin yes
you're it's I apologize and they gave a flat increase or is no increase to
schools for two years yeah and at the time the argument from Democrats and
school funding advocates was like this will create a fiscal cliff we will see
it in a couple years when the Essar dollars run out schools will be in a
tough precarious situation and this is where we are with the nearly half the
school districts in the state have gone to operating referendum since then and
like 80 in April is there like 90 well I think 90 is with some capital
some capital okay is it a pretty straight line from the legislature's acts to in
that budget to this point or is it you have to look the whole arc of school
financing to see that if you look historically back we withdrew the indexing
I don't know 15 years ago or more and if you were to look at funding from the
time we did that till today there's some $3,000 or more shortfall per
student if all we had done was index the revenue caps as we had during the
early 90s early 2000s had we done that the shortfall now is over $3,000 per
student that's a monumental change during that same time period we've also
ramped up the dollars that we've siphoned off to take care of the other
educational system that we're supporting which is the private and charter and
voucher schools so there's there's a double whammy there the the I'm trying to
get repeat the question is it a straight line from the 2021 budget and to the
today's operating referendas that are going around or is it a bigger longer
mark when we when we stopped indexing we basically the the outflow of that is
working to balance local school budgets by referendum and so basically every
school district is facing this cliff every three four years depending upon
how long they run their sunset referendum and if they never turn any of those
sunset referendum into recurring referendum the cliff just keeps getting
higher and higher and higher and it when I was on the board it was not lost on
me that if we didn't turn some of those referendum into recurring dollars we
would eventually be asking the public for on a 30 million dollar budget for
15 million dollars and the public's gonna eventually say man I can cut my
property tax bill by a thousand bucks vote no and the devastating impact that
has on that local school district is we make eight half the staff because we
just whacked the budget and there is no recall from from from a failed
referendum you you have reductions you that's what it is no it's been building
up over time had we and I spoke about the three thousand dollar shortfall per
student today and it's basically over the last 15 years 12 years when this
indexing stop so we've been given dollars but they've never kept up with
inflation and so the only alternative that school districts had are to run
referendum the makeup for the difference and I'm not certain that that the local
property taxes where we should be even funding our public education I know there
was a time back years ago the two-thirds funding and I'm beginning to wonder if
we shouldn't be doing a hundred percent funding of GPR numbers and and
eliminate the local property tax and fund our education system in the state of
Wisconsin from GPR across the board so that those who are earning income can
actually pay for the education system and those that are on fixed income we
lose seniors every year because they basically get taxed out of their home
and so if we didn't have that recurring unfunded expense adding on to their
property tax of their home that they've worked their entire life to pay for and
in retirement they have a reduced income a fixed income so you may not think much
of increase in property tax five percent a year or let's say four percent a year
well at four percent a year your property tax is going to double in 18 years and
that's let's just say in general that might be the life expectancy after
retirement for most everybody so if your property tax today for school is
two thousand about at the time of your death it'll be four thousand at just a
four percent growth it's a rule 72 you take 72 and you divide it by your rate
of growth if it's 12 percent a year with inflation takes it six years to double
in cost if it's six percent growth it takes it 12 years to double it's just
rule 72 it's a simple little formula to kind of see what the growth is and so if
your budget is growing let's say you're 30 million dollar budgets growing four
percent a year well in 18 years your 30 million dollar budgets could be 60
million dollars to do the same thing you're doing today nothing else changes
nobody's gotten ahead of inflation if inflation's that same rate your if
your teachings salaries went from 50,000 to a hundred thousand during that same
18 years and inflation was four percent those teachers are no better off in 18
years and what they were today it's just simple it's a simple math so when you
look at the the situation that we have with funding right now the reality is
school districts are forced to go to operating referendum absolutely you
talked about the the indexing stopping was that part of Act 10 or was that a
different walker air policy I think it happened after Act 10 okay I think it
happened in 1112 okay I'm not positive that predates me a little bit here and I
don't have the memory back on the school board but it the chart that I'm
looking at here basically shows it stopping either 9, 10, 10, 11 but it
becomes dramatic in 1112 yeah so with the do you think do you think the public
understands the fiscal cliff and the inflationary pressure and the state and
I mean it's such a convoluted system when it comes to them going into the
voting booth they're gonna look at a question that's gonna ask them to raise
their own property taxes and that's the only thing before them do people
actually have enough information do you think it's specially given the
constraints of where information can come from it's really challenging to get
into that great discussion in depth because they can't comprehend it their
eyes will glaze over within a matter of minutes because if you if you talk to
school business managers and ask them to explain it to you in a half hour you
will be partway into it okay and and you'll have lost the first 15 minutes of
that conversation you'll just know oh my god this is complicated why would you
go into the business of being a school business manager and those people that
are in it are trying to figure out a way how can they provide those educational
services and still keep the tax but it's again it's a balance that give those
people credit because they are doing a service to their community whether they
live in it or not as much as they can to try to make it work and keep tracking
those dollars and and people talk about waste and what not I'm like well we've
been cutting waste apparently since God created dirt and we're still cutting
waste a little doubt my mind that you can find oh yeah I could have done a
better expense there but that was $40 or that was $2,000 it was whatever you
made a choice and something didn't quite go right but no it is very
challenged for them when they go into the booth to say I need I need specially
I need this I need this no they can't see it that way they basically have to
go in the booth probably with their mind already predetermined that they're
satisfied that I want my grandchildren I want my great-grandchildren they have
the same type of educational opportunities I received because I got a
good education out of this school and today we're doing way more than what we
did before but the naysayers might say man I could save a hundred bucks and we
shouldn't be doing all this mental health and we shouldn't be spending this
money on on school counselors because whatever the reason might be we're
spending too much money on transportation or you know they really
didn't need that last security thing that they invested in we don't have any
crime here we didn't need to put in that that safe locked door that cost me
$10,000 I mean it's a door how can a door cost $10,000 it don't matter what it is
or what the cost is someone can come up with a simpler story to say no then you
can try to explain factually what how convoluted the the funding program is
and and because it's complicated it's we hold annual school board meetings we
used to fund our school budget our schools at the annual school board meeting
usually held in July or August why are we at referendum well there were tax
payers it didn't like seeing their tax bills going up that complained enough to
their representatives you need to do something about controlling taxes because
I show up at the annual meeting and I'm the only one that shows up and I vote
no and everybody else says yes and my taxes go on was the school board
abandoning those taxpayers no that school board and that administration did
their best due diligence to educate the children that they're charged with by
statutory requirement and maybe occasionally do something beyond it a
little thing here a little thing there they're not trying to just spin I mean
we went through the baby boom generation when we were building buildings every
other year to keep up with some of these school districts we have buildings that
are now 70 years old and they're very challenging to maintain they're very
challenging to update with new technology and so some have knocked down those
buildings and you're knocking down a good building and now you're asking me to
build a 20 million dollar replacement building and that you know maybe maybe
the analysis that's been done because of the new code requires because of the
new regulations that are required of schools to update the old building
costs us 15 million dollars we can build a brand new building the right size with
the adequate heating and cooling capacities more appropriate what I want
to call science labs or whatever it may be for five million dollars more we get a
whole new building that's functional from the get-go with all the technology
built into it instead of making new it's sort of the experience I had when I
promoted geothermal and Fort Atkinson probably some 20 years ago we had buildings
that we weren't cooling we had buildings that we couldn't properly heat we needed
to upgrade our systems and I spent a lot of time and effort studying geothermal I
had been in a building that was heated by geothermal they were spending third of
the energy third of the bill the heat of building that was twice the size of a
building that was heated conventionally twice as big a building spend in a third
so it's one sixth monumental savings and and I did a lot of legwork on it I
had one board member that was that allowed me to have the time to share share
my thoughts with the rest of the board and we eventually upgraded four buildings
with geothermal heating and cooling we had residents that wanted this to only
put in heating capabilities well geothermal and the heat pumps have an
automatic reverse involved in them it's just like a refrigerator except it can
also produce heat when you flow the gas the opposite direction we only need seven
degrees of water temperature differential to pass through that heat pump and we
can either produce heat or we can produce air conditioned air and all we're doing
is circulating water through a group of wells in the earth through our pipes
going through and then we just branch off into each heat pump and each heat pump
can cover a room or can cover a group of rooms just a matter of size of the heat
pump very efficient you know so when you have heat go up in one room you don't
shut down the school building because the boiler went up you got one room that's
cool and it might not be cool for more than an hour or two while the heating
contractor comes out and makes the repair and it's a refrigeration you know it's
just it's just your little refrigerator you got in your house except it can also
produce heat it took a lot of effort to get that done and the community watched
that all go in and they watched us bury all these vertical wells in our
playgrounds under our playgrounds and then we've got into solar energy both
from an electrical and heating water at our swimming pool it was I'm not a
tree hugger it was about saving that gas bill and and now I've got a heating
cooling in a classroom where I don't cook the students in the fall I don't
cook them in the spring and I don't freeze them out in the winter or boil them
because I got one room I can't seem to stop the heat from collecting it so when
we look at the the last dozen years and the situation that school districts are
in it's been Republicans who have been in charge of the budget setting the
standard the minimums of what they're going to allow should the public factor
in partisanship when it comes to why districts are in this situation is it
your colleagues and your party that are partly to blame for this or is that too
simplistic when we talk about the totality of this
Republicans have been in charge of the buying your budgets and it's pretty clear
that most of the us Republicans want to favor school choice
voucher schools charter schools they do an outstanding job but the public
has to understand now we're now publicly funding both educational systems and I
think that you can lay claim that that the private schools do an outstanding
job of educating children but I think you mislead the public if you tell them
that our public school system is failing I don't think our public school system
is failing I think we've over regulated it I would make the comment that we've
almost regulated it to death I would also say that private schools get the
opportunity to choose not only their child but their child's parents if you
have a child who has parents that are actively involved and their educational
career I don't care where that child goes they will do good they will perform
well because they have concerned parents that want that child to succeed and
they will help that child to succeed and I think private schools vulture schools
charter schools get the advantage of that I think part of my disappointment with
that is we don't have any real accountability of those tax dollars and I
think it's unfortunate that we've sort of shielded the public from the amount of
those tax dollars that it's not a big amount when you compare it to public
education but it has it's still a significant amount the the the question
goes back to is the Republicans responsible for the cliffs that we're
anticipating I think in it's a again it's a balancing act I don't know that if we
had left it into index the relative the revenue caps there probably wouldn't be
referendum but there'll probably be some pretty pretty outspoken cries about
high taxes on the property tax bill I think what the legislature hasn't really
come to grips with is whether or not we can properly provide the support to
both the private and the public schools and if we're willing to ask the private
schools to give the same accountability that we expect of public schools I think
I think it's it's it's really disingenuous to to have all the regulations on one
form of education and very minimal regulations on the other and in
certainly not necessarily being as accountable to the tax dollars but I
think in a simplistic form you could draw the correlation that you've
stated we've been in charge of the budgeting process for the most part we've
restricted budgeting per se although we had the biggest budgetary allocation in
this biennial budget that we've had in years it really doesn't make us back to
where we were but it but it's a monumental step forward but in general
I think it's whether it's the legislature or a particular party we have
basically asked our public schools to balance their budgets by referendum and
so you're going to have a great variation among school districts if we
thought we had disadvantaged school districts when revenue caps went in
because of the districts that were so conservative prior to revenue caps
under spending what we're going to get out of referendum budget management is
even greater disparity there are going to be school districts that'll be doing
the bare minimums across the board and then you're going to have the high rent
districts that will spend almost twice as much and theoretically we will try to
tell the public that those two educational opportunities are the same
and I will suggest to you that that's misleading you're not gonna see your
career advanced very farm party politics with some of those statements that is
correct and I didn't come here to necessarily do that I'm plenty old I
have no intention to be in here 20 years I happen to think that if you can't
get something done in a few years you should move on and let someone else
try it because either you or the people you're serving with are unwilling to
serve the people so speaking of which you've got your current old district on the
map over there on the wall how much will the new district be reshaped and will
you be running again about half the new district doesn't exist in that picture
or more whether or not I'm running again is I'm likely to I'm I farm I'm not
gonna move my farm my family farm is located in the 43rd and that's where I'm
gonna probably run I still have to figure that one out with my family
because there's some things they want to have figured out we're in retirement
and family would like me to slow down I'm not motivated that way my motor is
going and I think my viewpoint is important to my party and I remember as
a youth both parties had lots of moderates and those two groups of people
could get together form legislation and pass it and we could move for both at
the federal and state level and today that's pretty well gone it seems that
the two extremes have taken over both parties both parties have the same
problems it's not it's not just I'm looking at Democratic maps previous we
were looking at Republican maps we should have passed fair maps because it's
it's much better if we have a third party drawn these maps than we have
either political party drawn and my Democratic colleagues suffered amnesia
overnight they campaigned 12 years on fair maps and like overnight they
suddenly didn't remember that I can blame my own party for not doing it a
year ago because I think a year ago we could have passed fair maps we would
have the Democrats on board with us to do it it's unfortunate for the public
because I think fair maps are critical I'm big on education I want to have my
roads work I want to have fair maps I think fair representation is important
even with fair maps drawn by a third party the Republican party is likely to be in
the majority on a routine basis because that's just the dynamics of the state of
Wisconsin unless you if the public thinks that fair maps is going to have every
district be 50-50 that's not going to be it because to do that you would have
to gerrymander so bad you'd have one-town wide 50 miles long to get a
balanced 50-50 district because of just how our demographics are located so is
the 43rd is that Barb Dietrich no Barb is in the 97th now okay she was in the
38th I believe okay the districts have all been traumatic I know you're
looking at on that path of 33rd it is south and east of me it is it is not it
doesn't the 33rd contains none of that district anymore it's got a totally new
area so then the new district that you are drawn into is the 43rd 43rd and where
does that run to is that basically it's it's the northern it's the towns of
it's the town of Cold Spring in Jefferson County it's the town of Whitewater in
Richmond in Walworth County that includes the city of Whitewater the
College of Whitewater and then go on westward you have the town of Johnstown
the town of Lima both very rural and you have the town of Harmony which
includes northeastern the city of Jamesville and then you have the town of
Milton which includes the city of Milton mm-hmm and then you have the town of
Fulton which includes the city of Edgerton okay so is that's what Mark
Spryker's old district kind of well it's parts of Mark okay okay Mark is the
senator now from the light so he would cover 43rd so it must be the 43rd 4th
and 6th no I can't be that 43rd anyway I'm trying to remember he still he'll
still be the senator Sue Connolly is retiring yeah Clint Anderson I think is
is the assemblyman that covers part of Beloit with Mark and Mark that Senate
seat now is like Western North and Western Rock County and then it comes up
I think it wraps around and goes up into Dane County a little bit I don't I
don't have those three maps just fully yeah in my mind yet but though that those
three seats are all blatantly democratic it will be unexpected of me
to survive that election because of the way the map is drawn in the population
the way it currently votes but that's where your family farm is located so
that's where you'll stay okay all right do you have anything that you any more
that you want to add along the lines of what we've been talking about here what
time is it it is ten after two okay so while you're still rolling here time
wise how long do you want to spend it takes about an hour to get to Jefferson
okay okay if we want to go to Jefferson what time do you want to be in four the
meeting starts at five thirty they said members are getting around five so yeah
if we get there by five yeah okay because the earliest any buses are going to be
back in Jefferson is basically four o'clock okay all right and all the buses
should be pretty well back in Jefferson by four thirty so we could have our
pick of the lot at that point in time so relative to what else I want to add I
don't know that I have anything in particular I want to add but I'll
invite you to ride with me to Jefferson and we can have more conversation if
you're willing to do that sure I don't need you to be videotaping me or what not
but I think you would learn more about me as a person and a candidate that you
might find either boring or irritating I don't know which may be enjoyable that
might be the long shot but the I didn't come here because I thought I was God's gift
I came here because I wanted to truly try to help my state my party try to get
a little different attitude about where we're at what I've learned is much more
challenging there are other people in this building that are light-minded we
just haven't figured out how to speak and be heard maybe or we certainly don't
outnumber those on the far right and it doesn't mean that they're wrong it's
just that's their perspective I just think that we can do a lot more for the
state working from the middle than we can from the edges there's lots of the
issues that we can address we can do much better on than what we are and we
just simply I think from a political landscape around willing to address
those because I think you made the comment relative to just recently about
me not in having a very long political career because of some of my beliefs
and that may be absolutely correct doesn't mean that attempting to do that
for the public is wrong it just that might be the reality of where the
political winds are blowing I think it's unfortunate because I think it's
important for us to represent the people and not a particular ideology the
district I ran in that 33rd a very balanced district it was almost a 50-50
district I think it was a 51-49-52-48 the gentleman I ran against was
probably very similar to me Don Veraint an extremely well-liked person he
was he had voted at times or probably did things in his party like I'm doing a
mind which doesn't endear you necessarily to leadership but you know it just I
think if this legislative body was filled with people that were more
moderate in sense I think we'd get find far better solutions than what we
currently are I think many of the solutions that we're finding now are
very one-sided and I don't know that that's necessarily right and depending upon
how much of this you share I may get a whole lot more unwelcome feedback you
know it just and yet I think it's a message somehow some people need to
receive you asked me to be comfortable you asked me to have a conversation
with you and I think we've done that I think you've also found out that you
probably only asked about a third of the questions you wanted to ask no I got
everything I needed so I speak to freely to to self-motivated it's well
speaking freely is not a rare thing in a politician but I'm actually actually
turning around to answer the question is so I appreciate that well so I think
we can wrap these and let Brandon start tearing down yep that's