 Welcome. Welcome to Longmont Public Media's conversation with the candidates. I'm Richard Lyons and I'm here today with Jeremy Johnson, who is one of six candidates for the two at large positions on City Council. Welcome Jeremy. Thanks for having me, Dick. Thanks to Longmont Media for taking the time out to host us for this great cause. Well, good. Thank you. Jeremy, tell us a little bit about yourself so Longmont can get to know you better. Yeah. As Dick mentioned, my name is Jeremy Johnson. I'm originally from Andalusia, Alabama. I moved to Longmont almost 10 years ago. I originally lived on the west side of town of Longmont, and eight years ago I built a house on each side of town right off of Countyland. I married, my wife works in the health care facilities, and I have three healthy, amazing children. I'm an avid golfer. I love to play golf. I follow a lot of sports, coached high school basketball for a couple of years here for a local high school in Iowa at Cougars. Looking forward to getting more involved in the community. I have a real passion for people. That's why I chose to be in the insurance and financial world because I work with people every day. Very good. What brought you to Longmont? Well, my wife was working in Boulder at the time, and I traveled for my job. So financially living in Colorado was more for her to stay here than me being down south. So I kind of swallowed my pride and moved out here to Colorado, which I was afraid at first because of the big city. And ever since I've been here, I kind of just grew to call Longmont home. Very good. So tell us, what one thing do you want the Longmont voters to know about you? The most important thing is I know you hear it from everybody who's running for an elected office that they're for the people. Honestly and truly, my whole goal, my whole outlook, is I don't want to just be for you, I want to be with you because the decisions that's made affects me just like they affect you. So please, let me have everything you have to offer and I'll give you everything I have to offer. Fair enough. What do you especially like and don't like about Longmont? I really like Longmont because it has a lot to offer. I mean, no matter where it's out of town or what part of town you go into, it's always something that you can do or get involved in. And there's a lot of opportunity here. And if you take advantage of the opportunities that's at front of us, we can make Longmont a lot better than what it is. One things I do not like about Longmont is we are easily going away from the backbone of the city. This city was founded off the hard work of many people and a lot of those people were small business owners. If we look a lot of small businesses due to COVID or whatever circumstances, are leaving this city and when they leave the city, it affects the entire city. Jobs, tax revenue, and then those places that we've grown to love that's been pillars of the community. So let's do a hypothetical. Assume you're on city council and the city has given a no-strings-attached $1 million grant to use it in any way the city council so chooses. How would you use it and why? I would use that grant in a multiple different areas. The first, I would use that grant to look at the crisis we have right now, the affordable and attainable homes, trying to find that happy median so we can benefit in both areas. Some of that money would also be used in our youth. I mean, I spoke to a couple of people and I spoke to a couple of places. We need to figure out a way to invest more money in the education of our youth because we speak about diversity. Some kids can learn in different areas than others. So we have to give them the resources to learn in different areas. The last part of that money, I would put it back into the small businesses. Give the small businesses resources to make sure they can succeed and stay a pillar to this community. Good. So, Jeremy, did you have a person that was your mentor or that was very influential in your life? And if so, how did that person help or influence you? So I didn't have just one person. I have my grandmother and grandfather who basically helped raise me. I come from a single, my mom was single, my dad never was a really part of my life growing up. So I leaned on my grandfather and my grandmother. And one thing I learned from them was no matter what you put into life, you're only going to get as much as you put into it. My grandfather, who was a truck driver, he never once complained about having to go to work. And I watched that even as his health was going in a different direction. He still never once complained about having to go to work. And my grandmother was the same way. I mean, she did whatever it took as a kid growing up to make sure we had anything and everything we wanted. As I got older, I had a lot of people in my hometown that would invest time in me to say, hey, continue to strive, continue to be better than your surrounding. I took that advice, I joined the army. And once I joined the army, that kind of changed my mindset on my outcome of life. I wanted to be bigger and better than the opportunity that I had. And I think by those choices I made has set me up to be a mentor for people that's younger than me today. Well, that leads to the next question. Are you paying it forward? Are you mentoring someone now or? Yeah, I speak with a lot of youth. And right now I have a ring of one person that I work a lot with. And it's a kid that I coach basketball with at Iowa. He's very special to my heart. Was never really given opportunity to showcase his talents. And I got on a staff at Iowa and he was on my team. And I have actually, not only was he a player of mine, I really consider him as a bonus child. We still speak even though he's graduated. He calls and tells me his success. And I give him encouragement because, I mean, he has some health issues that he was born with. But I tell him, those are not your identity. Your identity is what you're putting out for people to see. And then I have younger cousins that live back in Alabama, which I force them to make an impact in the education system. Out of my family, I am the first generation or graduate in my family to graduate high school with honors. So I want that trend to come back to life. So I'm investing a lot of time in my younger family members to force them to be better than the opportunity to have. Oh, that's great. You know, Colorado and Longmont have lots of recreational opportunities. Which ones do you take advantage of? And what do you do when you lose your time? Well, you're right. It's a lot to do here recreational. I particularly, I love golf. So I play a lot of golf at some of the city courses. A few years back, I joined Fox Hill Country Clubs. So I spent a lot of time playing golf there. I love baseball. So I spend time out at Sandstone Ranch, at the baseball fields, the bat cages at Garden Acres. I mean, anything that deals with the youth. And I feel like, as a city, we look at opportunities for the youth, there's a lot of money that parents spend on sports. And with the facilities that we have here in Longmont, I feel like we need to try to figure out a way to put some money back into those facilities so we can attract those bigger baseball, softball tournaments to Longmont. And then we can showcase some of our local talent by hosting those events. That's great. So I just read this morning, they're still revising the congressional district maps under the redistricting. And it looks as if the latest map, that Longmont will switch from being in Ken Buck's fourth congressional district to the second congressional district with Boulder and the mountains up in the Northwest. How do you think that's going to affect, if any, Longmont? I don't really see a direct effect. We basically sitting here. I mean, we can kind of control how that's going to affect us by the decisions we make here in the city of Longmont. We can't let the congressional reform or redistricting affect the way we make our decisions. We are trusting the public to give us the feedback, and then you have to trust the elected officials that's going to make those decisions to put a success plan in for the citizens. Good. So how do you stay informed about local, state, and national issues? How do you keep up? I try to stay off social media because you have to believe half of what you see and read there. So a lot of it I get from people who or have been in elected office. I spend a lot of time with those people. And then also, I get a lot of my information from the citizens. I mean, in my short time here in Longmont, I have come to have a relationship with some really true Longmont natives. And they can give me a lot of valuable feedback. Good. So I think you'd agree, I think we all agree that national politics are very divisive, especially on the federal and now the state level. Although the city of Longmont is nonpartisan, some say it's becoming a little bit more divisive, more political. What would you do to keep that divisiveness from occurring on Longmont City Council? It's funny. As you say, the federal and some of the state politics, we have the red, the blue, the left, the right. At the end of the day, we have one goal in common. And that's people. Making sure that people are being taken care of. You might have been raised Democrat, you might have been raised Republican, you might have been raised independent. But at the end of the day, we all have values. And the most important value is respect, loyalty, and love. No matter which side of defense or whatever partisan you want to go on. So to me, those decisions need to be kept. You can keep them in your mind, but you can't let that be your decision-making process. Because no matter if a person's Republican or if they're Democrat or independent, you still have to respect their mind. And I see and I hear that people are getting mistreated because of their political stance. That's not fair. I mean, people have fought for our freedom for many years and they still are. So we can't give that up. So we have to stand strong, let people voice their opinion but this don't throw stones because they force their opinion. Good. So how do you plan on involving the residents of Longmont in the city council decisions? So that can go a couple of ways. We can start looking at when I'm elected as a next city councilman at large, we can start looking at community events, outdoor events where we can host outdoor meet and greets and public forums and open spaces that we have a lot of here in Longmont. So citizens can come out and voice their opinions. Or opening up network communications with the citizens so they can send their responses or suggestions to a functional email box where those emails or concerns come in and actually see them be in receipt. Actually giving them an opportunity not just at the city council meeting to show up or a phone number to call but actually have calendar events set up either quarterly or every six months or however we feel it necessary and different parts of the community. So they feel like they're actually being part of that decision-making process and showing them that they are a part of it. Good. So you may not be totally familiar with the Longmont Municipal Code but if you could change one thing, one thing in the municipal code, what would that be? It's a long list of things. We would have to look at the codes that's dealing with the building fees and the new thing that just passed the sugar drinks for kids. Parents, grandparents, they are the most important person and our youth life, the community is the next but we need to let and give that respect back to those parents to make that decision, okay? And I think you alluded to this earlier but between affordable housing and attainable housing, which do you prioritize as being the number one issue facing Longmont? I don't really prioritize one more than the other because like I said, if you put more effort to one you're leaving somebody else in the dark. So we have to figure out a way in a system that we can split our efforts between the both because affordable, they're gonna thrive in the community. Attainable, we're gonna be able to get more younger married couples into Longmont to put them in the workforce. So if we have both of those areas thriving, Longmont thrives. If you put more energy here, the attainable side falls off. As we see now, look at the inventory. I mean, the inventory here, we're starting to fall off but if we can shift and split our efforts, we can bring both of those up to equal playing field. Good. Jeremy, that ends our conversation today. I've enjoyed it and wanna thank you for coming by today for this conversation and wish you luck in your campaign. And again, I just wanna say thanks, Dick, for having me here and thanks Longmont media for sponsoring and having us to be able to let the citizens of the Longmont know who we are and put words behind our pictures and signs and all of the media stuff you'll read and see. But any citizen of Longmont that sees this, feel free to reach out, feel free to figure out a way to contact me. I do have a social media page that's live. Post stuff on there. I'll give you feedback and I'll give you honest feedback. Good. Well, thank you. Thanks.