 That's Sean, that's Sean, Ben, I don't like... I have more people in the room today. It's not like shooting a special from some kind of like, you know, bomber's bunker or something, you know. We're kind of getting a whole of our stage craft here. Welcome to the show. If you're watching this when it airs on Longmont Public Media, on the television, then I suppose it's time for me to be like, wake up Nana, wake up Nana, you left the TV on, you know. You should probably go back in the other room, get your blanket and go to sleep. But leave the TV on, we could fucking use the views. But this show's not for you, you should go to bed, you know. Quick disclaimer of course, anything that I say on the show, or any of my guests, does not necessarily reflect the opinions of any advertiser that may be on this show. They probably agree with me, but they probably would say, motherfucker, like way less. So like, you know, we release them of responsibility from what I say. Notes from the last show. My hand, I'm going to have surgery on it next week, looks like. That's why we have Sean here playing guitar, because I cannot play guitar. And maybe, you know, if I get my surgery and do real well, maybe I'll return to being a lower mid-level guitar player again. As Kurt and Sean are here in the Laughter Crew, we need like a name for the laughter guys, right? This Kurt and Sean, my friends, who laugh whenever I point at them, ready for this? Fuck, it's so good. Fuck, it's so good. I want to bring them on all my first dates. So good to me. But we need a name for that crew. It's mostly been, so far as just white men, approving of other white men, is like, whatever, Welkin, Boulder County, right? But like, we need like a name for you guys, and we need maybe to get us like a female person to be in the Laughter Crew as well. We'll think about that. For now, we'll call them like the peanut galley, just the nut galley, because it's just you guys. Another note from last show. I accidentally ended up doing a Jay Leno impression. I wanted to publicly apologize for that. There was other dickish behavior that came out in the last episode, but mostly the Leno impression I'm here to apologize about. Although I do want to like get better at that impression, because I feel like I was kicking dicks in on that impression. Don't you feel like, Kurt, you were here. I was like really doing my line, then I'm kind of giving it one of these. I feel like, I feel like I want to do impressions for this show, and the Jay Leno thing is going to be my first attempt, right? So it's like, this is my day Leno. You know, I kind of, hey, have you heard about this? It's about about about it. I feel like it's best if you don't even speak real words, just like... So I want to like dial in that Jay Leno impression to just like one word, and this is me attempting that for you today. This is Jay Leno responding to the phone call where he found out his dog was just hit by a car. Right? No. That's why Jay Leno finding out his dog is just hit by a car. It's a little morose, but also still upbeat somehow. It's the Leno way. No, we don't hate Jay Leno. Why is everybody always picking on Jay Leno? I'm such a nice guy. I wear so much denim. How could a mean guy ever wear so much denim? It's impossible. Jay Leno, come down to Walgreens and buy my new denim condoms. It's like a good Jay Leno impression. I feel like I'm getting better at it as we play with it, but I'm going to drop it now. Let's see. Today, our guest is the mayor of Longmont, Mr. Brian Bagley, friend of the show. We like Brian. We've been sort of like friends with Brian since he was a city council person. He's a Republican on the ticket, but he's what I like to call a hands down Republican as opposed to looking at hands. You know what I'm talking about? He's like a nice Republican. And then he's going to point it out nowadays because those little differentiations turn out to matter. He's like one of the nice guys. We like him. One thing we don't like and one point of contention, long standing point of contention between Mayor Bagley and myself has been the issue that we're going to have to talk about a lot on this particular monologue. It's an issue that actually challenged Mr. Bagley to have a public debate on a few years ago, which we didn't end up following through with that debate. He had to like take his kid to college or some fucking bullshit. Whatever, whatever, whatever. We release him, he's a good man, but he didn't debate us on this topic and we needed it because the topic was what is better, Star Wars or Star Trek? Now, I know what you're thinking. How could there ever be a debate on that because the answer is obviously Star Trek. Is it better franchise in every way? And let me break down for you why you're right. Grandma, are you still awake? Jesus Christ, go to bed. You're not even going to understand this. All right, what I'm going to do now is talk a little bit about what I would love to have rubbed Brian's fucking nose in that night and that debate with my amazing points. I'm going to skim through them because this is not a full, this is not a full shitting out of all the things I have to say about that franchise. But first I want to just talk about some simple basic things about the fucking universes. Star Wars and Star Trek. The simplest way to show the difference between these two franchises is their weaponry. Star Trek, what's like the famous, anybody, the phaser? We're aware of the phaser from Star Trek, named after of course how the weapon functions. It's a scientific mind forward show, the phaser and in Star Wars was their famous gun, the blaster named after the fucking sound the gun makes. You know what I'm saying? The guys at Star Trek might as well like, you know, they've got like a textbook to explain why their fucking gun is called what it's gun is called or whatever and the fucking Star Wars guys who might as well call their guns the pew-pews or whatever, it's exactly the same thing. Another thing of course, the ships in the show. The most famous ship I guess from Star Wars and Millennium Falcon. It's a fucking piece of shit and not particularly fast and like people brag about being able to fly it well but it's only because it's so poorly made that it takes like a skilled person to even get basic results out of it. Whereas like in Star Trek we got a whole crew, we got like we're always pushing it to the max and great and great results or whatever. Star Wars, their ships are named after like, oh it's an X-Wing because he's shaped like an X. You know what I'm saying? Like it is a lesser fucking franchise in every way. Who are the fucking, like another thing about the fucking weapons matter of fact. In Star Trek, right, we got the Phasers, we have a stun setting because we as the good guys recognize chilling isn't always automatically the right answer. Who are the good guys in the fucking Star Wars universe? Oh, the Jedi, what's their weapon? The fucking laser sword? It looks like a stun baton but there's no stun setting because the only way the Jedi solve their problems is by attacking government installations. It's because the Jedi are a fanatical religious group attacking government installations instead of working within the system to change the empire they're just blowing up government installations. They're fucking space Isis. The Jedi are space Isis. And like the empire is completely inept. Star Trek is what would happen if like the empire in Star Wars was actually run well and by good people or whatever. It's the federation of planets in Star Trek. This is like the positive future of the world. Star Wars is of course focused on war. There is no other answer than war. There's never anybody coming out being like, ah maybe cool we should be or whatever. I'm just fucking saying that, you know what I mean? It's because they care so little about peace in Star Wars. And then like the fucking movies fucking suck. George Lucas, you know, how many good Star Wars movies are there? There are like two. The first two. And then the more influence George Lucas has, the worse the movies get, right? And how many good Star Trek movies are. Famously every other Star Trek movie is not so great, okay? But there are fucking 13 Star Trek movies. So that gives us six and a half good movies. Versus fucking two in the Star Wars franchise. You got New Hope, you got Strikes Back, that's awesome. Then you start like, we have the green lightsaber in the next one. Go fuck yourselves, you know what I mean? And your bears or whatever, you know? God damn it. It's like we have Wrath of Khan on our side. That's like Space Shakespeare. That's like Terminator 2 in Space. That's how good it is, you know? And the best thing fucking Star Wars is doing, they're like, they blew by a little cold robot and said, don't you feel bad for me? I'm in an abusive relationship with humanity. All of the fucking sentient robots in Star Wars are in an abusive relationship with all the meat people. Have you noticed that? Everybody is a bad guy in that fucking show. I'm not doing this. This is happening in the franchise. You know what I'm saying? It's really not my fault. George Lucas is a terrible filmmaker. He's never made one good movie as far as I'm concerned. I know what you're thinking. Oh, Indiana Jones or whatever. No, because he's partnered with Steven Spielberg on that fucking franchise. And that's not fair to Steven Spielberg. He's one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. And he carried George's fat ass through those movies. You know it. I know it. Bagley knows it. It's true. I'm not paying them to laugh on that one. Did you notice I didn't have to point at them? That's because the fucking truth comes out. George Lucas is a terrible filmmaker. So bad he should be in no way associated with filmmaking. He's like, he is to filmmaking what Anne Frank is to tap dancing. Except Anne Frank wasn't allowed to tap dance. You know what I'm saying? The same relationship shouldn't be associated at all with that fucking thing. George Lucas is the worst filmmaker alive. And the more movies he makes, the more he proves it. And I know when we're going to come in, the Mandalorians who did Cowboy movie. Yeah, but like we have Cowboy movies, motherfuckers. You can't redress your thing as something else. Oh, it's a space opera. No, no. Now we kick the door open at the saloon and I'm a fucking Pew Pew cowboy or whatever. This is a ridiculous franchise. I don't feel bad about hating Star Wars. I want to release you from any guilt that you have for hating Star Wars. Yeah, I'm going to leave it there. I have a lot more to say, obviously, because God, I think I've burnt through a few minutes just kicking its dick in. It's just a real little dick. Really easy to kick in stupid franchise. You know, it's not like talking about Batman or something. It has like a lot of good movies and some stinkers, you know, whatever. We had Bat nipples. So there's some darkness on the Batman franchise. But that's a way back in a better franchise than Star Wars as well. Just some thoughts. Just some friendly fucking shots across the bow from my friend Brian over there. Which of course, we won't take much time to discuss it when he actually joins us on the show because we'll have questions about like real life or whatever. So I'm sure that we won't, unfortunately, get a chance to hear Brian's rebuttal to all this. But the short version of it is Star Wars can suck it. You know. This episode has been brought to you by 300 Suns Brewing. Have you ever been down at 300 Suns Brewing, my friends? Tell you what they don't do. They don't show any fucking Star Wars when you stand there. They are a, in case you don't know this, we're in Longmont, Colorado. And we're going to be kind of pointing to some local businesses or whatever for this show because like we love our community and that's the reason we're doing this show in the first place. So 300 Suns is a hyper-local craft brewery. They also have not only a wide variety of delicious beers, the cat in the long fucking, the blue corn cream ale, go fuck yourself, that's a wonderful beer. And like that blue corn cream ale, and I'm going to go off script of course because I live off a script. But like when I first got a glass of that, I was kind of just like curious because these are my friends for a long time known them since they started the business. And like I'd already had like one of their salted toffee earlier in the day was just a fucking monster beer as well. But I ordered the blue corn cream because I thought like, oh, that'd be like a nice light blah blah. It fucking knocked my dick off. It was like the sweetness, the creaminess. I recommend it completely if you're a beer drinker. This is big news for you in your life. If you haven't gone to 300 Suns, what your therapist might say is like you're refusing to live your best life. And I want to release you from that kind of thing. If alcohol is not your thing, they also have house-made root beer. Oh God, they also do cocktails and ciders. And goddamn, if you had the burgers over there, you'll notice there's no laughter when I say that shit because that's still a cold truth that like it's in the deep part of your stomach. That's like that burger that they've got like poutine. They do like this big ass cheeseburger that like it should kill you. You look at it and you think like, I'm going to probably die of a cheeseburger today. But instead you're lifted up on wings of angels and carried to the ample breast of the universe where you will suck a blue corn cream ale. And they also do poutine. They do the Nashville hot chicken sandwich. Rumor has it. Rumors? It's a rumor alert. Everybody relax, but this may be true. Rumor has it that the Times call is about to release their Readers Choice Awards for the year. And our local companies all care about that, of course, because it tells you who in the community, what the numbers look like. And it's always like something that I've looked forward to reading in the Times call. And I think they're about to get 300 Sons Listed as the best restaurant slash pub slash brewery in Longmont. Restaurant slash pub slash brewery. It's a lot of fucking slashes. Not for nothing. You think these slashes are easy to achieve? They're not. Like this is like a show that is about an idiot and interviewing. There's like a little slash in there. We earn both of those real hard. You know what I mean? Slashes are not easy to come by. 355 1st Avenue, Unit C in Longmont, or 300sonsbrewing.com. If you hate yourself, don't bother. But if you love yourself and you're like a great American, like I am, like anybody in this room, of course, would be, then you're happy to go down to 300 Sons and get yourself a root beer and a can of faggot and cheese burger and change your life. Of course you will because you're a good person. My guest tonight is Mayor Brian Bagley. Now, Mr. Bagley is a well-beloved member of our community. He's been mayor for a bit now, but he's not running again. Apparently there's a big election coming up, and we're going to try and cover it on this show. He's not going to be mayor again because I think it's been decided that he's too tall for the job. He's a very tall man. And he's been the sitting mayor for a while now, but it's looked like he's been standing the whole time. He's very tall. That's what I mean to say. He's a very tall man. When I first met Mr. Bagley, he's so tall. How tall is he? How tall is he? I'll tell you how tall he is. He's so tall that when I first met him, I thought he had dandruff on his shoulders, but it turned out to just be frozen hikers that didn't make it to the summit. He's a very tall man. What I mean to say he's a very tall man. He's a very athletic guy. He's a swimmer. He swims laps at the pool. I mean, about the high number of laps he swam at the pool. That's very impressive, I think, but he's a very tall man. So I think like when he dives into the water, he immediately hits his head on the other side. So the laps aren't really as impressive. He's a very tall man, that's what I mean to say. If you're home now and you want to put your hands together, this would be the time. Please put your hands together for our friend, Mr. Brian Bagley. Brian, would you please join me? Thank you, sir. Good to see you. Thank you, Andy. Nana, you can wake up now. Don't you listen to this boring monologue? You can wake up now. Don't you listen? Now we're going to talk about some real topics. Join us. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you. It's just a deep pleasure to have you, sir. So, Mr. Bagley, a... You can call me Brian. May I? Sure. I hate to just be assuming on TV. No, no, assume away. Okay, I will. Brian, baby, I know that there's an election coming up. And that makes me curious, you know, about who's running, what the issues are with these things. But my real first question, sir, is like, the way I see it, when you run for mayor, your best outcome is you get elected and immediately half the public hates you. And then the other half won't give you credit for what you're actually doing. It's pretty close. And then no matter what you do, you're just sort of fucked and you don't get paid well. And then at the end, you're like a, maybe like a husk of a person. Thanks for inviting me on the show. That's been Andy Epler, whatever the hell this show is, with Brian Bagley. I think he nailed it right on the nose, buddy. Right on the nose. Like, I know that it's a tough job to be in public service and thank you for doing what you've done, you know what I mean? I appreciate the work that you do. Who the fuck would want this job? So let me put it in perspective, please. So I am not running again in November. I will never run again for another public office. Ever. So I was on a team that wrote in New York Times Best Seller. The best-selling carback business book of all time called Good to Great, Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't. It was published in 2001. They call it the red bible in the business world. I was a senior researcher on that. There were a couple dozen of us. Jim Collins was the author and he funded it. He was the brain behind the project. That entire project was researched in the library. 20 years ago, the best-selling research, hardback business book of all time, the research was conducted by hand. Wow. Which means that that was 20 years ago. Yeah. The internet was not utilized in that project. Yeah. It was all like chat rooms and porn. Yeah. Not even that. I mean, there were no chat rooms. It was just kind of late 90s coming about. So approximately half the time I've been on city council or mayor. I've been mayor for four, six years before that. I was on city council. For 10 years, I have offered public service to the city. So 10 years out of 20. Yeah. So I'm only going to be 15 next year. And you look great. Thank you. 20% of my life has been this. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And I was joking, but you pretty much, I mean, you pretty much set it spot on. You know, you've got 80, I mean, I don't want to lecture anyone, but because I was one of those people before I went for public office. I mean, 20% or obviously 80%, 90%, maybe just, they don't even know who the mayor of the city council representative is on. Yeah. The remaining 5% to 10% are supportive, but are aware, but they don't do anything. Yeah. And then the other 5% or 10% are just complete and total jerks. You know, they don't agree with you. So they see you as evil and as the enemy. Right. And most public servants, at least at a local level, just want to help. Right. And I was not like enough money in it to be crooked. The city council only gets $1,000 a month. The mayor gets 1,500. I've got my real job is I'm a law firm. I've got 24 employees, two offices. So whenever I hear people, oh, you're in the pockets of, ooh, yeah. I want that $250 donation from that developer. Oh yeah. Oh, look at my jobs. Yeah. You give me the campaign money right now. That 250 and all. Rolling in it. Oh, yeah. It rolls cash in and nickels. And I'm just, and so I just reached a point where it's like, it's time for someone else to do the job. Yeah. And I don't have the patience for it anymore. I'm very grateful for the opportunity. Those who supported me and hated me or just endured me, you know, I'm very grateful for this experience. It was a great honor. But I think you did it in a noble way, but it's at the end of the day, if you look at, we're just a very tribalistic society or just if you're either team red or team blue, blood's in crypts, literally. Yeah. I don't care whether you're inner city or whether you're, you follow national politics. You just hate the other color. Why? Because the world sucks. We're unhappy with our lives. And we need to root for somebody. Basic tribalism. Blue, red, cowboys, Broncos. And you're just like, man, we just got to fix our sewer system. Yeah. We just got to fix the potholes. And I spent, I'd say 80% of my time just trying to figure out how to keep the 5% to 10% of the jerks away so I could actually do something. And everyone always assumes that you're looking for higher office or looking for more power or looking for, and you're just like, shut up. I would imagine only gets worse the higher up you go. No. And so it's like, can you name one national, and I can tell you right now, I've never wanted to run for higher office, name one national or state politician that everybody just goes, you know what? That's a pretty cool guy or a pretty cool gal. Yeah. No one. No one. No. Do you think it's because America is so sports centered that we take that same mentality and bring it into politics it's easier to think that way about politics? No. I think that people are fundamentally, again, my style is to defend everyone. Sure. So I think that people are fundamentally too lazy to actually care. And I think that there's four types of people, you know, at least as far as in the political spectrum. I've heard it said that you've got your non-thinking conservatives, your thinking conservatives, your thinking Democrats, your progressives, and your non-thinking progressives. That seems fair. And unfortunately, the people crazy enough to get out and knock doors and show up to city council meetings are the extremes. In Longmont over the last 10 years, we used to have both extremes. Now we just have the crazy wacko liberals. And so, by the way, you made a mistake. I'm not a Republican. Oh, I thought you were in the ticket. No, I'm unaffiliated. We're libertarian, I suppose. I'm definitely libertarian. Yeah. You know, social progressive, fiscal conservative, which means that everyone hates me. No one knows what to make of me. I'm an issues guy. Yeah. And on Monday, if I'm voting yes on your issue, boy, I'm great. If I'm Friday, I'm voting no on your issue, I'm just saying himself. Yeah. But we loved my hands-up, hands-down Republican joke. Oh, it was a camp. I was the back. I was chucking. You're not responsible for it, but it is hilarious. You can all bite my tongue with your Star Wars crap. I will just... It's very hard. And maybe we'll find time for that. And we'll get a special together once your life calms down a little bit. I will give it to you because it's your show. Yeah, of course. And that's very kind of you. Thank you very much for this deal. And like, I won't require you to be like, please, just forgive me for being so wrong all these years, because I love you. You're a good man. Bill O'Reilly. This is how we started. It was great. I see your future. This is great. I would love that. We already know it's not Jay Leno. So it's gotta be that Jay Leno. And frankly, I'd rather end up with a Bill O'Reilly outcome than a Jay Leno outcome. Because there are people that still like Bill O'Reilly. It is Jay Leno. I just want to like walk on my little porch in Nantucket or whatever with my book that I had someone else ride about killing Jesus or something. I would never write a book called Killing Jesus, by the way. You know? I don't know what you think of my own politics and religious affiliations or not. Even I'm not trying to kill Jesus. Bill, Jesus Christ. So, Brian. Yes. And we're coming into like an election. Yeah. What issues should I be concerned about in long months that I don't know to be concerned about? Which could be goddamn anything. Right. I wrote, I mean, again, just, I think there's a, there's a political, there's substantive issues. There's political issues. And then there's just crap going on that you need to be aware of. This town is controlled by those people who are willing to show up to council, knock doors, or send in letters to the enemy. So getting elected is all about me and my team. So you've got a very small group of people that understand that. And so their voice is lavest. Everybody hears. And then they vote the way that they say they should vote. And that's dangerous because you're having decisions made by non-elected people telling your elected officials what to do, whether they're some of them follow exactly what they're told. Others are just scared to vote against what those people say and other people spend most of their time arguing with them. It's just, it's just not productive. So that is an issue. But it won't show up on a small town good old voice. A small town good old voice. That's why we started this channel. That effect. Then you get, but I think then you've got other issues that, you know, just completely controversial. So one of the first things I did when I was mayor was I issued a mayoral proclamation saying that I was committed to 100% renewable energy by 2030. A week or two later, city council made my proclamation a resolution. I said on the, as mayor, the next mayor, whoever's mayor, sits on the, basically the power utility board. Right? So we get a voice in those kinds of decisions. And there's climate change is real. But unfortunately, a lot of people look at Long Island in this bubble or Northern Colorado in this bubble, and they make decisions that have adverse impacts on poor, adverse impacts on the city budget, all in the name of, you know, championing climate change. But there's really only, I mean, I never hear anybody advocating climate change, right? They're bike to the meeting, right? So we're in the middle of a climate emergency, which I agree with. Yeah. I mean, if my house run fire, I'd get my butt out and go outside, you know, or I'd grab a garden hose. I wouldn't sit there at a dais or at some meeting talking about, oh my gosh, our house is on fire. Yeah. Call 911, grab a bucket. Yeah. It's really as bad as people say, I believe it is. I believe it is. Grab a bucket. Yeah. And nobody's grabbing a bucket. All they do is yell and scream and talk about, it's like the Republic. So it's like, there's a meteor headed towards her, right? The Republicans are going to, you know, the Democrats are going to point at it and say, oh my gosh, it's going to kill us. The Republicans don't care. And they're not putting the necessary technology and dollars towards addressing the problem. The Republicans are going to be saying, nothing we can do about it. Let the market fix it. Let the market fix it. But in the end, the asteroid's going to hit us, you know? And so what people need to do in this particular situation, stop having more kids. Yeah. I mean, you really want to know the climate solution, just being totally, totally honest, stop having kids, which I think is laughable considering what you're trying to say. And if you want to, and you want to hear something that's completely over the top, I'm not going to vote for that guy. Why are we fighting COVID? Why are we fighting COVID? I mean, Thanos had something, man. Snap the fingers, get rid of half of this. I mean, I'm being facetious, but you cannot continue to procreate more and more and more and consume and consume and consume and think somehow that people are going to go, you know what? I think I'm going to start walking four miles to work. I mean, when we have a bike to work lifetime, we're going to make a difference. Well, day every year isn't. And so it's like, I guess part of the reason you can tell I'm a little jaded, it's like you spend so much time trying to placate people that want you to do this value signaling or this just show that you care, but really aren't making much of a difference. And the main reason I'm not running in all serious, this is I believe I've reached a point, well, I can't make much of a difference. I do things where I think I can make a difference. My first grant, I wanted to move to theater. You know? I got to go to theater, you know? I wanted to see affordable housing. I wanted to see our downtown begin to thrive a little bit more, but it was empty back then. I wanted to see, you know, I mean, I wanted to see all kinds of good stuff that happened for a long month, right? Yeah. Now the things we're dealing with, it's so ethereal and ideological that it's like, you guys can talk about that every Tuesday. I got a million other things to do. So I thought it was, of course, a historic time with the COVID that came fucking through our community. It changed a lot about our community. I'm glad that we're fighting it. I'm glad that we'll probably end up still fighting it. As am I. Yeah, I was being sarcastic. I wanted to clarify that. Everybody, everybody, everybody always, my point is people show up on Monday and say, we need more apartments. So City Council, oh, sure, we'll give you more apartments. Then on Friday, somebody shows up and says, traffic is terrible. No more apartments. It just depends on who's there that day. And it's like, I mean, just stick to your guns. But they'll come back, they'll be like, hey, we do have these apartments, but they're like two grand for a studio apartment. Go fuck yourself. One thing I was talking to was Caitlin Cannon on the last episode. Caitlin Rocket, my friend's confused when they have similar names. Caitlin Rocket from Boulder Weekly last week, we were talking about the homelessness issue in Boulder. And I know that we deal with that in Longmont as well. In Boulder, it seems particularly cruel and strange the way they're moving through that. In Longmont, I know we have different answers and we have something called the core team where we can send people to fix problems without a gun. Turns out that is useful as fuck. And I think when people talk about defund the police... By the way, can I just say that I do like his use of just the fourth law. I feel like I'm here with Ryan Reynolds. He's the most fuckable man in America right now. Ryan Reynolds put me at two. But the core team is like a good example of what I mean when I say defund the police because what I mean of course is reallocate police funding to reflect what the community actually needs. We have these people that are homeless in our community or not mentally well just trying to get by trying to find a place to sleep for the night. They don't need some motherfucker with a gun to come take their blanket and kick him out of town. That's what's happening in Boulder. But let me give you an example. An example that kind of merges the two in my point and what you just said. On Monday we'll have people come in and say oh my gosh Mayor Bagley, City Council we have homeless people in RVs parking in front of our houses and emptying their toilets all over the street. How many people here want VCs in here and all over the street? That's a real problem. We pass an ordinance. We pass an ordinance that says you can no longer park your RV on the street you can park it when you're loading or unloading or you can go get a permit from the city and like up to three a year and park it for like a week at a time so like three weeks total in order to force people into RV locations so that we do not have a public health crisis we do not have angry constituents that we keep long long pretty whatever. When somebody comes along somebody shows up this just happened a gentleman showed up on last Tuesday night and so Monday and Friday or symbolic by the way. And so Tuesday he showed up and basically had 40 tickets of him getting ticketed for having an RV and sleeping in an RV and parking on the street and immediately people were in an uproar and then Council said oh what are we going to do about this? I'm like pick one. You know you cannot have both. You can figure out a solution that will try to make everybody happy but it's like it's exhausting. I'm sure that's exhausting. It is exhausting. So going back to the homeless. So if you were to talk to Mike Butler who used to be our public safety chief. Yeah I know Mike. So chief Butler would have said a lot of the very things that we provide by way of charity are bringing people here. So if you were to go to Florida and you're talking to a guy who's going up the lawn and say yeah I was up in Long Haunt. They got free food, free tents. They have 30 different churches all willing to give us sleeping bags and tents. Well what our police would do they'd go up and down the St. Rain River clearing out the camps. They were camps that were abandoned closed sleeping bags and tents because the homeless essentially knew they were in. So it's not people need a place to stay but similarly you're down at Roosevelt Park you have a bunch of people camping out there and yeah I'm with you you need a place to save. Mental illness, substance abuse, poverty most people end up homeless due to most people I know can barely afford rent and they work two jobs. So here's a stat over 54% in Long Haunt are paying over 30% of their income to the rent. So the question becomes at what point do we have people left over who are capable of helping you know it's like so many people are in the same boat so you have people around Roosevelt Park saying they're loud, there is a criminal element of homelessness when Mayor Coombs the mayor before me was mayor and he left town for three days we had four stabbings of homeless people homeless violence until he used to joke with me I'm the king of stabbings you can't leave town for two seconds but you've done very well over the last four years we don't get three stabbings a day you know it's gone down it's gone down but my point is no but you've got all these problems you've got to deal with it's not simply a matter of getting rid of the homelessness or cut off the charity or it's a lot more delicate than that part of we show up to that problem too late in the problem we can't even see what the real issue was and the real issue for homelessness is affordable housing yes and no I believe it starts even earlier I wanted to do the mayor's early childhood education initiative to make sure that every child in Lawn Mock gets a high quality pre-school education which turned into daycare but really what it says is if you really want to make a difference get every kid a great education as early as possible that will have a bigger impact in 20 to 40 years on your homeless population on your income level on your who can afford housing everything is impacted by that affordable housing even if we were to subsidize affordable housing in other words we're going to give you money to help you out with rent there's also is typical rent affordable I can just like climate change I can fix the housing crisis in Lawn Mock elect me in November and I will make it so everyone can afford affordable housing meaning without subsidization you too can get affordable housing I'm just going to make Lawn Mock ugly horrible Lawn Mock is going to be an ugly horrible place to live it's going to be dirty and crime ridden no one will want to live here you'll be able to rent a place no you'll be able to buy a home for $800 so the kicker is the better the place the better the community and we can only have 100,000 to 120,000 people living here you belong in Lawn Mock you also belong in Beverly Hills you want to go to Beverly Hills I demand to live here pick a spot in the park it's never going to be affordable so long I'm speaking tongue in cheek here we're on the same page it's never going to be affordable so long as we continue to make Lawn Mock a great place to live then it even gets worse when you limit the supply no longer going to build housing or apartments we're going to start building and grabbing up a local developed land by way of conservation easements or open space and so that has a problem now as far as subsidized housing goes it's like there's not enough I mean if I were to sell my home let's suppose it's worth $500,000 I'm going to sell my home for $100,000 how many people am I going to have wanting to get in? a million billion people everybody is going to say I want a quick $400,000 because it's below market value so you have got people in line you've got hundreds of people on a waitlist for subsidized affordable housing they've been waiting for years the waitlist is opened every couple of years and then you get on and you hope you get a spot there's just not enough it's still not I wonder though because when I first moved here a two bedroom apartment that I rented back in 2009 was $850 a month it's twice that now and what I see from my vantage point in the community is I see the people that actually create the culture that everybody else appreciates that is largely the poorer people in your community you've got artists, you've got craftspeople those people will be fleshed out of this community and these prices stay like this and I don't think that the answer is educating the kids because you can have a real smart kid with stray days but if they're sleeping in the fucking street kicked out of the park by the goddamn polis that don't help so right now one of the issues one of the big issues is growth or no growth it's again people separating into blue versus red balance wasn't the answer but right now if Longmont says we're not going to grow anymore your housing prices are going to increase because now we're going to have higher property taxes gentrification your elderly won't be able to afford their property taxes so they're gone 27-28% of Longmont is Latino many of them first and second generation immigrants on the lower side of the income scale so all of a sudden they're pushed out so you're looking at the mentally ill you've got you've got a lot of issues and I find it reprehensible that the very people that will champion things like quality and equity and standing up to the little guy you know liberals that don't think will often say let's don't grow anymore and then they champion that issue and then get the support of the very people that you mentioned that are going to pay and suffer the price so again I am floored at Longmont's politics meaning I don't want to do it anymore I can't make a difference anymore because it's no longer making any sense and so many people have thrown up their hands and said I'm out you know I find was like I'll get the lights I'll get the lights you know and again I'm speaking tongue in cheek because we have some great candidates we have some good people that want to have it we have everybody on council no matter which one of those four categories they fall into for the most part they all want to do good you know they want to do good yes we believe that yes they want to do good and so I just wish that people in the public domain would become more educated and get more involved I don't care whether it's writing a check to your candidate or reading the local paper or the Longmont public media just get involved be knowledgeable what's going on because I guarantee you you know Joe Biden and Donald Trump have a far less of an impact on your life than those seven people sitting in your local council that's right and that's a lot of why we wanted to do this show just to kind of get our local community service out of people in a non combative not poisonous atmosphere and not only that unless you're a Star Wars fan then the thing is and again I'm not running me yet and a lot of people might hear me talk about what a bitter guy I'm not being bitter I'm a realist I appreciate your candor I wonder and this I guess more of a philosophical question I wonder when for us in this community growth quit being attached to quality of life for our average citizens when we talk about it 40% of the people spend more than 30% on their rent okay so it's way out of balance way more than half so who's actually growing who's doing better some small group of motherfuckers here's my question when you say like we need to choose between growth or stagnation I'm arguing there should be a balance as well I'm concerned that when we talk about growth we specifically mean economic growth and that is only a piece of what makes a good place to live I'm talking about the sense of growth number of houses I had an econ professor I took econ 101 back in college my freshman year he always said you can always explain economics and cornflakes and milk so if we've got 20 gallons of milk here and one package of cornflakes and we both want a bowl of cornflakes and there's only enough for one of this I want it and you want it and it's the only food available how much you willing to pay for that milk versus the cornflakes so the fewer houses we have the people with money oh yeah those rich developers no people in California and other places that have benefited from their own growth issues sell their house, have a couple million dollars after they sell their two bedroom deplorable home come out here buy one for a million have a million left over so you need to increase your housing stock then the question becomes that's going to make Longmont not feel like Longmont true that's as long as you have people wanting to move here you know you're going to have increased prices and the only way to fix that is increase the supply because if you have 200,000 people wanting to move here but you have 2 billion houses in Longmont you can go to Beijing or Dubai empty apartment buildings and my conservative mind looks at that and says like oh that's a money making opportunity I can build lots of affordable housing and all of a sudden I'm the biggest motherfucker in town because when I moved here in 2009 the reason I chose Longmont was because Boulder was refusing to grow or out and that economic pressure I felt was going to spew into Longmont and lo and behold it did I graduated law school in my MBA school back in 1999 and I moved to Longmont because I couldn't afford Boulder yes my daughter does not live in Longmont yes because it's a crazy expense she can't afford to live here which isn't necessarily a bad thing I grew up in Greeley but I chose Longmont because it was a good town and it was affordable and so there was an old again kind of a calm theme I guess what I'm saying is there was an old story about these college guys being a musical artist do you understand they needed a piano they wanted to practice for their jazz group so they had this large they found this large, cheap beautiful piano beautiful and they put it inside they got to go up the little steps door living room it sucks and so they couldn't figure it out and after just a few minutes of struggling one of them says just shut up stop, stop, stop, stop everybody just lifted it just lifted it and took it in right everyone needs to lift where they stand everybody is arguing about you need to stop driving and you need to decrease your carbon emissions and you need to stop developing and you need to stop building just lift where you stand that's it and do the best you can I agree with all those things but everybody should be trying to curb how they affect the world I think that's a libertarian idea too because everybody's responsibility is to take up what the government's not doing and so I mean we just spend so much time arguing amongst ourselves and ignoring the real issues that it's just I'm just floored and I have a lot, I do think that it's gotten worse because of Donald Trump I am not a Trumper I never said anything for or against them just it was an interesting moment in our nation's history but I think that everyone is suffering whether you loved them or hated them everyone's suffering from PTSD either you heard what you had to say and you couldn't stand it or the response from the Democrats was so bad that it was also in many ways just as bad so we're all just so frazzled we're traumatized we're all suffering on a political level personal level and from the pandemic everything we can talk pandemic I think that's an important note actually because no matter where you stand politically everyone in America is traumatized at this point I think everyone is that's another reason to try and create an atmosphere like this where people don't necessarily see things the exact same way can sit down and be like really we want to help homeless people and the answer is not tell them to fuck off and it's harder than just saying that or you hear how some money well yeah of course there's a balanced approach to be taken I feel like as far as population concerns that we talked about kind of we're joking about with the pandemic I think the economic disparity that has fallen upon millennials and younger those people aren't having children because they cannot afford children and all their fucking moms are like when are you gonna have a baby that's not my tip when are you gonna have a fucking baby when are you gonna have a baby they're not having kids anymore because like for me I'm a professional artist of course I make dozens of dollars a year I had a vasectomy for my own reasons but I'm so glad that I'll never make another person hold on you heard that first year folks heard this first year it's kind of like the interview when they got M&M this is gay ladies I'm clipped that's why I don't jump on company anymore when they come over you'll notice I haven't humped any of this furniture I'm really chilled out a lot this is way more chilled out I'm like my dog I was wondering why you were so calm I'm very calm it's like Brian did you ever see the movie Terminator in Terminator there is this human that is going to be born who is so helpful and impactful for humanity that our future robot overlords send back an assassin to hurt the child mine was sort of the opposite where it's like my kid's not going to be very helpful let's put that right out of reality immediately my last official act is Mayor of Longmont is to thank you Andy F. Wood thank you very much for saving us from future efforts I will accept a dick shaped key to the city as a gift from you Brian and thank you very much for offering it I made it right up I appreciate that and you might want a laminator I'm going to really enjoy having that in many parties by the way I'm not running again but I it sounds like a terrible job I'm always looking for a worse job final notes Brian any last thing you'd like to say no I just I mean I love Longmont keeping in mind I'm not running again Longmont is an awesome city 90% of the problems we have is because Longmont is an awesome city people want to move here, people want to live here we care about each other, we care about people in need we're diverse we want to make sure that we try, most of us really try to give everybody a fair shake you know and so it's great that that's the source of our problems you know because we really are an all-american city we're like a fucking Norman Rockwell we are and so when I say I can't make a difference anymore a lot of it isn't because oh my gosh we're screwed some things are just out of my hands you know and so Longmont's got a bright future and what's great about politics is it's a pendulum if the air gets too dirty or the park gets too overcrowded with homeless people or whatever it swings back the other way you know I mean it might take a while but we're pretty smart people when we put our hand on the stove and it's too hot we take it off and we turn off the stove or we get something cooking on it I mean but we're we're rational creatures so I mean the best days of Longmont are ahead I believe that as well we'll play a very small part my picture's on the wall and 100 years from now when somebody's looking at the wall they won't even notice me but I'm in there somewhere they'll wonder who the fucking mayor was during the most historic pandemic of our time but anyway Longmont's great the Longmont is just awesome I agree I want to sort of put a little bit of a period on this talk about homelessness because I feel like we talked a lot about the issue and not very much about the actual resources available to people struggling with homelessness or just in danger of not being able to pay their rent I'm thinking of the hour center what are some things so we have the public safety department has what's called the Angel Initiative so if you know anyone literally who has a substance abuse issue they're a meth addict they've got a heroin addiction you can actually go to the police department as long as you're an attorney you can go Andy but if you actually have a substance abuse problem you can actually go the police will help you they'll get you resources if you are you've got the hour center if you're a Longmont resident anyone can get a meal even if you're from outside Longmont I have yet to see anyone not get a Longmont ID somehow in order to get a meal they're not trying to tell you to fuck off take a brown bag take a seat at our cafeteria very loving very supportive you've got that you've got hope which they started off it's basically a volunteer organization where they go off on snowy nights to make sure the homeless aren't freezing now they're organized and doing things like teaching skills and helping people find homes and so let's go on and on we have so many services here in town I just didn't want to focus on the problem and then not point at what we're actually doing to solve it no no it is we can do more the question is what do you do right? there's a certain Venn diagram that happens between morality and what is difficult and there's a certain spectrum right? and if it's in balance I believe we could be doing more and not really feel it in just that bad way as a community I would totally agree so the resources are there I'm not advocating we shut those off by any means but we've also got we've got a veterans village that we recently built for our homeless vets actually we did build a private developer built it under the city's affordable housing laws we've got tons and all you need to do is call the city manager's office if you have questions and say hey I'd like where do I go for this to the point you're right to there's no a lot of people in town that are watching this I just want you to know that if you are struggling with that stuff we do have resources in town I know we kind of focused on it call me I'll point in the right direction Ryan god damn it you have no idea if I hear one more phone call about the jackhammer construction outside a window it's like I'll get right on it build our city and fix our streets not so loud not so loud there's a pothole on 17 where? just on there somewhere so last last note maybe you were the mayor during a historic pandemic and like that's something that our community will be talking about for a long long time and a fucking tough time for the shitty job you know that's a fucking that sucks sorry but one of the things that did happen that I fucking loved was when we put those barricades out on main street and the restaurants got to have more patio space that was the super tits that's awesome have you ever been to Rome? yes sir yes sir I have been to Rome I fucking love Rome is awesome so I went to Paris for two days and then I went to Rome I did a very similar thing and then I went back to Paris and I was like what a miserable place it's a little ratty Rome compared to Rome it's like a shadow I don't mean to like Rome should be paying you right now I love you Paris I would say but in Rome they don't have starbucks you know why cause all coffee shops are awesome it's like starbucks is the shadow of Rome yes I forget what I was talking about I fucking love Rome so in Rome they sit on one side just to watch the view it looks like a stadium stadium seating on a sidewalk I'm all for that I wish that we had that type of culture here where you just go let's sit down and talk with our friends and family over a good meal actually not a healthy meal but a good meal pastries, pizza it's young we're not saying bad shit about Rome we love it I thought it was a great idea it did feel very European it felt like it did lend itself more to like seeing your friends when you're walking up and down the street and people bringing out dishes it felt more it felt like a long month thing and there have been all kinds ten years I've been on council we've been talking about shutting down main street turning the streets kimbark and collier into one ways I don't like that idea I don't either but also you take away the parking spaces it's only a problem because how far will you walk in bolder in Rome how far did you walk many many long month again we live in a great town we don't want to walk a block that's an American thing all you have to do is park a block or two away and walk but we want to park in front of the restroom so we're it's just culturally Americans are so used to getting and wanting and demanding what they want and expecting what they're demanding right then and there you know I don't know if it's a fast food culture or what whether it's your politician development restaurants I mean we complain about all the effects and consequences but we want everything right now and we don't want you motherfucking start driving like you're in Paris or whatever Jesus Christ the drivers in Paris are insane they all want to die and they live in such a beautiful place I have no comment on Paris they all are suicidal I just pointed out case in point another example you know I love you Paris I hate you Paris I love you and I'm terrified and I'm sure that you're just doing that as an example of my earlier comment about how we seem to be just incongruent in our actions and thoughts so I wonder if like I wonder if there's a balance to be found because like we're gonna look the government's gonna put us back in quarantine again I completely believe that I'm not sure why they'll do it maybe it's the terrorists I was the first one so sooner or later, not everybody but 95% of us are done with the mask in quarantine we'll put them on but man we hate it we're emotionally traumatized I am proud to say I was the first person to say I'm done that was about two seconds after I started 18 months ago I can't handle this I fucking hate it too but I do it whatever I hope not because can we make a little friendly wager we can make a wager as well I hope not but I'm betting on quarantine the next six months but the reality is though that after Delta there will be another variant so this is an example of what I mean I'm just gonna pose a question because if I speak too much the paper says I'm a crazy uncle and if I don't speak enough then I'm accused of I want to take medical care away from the Weld County residents because I'm so duped into believing COVID is gonna kill us all I mean the question is if it doesn't go away if it doesn't go away with masks it doesn't go away with lockdowns it doesn't go away with the vaccine it goes away how are we going to choose to live our lives I mean we won't have to tell grandma to go to bed anymore and so for example you know I don't know because it's gonna kill grandma I'm not running but if I was I would probably leave now Nanny you just keep listening I know the it's I think that there's a lot of a lot of people out there that think that we should do something because they think their actions are gonna change things and they're wrong some of our actions will change things and then you have the right actions of course yes and then you have the people on the other end which are nothing's gonna stop it so let's don't do anything and so what's happening is you've got the unthinking progressives, the unthinking conservatives all out there on social media telling the world well this is science and none of them know what the hell they're talking about and the rest of us and so the rest of us are like better wash my hands stay six feet away indoors let's think about wearing masks and then beyond that what do we do because we can't shut down society no that didn't work right so when I said certain things before that I got in trouble for I was just saying walk me up for eight weeks but why why it's gonna be here in eight weeks why are you locking me up and don't just lock me up tell me to go fuck myself send me a check or something you're like sending me to my room when I didn't do anything wrong and so back when I resisted going in lockdown my whole point was was let those of us who are young and can work continue to support the rest of us because in eight weeks who we can still gonna be here and here we are 18 months later and nobody's yelling and screaming you know I was threatened I got a call from a very certain powerful politician saying you need to resign based on your comments on COVID I told them I said a bad word to go visit himself one of the ones that I like maybe I think you like this word but my point was that nobody's demanding a resign now because here we are not wearing masks why don't you wear a mask for the show we're all backed up so we wouldn't have to exactly but the vaccine we can have breakthrough transmissions we can give it to other people there's just so much information out there you can only do your best and so the anti-vaxxers and not the pro-vaxxers me as well beyond the pro-vaxxers anti-vaxxers it's tough not to get frustrated I get it but the reality is if everyone would calm down and actually calm down take off the blue and the red patches and think okay let's just think about what would be best here right alright I'm gonna avoid people for the next year I'm not gonna get vaccinated I can respect that I need to go to work and support my family I need help run the city I better get vaccinated we're also judgmental towards everybody and it's really not helping anything I kind of agree with that I definitely feel like if the anti-vaxx people are right and the vaccine is some strange poison and all the vaxx people are going to die I'm pretty happy with that outcome because I don't really want to hang out with the anti-vaxxers I don't want to be stuck on this planet with a bunch of anti-vaxxers and so those of you who I know that are anti-vaxxers they don't like hanging out with you you seem great but not that close so my point is Mr. Appler yes I think that there are a lot of crazies out there but it's a spectrum and if we would all just do our best not follow our ideology but just calm down not think tribally and do our best and admit that we're in for the long haul and do what we need to like for example I have not seen my mom or dad except for one time, no twice on their porch on sunny days like 12 feet away it's a heart transplant recipient and so it's obviously lethal for them they cannot my mom and dad can't get COVID so we're taking precautions everybody else needs to do that too no matter what it is and so but it's not going anywhere if everybody maxed out, if everybody got vaccinated I don't know it would make a difference I would of course make a difference but we are also not going to be able to convince the anti-vaxxers no matter how much you yell, how much you scream you're not going to be able to my sense of it is we won't be able to talk to them except that most of them are going to get the antibodies and they hope so god damn what everybody lived I hope November I hope everyone votes god damn it I want you to vote if you're one of the stupid Brian thank you very much for coming on my little show Andy congratulations on your show congratulations on the vasectomy thank you very much there's nothing like surety it's not a great copy but it's a good one next time if I ever want to do away with you I'm just going to put a red shirt on you you just slap a red shirt on somebody they're dead and the other thing is all it is is a commercial Star Trek you know what it is if you're in power it's okay to fondle harass and bang whatever chips in your vicinity Captain Kirk, sexual harassment it's okay a lot of consent happening on that show you also don't have John Favreau that's true John Favreau you know what instant Christmas class I agree with you I started the Marvel Cinematic Universe I single-handedly saved Star Wars so I mean you have nothing man I'm waiting for season three on the Mandalorian to come out and I am waiting next week on what if the new Marvel Cinematic we agree on that there's a middle ground here here's what I was going to say that debate was so four years ago it was but I don't forget that's fine Star Trek and Star Wars as it stands now they have a lot of work to do to regain my trust fair enough Marvel Cinematic Universe especially with this whole timeline variant thing that's going on yes I'm telling you right now that means new actors we are going to see X-Men Fantastic Four The Avengers forever new characters, variant baby just whip them out there new Jackman, buh-bye variant I love this Brian I'm so glad we got to end on a positive note with each other thank you very much I appreciate you very much thank you very much for being on the show and god damn it don't sneeze on your grandma this week see you next time easy enough