Latest / Between the Headlines: Columbus / Columbus' Watershed Crisis w/ Keith Gaskin & Kevin Stafford

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Columbus' Watershed Crisis w/ Keith Gaskin & Kevin Stafford · Between the Headlines: Columbus

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: From the opinion page of the Commercial Dispatch.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: This is Between the Headlines.
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: This is Peter Imes, publisher of the Dispatch.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: One of our hosts of Between the Headlines is the managing editor of our newsroom.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: Typically, we try to keep news and opinions separate, but reporters have a unique insight into the workings of local government and their analysis can be helpful for readers and listeners.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: The Dispatch remains committed to journalistic integrity and our reporting will always reflect that.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: And now Between the Headlines.
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: This week on Between the Headlines, the fountains of the deep were broken up and the windows of heaven were opened, and rain was upon the friendly city.
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: Once again, zach and I point fingers.
• 0:56
  Speaker 4: Plus, we unveil the sacred catacombs of Probst Park and special guests Keith Gaskin and Kevin Stafford.
• 1:07
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• 2:03
  Speaker 4: And now a message from political candidate Bill Strauss.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I want to thank the Commercial Dispatch for this podcast, bringing different views in an open discussion.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: I'm Bill Strauss, humbly asking for your vote as next mayor of Columbus.
• 2:18
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• 2:22
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• 2:26
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• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Vote Bill Strauss Mayor of Columbus 2025.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Paid for by campaign to elect Bill.
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: Strauss, and now a message from political candidate Jason Spears.
• 2:37
  Speaker 5: Hello, I am Jason Spears, your Republican candidate for City Council, ward 6.
• 2:41
  Speaker 5: I am grateful for the citizens of Ward 6 support in the primary and respectfully request everyone's continued support in the upcoming general election.
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: It is time to restore fiscal responsibility, economic growth and optimism back to our city.
• 2:54
  Speaker 5: I, like you, believe we can get back on track and know that, as a community, we're going to make it happen.
• 2:59
  Speaker 5: I approve this message and, on June 3rd, vote Jason Spears for Ward 6.
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: Paid for by the campaign to elect Jason Spears, ward 6.
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: You are listening to Between the Headlines with your local kayak salesman and managing editor for the Commercial Dispatch, mr Zach Clare, and my name is David Chisholm.
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: The top headline today George Clooney loses a can of Dapper Dan somewhere between the Lux and the Tom and our sins are washed away, or so we hope.
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: Here we are again, y'all Flooding.
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: What do we know, zach?
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: We know there was a bunch of it, and we know that there's a lot of money that has been put aside for watershed that hasn't been spent yet and a lot of money that was left on the table that will never be spent on it.
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: Well, this was a bad storm.
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: My grandpa would have called it like a cow peeing on a flat rock.
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: And I just have to tell you how this happened for me.
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: I didn't even know that it had rained.
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: I got up Sunday morning and I looked Something was funky.
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: Looking back toward the creek, I got my binoculars and it was just totally overflowing its bed and I'm like good grief, I left the push more back on the other side of that creek and I'm like, oh.
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: So I went down there and I looked.
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: The push more is still there.
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: Now whether or not it will crank is to be determined, and my wife, maybe you'll be all right.
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: My wife is going to hear this podcast and she's going to be like um david, excuse me what yeah, not to go immediately into the politics of this I had when I was growing up.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: I had a it was my sister, who's six years older than me and me and one time my father brings out something I can't remember what it is my sister's long about 12.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: I'm about sick and he gets home and he sees that something of his is broken and he brings it out.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: He just shows it to me and doesn't say anything.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: My sister also doesn't say anything.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: I immediately start talking.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: I know this comes as a shock.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: I don't even know what that is.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I wasn't even back there.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: You know different things like that that I just start saying, and so my dad just grabs the paddle, points to the chair where we go for that ceremony and gives me, gives me the whooping.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: And then at the end of it I said, dad, how did you know I did it?
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: And he said to me this, son, the thing you've got to remember is the guilty dog always barks the most and the loudest.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: And so from that day forward, even today, in my family my wife and our kids we talk about guilty dogging.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: We use that term guilty dogging for that sort of thing.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: When I look at the Facebook post post flooding from Ethel Stewart, stephen Jones and Pierre Beard, I'm reminded of the time I got whooped for breaking that thing in my dad's room Guilty dogging.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: And the biggest guilty dog of all is Pierre posting let's help our neighbors in need and try not to turn this political.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: That's what he posts on Facebook, what already is political, and Pierre and Ethel and Stephen and Rusty Green all helped make it that way.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: What did the city of Columbus do Okay, well, that's a good question, david when this ARPA money came in, what they did was they ended up using only half of their money on watershed and getting it matched.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: So they end up getting $6 million for a watershed project instead of what they could have gotten closer to $12 million like $11.6 million for a watershed project instead of what they could have gotten closer to 12, like 11.6 or so for a watershed project.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: They gave $800,000.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: At the behest of Pierre Beard, they gave $800,000 of it to employee stipends.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: But that's not political.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that had no political motivation whatsoever.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Can't get employee stipends matched.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: They's not political.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that had no political motivation whatsoever.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Can't get employee stipends matched.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: They bought equipment.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, they needed the equipment, but they bought equipment for public works and the police department and different other things.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: They gave some of it to CLW, which did get matched for projects they were doing, but at the end of the day, they could have had an $11.6 million project to improve watershed and drainage in the city and instead they decided to reduce the scope of that to $6 million and piddle away much of the rest of the money on one-time things that they couldn't get matched that had political purposes, like employee stipends and two issues here.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Pierre wanted to do 1.3 million in employee stipends, by the way.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: They ended up doing 800 000.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: The other thing is, even after they established that three million dollar watershed project, that, um, they got matched for six million dollars they went ahead and allocated that money.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Got matched for $6 million.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: They went ahead and allocated that money.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Got approved for the match August 30th 2023, at a meeting.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Ethel Stewart, the incumbent in Ward 1, who posted a big thing, was among the ones that posted a big thing on Facebook.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: You know Bible verses and references.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the good book, you know thank goodness I didn't get any flooding in my ward, but we really are praying for the people who did get flooded and know that we're doing something about it.
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: Be ye clothed and be ye fed.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is what she had to say on August 30th 2023, in an attempt to siphon money away from the established drainage project from arpa.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: She said we've had this problem for a hundred years.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: That's what she said about drainage we've had this problem for a hundred years well, no, I don't think she is.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: But uh, I'm sure the city has had the problem for a hundred years.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: That's how old their pipes are.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: In a lot of places We've had this drainage problem for 100 years.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: What good does watershed do if you don't have anything to run the city?
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: That was her quote and Rusty Green tags on later.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: The ARPA money quote could be used a whole lot more wisely in quote than on watershed.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Now the interesting thing about rusty is he hasn't been making any post a facebook post about this, so maybe he hasn't changed his mind well, but I, I else they've been playing the violin.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: They've been playing the violin.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Now, rusty hasn't been playing the violin, but he also doesn't have an opponent and one wonders if, um, he did have an opponent, if he would.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: And one wonders, if he did have an opponent, if he would have a video of him out on a john boat rescuing drowning dogs from the Masonic subdivision from Sunday.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know, that's something you can.
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: AI generate, but don't tell them.
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: I am contractually obligated not to laugh at that joke.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: But I mean it does not make any sense to me that they didn't leverage the money.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Now Keith is going to say it didn't make any sense to him that the county and the city didn't come together and there's an argument for that.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: But I mean, you can only control what you can control.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: You can only do.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: The city can't tell the county what to do, but it can sure do the smart thing for its own self.
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: We've just got to get politicians in there that are not nearsighted.
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: You look at this, it's not a short term deal.
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: This water is coming, maybe not this month, maybe not this year, maybe not this decade, but you've got to build the ditches, you've got to make them wide, you've got to make the water go where it needs to go, but water doesn't vote.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: David.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: The $800,000 that went to the city employees, those city employees vote and they'll remember who gave them that money Water might vote on June the 3rd.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Water might vote.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: I think it might.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: I think that was a very ill-timed storm for the general election and that's why they're on Facebook guilty dogging about it.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: On this particular issue, the voice from the wilderness from the very beginning that has continued to say the same thing from the very beginning has been Keith Gaskin.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: He was right about this and he has said over and over again he thought this was a missed opportunity.
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: All right, you're listening to Between the Headlines with Zach and David.
• 11:26
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• 12:37
  Speaker 1: David, there are a lot of mysteries at Probst Park.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: I hear you know about a good many of them.
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: I'm a primary source.
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: I'm proud to be 41 years old, which is not enough to know.
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: We're the same age, david, you know that.
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you weren't around, though.
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: You were up there making moonshine or whatever they do in that part of the country.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Just calling the hogs is really all it was.
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: Eating tomatoes and calling the hogs is really all eating tomatoes and calling the hogs.
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: I like some tomatoes.
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: Well, there's a lot of things that I remember at probst park and, um, I remember the american legion had a squirrel cage, this big deal in it.
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: I remember it had squirrels in it, but apparently that wasn't the only feature out there.
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: They had, like this makeshift zoo.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: They actually have one of those in Steens, by the way.
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: You drive past the Steens post office and there's an abandoned house over here and it's got goats coming out the windows.
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: It's wild.
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: You can feed them and stuff.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Well, for context, here they were delivering some stuff to Probst Park.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: One of the things they were delivering fell through the ground into this concrete bunker, mm-hmm Right, and the city spent some time trying to figure out what this concrete bunker was.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: They go to Rufus, mm-hmm Rufus.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Rufus played two truths and a lie with them because it was April Fool's Day and he got the city COO and the mayor to believe because it was april fool's day and they got the.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: He got the city coo and the mayor to believe that it was an old bank vault, that's right yeah, the democrats had already been there because the money was gone, oh my
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: god I'll leave that one b, but uh, it ended up being uh.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Something that was uh associated with a trolley service there around the turn of the 20th century is what now the conventional wisdom is.
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's fascinating.
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: I have no idea what that particular building or bunker or whatever it was might have been, but I remember when I was a child, my grandfather took me to the vfw and out there they had artesian wells.
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: On the way there there was the old sanders pool on the left and then there was this wood floor skate rink on the white on the right side.
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: But behind the vfw there was this weird underground kind of deal and these old men would drive their pickups up on the ramp and they would be changing the oil in their pickup while drinking beer, just having the best of times out there, as I recall.
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: And so when I heard about this story I thought it might have been the same little uh deal, but um, no, uh, probst Park definitely has a lively history.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: I was fascinated with just reading that story with the stuff that was out there at one time and you kind of get this is a word I don't allow our reporters to write in the paper but I was just sort of transported back to this place and trying to envision what it would have been like to go out there and see all of that at Probst Park in its heyday, when all of that was going on.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: What do you think about Rufus pranking the city?
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: I think that's absolute gold, because you wouldn't have expected it like he's normally so serious, but man, he just put it on he put it.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: They called him on.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: They called me on the wrong day.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: They called him on april fool's day to ask him the question.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: He told him the truth, but he also told him about the bank vault thing and and that that is so indicative, uh, of of just how endearing and charming it is to be in a small town where stuff like that happens.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: And it's good natured, nothing malicious about it, was just fun and it just a fun story all around and I enjoyed it.
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: You've got that park out there and I did notice on the way here that that it had been covered with water, like there were leaves all the way up on the fence and um.
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: Of course now it's receded and hopefully it didn't tear up the astro turf and whatever they brought out there.
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: But uh, my goodness, the history that is Probst Park.
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: Tell us your comments.
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: I know you've got some memories of Probst Park.
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: We'd like to hear tips at cdispatchcom.
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: In the studio today we are pleased to have Columbus Mayor and Councilman Candidate for Ward 1, mr Keith Gaskin, and across the table from him Mr Kevin Stafford, who is the North Mississippi Regional Manager and Vice President of Neal Schaefer and Associates.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: So, Kevin, also you're the contracted city engineer with Columbus.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: You know, in light of all of this flooding, in light of all of the discussions that have gone on for some years about watershed drainage in the city, I want to start by asking you, as a citizen and a professional engineer, your opinion on what level of priority or what rank of priority for you is watershed.
• 17:52
  Speaker 7: Sure, you know, drainage impacts everything in the city.
• 17:55
  Speaker 7: So, as y'all know, we have two major rivers that run through the city and with that you know the roads that are crossing over them, the houses that are built around them.
• 18:03
  Speaker 7: All those things are impacted by our drainage.
• 18:06
  Speaker 7: So floodplain, floodways are obviously one thing that we have going on.
• 18:09
  Speaker 7: The other thing is, before I got here let's just say it was around 2005, born and raised here, but 2005,.
• 18:15
  Speaker 7: I came back professionally and on the shelf since the 70s, in 71, there was a drainage study done.
• 18:20
  Speaker 7: Allen and Hochul did it on behalf of the city council at that time Obviously an older city boundary, but at that time it identified $15 million worth of drainage-only infrastructure improvement.
• 18:31
  Speaker 7: So from the city engineering standpoint, you've got roads and you've got drainage.
• 18:35
  Speaker 7: Well, if you don't have good drainage, your roads are not going to be worth anything either.
• 18:38
  Speaker 7: So water and sewer as in potable water and sanitary sewer is important, but that's handled by light and water.
• 18:44
  Speaker 7: So from a city standpoint, the city doesn't have to worry about that.
• 18:47
  Speaker 7: Light and water is looking at that all day, every day.
• 18:49
  Speaker 7: So from a city engineer's perspective, we're not looking at that Now.
• 18:52
  Speaker 7: Sidewalks and bike lanes and all the other things are important too, but without good drainage you can't build upon those other things.
• 18:58
  Speaker 7: So you know, like our tagline is solutions you can build upon.
• 19:02
  Speaker 7: So until you fix the drainage that's underneath, can you do all the other things to build upon that.
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: But does not backed-up drainage cause unsavory things to float up?
• 19:11
  Speaker 7: Oh 100%.
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: Snails to come up, so they're kind of there together in a sense, aren't they?
• 19:16
  Speaker 7: Yeah, what you're hitting on are potential cross connections between old drainage and old sanitary sewer.
• 19:22
  Speaker 7: So way back when they used clay pipe, unfortunately for both, and you can only imagine back then when regulations and oversight wasn't near what it is today.
• 19:30
  Speaker 7: You may get cross connections and so a lot of times y'all may see Columbus Light and Water will go out and smoke test their sanitary sewer lines and you may see smoke coming out of the storm drain lines and then they know they have a cross connection and so they've been actively for years now trying to disconnect those two.
• 19:45
  Speaker 7: So that's a human health safety welfare issue that really doesn't have anything to do with the quantity, which is what recently we've been worried about.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: That has to do with the quality okay, the city got 5.8 million dollars in thereabouts.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Doubling that for a watershed project $11.6 million.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: In your opinion, would that have been one a worthy expense instead of the scale that they're doing it?
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Would it have been a worthy expense to go all in on $11.6 million and would it have made any appreciable difference to, say, an event like over the weekend?
• 20:25
  Speaker 7: All right.
• 20:25
  Speaker 7: So you hit on two different things.
• 20:27
  Speaker 7: Absolutely Would have been great.
• 20:28
  Speaker 7: Anytime you can double your money, no matter what you're putting it towards, is great.
• 20:32
  Speaker 7: You know, drainage is one of the biggest unfunded mandates that everybody understands.
• 20:40
  Speaker 7: That's out there.
• 20:40
  Speaker 7: You can find grants for roadways and sidewalks and water potable water that is and sewer all day long.
• 20:47
  Speaker 7: There's not that many good grants that are out there and if they are, they're highly competitive for storm drainage.
• 20:52
  Speaker 7: So this was all of a sudden free money that you could double with the state.
• 20:55
  Speaker 7: At the end of the day, yes, it would have been great.
• 20:58
  Speaker 7: Now are there other priorities?
• 21:00
  Speaker 7: That's why you have a council that decides which one's the most and highest and best used From an engineering perspective.
• 21:04
  Speaker 7: Being selfish, sure, absolutely Anytime you can double your money and put it all on infrastructure, that's great.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, to the second part of that question.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: $11.6 million project, say, completed before last weekend.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: What difference does it make last weekend?
• 21:22
  Speaker 7: Anywhere outside of the floodplain that you would have had, it would have made a difference potentially, depending on where you are and what condition the area is in.
• 21:30
  Speaker 7: So you know the mayor and I were talking about this morning there was a very small improvement made on 15th Street and 10th Avenue by Union I don't have the numbers but it was less than probably 200,000 to add some drainage, literally the street was a river at the end of the day.
• 21:49
  Speaker 7: And that little project, that water wasn't in the street.
• 21:52
  Speaker 7: The mayor's talked to her and that's a small improvement.
• 21:54
  Speaker 7: I checked on it this week too.
• 21:55
  Speaker 7: Her name was Samantha Coger.
• 21:57
  Speaker 6: It's been flooding for 50 years.
• 21:59
  Speaker 6: She grew up on that street Every year multiple times.
• 22:04
  Speaker 6: When it rained, that street would flood, and she's been asking for help for a long time.
• 22:08
  Speaker 6: This was one of the ones that really brought home to me the opportunity that we had with ARPA money, that those kinds of things are happening all over the city that people have not paid attention to.
• 22:19
  Speaker 6: And one thing that I'm going to correct y'all on that you've been leaving out was not only the city that could double their money, but the county could too, and that was 11.4, which would have been 22.4 million, which would have been 34 million together.
• 22:34
  Speaker 6: And the lieutenant governor had been going all over the state encouraging cities and counties to become best friends, because if they put their ARPA money together they would match it one to one.
• 22:47
  Speaker 6: So in your reporting recently, y'all keep leaving out that the county had this opportunity and let's remember that 40% of the county is the city.
• 22:56
  Speaker 6: So instead of having 11.3% six million we could have had 30.4 million, that we could have been looking at all of these issues in the.
• 23:05
  Speaker 6: And you also did an article recently where you reported that the county spent four hundred thousand dollars to get consultants to tell them how to spend arpa and the city paid 50 something thousand for ours.
• 23:16
  Speaker 6: If we had put our money together, there would have been no reason to have uh, consultants coming in, I believe, because you would already know what you would do With it.
• 23:25
  Speaker 6: At Starkville, I believe you reported where Lynn Spruill made the comment you would be crazy not to.
• 23:30
  Speaker 6: Starkville was the only city in the Golden Triangle who put all their money into ARPA and they don't have near the flooding issues that we have in this town.
• 23:39
  Speaker 6: Columbus is like a bowl.
• 23:41
  Speaker 6: We're like New Orleans.
• 23:42
  Speaker 6: We have two rivers, I mean, and the debate should have been why, you know, once we put our money together, that should not have been a debate, but there was very little written about it.
• 23:53
  Speaker 6: Y'all may have written one editorial about it you ran for state office.
• 23:56
  Speaker 6: You didn't talk about it.
• 23:58
  Speaker 6: I mean, we didn't hear from anybody.
• 24:00
  Speaker 6: I think Joe Max mentioned one time that it would have been a great investment for economic development, but there was no headline that said city and county, you know, could have had $34 million.
• 24:11
  Speaker 6: There was not much of anything.
• 24:12
  Speaker 6: Most of the people that I talked to about it and I've been talking about it for four years, because this is when I first came into office, my first Mississippi Municipal League meeting I sat down and the lieutenant governor looked out at everybody and said what I just told you Cities and counties need to become best friends and put their money together.
• 24:30
  Speaker 6: We came back talking about that to everybody.
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: I had a state legislator ask me yesterday an event how much money did the city and county leave on the table?
• 24:35
  Speaker 6: We didn't have a lot of our state elected officials coming in adding to say we really need to take advantage of this.
• 24:44
  Speaker 6: Everybody in this area knows that watershed and flooding is a major issue, and now all you're talking about when you're on Facebook and other things is the council didn't do this.
• 24:51
  Speaker 6: No, it's not just the council, it's the board of supervisors too.
• 24:55
  Speaker 6: We got $450,000 for them for watershed and flooding.
• 24:59
  Speaker 6: That is it.
• 25:00
  Speaker 6: We could not get them to give us more than four hundred and fifty thousand dollars to go into the six that we had.
• 25:05
  Speaker 6: So this is a major miss by the entire community.
• 25:11
  Speaker 6: It's not just the city council, it's not just the mayor, it's everybody that lives here.
• 25:17
  Speaker 7: So I'm going to answer the backside of your question as well, in two different ways.
• 25:21
  Speaker 7: So in 71, when the study came out, one of the things that was offered after the study was completed, by the way, the study went through, we probably annexed three or four times since then.
• 25:32
  Speaker 7: So keep in mind 15 million, then it's probably 60 million.
• 25:34
  Speaker 7: Now we've annexed a few times.
• 25:35
  Speaker 7: The issue is probably a hundred million dollar plus issue.
• 25:38
  Speaker 7: So to your, would six or 30 accomplish the whole thing?
• 25:41
  Speaker 7: No, but you got to start somewhere.
• 25:43
  Speaker 7: If you do nothing at all, it's not going to get any better, right?
• 25:46
  Speaker 7: So that's the simple answer.
• 25:47
  Speaker 7: But you can't fix what God created At the end of the day, those people that are in the floodway and floodplain, such as Masonic Subdivision.
• 25:56
  Speaker 7: Nothing we could have done would ever fix their situation.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Well, then why are there still houses?
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: there.
• 26:02
  Speaker 7: Yeah, so the houses were built pre FEMA, so so here's, here's the answer.
• 26:06
  Speaker 7: So in in 2009, I brought some of this and it's 16 years ago.
• 26:10
  Speaker 7: It's funny how time flies.
• 26:11
  Speaker 7: But 2009, we did a town hall with just that subdivision, because they repeatedly flooded and a lot of people there weren't aware of where they lived and in the subdivision was built pre FEMA regulation.
• 26:23
  Speaker 7: So one of the things we told them was, if this subdivision is built today was brought to the city to be built under FEMA regulation, it wouldn't happen.
• 26:31
  Speaker 7: It'd be a totally different neighborhood because basically 75% of that neighborhood is in the flood.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, I don't understand exactly what you're saying there.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: However, there is a neighborhood there and it's there today.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Right, and it flooded Sunday to the point where they had to be boated out by the fire department.
• 26:55
  Speaker 6: To both of you, I guess what should be done about that, what can be done about that?
• 26:59
  Speaker 6: I'll say it from an elected official's position Watershed and flooding should be a top priority.
• 27:04
  Speaker 6: Sometimes this doesn't happen.
• 27:06
  Speaker 6: It's eight years in between when a flood like this happens.
• 27:07
  Speaker 6: But it happens, and when it does, it goes into people's homes and it affects their daily lives, but there are a lot of areas in this city that flood every time it rains heavy.
• 27:17
  Speaker 6: There are people that live in downtown Columbus that cannot cut their yard for a couple of weeks.
• 27:22
  Speaker 7: That aren't in the floodplain, that aren't in the floodplain.
• 27:24
  Speaker 6: So it is a problem all over the city and we have known this.
• 27:28
  Speaker 6: I mean, I came to appreciate it more as mayor.
• 27:31
  Speaker 6: And where is it primarily in?
• 27:33
  Speaker 6: It's in underserved areas of our community.
• 27:35
  Speaker 6: That's where a lot of it is.
• 27:37
  Speaker 7: And so the engineering side to your answer for Masonic, specifically, in 1986, the Corps of Engineers studied this problem.
• 27:42
  Speaker 7: It's Magby Creek.
• 27:43
  Speaker 7: Magby is a tributary to the Lux and it floods because of the Lux.
• 27:52
  Speaker 7: Magby itself does not flood that neighborhood, it's the Lux that causes them to be in the floodplain.
• 27:54
  Speaker 7: They studied 13 different remedies to try to help that area with Magby.
• 27:58
  Speaker 7: What they came back with then the best return on investment was to clear and snag that ditch.
• 28:03
  Speaker 7: The Tom Bigby River Valley Water Ventagement District, who does the maintenance for the core, did that project, have done it several times and now it's on their annual list.
• 28:12
  Speaker 7: They go through and make sure it's cleared and snagged to be the best that it can be.
• 28:15
  Speaker 7: But the other thing that that study came out with and I'm going to go two ways with this First off, it would be cheaper to buy and demo the houses than it would be to build a ditch to bypass the neighborhood that could carry the water.
• 28:26
  Speaker 7: Because here's the deal the water's coming upstream from the Lux.
• 28:29
  Speaker 7: It's not that they're flooding from downstream rains, it's the upstream effect of it.
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: So the water actually flows in reverse to flood that area, correct so.
• 28:37
  Speaker 7: I'll show you a couple of things.
• 28:38
  Speaker 7: I know, look, we're radio, so it is what it is.
• 28:40
  Speaker 7: This is the Lux Basin.
• 28:42
  Speaker 6: Easy now though.
• 28:44
  Speaker 7: And so well, look, we all know we have a face for radio right.
• 28:46
  Speaker 7: So you know what I circled here.
• 28:49
  Speaker 7: This is all, by the way, from the 2009 town hall we did with the neighborhood and what we were trying to show them is give them perspective on where they live.
• 28:55
  Speaker 7: They live on the lower end of this large basin.
• 28:58
  Speaker 7: The basin is over about one and a half times the size of Lowndes County, and I'm talking about the Lux Basin.
• 29:03
  Speaker 7: So the Lux Basin and what you see here, it comes all the way in from Alabama, crosses the state line and you see where Masonic sits in relation to that.
• 29:10
  Speaker 7: So as the Lux continues to swell, water backs up.
• 29:14
  Speaker 7: I'll give you another example.
• 29:15
  Speaker 7: Obviously, on the opposite side of the Lux is Probst Park.
• 29:17
  Speaker 7: So after the rain, probst didn't flood at all and I went out there yesterday and it was all the way up and over the road and, of course, I think it crested last night and I went back out there today and it's down 8, 10 feet as the Lux goes down.
• 29:28
  Speaker 7: So what you see here, this is FEMA's flood map and what you see is it says that flood is controlled by the Lux Creek.
• 29:35
  Speaker 7: It has nothing to do with Magby which is to matter.
• 29:41
  Speaker 7: When the water comes back from the Lux, you're in trouble, that's right.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: Well, what I'm looking at here is the Yellow Creek and the Luxapalila Creek watershed, which extends all the way through what looks to be Millport and perhaps even almost Sullagen.
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: It heads that northeasterly direction.
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: And then this small little area, which I presume is the Magby Creek, that small little area which I presume is the Magby Creek, that small red area it heads directly to the east and it ends up being a drainage canal, more or less, for all the rest of this watershed here.
• 30:14
  Speaker 7: If you'll see there at the top it says Magby's overall drainage is only 43 square miles.
• 30:20
  Speaker 7: The Lux drainage is 795 square miles, whereas all of Lowndes County is only 516 square miles.
• 30:23
  Speaker 7: The Lux drainage is 795 square miles, whereas all of Lowndes County is only 516 square miles.
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: So kind of give you perspective of the big issue, there's not a sump pump that could be built.
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah right.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: So what you're talking about.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, could these qualify then, keith, for the blight elimination program?
• 30:38
  Speaker 7: Some of them could Well.
• 30:39
  Speaker 7: So that was the second side of my answer.
• 30:41
  Speaker 7: So the second thing the city's done for years and George Irby and his department was involved is we got a repetitive loss grant from FEMA.
• 30:47
  Speaker 7: But it's completely, at the end of the day, voluntary.
• 30:51
  Speaker 7: We can't make people sign up.
• 30:53
  Speaker 6: It's kind of like the blight program, right, right and so what we did, so we're trying to get now too, for the flooding areas.
• 30:59
  Speaker 7: That's right.
• 30:59
  Speaker 7: What that is is you have to prove that you have flooded repetitively and that you are part of the federal government's rate insurance program, federal insurance rate program.
• 31:08
  Speaker 7: In other words, if the federal government is paying out on your insurance losses over and over, they're willing to raise their hand and say I will pay 100% to buy your property, to do it again?
• 31:17
  Speaker 7: Yeah, so here's the deal.
• 31:18
  Speaker 7: We did that numerous times and no one in Masonic ever raised their hand, and I think it's because, while the inconvenience of the boating in and out I don't think it's getting in the houses a whole lot, or that the insurance claims either weren't high enough for them to qualify or they didn't care to leave where they were Right.
• 31:33
  Speaker 7: So you know.
• 31:34
  Speaker 7: But now we do.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: One of them that we talked to the other day that said, I ain't going back.
• 31:38
  Speaker 7: Right, that's right.
• 31:39
  Speaker 7: I saw that and, look, that would be one of those that we hope that program is always available and the last time we did that program we had one house that wasn't in Masonic that raised their hand to do that right to sign up for.
• 31:49
  Speaker 7: But in the beginning we were having 14, nine houses at a time.
• 31:53
  Speaker 7: Every year we would buy them.
• 31:54
  Speaker 7: The way that works is they buy the house.
• 31:56
  Speaker 7: The city basically owns the property.
• 31:57
  Speaker 7: So give you a perspective of one of those near Masonic that did do that.
• 32:00
  Speaker 7: If you remember, across from the Country Kitchen on Highway 50, there's that old furniture store that was there.
• 32:06
  Speaker 7: The city now owns that lot and that furniture store flooded several times and they raised their hand, participated in that program and again they were taking demo down and now the city owns it.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Well, I want to switch gears here and you know I understand your point about the county, I do.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: The city left half of its money on the table and they did it over your objections yes like and and I'll be.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Uh, I mean quite honestly and quite frankly, you were the voice in the wilderness from the very beginning and have been consistent from the very beginning.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Use arpa on watershed, get it all matched.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Why didn't at least the city do that?
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: How come we couldn't get there?
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: And I've got some follow-up questions on that.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: But I want to answer that one first.
• 32:52
  Speaker 6: You know I don't understand it.
• 32:53
  Speaker 6: I would ask them individually together what is it about doubling the money?
• 32:59
  Speaker 6: That doesn't.
• 33:00
  Speaker 6: Why isn't that sinking in that we're going to double our money if we do it on watershed and flooding?
• 33:07
  Speaker 6: We know we have these problems.
• 33:09
  Speaker 6: Well, the city has a lot of other areas that needed work that they wanted to spend money on.
• 33:14
  Speaker 6: They wanted to do part of it as bonuses or.
• 33:17
  Speaker 6: You know, you couldn't do it as a bonus, but you could give it for pay, a stipend, a stipend, right.
• 33:22
  Speaker 6: And I even talked to the police department and the fire department as a group and told them.
• 33:27
  Speaker 6: I said, guys, I'm not for this and this is why, because if we do this for y'all, we don't get to match it.
• 33:34
  Speaker 6: If we do it in watershed and flooding, we can match it and we can have a bigger impact on the citizens.
• 33:39
  Speaker 6: Yes, we need to raise y'all's salary.
• 33:41
  Speaker 6: We're going to work on that and we have done that since I've been there, that's right and I think the majority of them understood it, but it's hard sometimes when people have money in hand that they don't put it like we gave a million dollars to Light and Water and that was a worthy project and it was matched.
• 34:00
  Speaker 6: So I didn't.
• 34:00
  Speaker 6: I was, I felt better about that one.
• 34:03
  Speaker 6: But yes, I mean, but I'm going to go back to the county because $34 million is that we could have had.
• 34:12
  Speaker 6: Could you imagine what we could have leveraged that?
• 34:14
  Speaker 6: What in Washington?
• 34:15
  Speaker 6: We have been to DC several times trying to leverage the little bit that we the six the six that we held on to and we've been working to get more money from there and we've done that from the state.
• 34:25
  Speaker 6: But can you imagine what you know they would have done in Washington when they saw us working together to do this for the citizens?
• 34:32
  Speaker 6: You know, sometimes I think the decisions are made because a lot of people who go into political life, they're doing it for a career or for what it can do for them and what their next office can be.
• 34:44
  Speaker 6: When you do that, you lose sight of making the best decisions for the citizens.
• 34:49
  Speaker 6: It's easier to be able to hand a big check off to a nonprofit and get credit for that.
• 34:54
  Speaker 6: The work that this is doing is underground, so you don't see it as much.
• 34:59
  Speaker 6: You don't have naming opportunities, you don't have naming opportunities and you don't have to go back and say, look, I got all this money for y'all, when you know for the employees, you know you can't with this kind of stuff.
• 35:11
  Speaker 6: And then sometimes there's a space between when the flooding happens.
• 35:14
  Speaker 6: But the long term is and what I will keep harping on, and the council members and the supervisors know this there are people in this city that suffer almost every time it rains heavy their houses flood or their yards flood.
• 35:27
  Speaker 6: There are lots of things we can do.
• 35:29
  Speaker 6: We've talked about ditch maintenance and those types of things.
• 35:32
  Speaker 6: We've talked about scheduling, one of the reasons that we and one of the things that we're going to do with some of this money that we got back the 190, we could potentially use to buy more equipment to actually clean these ditches properly.
• 35:44
  Speaker 6: Also one of the things that we learned when we were going through this process if you cleaned out a certain area better, it may all of a sudden flood another area because of the poor infrastructure that we have and the way that so you just can't go in and clean a bunch of ditches you may make the problem worse.
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: One thing I can tell you is that about 10 years ago or greater, there was a project proposed to put a dam along the Lee-Stokes Road and I believe it was Supervisor Mike Smith that spearheaded that and they were basically going to turn the east side of that road into a big retention pod and it would push over into Alabama.
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: And, as I recall, some of the Alabama homeowners said no, I don't want a swamp in my backyard.
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: Therefore they wouldn't sell the property and that particular project came to a halt.
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: And, kevin, do you think that would have made any difference here?
• 36:39
  Speaker 7: Yeah, 100%.
• 36:40
  Speaker 7: So everything you just said and I wasn't at those meetings but at that time you know, I understand that's one of the main reasons.
• 36:48
  Speaker 7: The other, I think they hung their hat on some environmental hurdles they would have to go through to do that, to create that lake, and I think they were at the time they being some people in Alabama trying to sell it as a recreational lake because it had to be so big to help detain that water.
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they wanted to sell fish out of it.
• 37:03
  Speaker 7: Yeah, well, regardless, I wasn't involved, I don't know what they were going to do, but it absolutely would have helped.
• 37:07
  Speaker 7: And those are the big picture things.
• 37:11
  Speaker 7: So, to put that, we went to DC this past year for are trying to continue in this basin improvements that, believe it or not, the majority of the improvements are going to be in the county, not the city, but it's going to impact the city because we're on that downstream side the mayor talked about.
• 37:24
  Speaker 7: And there's another big thing that WCBI thinks reported on I don't think I've seen y'all as much the lack of maintenance of the Lux.
• 37:32
  Speaker 7: Once you cross the Mississippi Alabama line.
• 37:34
  Speaker 7: If you ever pull up an aerial, look at how well-defined the Lux is in Mississippi.
• 37:43
  Speaker 6: And as soon as you hit the.
• 37:44
  Speaker 7: Alabama line and I've had Alabama supervisors in towns call me and say can you help us get any traction to get the Lux cleaned out?
• 37:47
  Speaker 7: And WCBI did an article on it.
• 37:49
  Speaker 7: But if they ever clean that out it's coming our way and it's going to come here quicker.
• 37:52
  Speaker 7: So just imagine it's hard, you already have a little bit of a detention going on in Alabama.
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: Let that be their problem for now, right, because it's helping us.
• 38:03
  Speaker 7: But just know that when they're talking about that area that has all of those cypress knees and goes on, You've seen where it almost gets over the highway and it's backing up into towns in Alabama and the mayor's gone on Again.
• 38:13
  Speaker 7: This has been the last year he's talked about it's every rain, not torrential rains like we got this past week.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: It's every rain.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: The other day I was talking to Pierre Beard, ward 4 Councilman.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: I was talking to him about leveraging the ARPA and why the city didn't leverage all of its ARPA for watershed.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: His answer, in short, was that the number one problem was actually the ditches and that you had told him at one time that 70% of the like, if they use the ARPA to just clean out the ditches and keep them, maintained that 70% of the flooding problem in the city would be solved.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Is that accurate?
• 39:00
  Speaker 7: So of course short answer is we're talking two different things.
• 39:03
  Speaker 7: Short answer is those are the maintenance of ditches, and if you ride around today, you will still see ditches holding water from a rain that happened on Sunday, Saturday right.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 39:12
  Speaker 7: Those are the things that cleaning out ditches that have overgrown, and I can sit here and talk an hour and I will, if y'all want me to.
• 39:22
  Speaker 7: But go up highway 45, you'll see both sides of the road there's ditches holding water.
• 39:24
  Speaker 7: Today.
• 39:24
  Speaker 7: It's been there.
• 39:24
  Speaker 7: It's been that way for the 20 years I've been back here and it's because of the lack of maintenance of those ditches Haven't been touched in 20 years and that's, that's 45, easy to get to.
• 39:32
  Speaker 7: So now you take these subdivisions where the ditches are behind all the houses that you can't get to.
• 39:36
  Speaker 7: So Gay Lane is one we're working on right now, that's pretty bad.
• 39:40
  Speaker 7: But again, going back to the overall drainage issues in the city, a lot of it is maintenance.
• 39:45
  Speaker 7: I can name pipe after pipe and instance after instance where basketballs, garbage, can, tops, dead animals, foam that comes out of packing are stuck in pipes that nobody knows about until you go in there and clean them?
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: Beer bottles Beer bottles Is there something that you can do for the maintenance now that will alleviate what is happening now?
• 40:03
  Speaker 7: Yeah, there's some area.
• 40:04
  Speaker 7: Everything in the 71 study they even prioritize here are the worst areas, here are the areas of least you know.
• 40:10
  Speaker 7: And so one of the things that was done prior to all the ARPA is hey, what are the worst areas in the city for flooding?
• 40:17
  Speaker 7: I mean, there were nine areas identified.
• 40:19
  Speaker 7: Again, all this was pre-ARPA.
• 40:21
  Speaker 7: Got with Public Works and said all right, why are they flooding?
• 40:23
  Speaker 7: Well, we can't maintain these areas for the most part.
• 40:26
  Speaker 7: All right, let's figure out what's going on.
• 40:28
  Speaker 7: It's an undersized pipe 71 study addresses that.
• 40:30
  Speaker 7: Or is it just an overgrown ditch that hadn't been dug out in 20, 30, 40 years?
• 40:34
  Speaker 7: Whatever it may be, it's a combination of the two.
• 40:36
  Speaker 7: Of those nine priority areas, I think eight are actually in the current money.
• 40:40
  Speaker 7: That's right.
• 40:41
  Speaker 7: If it stretches that far, yeah.
• 40:43
  Speaker 7: But I think it's a combination of what you're asking, which I do think some of it's just pure maintenance Cleaning out the ditch, maybe armoring it so it doesn't grow back up, you know, with trees or whatever else prevent.
• 40:53
  Speaker 7: And then some of it is upgrading the pipes that are there because they were identified as too small.
• 40:57
  Speaker 7: So it's a combination.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Well then, what is the maintenance plan now, and why isn't it sufficient?
• 41:05
  Speaker 7: Can't answer that one.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: What is the maintenance plan now, keith, and why isn't it sufficient?
• 41:08
  Speaker 7: No, no let me explain.
• 41:09
  Speaker 7: You know I'm not in the middle of the day today.
• 41:11
  Speaker 6: Well, you can answer this and I can answer it and if you think about it, you could probably too.
• 41:16
  Speaker 6: Every time that we talk to public works about maintenance and the ditches and those types of things, the thing that we hear is we don't have enough manpower and we don't have the proper equipment.
• 41:26
  Speaker 6: So that's part of it.
• 41:30
  Speaker 6: The other part of it, in my opinion, is that we need more discipline in making sure that we're taking care of those areas, and Kevin and I have talked about this.
• 41:41
  Speaker 6: We've driven around, we've looked at them.
• 41:42
  Speaker 6: It's, there is and I've said this publicly there's a room for improvement there, and so that's part of it.
• 41:51
  Speaker 6: And also homeowners can help a little bit in their yards and stuff and run their ditches pulling things out.
• 41:55
  Speaker 6: I know they feel like they don't have to because they're paying taxes and everybody should do that, but being smart and helping and there are a lot of people I see out blowing their leaves and stuff they're causing part of the problem when they're blowing into the culverts and things that fill up Before.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: I forget.
• 42:08
  Speaker 6: let me add this one thing too, to remind people that maybe this will help people get a little bit more serious about it.
• 42:12
  Speaker 6: The flooding also causes potholes.
• 42:18
  Speaker 6: This is one of the things.
• 42:18
  Speaker 6: You know, some of the council members and I'm not going to name names but would say, oh yeah, that area floods, but it goes away.
• 42:23
  Speaker 6: It doesn't stay there long and I would say but do you know what damage that's doing to the roads?
• 42:28
  Speaker 6: Kevin and I have talked about this.
• 42:29
  Speaker 6: Water is the enemy of asphalt, the worst enemy.
• 42:33
  Speaker 7: So it both softens the base underneath it and then also can eat at the surface as well, right, so it's a combination of things.
• 42:39
  Speaker 7: Some of the issues we see and y'all see it too are beaver dams.
• 42:42
  Speaker 7: There's beaver dams all over the county.
• 42:44
  Speaker 7: They've been hiring John Powell bless his heart, usda.
• 42:47
  Speaker 7: He goes around and literally helps trap the beavers, remove them, however he does.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Well, one of the things right now, that is, a public criticism of the watershed project that has been approved is that it's not nothing's being done Slow.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: You look over in Starkville and where they did leverage all of their ARPA money and get it matched for watershed, one of their projects has been completed for a little more than a year and the other one is shovels in the ground for six months now.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: The easements are the issue.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know that that's one of them anyway.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: I mean this project has been designed right, okay.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: So why are these easements taken so long?
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: And why is it taking two engineering firms like the one that y'all hired to begin with, and now Kevin coming off the bench?
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: Why is it taking all of that to get this done while months go by?
• 43:43
  Speaker 6: I think you know the answer to that because you've been covering it, but there was a lot of wasted time on firing and rehiring an engineer firm.
• 43:53
  Speaker 6: There was a lot of back and forth with I'm just going to say it some folks sitting on the council building relationships with either or firm right, and that's unfortunate, but it is the actual truth.
• 44:09
  Speaker 6: That's why that it has taken as long as it has.
• 44:14
  Speaker 6: It's also been, but the area that we're unfortunately and I'm going to say this, having Kevin here as long as he's been here has been a godsend on a lot of this stuff, and he gets pulled into a lot of things that are unfortunate for him.
• 44:32
  Speaker 6: Here's the bottom line.
• 44:33
  Speaker 6: If we can't speak the truth about this, then we're never going to fix these problems.
• 44:36
  Speaker 6: That is exactly why Columbus is behind right now.
• 44:39
  Speaker 6: But what have we done?
• 44:41
  Speaker 6: We've pulled together.
• 44:42
  Speaker 6: Kevin did come off the bench in helping get this work done for us as far as the easements.
• 44:47
  Speaker 6: He had somebody in his office that they could focus on that.
• 44:50
  Speaker 6: The other engineering firm did not.
• 44:53
  Speaker 6: What I have told people, though we have until 2026 to get this money spent, and I can assure you we will get that done.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you guys for joining us today and talking about this very important issue and we appreciate your time.
• 45:08
  Speaker 7: Thank you, absolutely, thank you all.
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: That will do it.
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: We thank our listeners for joining us today.
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: Be sure to subscribe, share and rate and send us your comments.
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: We'd like to hear from you on this stuff.
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: Tips at cdispatchcom.
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: Again, that is tips at cdispatchcom.
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: You can also follow me on Facebook or X at dchism00.
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: Signing off until next week from Catfish Alley Studios in historic downtown Columbus.
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: Your host has been Zach Player and I am David Chisholm.
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: So until next time, y'all keep it friendly and we will keep it real.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: Opinions expressed on this show are those of the speakers and not necessarily those of the Commercial Dispatch.