Latest / The Town Square Podcast / Rep. Clint Crowe on Affordability Housing and Data Centers | Candidate Conversations — Episode 101

Transcript

Rep. Clint Crowe on Affordability Housing and Data Centers | Candidate Conversations — Episode 101 · The Town Square Podcast

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the town square podcast where local advocates for a better community bringing their different perspectives into the messy middle where our aim is to have a conversation where aim is unity, not uniformity.
0:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And we are kicking off our next series of candidate conversations and you guys followed along in the spring.
0:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Great response.
0:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope they were helpful for you guys to figure out what candidate really fit best with your values.
0:24
[SPEAKER_01]: who you're going to vote for, and we're doing it again for the main general election here in November.
0:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And the first, first guess we have on is already a representative in the Georgia General Assembly.
0:38
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is this is representative Clint Crow.
0:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Clint Crow, welcome to the task of our podcast.
0:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Tray.
0:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Glad to be here.
0:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Appreciate it.
0:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Love your setup.
0:45
[SPEAKER_00]: This is going to be a lot of fun.
0:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, well, thank you so much.
0:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I hate that Gabriel's not with us today, but he's like a fancy, fancy guy in Augusta.
0:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's like a morning show host, like in the actual division.
0:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
0:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he gets called out on assignment way too often.
1:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And he would tell you he would rather be here some days, but well, maybe next time, next time I hope he gets to be here.
1:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I like, hey, I just heard it next time.
1:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I'm confident I'll be willing to do it more than once.
1:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, for voters who are meeting you for the first time, let's just hear who is Clint Crow, how long you've been doing this, give us some background.
1:20
[SPEAKER_02]: buying the home is exciting, but it can also feel overwhelming.
1:24
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1:28
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1:34
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1:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Through our community first program, eligible buyers can access down payment and closing cost assistance designed to help make home ownership more affordable.
1:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So whether you have questions about down payments, loan programs, or how much home you can afford, our experienced mortgage lenders will help you find a solution that fits your needs and budget.
2:00
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll explain the process in plain language and to your questions and guide you from application to closing.
2:07
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2:13
[SPEAKER_01]: We're here to help turn your dream of owning a home into a reality.
2:17
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2:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Member FDIC equal housing lender in MLS number 413-054.
2:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I've been doing it for six years.
2:33
[SPEAKER_00]: First guy elected in 2020.
2:36
[SPEAKER_00]: What a year.
2:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
2:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
2:39
[SPEAKER_00]: What much going on then, you know, I, you know, speaking of you talking off camera earlier, we're talking about how to thrive in chaos.
2:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's, uh,
2:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And welcome to the party.
2:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we made a big much like now.
2:50
[SPEAKER_00]: We made a big transition with our business then, and if you live with a national brand for my real estate company, and that same year, and our brand for public office for the first time.
3:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the middle of a pandemic.
3:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's, you didn't have any big decisions to make what's going on.
3:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Now look, everything's easier after that, right?
3:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, yeah.
3:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I've been in since, since 2021 is when I first got sworn in, it's finishing up my sixth year, third term, really enjoyed it.
3:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, prior to the legislature, I've had a pretty varied career, a lot of different life experiences.
3:31
[SPEAKER_00]: My first career was in public safety, started off volunteering with fire department workers, and I won one dispatcher.
3:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, initially, went into law enforcement, worked for the Clayton County Sheriff's Office for a little while.
3:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Went over to the Henry County Police Department where I spent about the next nine years.
3:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a patrolman and a field training officer and then I was a detective with Henry County.
3:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And so did that for a good part of my life.
3:56
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents were both in real estate.
3:58
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom from the time I was very young.
4:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I grew up around the business and she always as as mothers would, you know, are likely to do.
4:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Didn't love me being in law enforcement.
4:11
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what urge me to think about getting into real estate.
4:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So I finally decided to do it, you know, part time got my license started working with them and then a couple of years after that.
4:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It was going pretty well and I decided to transition into real estate.
4:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the market crashed.
4:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I left police in full time in 2006.
4:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And then two years later, the recession happened.
4:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And we survived, you know, we were good.
4:37
[SPEAKER_00]: We made it through open our own company, my mom and dad and I started this company in 2009.
4:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they retired just a few years after that and I started to grow it and we eventually grew it to over 100 agents in multiple offices Office is still in locus grove and making and yeah, we just you know did a little bit of a transition merging with another bigger company that's going to Help it to go to that next level
5:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and it also helps me a little bit with the operations and stuff.
5:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll stay on as the broker for Georgia, but as far as the day-to-day management of the company, as you know, being in public office as well, sometimes that part-time job becomes a little more part-time than you think it might be.
5:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And so all the time, it sort of feels like,
5:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, this legislative job can can really take a lot of of your time if you really want to commit and be as involved as as I like to be, you know, you're always looking for balance and this is a way to do that, but yeah, that's my wife and I Christy, we've been married for 24 years as past June.
5:43
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got four kids, two grown sons, in fact, in our second oldest sons birthday is today.
5:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Happy birthday, Corbin.
5:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Here you go.
5:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And Cody, our oldest son's birthdays tomorrow, so their birthdays are back to back.
5:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
5:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we have Cason, whose birthday is in a couple of weeks at Timber 10th.
6:01
[SPEAKER_00]: He'll be 14, and then Holland will be 13 in November.
6:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody's right here in the fall, huh?
6:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
6:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
6:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And everybody's right here in the fall.
6:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
6:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
6:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and so there's a 21 year age gap between our second oldest and our third oldest and we have two grandchildren, Chloe will be 10 in December and Jason's three, he'll be four in next March.
6:19
[SPEAKER_01]: You are all over the map.
6:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, the two young people are like, wow, that's a big space in the kids.
6:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, yeah, it wasn't really my idea.
6:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we, our boys were grown.
6:29
[SPEAKER_00]: My wife was working at the
6:33
[SPEAKER_00]: with the bus county, they went Henry County and you know the boys were grown and pretty much out of the house and then one day we had an opportunity where case and then howling came to live with us.
6:43
[SPEAKER_00]: They were nine months and 23 months old or they were our great niece and great nephew and we got temporary emergency custody album.
6:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Which led very quickly to to us taking them all full time and we adopted them officially and so wow.
7:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I tell people is like, this wasn't my idea.
7:02
[SPEAKER_00]: This was God's idea.
7:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
7:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a different plan.
7:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And his plans and my plans don't didn't always align.
7:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And his went out.
7:11
[SPEAKER_00]: They're right.
7:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So, well, yeah.
7:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And you were faithful to do what he told you to do.
7:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, wouldn't you know, and people say all the time they say, man, those kids are blessed to have you on.
7:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I will tell you.
7:22
[SPEAKER_00]: flat out.
7:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know who was blessed more us or them because it's it's such a, it's such a gift.
7:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, and now we get to do a lot of things and you know, our boys are wonderful.
7:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I love our our two older boys and they're great.
7:37
[SPEAKER_00]: But we were, we were younger when they were growing up, you know, and I was working as police in full time.
7:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I watched the development.
7:43
[SPEAKER_00]: We both work two jobs most of the time.
7:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
7:45
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't have a lot of extra time to do a lot of things and if we did, we didn't have any extra money for anything.
7:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, fortunately now we're in a little bit different phase of life.
7:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, tonight when I leave here, I'm going to go home and grab case and we'll go to Connercy Place Soccer at GSA up at Rotdale campus up there that they're doing now.
8:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So he plays club soccer and we'll go to soccer practice.
8:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And I get to be a lot more involved
8:15
[SPEAKER_00]: early to sneak it up on mid 50s looks drastically different than it did in my my late to late 20s to 30s and so it's it's been a real a real pleasure to raise those kids and they've done a lot for us run a lot of joy.
8:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So I mean it immediately speaks to the values that you have.
8:35
[SPEAKER_01]: You've already said a lot of them already.
8:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like your faithful guy.
8:38
[SPEAKER_01]: He sounds like your father.
8:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And you enjoy that and you're husband to your wife.
8:45
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got a lot of things going on other than politics.
8:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I do.
8:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I do.
8:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Now you were talking about Dutch County, Jackson, Henry County.
8:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you from Butts County?
8:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I am from Butts County, yes sir.
8:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
8:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I have lived on the same street in my entire life.
9:02
[SPEAKER_00]: No kidding.
9:03
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents had house on the lake.
9:04
[SPEAKER_00]: They first bought on Jackson Lake in 1958.
9:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
9:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I say my whole life.
9:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We moved there full time to the lake house when I was six.
9:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't really remember.
9:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
9:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, but it's always been on that street and that's where we spent most all of our time anyway.
9:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And they had two lots across the street that my sister and I built on my sister was a captain with a fire department.
9:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, she was in public safety as well.
9:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
9:27
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole family's public safety.
9:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're my husband.
9:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Two of her size.
9:31
[SPEAKER_00]: My oldest nephew who's only five years younger than I am, I was sort of a late in life, baby.
9:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And.
9:38
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a sergeant with a sheriff's office in Butts County.
9:40
[SPEAKER_00]: My youngest nephew, who's I think 30 now, he's a special agent with a GBI.
9:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And then our daughter-in-law, who's married our oldest son, the mother of our two grandkids, is the deputy director of the Butts County 9-1-1 Center.
9:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So we could not get away from it.
9:55
[SPEAKER_00]: We cannot and I share the public safety and Homeland Security committee in the house now.
9:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So of course, yeah, so the speakers like, yeah, I think you know some of them for you.
10:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but yeah, it's me going to throw it away with it.
10:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you did just ask your nephew or ask your I've been around or involved in just about every aspect of a public safety for most of my life and
10:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but back to the, you know, my sister and I built across the street from my parents and I've we've been in the same house for 25 years never.
10:26
[SPEAKER_00]: never moved in this just yeah we love it there is home uh and we're not far from Newton County uh you know we're up at the north end of Jackson Lake right off 36 there so probably a couple miles from Newton County so it's been a lot of time and Kevin did in fact Corbin his birthday today was born at Newton General.
10:42
[SPEAKER_00]: There you go.
10:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah a lot of a lot of ties to the area so you know my district has changed quite a bit when I first got elected I had
10:50
[SPEAKER_00]: a good portion of South Eastern, Henry County, Southwestern, Newton County, just a piece of it, and then the North half of butts.
10:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we withdrew, and I got drawn out of Newton County.
11:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
11:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a little bit of Henry, but Jasper and Putnam.
11:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when we read drew again, I came back and got a bigger portion of Newton.
11:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So now I have pretty much all of a sudden Newton from coming to an important day all the way down to the tip at the lake all of South and all two 12 South 36 81 and all of the county and now the northern I don't know probably almost two thirds land-wise of Monroe County.
11:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I go way down to full width all the way down to Versailles and actually on the east side of the state all went down to rumble road and
11:32
[SPEAKER_00]: out, you know, a seven side along the river out almost to the rock corridor, there are passpoints here or so.
11:37
[SPEAKER_01]: In Monroe County and Monroe County, yes, sir.
11:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So three counties from Newton, but and Monroe just straight down.
11:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
11:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's district one 18.
11:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even know if we said that yet, but I think I think I think that's one 18.
11:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Just in case district one 18.
11:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so if you're in that area, that's who that's when you're voting in November.
11:55
[SPEAKER_01]: You're voting for district one 18 to support to for your house representative and I know you got competition like you actually have someone running against you in the democratic party.
12:04
[SPEAKER_01]: But real quick now from Butts County because.
12:08
[SPEAKER_01]: To be such a small population, boy, it puts out some heavy hitters.
12:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you've been there in a six years.
12:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You got Lieutenant Governor Bert Jones, who's been in, yeah, he's got elected to the Senate in 2012.
12:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's been there a long time.
12:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I had it just lost a tough primary in a really crazy race for governor.
12:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you got Congressman Mike Collins, who's now running for Senate.
12:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you've got some really heavy hitters just in that.
12:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and we all kind of grew up around each other, you know, Mike's a little bit older than I am, but I went to high school with his youngest sister.
12:43
[SPEAKER_00]: She's your head and me and Bert's oldest brother and I actually graduated high school together.
12:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've all known each other and the families have known each other.
12:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
12:51
[SPEAKER_00]: the Sicily are whole lives.
12:53
[SPEAKER_00]: We're all going to church together.
12:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, and then people have mentioned that a lot of times about the, you know, that small county producing folks who have been pretty, you know, involved in politics.
13:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm certainly the least of those three.
13:07
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know,
13:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it says a lot about our community.
13:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I think so.
13:13
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a lot of people in our community and I include the, you know, Newton County in that as well, that this whole region.
13:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
13:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, there's a lot of people who really come air care about the community, really involved, um, you know, support one another.
13:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
13:28
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I've never lived anywhere like I said other than Jackson and Butts County, but I can tell you that the people, the people there are wildly supportive of each other.
13:36
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's a very,
13:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just a county or a city, it's a community and people really coalesce around each other and it's, uh, I think it teaches you a lot of values that really, um,
13:50
[SPEAKER_00]: that really benefits you when you go into public office, because you learn a lot about how to treat people, how to work with people that you may not align with on everything, how to disagree with people without being disagreeable, you know, still being neighborly, is you're not ever going to agree on everything, right?
14:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think there's a lot of lessons.
14:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's produced some good quality people out of there.
14:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And so,
14:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
14:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we're glad.
14:16
[SPEAKER_01]: We're glad to see you continue to serve, too, because I know six years is a long time now.
14:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems like in, in, in, in state, it's, it's flown by.
14:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
14:26
[SPEAKER_00]: To be honest with you, it, it, it, it doesn't seem like it's been six years.
14:30
[SPEAKER_00]: But then you think about all the things you've done, and it does seem like a big stretch of time.
14:34
[SPEAKER_00]: There's.
14:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're on the ways, or at least the last session.
14:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry.
14:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I was vice chair of it when I got the chairmanship public safety, then they put somebody else's vice chair, because those are both of those positions are pretty, pretty heavy lifts.
14:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
14:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And usually have somebody chair in a standing committee also be vice chair of ways and means.
14:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Got you.
14:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And I want people to know like ways and means is like that's where you determine the budget right a lot of the decisions about that's the that's the money coming in part right yeah all right the money coming in part Appropriations when I was vice chair of ways and means I was also an ex officio member of appropriations just by virtue of that position that's going on right yeah
15:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Ways and means is basically taxes every every source of raising revenue throughout the state whether it's state county city school.
15:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean everything that then deals with the raising of revenue in the state of Georgia comes through the Ways and Means Committee.
15:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is a it's a it's a pretty impactful committee right.
15:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I love serving on it.
15:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm I'm happy that I got to stay on there.
15:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the vice chairman of one of the subcommittees now.
15:42
[SPEAKER_00]: The the
15:43
[SPEAKER_00]: public finance and local policy subcommittee.
15:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of bills come through there that deal with things that touch the communities directly, but it is it's pretty pretty tough topics we deal with.
15:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's a committee.
15:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's got to be like.
15:59
[SPEAKER_01]: you're you're getting currently every the you know affordability affordability is like the buzzword yeah which means hey how much is it gonna cost me at the gas pump and at the grocery store and insurance and you know all those stuff all those all those problems but also property taxes like that's been in part of it and and so if we can just jump into maybe some affordability conversations because you know people here
16:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, like inflation is like a national thing and then zoning is local and then taxes are split among all sorts of different, you know, government entities from, and you were named them just in like city tax, school tax, county tax, and you get state federal tax, everybody's trying to get a piece of the pie.
16:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
16:42
[SPEAKER_01]: For for good reason, right?
16:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Like for for things that we need services that we need.
16:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But as a, as a house member, George house member,
16:51
[SPEAKER_01]: and you've been in the ways and means that you've got a good view of this.
16:55
[SPEAKER_01]: What realistically can you do, or house member, what can you do to truly move the needle on affordability at as someone sees it at the grocery store?
17:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'll start by saying that I think, you know, just say what can one person do, you know, you hear that conversation a lot when it comes to voting like, well, what can one person do?
17:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot because I think every vote counts.
17:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
17:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm one of 180 in the house, but I still have a voice right, and so you can still advocate for your community or what you think or the policies that you need to put forth.
17:32
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... now takes ninety one boats to pass a bill constitutionally in the house uh... when it comes to certain things refer in them since things deal with taxes uh... that have to go on a local ballot for voters to vote on that's a hundred twenty vote as a two-thirds majority that you have to have so it is very much a team sport legislating uh...
17:53
[SPEAKER_00]: which is sometimes frustrating and but overall I think it's beneficial because you know you get there's there's wisdom in the community right and so most of these bills when people think man this process is so slow and so arduous and all it's designed to be that way right we vet everything fully you know bill gets introduced in the house it goes you know gets red
18:21
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll have one or two committee here and ways and means specifically you'll have three.
18:27
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll have two subcommittee hearings.
18:29
[SPEAKER_00]: One you just hear it the second one you hear it and you take a boat.
18:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he goes to the full ways of means committee for another hearing in a vote.
18:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Then he goes to the rules committee and the rules committee will debate it and no vote.
18:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And if it comes out of rules, then the speaker decides whether or not it gets a vote on the House floor.
18:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
18:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's one of the calls of votes to the floor.
18:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And then once you pass that, it goes to the Senate starts all over again.
18:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It goes to, you know, in this case, it goes to their finance committee.
18:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And it'll usually have a couple of hearings over there.
19:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Then goes to the Senate rules right in the Senate floor.
19:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And then if it passes there, it goes to the governor.
19:07
[SPEAKER_00]: who can choose to veto it or not, and that process is designed to be highly deliberative.
19:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So we try our best to make sure that these things were passing.
19:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Because these are big policy things that we deal with most of the time that are impacting 11.3 million people roughly now in the state of Georgia.
19:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we need to make sure that we thoroughly look at it and discuss it.
19:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And that process allows
19:33
[SPEAKER_00]: for that.
19:33
[SPEAKER_00]: But it, you know, to your question, I think that one house member can have, you know, we all have an equal say and what happens.
19:45
[SPEAKER_00]: We all have that one vote.
19:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think the longer you're there and if you put the work in and you try to establish yourself on some of these committees that I'm all in and you wind up in a position.
19:56
[SPEAKER_00]: a leadership position, chair and a committee and stuff.
19:58
[SPEAKER_00]: You get a little more of an opportunity to be involved in more conversations.
20:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, well, and we had Tim Fleming on earlier in the year running for Secretary of State.
20:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's, he's my representative.
20:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I was with time yesterday.
20:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, where are you?
20:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
20:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And, uh,
20:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was going through that process that you just described again and explaining again, why it's deliberative, like you said, but it's not so much slow as it is, it's just, you got so many things to think about.
20:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And one community, it looks completely different than in another community.
20:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, downtown Atlanta is going to look a lot different than, you know, rural South Georgia.
20:37
[SPEAKER_01]: But yet, you're still making a decision that affects all
20:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not like something you used to go, oh yeah, that sounds good.
20:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's just send it on through, pass it on through, right?
20:47
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no rubber stamp in anything.
20:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody's, and even like so last year, I came up there to test a file on one of the, one of the communities you were, the ways and means, to turn on a forget what it's called, the one of the subcommittee hearings and it was about property taxes and one of the bills you guys were looking at.
21:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember,
21:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember like, oh, this is incredible.
21:06
[SPEAKER_01]: They're asking.
21:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they came up and give us your opinion on what it looks like for the school board.
21:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, what does it look like for it was city councils?
21:14
[SPEAKER_01]: What does it look for?
21:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Look like for county government.
21:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're taking all that information in even though you might have a plan.
21:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, well, come on, she holds in it.
21:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Like help us out.
21:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And I loved that.
21:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I was fascinated that that's even part of it.
21:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm learning a lot about how how the sausage just made.
21:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, good term.
21:33
[SPEAKER_00]: We use that one a lot and it's not a perfect process.
21:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is, we do, we love to have input from
21:44
[SPEAKER_00]: everybody.
21:46
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, our committee meetings are designed.
21:48
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all open.
21:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Every one of them is streamed online and held in, you know, where you can go back and watch them.
21:55
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all archived.
21:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can watch the video from every committee meeting that's had for every committee.
22:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's that's purposeful.
22:03
[SPEAKER_00]: We won't people to be involved.
22:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's a representative government.
22:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
22:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the hardest thing for us to do, I say often that most of us are good at a lot of things.
22:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think any of us are good at mat reading.
22:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it is hard.
22:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're not.
22:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never been on the school board.
22:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been a lot of boards, but I had never been on the school board.
22:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
22:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there are things that that we think we have a good plan.
22:27
[SPEAKER_00]: But we want to make sure that we try to perfect it as best we can, and having that input is critical.
22:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I love the committee process that we do.
22:38
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's probably what of my favorite parts of the job.
22:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Constituence Services, I love getting out and meeting with people and talking to people, you know, you see me, I'm in a lot of places.
22:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know,
22:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I like people, I generally like people, and so I think that's part of it.
22:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It helps me do the job better if I know what people think and what they want.
23:02
[SPEAKER_00]: But that process, I love the legislative process, I love legislating, I love policy making, I like to try to solve hard problems, and we've been doing that specifically with property taxes, and that is a hard problem.
23:19
[SPEAKER_00]: having worked in public safety for local governments, um, I know how critical it is that that local governments have funding.
23:26
[SPEAKER_00]: There are, you know, when we look at taxes and affordability,
23:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Every dollar, every cent we take in, that's somebody else's money, right?
23:36
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I call it opium, other people's money, right?
23:39
[SPEAKER_00]: That is, that is, other people's money that is being given to us to provide them something back in value.
23:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
23:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we try to be very conscious of that when we're doing it.
23:51
[SPEAKER_00]: But we also try to make sure that we put the way y'all collect revenue for the school board.
23:56
[SPEAKER_00]: For instance, y'all don't decide that that's decided on a state level.
24:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
24:01
[SPEAKER_00]: The state law dictates that.
24:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
24:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we want to make sure that we work with y'all to make sure a you have the funding you need to provide that critical resource that's needed.
24:16
[SPEAKER_00]: but also doesn't overly burden the taxpayer or a certain group of taxpayers.
24:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
24:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And the group we've heard from the most I've heard from the most are property owner specifically seniors who were on fixed incomes in their home that they've been in forever.
24:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, now they're worried, I've literally had them call me, you know, crying, saying, I don't know what to do.
24:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to have to sell my home because I can't afford the tax bill.
24:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
24:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been here 50 years.
24:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
24:46
[SPEAKER_00]: That is something I don't think, just from a philosophical standpoint, my position on it is is that
24:54
[SPEAKER_00]: At some point, at least, if not all real estate, at least your primary home, your primary residence, the home-stated property that you have, you shouldn't have to continuously rent that from the government for your entire life.
25:09
[SPEAKER_00]: That needs to be the place that is your home where you are secure, where you raise your family, that at some point you get to where you don't have to worry about somebody coming and taking it from you.
25:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
25:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's, and that's really kind of the lens we've looked at this through with all of our property tax discussions.
25:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, property taxes for good or bad is the way we've chosen to operate a lot of our government specifically local governments in school boards.
25:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
25:34
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's a, it's a tax that's not.
25:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not the fairs tax in my mind.
25:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
25:40
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you, if you think about it a couple of years ago, if you remember.
25:43
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a discussion, the previous administration, the U.S. administration, somebody floated the idea of taxing unrealized gains on investments.
25:54
[SPEAKER_00]: You remember hearing about that?
25:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And it did not go over well.
25:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It never got implemented in the experience.
26:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoa, you can't do that.
26:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
26:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, my stock goes up.
26:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got an unrealized gain.
26:05
[SPEAKER_00]: How am I going to pay taxes on that?
26:06
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no realized gain.
26:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
26:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't have that money.
26:09
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's exactly what we do with property.
26:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
26:12
[SPEAKER_00]: You're assessed value goes up now you're taxed on that unrealized gain in your property and you haven't realized any dollars from that to pay that extra tax.
26:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, um, and particularly for those who are all fixed incomes, like seniors, those are ones that they break my heart.
26:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they come to the school board meetings and they're they're they're telling a story that I hear it and pulls it to heartstrings and I go, I don't
26:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what I can do.
26:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it feels like you're stuck.
26:39
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't solve their problem for them.
26:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And you want state legislators to help, but they're also going, what you need the dollars to do, what you need to do, what is the solution?
26:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And we haven't landed on what the solution is yet, but we all want to somehow help help.
26:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and that's the thing, and I will say this.
26:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to put this out there, I say this quite a bit.
27:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Especially this time of the year, we start talking about, you know,
27:04
[SPEAKER_00]: elections and Republicans and Democrats and that sort of thing.
27:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And look how we'll say there are philosophical differences.
27:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a conservative by nature.
27:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that that smaller government, more self-reliance, more self-dependence, that your money is yours and you know better what to do with it than we do.
27:23
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just, that's my core belief.
27:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I do also understand that there are certain things we are obligated to do and should do
27:31
[SPEAKER_00]: by the Constitution to provide certain services to make sure we maintain a civil society.
27:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But aside from those philosophical differences, the thing that doesn't get seen by the public more often than not is the relationship we have with people in other parties.
27:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we don't, we're not up there.
27:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't look like a wrestling match where we're coming off the top rope with an elbow.
27:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like that we all, for the most part, get along fairly well, work well with each other.
28:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think at the end of the day,
28:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And I say, all meaning most won't what's best for the people.
28:16
[SPEAKER_00]: We just have completely different ideas about the best way to do that.
28:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
28:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's where the discussions come in.
28:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where our wish elections were more about.
28:27
[SPEAKER_00]: philosophical differences, political ideology as far as what your policy are and not personalities and not villainizing one side or the other.
28:38
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's this time of the year, that's not where we are.
28:42
[SPEAKER_00]: But I will say, I think that the philosophical differences are for me, coalesce around the idea that I want you to keep as much of
28:57
[SPEAKER_00]: because you know better what to do with it than we do as a government, but the funding for schools and things, it's, you know, where we've kind of leaned towards, I know, we talked about House Bill 581 that I was intimately involved with.
29:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether you wanted to, we were the floating home state exemption to try to alleviate some of that unrealized gain.
29:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
29:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Pain that people were feeling.
29:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And that went a good ways, and then we had House Bill 92, the next year.
29:28
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's a, there's a, people kind of think is a joke, surely not a joke.
29:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But see, the reason we go back into session every year is to fix the stuff we messed up the year before.
29:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And so sometimes that may be true.
29:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we're always a working progress all the time, and so 92 did some things to try to help change or alleviate some pain points once they implemented that we saw from from 5801.
29:54
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we had another bill this year 1116 that we weren't quite able to get across the finish line.
29:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think where we kind of settled what we're really trying to do now is to find
30:06
[SPEAKER_00]: homesteaded properties from property tax.
30:08
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that's what I think is is our ultimate goal for those of us in the house and in our committee.
30:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But to do that, you have to replace that road near somewhere.
30:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
30:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And so looking at a once in sales tax consumption tax is the way we kind of look at trying to do that to fund.
30:25
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, part of five of you want to include the floss floating local option sales tax.
30:29
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem with that specifically for y'all.
30:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it school boards because they're not a tax-leaving authority, you get your funding from the county, you set your budget and everything, but then they levied the tax for you that you're only eligible to just paint the floor.
30:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Just paint the floor.
30:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
30:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
30:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're trying to go back and figure that out.
30:52
[SPEAKER_00]: then that takes either like a constitutional amendment, right?
30:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Or then you have to figure out a different way to do it.
30:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
30:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's kind of where we've landed.
31:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are people, you know, that have argued that well, it once the sales tax makes everything more expensive for everybody.
31:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But the thing I like to lean on is for most.
31:14
[SPEAKER_00]: most counties.
31:16
[SPEAKER_00]: It would work really well.
31:17
[SPEAKER_00]: There are some that might not have a sales tax revenue that would help fill that gap.
31:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And we had plans for that.
31:24
[SPEAKER_00]: We had some alternate revenue sources that we were looking at to get some money to put into a fund.
31:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, new grants for those local governments and things.
31:34
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's estimated about 60% of the sales tax paid in
31:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, really.
31:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
31:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and with a great place, not only to do business, we're a great place for people to come visit.
31:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, they come visit.
31:45
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a huge tourism industry here.
31:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
31:47
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
32:00
[SPEAKER_00]: of local services, you know, they may need the fire department or EMS or Sheriff's Office, but they're also riding on local roads and doing certain things that the local tax payers are paying for.
32:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's only right that they contribute to the funding of that local government as well through their tax dollars.
32:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what that does is yes, it might make the, you know, you'll have a one extra cent for every dollar on stuff that you buy certain things are exempt.
32:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So it wouldn't be on everything.
32:30
[SPEAKER_00]: But that is going to equate to a lot less.
32:34
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have a $3,000 property tax bill on your homesteaded property, you know, one cent of sales tax, that one extra cent that you're gonna pay, I think if my mass not wrong, I'd have to, and I hate to do this.
32:51
[SPEAKER_00]: live here.
32:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, but you don't spend a lot of money to get cash on things to get to $3,000 for that one cent to add up to that.
32:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
32:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
33:00
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so I think $300,000 is that one percent.
33:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
33:05
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, you know, it's a lot.
33:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
33:07
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people spend $300,000.
33:09
[SPEAKER_02]: It's possible income.
33:10
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, cash out of pockets.
33:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, wouldn't be on your house, no, it wouldn't be on your own, your vehicle payment each month.
33:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's
33:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a, it's the concept we've kind of landed on as a way to do that.
33:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we've also talked about, I think, one thing that we've talked about that, at least I've talked about a little bit is maybe a reworking of our spost and e-spost.
33:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I think those programs have been critically important.
33:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Great.
33:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
33:40
[SPEAKER_00]: The one problem is, is that you use those for capital expenditures, but then there's no extra funding to then maintain and operate those things.
33:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
33:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
33:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you're kind of pigeonholed to only do it for capital projects, then it winds up.
33:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, and you're taking those projects really before your community and referendum's you're saying, hey, what do you want to see us do?
34:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we kind of are stuck or not stuck to, but obviously when you vote on the penny sales tax, then we're going to honor what you've said, you want with that.
34:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, we built three brand new stadiums for all of our high schools in New and County, but then right now we've got to have the capital dollars to, I mean, the budget, budget dollars to make sure they're not paying.
34:23
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34:26
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34:30
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34:36
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34:43
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34:51
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35:02
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35:09
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35:15
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35:19
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35:24
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35:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Fire station built a fire station by fire trucks fantastic now you got to pay people to operate that Yeah, you know you've got to pay for the utilities for that.
35:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to pay for fuel for these trucks and also so You know, I'm not I don't want to freaking anybody out and think that we're
35:50
[SPEAKER_00]: actively talking about changing that, but it has been, you know, that has been a discussion that we've talked about about, you know, not being able to use those funds for capital expenditures as well.
36:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So we look, there's virtually nothing we haven't talked about.
36:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm sure.
36:04
[SPEAKER_00]: In this space, and this is, this is one of those complicated problems.
36:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And, and I
36:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I enjoy talking about it, and I think we're going to find a good solution, but it's taking some time.
36:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
36:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, along the same lines in the fortability conversation, and being a real estate guy, like how is a house member, or what can really happen at the gold dome?
36:30
[SPEAKER_01]: to help build, you know, I don't know, how to create affordable homes for people to purchase as they're getting started, right?
36:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Like when you and I were coming up to, well, you had land across from, you know, mom and dad.
36:46
[SPEAKER_00]: But I said to build a house on a contextual salary, right?
36:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And I never would have been able to do it.
36:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Same here.
36:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Like my wife's family were farmers and we got a little piece of the farm land.
36:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, so I had to build a house on it, right?
36:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, um,
36:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But we had to start our home before that, right?
37:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were able to buy something on a teacher salary and a pastor salary.
37:03
[SPEAKER_01]: We were able to buy something small and work our way up to.
37:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't look like a lot of young kids have that opportunity these days.
37:10
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no starter homes that are in their price range.
37:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't even know if there's something that you can solve at the goal.
37:17
[SPEAKER_01]: No, this might be a local kind of issue.
37:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But just what can you do?
37:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Like how can you help in that?
37:21
[SPEAKER_00]: that world well it is a topic of discussion we have a lot in fact i've got to meet coming up in a couple of weeks because i'm i'm pretty involved in that space as well obviously with my background right in a realtor um i will give you a stat that absolutely
37:36
[SPEAKER_00]: mortified me when I heard it.
37:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I probably subconsciously maybe knew it, but it had never been put explicitly to me.
37:46
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what the average age of a first time homebar in 2025 was in the United States of America.
37:51
[SPEAKER_01]: First time homebar.
37:54
[SPEAKER_01]: 28 29 years old 40.
37:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on man 40 years old first time home by the average age of a first time home by in this country in 2025 was 40 years old.
38:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my goodness, which means you're buying your first home at 40 with a 30 year mortgage.
38:10
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to be 70 before it's paid off.
38:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
38:12
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't ever move in by another house.
38:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
38:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
38:15
[SPEAKER_00]: um, that is unsustainable to me.
38:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
38:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree.
38:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I think one of the founding principles of our country that makes it so great is our ability to buy and own property.
38:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Private property rights are a court tenant of the foundation of this country.
38:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that, I mean, look, I've had rental properties.
38:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not, I'm not opposed to rental properties.
38:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we need a mix of housing for people because there's different people that need different types of housing, different times.
38:45
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think there's something inherently positive about being able to buy property and own it.
38:50
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how many people build generational wealth for their families, right?
38:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Because somebody buys a home, they pay it off, the kids inherit it, they get that chunk and it gives them a start to their life.
39:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it goes on down, right?
39:02
[SPEAKER_00]: That leads to generations of people being able to afford to own homes.
39:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And the great thing about owning your home is now you will become a part of that community.
39:10
[SPEAKER_00]: You become part of the fabric of that community because you own a piece.
39:13
[SPEAKER_01]: put roots in.
39:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
39:15
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to have a say in what's happening and you're locked in.
39:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes everything better.
39:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes our local community better.
39:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes our schools better.
39:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
39:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And you don't have a lot of transition and a lot of people moving in and out and stuff.
39:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm a huge fan, not just I'm partly I'm a realtor partly because I believe so much in private property rights.
39:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And how beneficial it is for people to own private property.
39:35
[SPEAKER_00]: But that is slowly eroding because you know,
39:40
[SPEAKER_00]: people now who who answer our 911 calls, who respond in a police car or a fire truck or an ambulance, I know many of them that can't live in the town they're working and because they can't afford to buy home there, they have to drive, right?
39:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
39:56
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not good for our community.
39:59
[SPEAKER_00]: From a solution standpoint, I think the affordability issue in housing is
40:04
[SPEAKER_00]: is, it really comes down to a supply and demand issue.
40:09
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of talk about corporate owned housing and things like that.
40:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think they get a lot of the blame for the problems.
40:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they are a symptom of the disease.
40:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I think because we have such a shortage in housing coming out of 2008, 2009, 2010, there were such a pin-up demand.
40:27
[SPEAKER_00]: We've never called up to that.
40:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can read numerous
40:31
[SPEAKER_00]: articles by economists that talk about how much unmet demand they're still being, that we never recovered fully from that in the number of homes that were being built.
40:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So the supply just wasn't there.
40:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Supply wasn't there.
40:45
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a supply side issue in housing.
40:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you have that, and you have more people who can't buy homes and they need to rent, and you have a group that says, well, I can go build these homes and rent them out.
40:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, corporation hedge fund.
40:58
[SPEAKER_00]: They're looking to say, hey, I can go in here by low sell high.
41:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
41:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're taking advantage of the conditions and environment that's been created by our lack of supply that also drives economics.
41:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
41:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I don't, I have, you know, part of my background or my education,
41:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I went back to school after policing, I'd go on to college the first time and then I went back to Mercer and finished my bachelor's degree and got my MBA both in finance from Mercer.
41:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I'm a Mercer Bear as well.
41:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you go Bear's double Bear, yeah.
41:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, I'm majoring in finance because it dealt so much with what we do in real estate.
41:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just, I'm a, I love numbers, I'm a math guy.
41:44
[SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty simple with economics.
41:46
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have a low supply and a high demand, price goes up.
41:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So what you saw during COVID, there was a spike because there were so much demand and so little supply that prices shot up, we've never saw that supply problem.
42:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Now how do we fix that?
42:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
42:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm also a a big proponent of local control.
42:07
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I served on the planning as only important but it's counting for 11 years.
42:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I am not anti-zoneing or anti-planning.
42:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that those lead to good communities.
42:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I do think, though, however, and there's also, you know, numbers to back this up, that it's estimated that 26% of the cost of a home is driven by local regulation.
42:30
[SPEAKER_00]: That much.
42:31
[SPEAKER_00]: That much.
42:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, permitting this is so many fees and permits and different things and yeah and just time delays we had to build this session dealing with land disturbance permits and the time it takes and try to really say hey Let's let's put some some timelines on this like let's make it a real process where people know going in what to expect.
43:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, now they own that land, generally they're going to have some sort of financing on it because they're not going to spend all the money out of pocket to do that.
43:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're paying interest in carrying calls and all that.
43:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And every, every sin of that winds up at the, at the end user, which is the homeowner.
43:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
43:16
[SPEAKER_00]: All that gets passed along to the homeowner, which makes the house less affordable.
43:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
43:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's just a lot of those, you know, a lot of our communities have requirements on minimum square footage.
43:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
43:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
43:30
[SPEAKER_00]: That makes it less cost-effective.
43:32
[SPEAKER_01]: They have, because when supplies go up, then that's the price of that home goes up.
43:36
[SPEAKER_01]: If you've got to have 1600 square feet, then that's.
43:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
43:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, land density requirements.
43:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So you got to have a bigger piece of property or the cost of doing developments.
43:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I know there are certain communities.
43:47
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no developments happening because they can't.
43:53
[SPEAKER_00]: and have a cost effective lot, they did prices at a piece of property for sale.
43:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was already zoned, already planted, already engineered, everything was done because of the density, the number of lots were smaller for the total piece of it.
44:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And I showed it to several different people and said, hey, you know, here, take a look at this, I think it'd be a great location there like, yeah, we'd love to do it.
44:16
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem is is we're going to have a cost of $65,000 per lot, just to build, that's before you build the house, that's just to put the streets, curving gutter, underground utility, storm order, detention, all right, all the $65,000 per lot, that's in Butts County.
44:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't absorb the local pricing, the praisels won't support a price of that.
44:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's if you did it and you got zero dollars.
44:39
[SPEAKER_00]: off of the developer piece of property.
44:41
[SPEAKER_00]: That's zero profit on the development.
44:44
[SPEAKER_00]: That's only getting your percentage of profit all for the home.
44:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And if it's not, if there's no margin then, then the developers and it's not going to touch it.
44:54
[SPEAKER_00]: No one's going to do it because they're taking a risk, right?
44:56
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, return.
44:58
[SPEAKER_00]: the amount of return that you that that any investor in anything would expect, whether it's you in your 401k or anything else, should be directly related to the amount of risk you're taking.
45:08
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a huge amount of risk because you're laying out millions of dollars to develop a neighborhood and put all this infrastructure in.
45:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there needs to be some sort of expected return on the back into that to make it to make it reasonable for you to do that.
45:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that, you know, there's just a lot of things around that that make it harder for a lot of times what you see now.
45:31
[SPEAKER_00]: You only see really big builders.
45:33
[SPEAKER_00]: coming in and building.
45:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I know around here in Henry County where I don't represent anymore, but I still work a good bit and some other counties.
45:42
[SPEAKER_00]: The only neighborhoods in homes you see being built or by your national home builders.
45:47
[SPEAKER_00]: They can afford because their margins are so low.
45:49
[SPEAKER_00]: They can afford to go in.
45:50
[SPEAKER_00]: They have their own development companies.
45:51
[SPEAKER_00]: They have their own cruise that put in the streets and stuff.
45:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And they do that sometimes even at a loss.
45:57
[SPEAKER_00]: just to have somewhere to build a house because they can make people go, they're publicly traded companies.
46:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they have to, they have to be generating some kind of returns.
46:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
46:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's, and in many communities, and this is not a knock on them.
46:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they're great.
46:14
[SPEAKER_00]: We need them too.
46:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I'm for all kind of housing.
46:18
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not where a lot of communities won't.
46:21
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't want the big, no design neighborhoods.
46:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine a home builder stuff.
46:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I personally missed the days where you had a nice neighborhood where you might have somebody to develop it.
46:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you had two or three builders come in there and take down lots and build two or three different, kind of homes and stuff and it made really nice neighborhoods.
46:40
[SPEAKER_00]: But local builders, community builders can't afford to, they've pretty much been driven out of the business.
46:46
[SPEAKER_00]: All of that goes into.
46:48
[SPEAKER_00]: the affordability issue with housing.
46:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It's absolutely a problem we need to look at.
46:53
[SPEAKER_01]: That's simple solution either, it's not.
46:56
[SPEAKER_00]: No, because anything we do is going to start going to start trading into local control issues.
47:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
47:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And local governments are like, hey, local control, local control.
47:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm, yeah, and, you know, again, my default position is it doesn't get any more local than that individual property owner.
47:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
47:12
[SPEAKER_01]: That's local.
47:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's pretty local.
47:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And, and, you know, I don't think
47:18
[SPEAKER_00]: If their house is 1,200 square feet or 1,800 square feet, I don't think that makes a difference to me on my property, what they do on their property.
47:27
[SPEAKER_00]: If they build it out of this, as long as it's a, as long as it's a recognized by the National Building Code as a viable building product, that something that's pretty standard is gonna be safe and hold up.
47:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think, I don't really know why anybody would tell them what it needs to look like.
47:51
[SPEAKER_00]: But a lot of our communities want to tell our neighbors what they need to build, what it needs to look like, how big it needs to be and how big they're not needs to be.
47:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And then because they think that somehow affects their
48:01
[SPEAKER_00]: private use in enjoyment of their own property, but instead it might actually be driving to cost of everything up.
48:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
48:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
48:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if there's no new houses being built, then the only taxes to pay for local government operations are you.
48:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, yes.
48:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And you don't want to pay any more taxes.
48:16
[SPEAKER_02]: It's for you when it told us.
48:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
48:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
48:19
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
48:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's talk about another hot topic right quick.
48:21
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, this is the messy metal.
48:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So we'll just jump into it.
48:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
48:25
[SPEAKER_01]: This data centers, data centers.
48:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Who?
48:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I never heard never heard of that.
48:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure you have it.
48:31
[SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, this is like, how man.
48:34
[SPEAKER_01]: We had data centers come in down here meta in Newton County.
48:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, it was 2018, 2019.
48:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It was not a big to do.
48:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, of course, they're in a technology part, off of not near any residential.
48:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe we did it right.
48:49
[SPEAKER_01]: No, maybe we did it right.
48:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Now they're popping up in all kinds of places.
48:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I know the last session, you guys, at least, had a lot of conversation around how much should the state be involved in the state government be involved
49:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, I don't know, more prohibitions or more ordinances.
49:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure exactly what the conversation was.
49:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was like, how much control should the state have?
49:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, because you write back to local control, well, if local control, you got, you got some councils and commission, board commissions, who's going, come to our neighborhood.
49:22
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we'll give you, we'll debate everything and you build here.
49:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And because they want to tax revenue.
49:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
49:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you got citizens who are going, we don't want that in our backyard.
49:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
49:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
49:31
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you, what?
49:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Where are you at and all this?
49:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, the messy middle I guess is where I'm at.
49:39
[SPEAKER_00]: So appropriately named.
49:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is obviously a very sensitive topic, and one that we've had discussed a lot.
49:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I think at the end of the day where where those things go is muchly, you know, very much a local decision.
50:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, again, I was only planning as on board.
50:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I was also on the development authority in Buzz County.
50:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
50:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a big, both sides of it.
50:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a big, I am a big fan of comprehensive planning.
50:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
50:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you need to decide.
50:12
[SPEAKER_00]: what you want to have and where you want it to go.
50:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that needs to be what drives your decision making.
50:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I am not a proponent of
50:27
[SPEAKER_00]: moratoriums are getting rid of or saying full stop to data centers and that may not be the most popular topic with.
50:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a lot of conversations with people about this and I think one old one, it's a lot easier to explain to somebody.
50:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I've cheered the public safety and homeland security.
50:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
50:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, AI in my opinion is coming.
50:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It is going to happen.
50:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
50:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Regardless.
50:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It's here.
50:56
[SPEAKER_00]: We are very much in a, for lack of a better term, a space race.
51:03
[SPEAKER_00]: with China and others, but mostly China for the development of artificial intelligence.
51:11
[SPEAKER_00]: China has a huge head start on us in terms of power, and their data center construction is quickly catching up.
51:20
[SPEAKER_00]: They are not going to slow down.
51:22
[SPEAKER_00]: if they become the world leader in intelligence, whether we want it or not, they're gonna be huge discoveries made by artificial intelligence.
51:31
[SPEAKER_00]: There's already things that are happening in science and health and all kinds of things that are going to, that are gonna be monumental.
51:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's gonna be an overall benefit to what artificial intelligence can do.
51:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
51:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I also think though that there is an opportunity
51:52
[SPEAKER_00]: bad actors can do bad with it as well.
51:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And so just from a national security standpoint, I don't think we can stop and say we're not going to build any more compute compute, which is what's in data centers, the chips.
52:07
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what determines.
52:09
[SPEAKER_00]: how much, how fast you can operate, how fast you can train it, how well it can develop.
52:15
[SPEAKER_00]: If we were to link with that to them and don't do any of that on our end, we're going to be in a very disadvantageous position.
52:32
[SPEAKER_00]: they are, you know, they won't to be a leader in that space because then they won't to utilize that to have other people come to them for their developments in artificial intelligence other countries, other regions.
52:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard this, I don't know exactly where I heard it, so I can't attribute it on apologize, but I know I've heard it a couple of times.
52:52
[SPEAKER_00]: that they've already gone to some other subs and here in African countries and other things trying to partner and sail their intelligence and their stuff and all that.
53:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So the point is this, they're going to try to become the providers of that intelligence.
53:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
53:07
[SPEAKER_00]: If it does become the main
53:12
[SPEAKER_00]: economic engine, much like the railroad did, much like electricity did.
53:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
53:17
[SPEAKER_00]: If artificial and the internet, if they become the one that is seen as the leader in that and the one everybody turns to, not only is you going to make them an economic powerhouse, it's going to give them a lot of alliances and a lot of people are going to rely on them.
53:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, my biggest fear is that,
53:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But then for years they've been trying, they've made pushes off and on to have the you on their currency, replace the dollar as a world reserve currency.
53:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So just for a thought experiment, if play that out for a minute.
53:52
[SPEAKER_00]: If the you on replace the dollar as the world reserve currency, because now more people are trading with them and they're the one everybody's trading with because of intelligence.
54:02
[SPEAKER_00]: and some more people are dealing in U.S. and the reason to dollars for workers are of current is because everybody deals with the U.S. and they operate in dollars as easier that way.
54:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
54:10
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why it's a world reserve currency.
54:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody operates in dollars because they all deal with the U.S.
54:15
[SPEAKER_00]: If that were to become dominantly China and the U.S. replaced the dollar will immediately the value of the dollar goes down.
54:24
[SPEAKER_00]: When the dollar goes down,
54:27
[SPEAKER_00]: everything we buy calls more right inflation will go through the roof.
54:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So for not to the supposed to be fun, sorry, I don't want to be a downer on his.
54:37
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I'm scared about it, but, but that's the things that I think about when I think about this conversation, right?
54:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
54:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Do we need data centers, I think?
54:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
54:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Are there still things we need to do to make sure that they're done right?
54:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
54:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Are there proper places for them?
54:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
54:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Are there in proper places for them?
54:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
54:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think we need to be very mindful about where that is.
55:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, and again, most of the I think the local governments need to decide where those go if they go, if they're right for a community.
55:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
55:11
[SPEAKER_00]: If it's done right.
55:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the economic benefit that can come from it can go a long way to do what we're already talking about doing it, trying to reduce property taxes and alleviate pressures.
55:23
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to make sure that they pay their fair share.
55:26
[SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't mean all fairs not all, but they need to pay, you know, they're making
55:31
[SPEAKER_00]: really good revenue off of these.
55:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And they need to contribute that.
55:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think just from what I've seen, they do that, or no willing to do that.
55:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So there has been a fit that can come from that, but then it's going to be dependent upon the local government leaders.
55:48
[SPEAKER_00]: that get that revenue to do the right things with it.
55:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
55:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
55:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
55:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And if and when they don't, that's when the voters have to make a decision.
55:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, on whether their needs are being met.
55:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
56:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
56:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's I will say this finally own own data centers.
56:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Um,
56:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a lot of conversations with a lot of those folks.
56:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they're obviously all around the capital and all over.
56:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I also serve on the technology and infrastructure innovation committee.
56:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So you've named like eight committees already.
56:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, six.
56:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I got six committees.
56:20
[SPEAKER_00]: You stay busy.
56:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I left out banks and banks and judiciary and non civil, which is pretty busy.
56:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
56:25
[SPEAKER_00]: But the technology committee, we obviously talk about this a lot.
56:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm fairly well versed in the possibilities and the problems.
56:37
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think a lot of the information that people read and see and hear on the internet and social media is parent.
56:49
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of misinformation out there.
56:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I will tell you that I have
56:55
[SPEAKER_00]: real credible information that there's this documented, that there are foreign actors purposely spreading misinformation, China, spreading misinformation through social media to try to stop.
57:09
[SPEAKER_00]: They're trying to do exactly what we're talking about doing, right, moratorium, stoppage is slowing down.
57:15
[SPEAKER_00]: They're purposely doing that and spreading misinformation and it's growing like wildfire because people are afraid and I get it I get it.
57:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I get it.
57:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Do they use a lot of power they do?
57:24
[SPEAKER_00]: They do they use a lot of power Do they use a lot of water
57:29
[SPEAKER_00]: sometimes.
57:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
57:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll say, and I don't know if I'm able to say this, but I'll say it anyway.
57:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And I also, but I'm just one that talked about, you know, when they filed, they needed a commitment for 600,000 gallons per day, which is a lot.
58:03
[SPEAKER_00]: If you multiply that over 365 days, how do they have a lot of water?
58:07
[SPEAKER_00]: They need that capacity to be available.
58:11
[SPEAKER_00]: they utilize that about 8% to 10% of the days of the year, because most of the time it's going to be air cooled.
58:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
58:18
[SPEAKER_00]: They're only going to use that water to cool the air when it's extremely hot for a long period of time.
58:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I do degrees or something, something like that.
58:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for an extended period of time, you have multiple hot days.
58:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Like right now, would probably be some of those days they would use that.
58:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
58:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
58:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But the rest of the time, they're paying for access to that capacity for
58:39
[SPEAKER_00]: can lower your per gallon cost for the water authority because they're getting money for border they're not having to.
58:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It was should bring everybody's raised down.
58:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Same with power.
58:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
58:49
[SPEAKER_00]: That is absolutely possible with power because if they're using this much power and paying this much for it and you're getting this much consumption, you should be able to lower the price per kilowatt.
59:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
59:01
[SPEAKER_00]: You should be able to.
59:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
59:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You should be able to.
59:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's some of the things that we're looking at and talking about.
59:07
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, Georgia Powers already frozen right for the next three years and he's we're a little ways into that.
59:13
[SPEAKER_00]: The public service commission has a rule now they've implemented that requires any large load user, which would be a data center and some others.
59:24
[SPEAKER_00]: to pay upfront for any infrastructure improvements that have to be built for their project.
59:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We had a build this year that I voted for, that passed the house, and didn't make it quite across the Senate.
59:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It got some of our things just don't make it through it, right?
59:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But it passed the house to codify that rule.
59:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So the PSC can't come back and say, yeah, well, we changed our mind on this.
59:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It would put it into law that that is how it needs to operate to make sure that these people are paying their own way.
59:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
59:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not on the backs of taxpayers to protect taxpayers.
59:59
[SPEAKER_00]: We've also had a lot of discussions about there's a sales tax exemption for the equipment in data centers.
1:00:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:00:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It's set to sunset in 2031, I believe.
1:00:09
[SPEAKER_00]: There's been talks about repealing that.
1:00:11
[SPEAKER_00]: We actually passed a bill Two years ago Pass the house and the Senate and the governor ended up vetoing it You know, look and I'm not I'm not saying yeah, you're now on what the governor did I agree with him almost on everything almost not everything, but but a lot of things But you know He had his reasons and then perhaps he had information we weren't pretty too
1:00:34
[SPEAKER_00]: about the effect that would have it can have an overly detrimental effect to just stop in the middle.
1:00:39
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason we put sun sets on things like that is to give expectations to the people who are planning on this.
1:00:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's ever fair to have a tax credit or a policy and then say, now, if you're a developer or say, you know, you're going to build a data center and you're saying, okay, we're going to price this.
1:00:59
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to pay this much for the land.
1:01:00
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to pay this much for this.
1:01:02
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to pay this much for the equipment in there because we're going to have this sales tax exemption.
1:01:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not going to cost us, but that that goes into every facet.
1:01:08
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're already starting construction and now we take away that sales tax exemption like that.
1:01:14
[SPEAKER_00]: that's not to me that's not good policy necessarily.
1:01:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I did vote for it.
1:01:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I did vote for because I think that that's I think ultimately that probably needs to change.
1:01:24
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, part of 1116, I think one of the things we had in there, a part of that for that grant money, we're talking about for locals was doing away with that sales tax exemption and have that money going to a fund for local governments and schools.
1:01:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:01:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
1:01:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:01:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So, that's a conversation, but we'd have to be mindful about how we're doing it because we need to be fair to everybody, sure.
1:01:43
[SPEAKER_00]: The same thing with the film tax credit, which has been hotly debated.
1:01:47
[SPEAKER_00]: We put sunset, so it gives people a real expectation to say, hey, I can't assume this is going to happen past this, but up until then.
1:01:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to have this, so you can make good long-term decisions based on the information that you have.
1:02:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's a good business practice for the state to operate that way, and so I don't know really if I answered your question because I don't know if there is an answer.
1:02:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:02:14
[SPEAKER_00]: It's each individual, but everybody that I've talked to when they say, I don't want these data centers.
1:02:19
[SPEAKER_00]: When I explain some of that, I think they understand the rationale behind it.
1:02:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they all agree.
1:02:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they don't really, I don't know that a lot of people are aware.
1:02:28
[SPEAKER_00]: of the long-range view of how critical this infrastructure is going to be for the protection of our country and our state.
1:02:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Benefits aside, the potential benefits are, like I said, they're going to be enormous.
1:02:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But just from a security standpoint, just from an economic standpoint, I think that that people don't realize how critical they are.
1:02:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And if they do, they say, well, but we don't want to hear.
1:02:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And I get that.
1:02:55
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's why local governments have to be very mindful about, you know, there needs to be areas that they have slated for industrial growth and things like that.
1:03:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where if you're going to do something like it, you need to do it there.
1:03:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
1:03:07
[SPEAKER_01]: That's your comprehensive plan you're talking about.
1:03:09
[SPEAKER_01]: If you go ahead and get those kind of work, things in the works.
1:03:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Now it's a little easier to say, all right, we'll look tax payers and citizens, you're part of this conversation.
1:03:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
1:03:19
[SPEAKER_01]: You're stakeholder.
1:03:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You wait in on what you think this plan should look like this comprehensive plan.
1:03:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Now we have it.
1:03:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So it shouldn't be as a prize that there's a data center going into a technology part because that's what we all kind of agreed what we wanted our community look like.
1:03:32
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it shouldn't be one that pops up in your neighborhood because we didn't have this comprehensive plan and, you know, in place.
1:03:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So that is, you know, to your point about meta, it was in the news in Stanton Springs, right?
1:03:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Industrial Park.
1:03:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And nobody knows it's even there.
1:03:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:03:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you can drive by a thousand times and you'll never know it's there.
1:03:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You could drive by the front of it and you don't even know what it is.
1:03:52
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true.
1:03:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Even, you know, I hear a lot about the noise and stuff.
1:03:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I will say there's one going in one of the local communities I represent.
1:03:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Those local commissioners went out and toured a facility just like the one that's being planned there.
1:04:03
[SPEAKER_00]: That was out in just north of Jackson, Mississippi.
1:04:06
[SPEAKER_00]: They went out there and looked and said, hey, we want to come see it.
1:04:09
[SPEAKER_00]: They went and saw it, toured it, asked questions, had a decimal reading meter outside.
1:04:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they were out on straight away from it.
1:04:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the noise was like 50, 60 decibels, which is not overly loud, right?
1:04:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:04:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's, it's a noise you can hear, but it's not, it's not any louder than the interstate going by.
1:04:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:04:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:04:29
[SPEAKER_00]: They talk to neighbors and businesses, you know, and they said, man, they think they're great community partners.
1:04:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that is done.
1:04:37
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not long ago.
1:04:37
[SPEAKER_00]: They were doing some community grants.
1:04:39
[SPEAKER_00]: They've done so many grants for schools and different things.
1:04:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you have good actors and the counties.
1:04:47
[SPEAKER_00]: do it right.
1:04:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they can be a benefit for the community if it's put in a right place.
1:04:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:04:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are decisions that are not really hours.
1:04:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:04:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Today though.
1:04:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I asked you so many like local questions and you are you like, hey, man, I'm at the goal.
1:05:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't ask me something about Atlanta.
1:05:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, look, look, look, all of this is, I represent this area though.
1:05:06
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
1:05:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:05:07
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, that take, I take this perspective to the gold dome.
1:05:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.
1:05:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And decisions I make are like, hey, yes, this is going to, I need to be cognizant that decisions I make and vote on the things I do are going to impact.
1:05:20
[SPEAKER_00]: all 11 million plus people in Georgia.
1:05:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But I also need to think about how is it going to reflect my immediate community in my district, right?
1:05:28
[SPEAKER_00]: That's who you represent.
1:05:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Who I represent?
1:05:30
[SPEAKER_00]: The people who have voted for me and asked me to go there.
1:05:34
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and like I said, we're not going to agree on every issue.
1:05:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I do hope that people find and think that I'm very thoughtful about it.
1:05:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I think any position I take, I can I can
1:05:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I can make a case for it.
1:05:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I can explain it.
1:05:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Why I believe what I believe and that's my pastor likes to say I still a lot from him.
1:05:52
[SPEAKER_00]: You know him.
1:05:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's he's very portable.
1:05:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:05:55
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a number sticker guy.
1:05:57
[SPEAKER_00]: He is a buffer sticker.
1:05:57
[SPEAKER_00]: You got a whole book called Biniisms.
1:05:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
1:06:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fantastic.
1:06:02
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, he likes to say that, you know, when I get into talking, you may not believe what I believe, but you'll believe I believe what I believe.
1:06:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's, and that's kind of my approach.
1:06:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you may not believe the same thing I believe.
1:06:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:06:12
[SPEAKER_00]: But you'll at least believe that I believe it in its reason and well thought out.
1:06:15
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
1:06:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That I've really tried to put a lot of, of thought behind it.
1:06:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:06:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I try to be very conscientious when we're thinking about these things.
1:06:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I have kids and grandkids too that are going to grow up here.
1:06:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and you wouldn't just stay here.
1:06:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to stay here.
1:06:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be able to buy a house and live here and put down roots and have a nice job.
1:06:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:06:35
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you mentioned something a second ago and it kind of snuck by, but you said, you're talking about the noise and stuff, and then what else could be there?
1:06:42
[SPEAKER_00]: The one thing we get back in one thing I hear a lot now and I try to push back on this a little bit when people talk about data centers and they're like, well, I read an article today talking about it in the AJC and it said, you know, they produce relatively few jobs.
1:06:59
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't produce 500 jobs, but there may be a couple of hundred jobs there.
1:07:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And these are going to be really well paying 80,000 plus jobs for college.
1:07:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Never went to college.
1:07:11
[SPEAKER_01]: 80,000 rest.
1:07:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Correct.
1:07:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Really well paying jobs.
1:07:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But also, they don't bring trucks in and out.
1:07:18
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't bring cars.
1:07:18
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing we heard forever in economic development, especially when I was on development authority and warehouses were coming in and distribution and all the things.
1:07:24
[SPEAKER_00]: People like, we don't want all that.
1:07:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It brings wood, bringing all these jobs and they're like, yeah, but those jobs are bringing people and they increase this traffic and make some more trucks.
1:07:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, now we've got something that don't.
1:07:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It just brings dollars, right?
1:07:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, and it don't create that.
1:07:37
[SPEAKER_00]: But now they're like, well, it don't create jobs.
1:07:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, you didn't work right here.
1:07:41
[SPEAKER_00]: job because they created traffic.
1:07:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's an, it's an unsolvable complete.
1:07:50
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not, you're never going to fully be able to please everybody.
1:07:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, that's the case.
1:07:57
[SPEAKER_01]: But I will say this in your six years and I've gotten to watch you work and you represent well.
1:08:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll, I'll be happy to tell people that you represent well.
1:08:09
[SPEAKER_01]: if if you had one last thing you would want to say like why?
1:08:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you're an election.
1:08:13
[SPEAKER_01]: This is like we've talked about a great lot of great stuff, but you're actually in an election season here.
1:08:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And you've got to win this seat.
1:08:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Why should people listen to this?
1:08:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Why should people vote for Clint Crow?
1:08:26
[SPEAKER_02]: buying the home is exciting, but it can also feel overwhelming.
1:08:30
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1:08:34
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1:08:39
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1:08:46
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1:08:54
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1:09:05
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1:09:12
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1:09:18
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1:09:22
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1:09:28
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1:09:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think that I think that they would find if they don't already know that I'm very responsive, that I am well thought out, I do try to, I take what I do very seriously.
1:09:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I take this responsibility very seriously.
1:09:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, again, it doesn't just impact my constituent, it impacts my family, you know,
1:10:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that I have a lot of, there's no substitute for experience.
1:10:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a lot of experiences in a lot of different just because of my life is chaotic as it has been.
1:10:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I've worn a lot of different hats.
1:10:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I've developed a lot of experience that I think informs my opinions.
1:10:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I think that they would find that that I'm responsive, no matter where they are on an issue, whether they agree with me or disagree with me, whether they voted for me or didn't vote for me.
1:10:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, I go to things if somebody calls me and invites me to something or will submit to come talk to them about something or has a question about something, um,
1:10:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll say this and I'll I'll I'll make it very vague because I don't ever want to to throw anybody's stuff out there.
1:10:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, but there's a gentleman that I know who is he actually is a member of the Democrat party and one of the counties I'll represent.
1:11:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And I saw him a couple years ago, and it was during about the same time of season.
1:11:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw him at a county community function, and I said, hey, you know, my opponent was at very nice.
1:11:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Very, very nice.
1:11:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if her will.
1:11:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
1:11:23
[SPEAKER_00]: She's ran a couple times.
1:11:24
[SPEAKER_00]: She doesn't get out much.
1:11:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I would love to tell you what our differences are in policy.
1:11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea what hers are.
1:11:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never been able to have a film with her or anything else.
1:11:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, graduate of high school with her sister, lover sister to pieces.
1:11:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw her in June.
1:11:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Just wonderful, great friend of mine.
1:11:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but I, I saw her and she was kind of there and just thing, I, I said to him, and I said, oh, hey, you know, my opponents here.
1:11:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good to, good to see her, you know, and he said, yeah, and he kind of leaned over.
1:11:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And he had his hat on it said proud Democrat.
1:11:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
1:11:53
[SPEAKER_00]: You leaned over and he said, I voted for you.
1:11:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, really, he's like, I don't agree with you on, on everything.
1:12:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's some things I really disagree with you.
1:12:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, but I know you show up, like you, you show up and your responsive, and, and I'm can communicate with you and, and I hear from you.
1:12:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:12:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's the difference, right?
1:12:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's, you know, I don't, I don't ever want anybody to vote for me because I'm Republican or not vote for me because I'm Republican.
1:12:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I would much rather than get to know me and what I believe and say, hey, you know what I think I agree with that guy on more things than I disagree with him on.
1:12:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think he would do a good job.
1:12:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:12:34
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I believe and I would ask other people to believe that and vote for me.
1:12:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But I offer to, you know, to try it out too.
1:12:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm always happy to talk to anybody, and I think that I hope I've shown that I'll show up to whatever the venue is, no matter who's putting it on, or what it is, whether it's a home game for me or not a home game for me, you know, if it's both places.
1:12:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:13:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's, I think that's the job, right?
1:13:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, no matter whether whoever votes from your don't, I'm still elected to represent all 59,000 people in the 118th house district.
1:13:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to do that well and I want to understand their concerns and if we disagree on something, I want to have a chance to talk to them.
1:13:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Look, I don't know everything by any means.
1:13:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I love to hear other people's opinions.
1:13:23
[SPEAKER_00]: It helps inform my opinions sometimes.
1:13:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And there may be some things that we can find common ground on that might still get what I want to do and meet my ultimate goal.
1:13:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And might help meet their goal as well.
1:13:34
[SPEAKER_00]: There may be a way to have both things happen.
1:13:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I've made a career in real estate out of finding win win situations, you know, that's, that's the, the gold and selling homes or selling a house or selling real estate is you have a buyer who wants to buy a property at a certain price and a seller wants to sell it a certain price and if you can get those things to, to overlap, you've got a deal and you've essentially are trying to make a deal, you're trying to find consensus and that's.
1:14:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been pretty successful doing that, and I think that this is no different.
1:14:07
[SPEAKER_00]: We're in the people business, you know, whether I was policing, whether I was in real estate, whether I'm doing what I'm doing now in the legislature, it's all the people business.
1:14:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that's what I love about it, and I think that that's.
1:14:21
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I've done okay at it.
1:14:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you have.
1:14:24
[SPEAKER_01]: How tell you, when I call our message you, you're quick to respond and I'm grateful for that.
1:14:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Just being a local elected official who needs to get in touch with, you know, the Georgia Assembly, you've been there, man, and I appreciate that.
1:14:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So anyway, thanks for being on the show today.
1:14:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was great.
1:14:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I will come back.
1:14:43
[SPEAKER_00]: This was not, not painful at all.
1:14:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Good.
1:14:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Good.
1:14:47
[SPEAKER_00]: You survived the messy middle.
1:14:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I did.
1:14:49
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, ma'am, thanks for being here.