 All right. So I'm here with Andrea Farnum. So you're running for Commission District 8. Yes. So why are you running? I am running in part because it kind of feels irresponsible not to. I'm not... I kind of didn't want to run, but there's a certain point where after you've studied and read and experienced what the problems and Athens are and you have some idea what the solutions are, it feels pretty selfish to keep them to yourself and not, in some ways, seek a kind of position where you could implement some of those solutions. So I guess I'm a little bit of a, like, resistant public candidate for office in that I don't sort of love the public eye in terms of, like, holding office, but it's like having to cure for cancer and keeping it in my house. That would be kind of a little unethical, I think. So I think I have some idea what the problems in Athens are, and I think I have some idea of what those solutions need to be. So I think I should probably do something about it. Okay. So how have you been involved in the Athens community or in the local government over the past few years? Sure. I've been a citizen, so I've been a community member in Athens for a little while and just involved wherever I can, a part of the school, local school governance teams, and involved in the actual parent teacher side of things in terms of having kids in the school district and involved in my kids at 10 games. I'm actually a school, so I'm involved pretty involved there at the school. I've been involved in my neighborhood, the neighborhood association, and my neighborhood as a pool, so I've been on the pool board there, as well as just as a citizen participating in things like the Athens Citizens Government Academy and the Police Academy, that kind of thing, just to learn about how our community works and what's going on. Then just as well with a few different organizations in town, co-founding Athens Area DSA chapter and been somewhat involved in some other organizations that do work around town, Athens for everyone, and that kind of thing. Okay. Do you have any other experience that you feel that qualifies you to... Sure. I am a therapist. I mean, I spend all day listening to people's problems, identifying their problems and solving their problems, and there's a way in which that gives me a unique perspective in understanding, connecting sort of political antecedents to the problems that people experience in their life that everything from mental health relationship issues to inequality in our community stems from has political antecedents. That sort of our deficient politics produce deficient ways of being in the world and deficient politics produce massive inequality in terms of inequality economically and then just inequality in terms of how we treat people and how we think about them. So I in some ways feel like therapy has prepared me the best for this kind of position. But there's also a way in which we underestimate the experience of thinking that reading the right things and having the being influenced by the right ideas, how much that comes into play with anything. Learning how to be a parent, learning how to do, learning how to be a good friend, be a good spouse, be a good citizen. You don't necessarily get there just by being one, which is because I'm born and raised and live a long time in Athens, doesn't mean I know how to be a good citizen. But having exposure to being taught what a good citizen is is actually what gives me experience in sort of thinking through what a good government is. So I put a lot of value on the experience of like study and thought. Do you think our civics education in high school is not of the bars? Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's massive failure. I mean, it's it's yes. Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes. I would I would love to have a very good partnership with the school board and like radically radically like change our curriculum to something much more robust to training the right kind of people. I mean, I'm a therapist. I spend all of my time making people better. So I think it's important. So if you're elected, what would your top priorities be in your first term in office? Sure. It's no secret that the two things I care about I have to do with racial issues and labor. So my top priorities and some of us are more relevant now because of the pandemic. They're relevant before, but they're like extra relevant now because inequalities are only going to get worse in terms of there's lots of data that show that this pandemic disproportionately impacts people who are on the bottom anyways. So the people who've been on the bottom are just going to be like more calcified on the bottom if we don't take seriously what kind of interventions we need to like get rid of the floor. So it's going to be very much a focus on jobs and labor and things like a worker center and things like how do we get you know workers to stay in their work conditions? How do we get people better wages? How do we secure? How do we keep Athens treasure and Athens? How do we keep you know how do we you know really heighten scrutiny on the procurement process in terms of who gets contracts and where and how and how do we put as much of that money as possible into the Athenian pocket? So Athenian workers, Athenian businesses, if you have a company in Athens that you own like you should be first in line to like so many things and so we should really like center keeping treasure for my Athens treasure and Athens. So one of my top priorities is you know focus on the poverty rate that we have. We have no idea what the unemployment rate is going to be in a little while but I'm fairly certain though I'm very good ground to say it's going to be atrocious and like staggering and are we ready to like tackle that? Like what are we going to do? How are we going to put people to work? I have some pretty good ideas of like what we could do but it's going to take some like spine and some creativity to how do we get people working and what do we do because all these businesses are going under. I mean it's going to be bad so yeah I think I don't know I don't know anyone can not center like workers at the end of the coming like few I don't know decade but yeah. Do you feel that this election is more about big issues like social justice and climate change? I guess I'm getting a feel for your answers but we're maybe more about smaller issues sort of like basically government services and amenities and just generally keeping your constituents serving your constituents and keeping them informed. To be honest I think both I mean I'm an ideas person so I like like big I'm very theoretical I like I like to have like a guiding like logic to that like orients like I just don't think anyone has integrity if they don't have some kind of like principled way that they're like going through the world so you have to as a any kind of leader or person who makes decisions to like do it well you have to have some kind of idea of what is informing your decisions so I take it very seriously to have like what is what is good governance what is you know an Athens that's whole like that matters in terms of how we're going to make decisions as a commission but that also means on the day to day level we have to be serving our constituents and pay attention to whether or not everyone has trash service and everyone's getting you know weak olympic up and you know how are they paying rent and what are we doing to secure them housing and job and you know child care and and they're you know most people are not I live in this like ridiculous bubble where we talk about politics all the time. People are not doing that they're worried about child care they're worried about paying their rent their job their awful boss or whatever so most Athenians are just trying to like live their lives and not you know up here debating politics. Yeah I've actually been kind of worried that this election is going to like maybe really low turnout because of the virus. I think how people worry about other things are likely they're they've lost their jobs like they're stressed about their kids like they I mean people are strapped strapped they don't have time to care about you know other things when they're in sort of this like survival mode so there's a way in which we have to like all right we get people the things that they need so that's there's a way in which to me it's both you have to have the big ideas because you have to have a guiding principle of philosophy guiding logic and you can't stay there you have to connect to like what does that mean in terms of the day-to-day of people's lives I mean I connect everything that's like freedom so everything from how we're getting everyone trash pickup is connected to enabling freedom right like no one can live in a safe clean healthy community if they're like trash isn't being picked up so it's a way in which like the tangible practical things connect to how do we enable freedom in people's lives how do you define freedom I mean can that be answer quickly yeah well I mean I think in terms of freedom is the ability to like make plans and actualize those plans okay so it's not it's it's a really broad definition but it means if I want to be a soccer player I can like make a plan to be a soccer player then I need the ability to like actualize that there needs to be like a league and like teams and other people that want to play in a place where I can get equipment and then refs and like fields and like any things to be able to enact that I need to watch my kids so that I can go play or whatever so I need like the conditions that enable that and it doesn't mean that I get to enact all of my plans because some of my plans might suck or some of my plans might be bad but it means that like if there's things I want to do freedom is being able to like externalize that all right so my next question is about taxes yeah I'm just asking everyone what their feelings are about taxes um so do you do you think our local government is adequately funded right now and if not how would you change that and are there some taxes that you like or dislike more than others on the local level yes sure so uh I um taxes are about us as a community coming together and deciding the the goods and services that we need uh and everyone sort of like pitching in to pay for those things right so if there's something that we want we have to pay for it and how do we pay for it like we want a library how's that going to get how's that going to happen um so the idea that like I'm finding taxes as long as the like goods and services that are given to us as a community are actually like helping the community what pisses me off is when I'm paying taxes and it's not resulting in something like for the good of the whole right so for example I'm not a fan of the progressive types of taxes like the swaths and those kinds of things in part because I'm not convinced that it results in something that's good for the whole community it tends to be sort of this like money grab for like people who already have money uh in a way that I am not convinced is actually like good for the whole community I could be talked into it being like a good thing if if I saw more like if I saw better use of the funds right so if you're going to tax me for a sloth I want to make a worker center uh if you're going to tax me for you know an east lost uh things for our schools obviously our schools need buildings but I also want janitors and bus drivers and food stamp workers pay more I want pre-k teachers to like have adequate wages so there's things that obviously those monies by the way those money just go to capital projects so it means buildings but if we're going to spend all these millions on buildings we need to do something about the wages of the people working in the buildings so I want a little more I want the taxes to translate into things that are more universally good as opposed to like taxes that translate into good for special interests so that that part kind of frustrates me are we adequately funded no I do not think we're adequately funded as a as a government but I also think we could be and um I also think that we could be way more creative with the money that we do have I think we spend it very poorly I think there's ways in which we spend it the way that we need to spend it because we all need water and trash pick up and things like that but there's departments that are underfunded very much so and then there's departments that are overfunded so there's some definite things I would fix about the budget in terms of how we allocate money how much goes where so there's to me enough wiggle room for creativity and what we already have but I'm also not scared to bond out or borrow money for better better and things that are good for the community um so did I hear that you would be more likely just for property taxes over sales taxes or is there yeah I mean I would be I would be open to some creative ways to tax so for example I'm interested in the commuter tax I'm interested in the fact that we have a lot of people that live outside of our county uh and uh that's fine they get to live wherever they want people get to live where they want but if you're living outside the county coming into the county working taking our money and spending it most of it outside of the county on your own property taxes and blah blah blah that's fine but uh why can't we have some kind of commuter tax to incentivize people to live here there's a few issues with that we're land mass wise we're confined in terms of how like you know it's 122 square miles so like it's uh but I prefer I get you want Athens money going to Athenians and it's obviously fine for people to not live here and to like commute in but we're the number one employer to a few surrounding counties and that's a problem for me in terms of like them taking a lot of our wealth and and it's siphoning outside of the county and I would like to solve that to be returned just doesn't matter like right like you use our roads and services and goods and I think you should pay a little bit for it um and not just take it all outside of our county so so yeah I mean things like that we could we could be a little creative with a few things um there's a few creative things we could also do for uh taxing UGA um in not taxing but you know there's a phone service tax right that we could actually um institute uh in terms of uh taxing uh phone use so so phone I was doing some research on this I would have to I would have to do a little more but I think there's a some wiggle room open for interpretation of how we could get a tiny percentage of uh money from you know folks that come and use a lot of our stuff and don't pay much more and why should voters choose you over your opponents I think that one thing that's interesting to me about this pandemic is uh if your idea is very relevant before the pandemic they're super relevant now that the pandemic has hit uh versus if your ideas were relevant before then it's like heightened in terms of like it being relevant because a crisis kind of un uncovers the underbelly of the things that were wrong so it's not like the problems we had before stopped being problems because of the because of the crisis it's the opposite the problems we had before are actually exacerbated by the crisis so I think people should pick me because my ideas were relevant before and they're more relevant now I've always understood that the primary issues and Athens are related to race uh and labor I I've always had my finger on the pulse of like what is actually going on here what the problems are I mean I spend all day every day helping people identify problems uh it sounds a little arrogant but there's a way in which like I know how to identify problems I know how to look at things and see like what's happening underneath and what the real like issue is that doesn't mean I know what the solution right away is but you can't get to step B if you can't get to step A uh and so I think that um I think that I I think that my ideas speak to themselves in terms of why it was a solution before and why is the solution now even more so uh I thought we needed a worker center before we absolutely needed a worker center now do you have any idea what the unemployment is going to be because of this thing you know high economics and keeping Athens treasure and Athens was relevant before it's super relevant now because we have no idea what the tax situation is going to be so all this glass stuff that's not going to be what what we thought it was going to be what we thought we were going to be able to bring in like we're looking at some like really interesting problems that we're going to have to address because the the tax revenue is not going to be what we thought um so we have some challenges that are um for one of us and uh I I think that I knew how to solve them before and I know how to solve them okay and is there anything else that you'd like to mention that we didn't get a chance to cover I mean you know we're trying to figure out what good governance is and what kinds of commissioners what commissioners need to do to um make Athens a great place to live that's prosperous where people can work and live and do some things that they want to do make plans actualize those plans but I am also a therapist and you can't disconnect sort of the like cultural production of people from the government uh figuring out how to enable freedom for those people okay that like we have to make better people and we have to make a better government and you can't do one of those things without the other uh in that we have to create cultural infrastructure that makes better people that that again like what you asked about civics education and things like that we have to teach people how to be good thoughtful wise people like that is essential to any like functioning democracy and we have to make a better government that actually enables people's freedom and so I do both of those things and I'm interested in how we as Athenians can do both of those things even as I'm you know leaning over a year to the side of all right like how we as our government actually do like what we're supposed to as a commission um and I think um it's essential to understand how those two things are connected and why we have to tackle both at the same time all right well thanks for doing this yeah