 Welcome. Welcome to Longmont Public Media's conversation with the candidates for the two at-large positions on City Council. I'm Richard Lyons, and I'm here today with candidate Talis Salamatian. Welcome. Thank you, Richard. I appreciate what you're doing for the community by doing this. Good. Thank you. Talis, tell us a little bit about yourself so Longmont can get to know you better. I appreciate the question. Yes, so I'm an immigrant. I was not born here. I immigrated here when I was young, four years old, grew up in Southern California, got my undergrad at UC Santa Cruz in business, got my MBA in Boston area at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. I've been an entrepreneur ship since I was 19 years old when I started my first company while still in undergrad, exited that company shortly after graduating. And since then I really had the entrepreneurial bug. I've been involved in dozens of companies as a founder, investor, mentor, advisor, fractional CFO. I've helped lots of businesses through my personal mentorship but also through my involvement with Energize Colorado. During the pandemic, I've been really focused on helping businesses recover from COVID through my work with the Digital Innovations Initiative of Energize Colorado. And if you check my website, Wendy Lee, who is the head of Energize Colorado, wrote me a quite nice testimonial about my involvement with the entity. I've also taught business at the University of Colorado. I have a published book on business. So I can confidently say that I'm the most experienced business person running. Well, certainly a varied background. Thank you. What one thing do you want the Longmont voters to know about you? I think it's my passion to help people. When I stopped teaching, I decided to write my book and I didn't price it to be a millionaire. I priced it just above break even so that I could give the most amount of people the ability to learn from my experience. I've had great mentors throughout my life, especially in business and entrepreneurship and I always believe in paying that forward. So giving back is important to me. When I first started my campaign, I wanted to have a way to interact with the community. And on next door, I've noticed a lot of people having issues doing small tasks, changing locks, putting up a curtain rod. Things love that nature. And so I volunteered my help to a lot of people throughout this community to do small tasks that are trivial for me because my father was a contractor. My first job was swinging a hammer and that's what made me want to get into business and out of the 100 degree bakers filled heat. Well, what brought you to Longmont? Great question. So as I was traveling across country from California to Massachusetts, I fell in love with Colorado. We had the opportunity, my friend and I were driving across country. We were only going to stay one day in Colorado. We ended up staying three days because we enjoyed it so much and it went on my shortlist for places that I wanted to settle after my MBA. My wife, my then girlfriend now wife, we traveled to several destinations to see where we would want to land because it wasn't feasible to buy house in the Bay Area where we were. So in 2014, we moved to Boulder County in 2017, about my first house in Longmont. This last year, I moved my mom into our first house and was able to buy a second house, just three doors down. So I moved my mom here. My dad passed away several years ago. So I'm an only child. So I wanted to make sure that she was nearby. So if God forbid anything happened to her, I'd be able to take care of her. Sure. Good. So what do you especially like and don't like about Longmont? Well, the list of things that I like is long. The list of things I don't like, it's hard to think about. You kind of stump me on that one. I mean, I love the community. I love that we have a vibrant business ecosystem here. The fact that we have front-range community college, which is a great educational institution that provides a great service to our community, the fact that we have great nonprofits, the fact that we have very engaged community members with a ton of generosity. I've been always floored by the generosity of our community members. I really genuinely have nothing bad to say about my experience being here in Longmont. Good. Let's jump ahead a little bit and assume that you are elected. And you're on City Council. And the city receives a one million dollar no strings attached grant. The City Council can spend it in any way that it may choose. How would you want to spend that and why? So a million dollars doesn't buy you as much as it did a couple decades ago. Well, maybe we should say five million or something. Okay, yeah. So if we were given X amount of dollars in millions category, I would say that down payment assistance is the number one thing that we should be focusing on. I think that there's a emphasis on affordable housing, which I think is misplaced. I think we should focus on the attainable housing. My understanding and this is new information that I've gathered while running for office. One of the great things for running for office is I've learned so much. And one of the things is the difference between attainable and affordable. So affordable housing is essentially just rentals that people are, they're subsidized rentals basically. People aren't able to buy and create an essay create equity, gain from appreciation. None of that is available to someone who is an affordable housing participant. Now, if we gave down payment assistance, that would allow people to actually get into a house, gain equity, one third of all their payments will direct you to the principle of the note. And for good or for bad, the appreciation of housing values in our area has been tremendous. And so anyone who had property have benefited greatly from that. So I don't feel like it's a good idea to trap people in rent when they should be able to amass wealth by owning. And that would also address some of the systematic historical racist and negative impacts to people of color in this nation, red lining and other preventative measures that were targeted toward black people and people of color prevented them from owning homes, which I believe contributes to the wealth inequality in this nation. So in my opinion, the best way to amass wealth and to level the playing field for equity and inclusion is through your own ownership. Very good. Thank you. So, Talis, did you have a person that was your mentor or someone that influenced your life? And if so, can you tell us about that person and how that mentorship or influence occurred? Yeah, great question. Sorry if I get emotional, but it's my father. He was very courageous, leaving Iran before the revolution, coming to Canada, making me and moving to the United States to have a better life. So he's always been my inspiration. And when he got brain cancer and I took six months off of being a CEO of the Bosy Fitness Technology Company to take care of him while he had brain cancer, it was important. But yeah, he was an entrepreneur. He started a construction company and... Pardon me. No problem. Take your time. He invested in my first company that allowed me to be where I'm at today. Oh, well that's fantastic. Good. Now, are you playing it forward? Are you helping someone, mentoring someone? Oh, yeah, constantly. I'm always mentoring people and helping them with their businesses. I still stay in contact with all of the students that I taught at CU. Many of them have reached out to me for mentorship of their subsequent businesses that they started after my class. So, yeah, I feel like every week I have a conversation with someone that I've been helping out and mentoring because it is so important. A phrase that my father told me that I live by is, a smart person learns from their mistakes, but a wise person learns from others. And I want to be that other person that helps people who didn't have the privileges that I have had. Very good. That's a good saying. Talis, Colorado and Longmont both have tremendous recreational opportunities. Which do you enjoy and how do you spend your recreational time? I'm glad you asked. I own a fitness company, so I try to stay as physically fit and work out as much as I can. I also inherited my dad's track road bike, so I've been trying to go in his footsteps before he got cancer training for a century around Lake Tahoe. And so, yeah, it was a really nice bike, and it was just sitting for a long time, so I started getting into it. I've been really enjoying it. I also do a lot of, well, prior to COVID, I was coaching soccer. My dad was a 20-year soccer coach, and I have been doing that my whole life. Ever since I tore my knee up when I was 18 years old, I, you know, the phrase, you know, if you can't do, you teach or you coach. So I've been a soccer coach for about a decade, coached at Boulder County Soccer Club, now St. Frayn, and, yeah, it's just really rewarding. I get to just turn off my business brain, just focus with, you know, being present on the field, coaching the kids, giving them, you know, the experience that I had, which I think was very important. Unfortunately, during COVID, the age group that I coached had three teams, and we didn't have enough kids, so I was doing it more as a philanthropic thing while the other two coaches were doing it as their primary income. So I decided to wait until there's another team that's available. Very good. I'm sure you've been keeping up with this, but it looks like Longmont may switch from the fourth U.S. congressional district to the second. What impact, if any, do you foresee that having on Longmont? Well, if that's the case, then hopefully we can unseat Boebert, or however you pronounce her name. But, yeah, I think that making sure that the districts are representative of our community is important. Gerrymandering has been something that our nation has been dealing with for a while now. I think that it's very unfair the way some politicians draw the lines of the districts. I wish there was a better, more equitable way to do so, but such as making sausage, things happen, and you've got to make the best of it. However, I hope that this will allow us to take the tip for the people to have better representation. Tell us, how do you learn and stay informed about local, state, and national issues? So, I'm an avid reader of The Economist. I'm a free market capitalist, Keynesonian, if you will. Classical free market person. So, The Economist is my primary news source. I also stay engaged with the community when I was collecting signatures. My primary objective instead of spouting out my beliefs is understanding what was impacting them. And I think that really helped me understand what was most important to our community. So, it's a combination between talking with my friends, my peers, my other business professionals that I work with, and colleagues, as well as the economists. I think MSNBC and One Side of Fox News and The Other Side, they're both very focused on the particular dogma, and The Economist is more centrist, which is where I find myself. I'm a very moderate centrist. Well, you didn't mention Longmont Public Media. Oh, yeah. So, I'm actually on Longmont Public Media. So, yeah, I should have absolutely mentioned that. I have a show called The Savvy Entrepreneur. So, please check that out. So, I think we all agree that national politics are very divisive in both the federal state levels. Although the city council is nonpartisan, some say we're becoming a little more political and a little more divisive. What would you do to keep that divisiveness from occurring at Longmont City Council? Well, I think just being elected, I think that will help that several of my other candidates are being supported by Longmont Area Democrats, which should not be supporting any candidate, in my opinion. And I think that if any of those candidates who are being supported by Longmont Area Democrats are elected, then it's going to contribute to more partisanism. I am a centrist and a moderate. So, if you're voting, I think you can feel free-floating for me and mean being free of any sort of, you know, political cabal. Very good. Thank you. How do you plan on involving residents, the voters, more in the decision-making of the city? Yeah, that's a very good question. And I think it's a trade-off. I think it's important to get a litmus test for what is important to the members of the community. But I also feel as though members of the community don't want to be bothered with some of the trivial things that they elect someone to take care of for them. That's why we have a representation in a Democratic Republic rather than a direct democracy. If we had a direct democracy, then we would all vote for everything like they did in ancient Greece. But we don't. We have a republic where we elect officials who we feel as though can represent our needs, our desires, our aspirations. And I'd like to be that person to represent the people who are, you know, struggling to find attainable housing, the people who want their businesses to recover. All the people who are struggling with COVID, I would like to be your representative. Very good. So tell us if you could change one thing in the municipal code, the current municipal code, what would that be? I'm glad you asked. And it may not be the first thing people think about. But when I was talking to voters, one thing that seemed to be a very low-hanging fruit that we can address is the use of gray water. Conservation is important to us. We live in a high mountain desert. And I think that water is going to be something that is going to be a main talking point for decades to come. So I think it's important we do something now when we have an abundance of water and we take conservation seriously. So because there's no permits or guidance for use of gray water in Longmont, I think that's a very easy fix that can reduce substantially the amount of water that we use on a per-person basis. Tell us, between the affordable housing and attainable housing issues, you alluded to that earlier in your answers, which do you prioritize as being the greater need for the city? Oh, absolutely, attainable housing. I just did math actually for one of those surveys from the interest groups that send you, send all candidates surveys to respond. And I was doing math, and if we can average out appreciation for the next 14 years, about 10% appreciation of house values, and if you compare that to like a 5% increase in rent per year for the next 14 years, then the person who bought a house versus the person who was renting, even though the renter didn't have to worry about the upkeep cost, and I'm assuming that's going to be about $3,000 to $4,000 a year, if you average all that out and you do all the math, the person who bought the house is about $750,000 ahead of the person that got the affordable housing. Sure, affordable housing is important for people who have disabilities, people who have the inability to make the money required to own a home, so it's important that everyone's housed. We have a horrible homeless problem here. We have 1% of our population homeless, and then up to 4,000 to 5,000 kids that are doubling up into houses are close to being homeless. So it's a tragedy that we have there, so don't get me wrong. Affordable housing is very important for those members of our community, but I think if we were to generalize, I think that attainable housing has much higher benefit to the individual. Very good. Well, Talis, I want to thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to come down here this morning. Richard, never too busy to talk to you. Well, thank you very much, and good luck with your campaign. And thank you for what you're doing here. This is a great benefit to our community, so I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me. Thank you.