WEBVTT

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Good money, good money, good
morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

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It's time now for our community connection
right here on K one and the one

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you trust being brought to you by
Arnold Moore and Ni Camp. You all

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we stay in Kidney College, tall
Grass Motors and get real ministries and once

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it's here on this July fifth,
is Commissioner Mitchandele. How you doing today,

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young man? I am well,
Tom and you I'm doing great.

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I had a great celebration of our
nation's birth yesterday and hope you had a

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great time too. Absolutely, and
now things are happening here with the commissioners

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and what have you. We it
seems like every week there's something new,

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but some of the things kind of
stayed the same for a while. I

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know that a few of the things
that stay the same are, of course

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our thoroughfares, ore roads and bridges
and things like that. Usual meeting and

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this time of year sometimes we have
some problems with the heat buckling, Yes

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sir, yes, sir, that's
of course, that's of course an ode

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issue down there on highway. Said
that, I've noticed several of the comments

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about you know, it seems to
have every year. It does so I'm

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not quite sure what that's going to
look like, but we will. We'll

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always have those conversations with the district
engineer. We did recently have a transition

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in District eight for the engineer,
so we will see what we can what

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we can get accomplished by way of
having those conversations. If we have these

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overlaps and you know who does what
and where and everything, yes, sir,

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because you know the highways run through
the county. Bit is it a

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part of the county. Well,
yeah, but there are county only maintained

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roads and thoroughfairs, and there are
a city depending on which town you're in,

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in correct, And then sometimes they
just kind of like all mixed together,

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and it's kind of hard to keep
a streets good thing. We have

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smart people who know what's going on
well, or at least there to argue,

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at least if you we're pretty good
about no, that's not mine,

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that's yours, and oh that's mine
and not yours, and we're going to

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do this and you're going to get
the road and we're now. It just

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it's always a mess, but we
try to work together and accomplish a common

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goal for a common good. Now
as a commissioner. It's just not roads

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and bridges. It's not snow removals, not patch and holes and stuff like

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that. There is the business of
the county, yes, that you look

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after. You tell us a little
bit about that. Give us a little

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thumbnail sketch. Thumbnail sketch sketch would
be basic oversight and administration of the taxpayer

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funds. We want to make sure
that as a board collectively we look at

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those on a weekly basis, kind
of the concept of take care of the

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take care of the pennies and the
dollars will handle themselves. We look at

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things on a very minuscule level to
ensure compliance with purchasing procedure and check transactions

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office by office by office weekly we
go through those claims. One of those

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transactions took place with some vehicles here
recently where Washington County opted to lease,

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purchase or lease out either equipment or
vehicles, and there was a reason for

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that. We're in a strange place
economically, we are. I approach things

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a little differently up in District one
than we do in Districts two and three

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with regard to leasing heavy equipment.
Sure, I'm not saying we won't end

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up in that position. But we
like to acquire in district one piece by

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piece through the years, okay,
and sometimes that puts us in a in

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an odd position. We've got several
other well, the two districts here both

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lease equipment, and then throughout the
state you'll see a lot of leased equipment

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because we're getting to the point with
vehicles where a the cost is excessive.

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I mean some of these things,
you're looking for five hundred thousand dollars to

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purchase this particular piece of equipment.
No swimming pool included, right, So

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then it's the maintenance behind them.
And of course, with the increase in

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technology and computers and things like that, we've all seen that with our personal

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vehicles too. So you know,
when a computer fails in a car,

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that's a that's a lofty expense.
If it fails in a greater that's a

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more lofty expense. Yeah, that
is absolutely huge. When that happens,

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I think we just lost something here. There we go, we're back on.

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But yeah, that is that is
really incredible. With costs and of

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course technology, those are those are
two huge factors to consider in anything.

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Really, so kind of tongue in
cheek and jokingly. My we recently acquired

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a new oil distributor, and I've
joked that our old one was used in

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the movie cool Hand Luke. Oh
really it was not. But it was

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interesting where we sent a couple of
personnel to the facility that was manufacturing our

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truck for some hands on training and
to watch the process. In part.

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They they kind of joked with us, this company about giving us a plaque

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because we had been using that distributor
for twenty four years. Their normal lifespan

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is ten, so we've kept it
up, been running for the last decade

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that I've been in office, but
it was fourteen years old when I came

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in. So normally they're not They're
just not designed to do what they do.

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So we've got great people on staff
that manage and maintain this equipment up

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in District one, so we're able
to do things a little differently that way.

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Not to say that we don't have
great personnel on staff in District two

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and three that take care of their
equipment, but it's just a different type

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of area, different type of road
maintenance, which is why in park districts

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are split up the way they're split
up okay, but you guys got to

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all come together. I mean you
have your own districts, correct, but

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the three commissioners each in every county
in Oklahoma have to come together and meet

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frequently in order to get things accomplished. Some of the things you have to

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take care of course, are you
know, budgets and things like that.

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And like you said, you will
re see the pennies. The dollars take

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care of themselves. But it's also
investments too, like you were talking about

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some of the investments you've just made
in your district. But when it comes

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together, like say something like for
the jail, I'm just going to pick

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on Sheriff Owen for a little bit
here. If there was something that needed

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to go into the jail that's not
a district by district thing, that is

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a consensus of the three commissioners,
you've got to come together to kind of,

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you know, work this out.
Absolutely charged. Building maintenance being another

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sure facet of the job, right. We maintain the structures and provide the

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spaces for all of the offices that
take place. The jail being the one

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that comes to mind most often,
and it's I don't want to say it's

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showing its age. We've been on
top of maintaining it, oh a sheriff's

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office, but that's an expensive endeavor. So that's just another When you run

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a twenty four to seven operation,
a hotel, so to speak, where

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you're feeding and housing a lot of
people, it gets in a hurry.

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Hospitality ain't cheap, No, it
isn't. No, it isn't. You

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know. One thing that is great
is that we're coming up with a new

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place for Washington County emergency management.
Has he been in such tight quarters and

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of course it's greatly appreciated that we
had the space to begin with. Absolutely

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absolutely no one wants to poop poo
that, but it's nice that they're going

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to get their own command center independent
of everything. And how's that coming along.

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It's coming along well, of course
everything there's delays in all of it.

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That's a that's a project. The
Commissioner Dunlap really excels in that area

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of capital TIPE construction, so he's
he's all up in the middle of that,

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all tooled up on what's going on
there. We've got good subs,

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good managers, so everything's moving in
the right direction there. But that particular

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facility is being designed with a lot
of different things in mind, from the

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emergency management and continue the continuity of
operations, if you will, by being

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built in such a way that it's
constructed to withstand any four tornado. Good

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so the primary occupied space of it
also can be split up. So if

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we suffer a huge loss of our
administration building or our court operations or something

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along those lines, we can relocate
out there with the flip of a switch

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and begin operations or continue our operations
as if they weren't interrupted. So redundancies

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are cool. Correct. Redundancies are
cool. Redundancies are expensive. You don't

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want to over plan, but at
the same time, you want to make

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sure that your your operations don't really
hit You know, you don't want to

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see the hiccup. No, no, nobody wants that. No, and

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getting ahead of it is the name
of the game here. It makes it

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it is. It is planning and
preparation. Prepare, not scare correct.

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What's going on in your district in
particular that you like to talk about,

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let people know what's going where in
that time of the year where we start

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doing our road maintenance, not start
doing our road maintenance. An ongoing endeavor

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start doing our road construction. I
will say we just finished a project over

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a by Bardow Lake, small asphalt
overlay there as far as we could afford

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to do it, and we'll pick
up a chip and seal and finish that

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off. From that point onto what's
commonly known as Virginia. It's thirty ninety

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five at transition transitions. Right about
that same point, we've got several other

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sections of road that we'll work through
and probably put some additional courses of chips

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on with this new distributor where we're
gonna kind of take it easy this year

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move into those areas we know that
we need to kind of top cap a

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little bit more. Then. The
funny thing to me about chip and seal

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roads is it's basically just a rain
coat over a gravel road. You're dealing

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with a layer of oil and three
eight to in chips and we put two

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coats down, so that's what's between
you and that gravel road. Technically,

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it's an asphalt product. It's a
very thin as fault product, so it

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does it's not designed to handle the
weights sometimes that we see on County Road

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sure, so we will have blowouts
in different areas that need need looked at,

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or you're dealing with a lot more
subgrade issues at that point, because

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you're not too far from subgrade.
No, you're you're you're precariously closed,

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correct, correct, But it's better
than a gravel product. Sure, you

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eliminate a lot of dust. You
you know, there's there's a lot of

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advantages to doing that chip and seal
product. If you're dealing with those average

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daily traffic counts and the standard commute
from your house to a higher capacity road,

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a major collector, a minor,
minor major collector, and then onto

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that highway system. That's where you
see different construction methodologies where we're going to

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have a higher traffic volume, you're
going to have a better, better constructed

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road because warrants it. Yeah,
sure, you know, is our our

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ranching equipment. It's a little heavier, like what seems like by a factor

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of five every two or three years. That puts a lot of strain on

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the roads. It does. We
work a lot with agriculture and the agriculture

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community. We know those areas that
are historically farmed and and we want to

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ensure that we provide the safest,
most stable transportation route for those implements of

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husbandry that have to move up and
down these roads. We all, you

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know, we don't eat out of
the grocery store. We eat because farmers,

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yes, So we have got to
understand that. And we're I don't

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want to say we're a farming community, but we do have a large agriculture

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footprint in Washington County. We do. We absolutely do. What's on the

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horizon here for the commissioners here in
the next couple of months a year kind

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of I think, kind of transitioning
at this point. Obviously, we've got

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the primary runoff election coming up at
the end of August for the District two

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commissioners seat. We'd love to have
voters turnout for that. We had about

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twenty five hundred for the primary election. What we typically see is about fifty

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percent of that we'll show up in
a runoff. So I'm really encouraging everybody

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in District two to get out and
vote on August twenty seventh and have your

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voice heard as to who you want
to see in that commissioner's position. We

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need, we need good voter turnout. I always promote that or try to

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promote that. I'm not going to
tell anybody how to vote. But I

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am going to get out and exercise
that right. Please please, you know

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what, Frank Zappa is not a
guy I would quote all the time,

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but he has encouraging some great things
to say. You can't complain if you

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don't vote. It's right, you
have forfeited that right. Yes, you

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still go out there and do the
thing. You can't complain about the thing.

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So I can't disagree, Tomy,
you disagree, you know, you

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know he's not not Plato by any
means. Sure, but sure he's alright.

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He's got something going on anyway.
It's always great to have you here.

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Any thing else you'd like to add
that I might have missed? No,

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I think we always have good conversations. I appreciate your time and the

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radio's opportunity for us to get together
and connect on that community level. How

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can people connect with you they have
a question. The easiest way is our

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county website County courthouse dot org.
You know all of your elected officials are

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on that website. My cell phone
numbers on there. Call me. I'm

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there's there's two things we need out
of an elected representation, and we lose

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those things at higher levels just because
of the number of people serve. But

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you have to be accessible and you
have to be responsive. You don't always

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have to say yes, but if
you're saying no, you better know why

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you're saying no. Oh yeah.
But otherwise you just need to be accessible

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and responsive. People need to know
they can get a hold of you and

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that you're going to communicate with them. That's the that's really foundational when it

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comes to those we elect. I
will tell you I've lived in a lot

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of places over the years, and
Washington County and I don't care what level

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of government it is. The people
who are in elected office are the most

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accessible that I have witnessed in sixty
five years. Whenever someone calls up to

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say, yeah, just give me
a holler on the cell phone. You're

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giving your cell phone out on the
air? Yeah, why not? They

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got to call me? Yeah,
you have to be reached, right.

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But I'll tell you in other places
will say, yeah, get a hold

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of my office, and someone will
tell me and I don't like that.

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And here it's just one on what
the government shift is the one thing I

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knew coming into the office that I
never wanted to see. Not my job

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go talk to this person. No, that's not how this is supposed to

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work. Not my job. But
let's go together and have this conversation and

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I will. You know, a
soft handoff is a whole lot better than

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a not my job, and go
over that way. Let me go introduce

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you to this person. They handle
that, and here's what they do and

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here's why they do. And it's
been received. Well, it makes sense

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to me, it makes sense to
a lot of people. Yes, hey,

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thank you very much for sharing with
absolutely Tom all right, poach,

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