Latest / Rick Outzen: (we don’t) color on the dog / Meet Brian Cole
Transcript
- Rick Outzen: I'm Rick Altson. This is Rick's Blog Live. Thank you for watching. We've got two city council races that are important for our city residents. One is the District 2 race, and the other is District 4. We've got with us Brian Cole, who's running for District 4, which is an open seat. Brian, thank you for joining us. Brian Cole: Thank you for having me, Rick. Rick Outzen: Who is Brian Cole? Brian Cole: I I absolutely hate that question really with Rick Outzen: No, that's Brian Cole: the most I'd I'd rather talk about stormwater or taxes or any of the nuts and bolts of it. professionally I'm I'm a I'm a contractor. I work in property restoration. Probably most people would not know me from that side of my life. They've probably interacted with me somewhere else along the line, whether that was when I was a volunteer firefighter or when I was a youth sports coach. I still am a youth sports coach, mostly just with my kids school. I'm a Pensacola guy. I'm a local who just really loves this community. I'm raising my two girls here, my wife and I. Thank God for my wife. She's doing most of the raising. Right. And really, I'm just somebody who wants to take some responsibility for what the city becomes over the next four years. Rick Outzen: Where were your volunteer firefighters? Brian Cole: So I was a volunteer at Station Seven, which is Ferry Pass. Right. and then transitioned over to Station Two over in Beulah. Ferry Pass became a combination station. They had career firefighters. My dad was a firefighter, and the same reason he joined was the same reason I joined as nobody else was there. And sometimes people got to step up to the plate and put in the work. And when they had a career element that was really handling it and they had ample volunteers and the men and women out in Beulah were shorthanded, I I just started making the commute out there 'cause that's where they needed the help. Rick Outzen: What do you think how does that prepare you to run for city council or be involved in in any municipal government? 'Cause I think it is good training. It it Brian Cole: It is good training. I'll tell you what it's really good training for is making do, right? We we had we had we had to survive with with limited equipment in some cases and we had to survive with with limited training. You know, as volunteers, we're only able to to commit so much time to the types of training, not just the amount of training, right? You've gotta have training in hazardous materials, you've gotta have training in, you know, rescue operations, you've gotta have training in A variety of things that when you're a contractor or you are a tree trimmer or you are somebody else inside of the community doing something else, having another job, and and this is your your volunteer, your civic obligation, it's it's it's pretty it's pretty interesting. I I I can say that. As far as how that's specifically prepared me for city government, I think the biggest thing it it showed me was our independence. Visual departments are really trying to make it work. I saw firsthand our county government, you know, not the city limits inside, the amount of effort they were going through to just try and stretch those budget dollars, to just try and make things work. It it gave me a real perspective on where problems usually are. It's not in how the individual departments are operating. I think we've got great department heads inside of the city have been really fortunate over this last year to get to meet most of And I think they've got their heads screwed on right. I think they're doing really good work. I think they're making really good use of the resources we're giving I'm not sure we're putting the right resources where they need to go. Rick Outzen: You know, you've been knocking on doors, you've you've met the voters in District Four, as a candidate, which is different than as a neighbor. Sure. what are you hearing from the public as you move around? Brian Cole: I have heard a little bit of everything. You know, some of the most common concerns I hear are in regards to our tree canopy, downtown parking, and there's these these sort of surface level problems that that people recognize, right? They bring up things about the schools, and obviously city council doesn't have anything to do with how the school board operates. they bring up issues of you know cost of living, they bring up issues that that seem very far away. And I think a lot of them If you do a root cause analysis, if you actually take the time to figure out what is causing this problem, you'll find that it's an economic issue. Most of the time, we don't have the opportunities that another community does. And so we lose a lot of people. We hit we have some great kids come out of this community. We have really talented individuals that call this their hometown that have not been here in 10 or 20 years because Atlanta pays more, because Gainesville pays more. Well how Rick Outzen: Can a coun a council member impact that? Brian Cole: Well, I think we're seeing that unfold right now with how the Birdon project is is going through at the port. We can see that our city has a a real hand to play inside of economic development. We have an economic development department at the city. Steve Baham is the the director there. I've had a chance to talk to Steve, and him and I are on the exact same wavelength. One of the challenges we have as a city, for a very long time, we have focused on trying to attract new businesses to the area. And we've put a lot of chips into you know trying to bring in business, but there's effort that could be used, there's resources that could be shared with local businesses that are already here that are producing something, right? They're they're producing a product or they're producing a service that goes outside of the city limits. And that's really what you want in an economy: is you want things that bring dollars into the the the pool, right? We have Money leaving the pool constantly, and we're sharing money inside of the pool constantly, but we need businesses that bring money into it. I would like to see us provide the same amount of effort and the same amount of energy into supporting some of those local businesses that are here, that are bringing new dollars into the community, as we are spending time, energy, and money on. Rick Outzen: What what would be one of those businesses? Brian Cole: You know what's interesting is I met a young entrepreneur. He's got an engineering firm. And what he's trying to do is he's trying to create a sort of connection to the details of engineering and structural engineering, specifically for construction, that can be exported across the entire state. One of the biggest challenges usually is you know geography. He's gotta go, he's gotta look at it, he's gotta go sign off on certain things. And so he's trying to from Pensacola, he's trying to run a business that exports services into other places. Rick Outzen: And services in other places. Yeah. All right. We we've got we're down to about two minutes left. It goes by so fast. Brian Cole: I cannot believe that for minutes. You just want to get rid of me. Rick Outzen: no, but I do have other people that need to be in that chair. But the you know, the two things, two questions I'd like to hit before before we we sign off with this segment is is one is every council person And I've been on a council in Gulf Breeze, you have to have a matrix in how you make your decisions. What will be the the the most important thing you'll look at when you have a decision in front of you that has multiple choices? Brian Cole: So my kind of guiding light is is it's a little it's a little silly, but it's a it's a saying, right? A society grows great when old men plant trees that they'll never sit in the shade of. If the decision is a short-term gain for me, that's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking to change how Pensacola operates as a city long term so that my children's children can call this place home, they can have a a place to live, they can have An economy to participate in, and that's gonna be my guiding light. What is best for us long term? Rick Outzen: Good, good answer. th the next you got you we're down to thirty seconds. Thirty seconds the I'll give you a little bit more, I'll give you a minute, is to give your elevator speech for the for the audience. Why why should they vote for Brian Cole? Sure. Brian Cole: If you are looking for a councilman who cares about this community, who wants good things for it, who's put in the legwork, I've attended every single city council meeting, agenda conference. The experiences I have both in the community and outside have prepared me for this job. I would be honored for your vote, and I will be available. Rick Outzen: Great. Brian, thank you so much for coming on. First chance for us to really sit down and meet. It was fun. Enjoyed it. So we're gonna go ahead and take a break. We'll have other council members on throughout this show. Thank you for watching. We'll be right back.