Politics, Crime and an insider look at Prince Albert City Council with Evert Botha

I sit down with former Prince Albert City Councilor Evert Botha to get his thoughts on his 2016-2020 run with the City. We talk a lot about crime, taxation rates, cannabis store limitations and job prospects for the city. Evert gives his thoughts on what worked well for the City of Prince Albert when he was a Councilor and where he thinks the City should go next to help improve its struggling downtown core area. 

This episode has explicit language. 

.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:09

All right, everyone. Well, welcome back to Coffee Breath Conversations. I'm your host, Russell Barton. And today in the studio, I have Everett Botha. Everett was a city councilor for the city of Prince Albert, from 2016 to 2020. He's on the show today to talk a bit about his experience being a city councilor for the gateway of the North. Welcome to the show ever. Thanks for having me. Kind of give us a bit of a background on yourself. Who You Are any interests you have anything like that. Good God, how much time do we have? About 35 minutes, so make it for the intro for the whole podcast for the whole thing. I keep my cards close to my chest. But I'm also an open book. If anybody has a question. And everybody has an issue, they can ask me and I'll give them an honest answer. But as far as who I really am, I came to Canada after spending about 25 years, self employed, engaged in everything from music to magazines, to e commerce, loyalty, rewards management, field marketing, when the opportunity came for us to basically cut ties and move to Canada, I jumped at that I can ever know, Brad, my partner and I were apart for about 22 months. It was quite a transition. But in 2010, he joined me we kind of found our feet and we bought our first house. Yeah, so as far as the day to day things that I do prior to city council and post City Council, we do have a family owned diamond cutting and polishing atelier. So we do cut diamonds on the right now post COVID we've been specializing in or focusing on monetizing the many designs that my father has designed over the better part of the last 20 years, and really making sure that we extract revenue from that intellectual property. The post City Council, I really spent about three, four days trying to take it all in post election. And I thought to myself have spent a lot of time invested in the community. And I wanted to find something or a project or an organization that I can work with, to kind of invest that energy and that time. At the same time. Also, using the skills that I've developed over the past partners, how long have been employed and or self employed or gainfully employed, to see whether I can add value to other businesses terms of getting their messaging and communication on track of working with a non for profit, in fact, is the second non for profit that I'm starting to work with that really just assisting name with a messaging, fundraising and communications. And at the same time, I do apologize for the dogs in the background, assisting them and getting their messaging on point getting their branding, right getting the corporate entity, right and make sure that all the stakeholders or the customers and the clients or the events have a consistent experience with them as a business or as a corporation. At the same time, both covered, you know, slowly but surely coming out of that in the luxury trade. So we started to see an uptick in diamonds and in jewelry, and we're definitely looking forward to at least having a good Christmas this year. And then heading into 2020. Also, he definitely got lost a lot of stuff going on and a lot of life experience. Why run for city council? What in 2016 happen that were you said I have to run for city council. It's a combination of factors. But anyone that lives on the 300 block and the 400 block, and I think the 500 block of eighth Street East went through the pardon my French French clusterfuck of an upgrade of sewer works and paving. I think we had no water for several weeks. It may have been as long as a month. So it was really just somebody challenged me the one night saying what if you don't like it on to run for Council and do something about it. React concern was a soleus a great person, it was a great representative and knew I was in for a tough run. But ultimately, I wanted to see whether I could make a difference for residents to at least have their voice heard. And throughout my tenure at City Hall. I encourage residents to not only vent on social media or to share posts or text or whatever it is, but actually put a pen to paper or put a finger to a keyboard and submit an inquiry or address mayor and city council on this on matters that are important to them. So the birth of the first neighborhood watch in Ward three, with Peter john. And that has kind of developed a life of its own. But I think for me, my proudest accomplishment at City Hall was to get residents in the ward three community more engaged with what's going on with the city, not just in Ward three, but elsewhere to say the knowledge, your voice matters, someone you can go to city council and enter an extremely hostile environment, depending on what it is that you speak into or speaking for, but at least it's on the record, your voice has been heard. And there will be a response, be it a receive and file, which means nobody cares. Nobody wants to do anything, or administration could actually be tasked with doing something. So in Prince Albert want to, you know, you kind of touched on it with the neighborhood watch program, one of the things that people often talk about is crime. That seems to be a big, kind of hot button topic, whether it's on social media when when people post comments and response to pa now and the the Herald's kind of articles on crime in the city, it seems that everyone is kind of have a consensus that there's an issue with crime in the city. What type of action did the city take? And what type of action Do you think needs to be taken to to combat crime in Prince Albert? I mean, at one point, I believe it was the third most violent city per capita, I believe, in Canada. So you know, we've talked about the crime severity index, that is a model that we are victims, no pun intended, of our own success. And you know, our own success is people calling in and reporting and the incredible men and women in uniform, responding to those calls, making the arrests, boarding up properties, evicting undesirable tenants from properties, and through and I'm going to use the term in inverted commas, proactive policing, slowly but surely make a difference. We look at crime in the city. It's a combination of many factors. But it really boils down to mental health, addictions and poverty. And I don't want to go into any of the legacy issues which have been covered at length in the media recently, that we do have a problem. And it's always easy for members of city council to say, it's a provincial problem, or it's a federal problem. You know, ultimately, everyone in our community, whether they are homeless and live on the streets, or whether they live at Lakeview estates, these are all residents of our city. And we can't just say that some of our residents are federal or provincial matters. Everybody lives in the city, whether they own a property or whether they rent a property. And whether they're homeless, these are individuals that we should look at as residents of the city. There are many issues which I can't speak to. And I probably won't speak to, but instead of looking at downstream to say it's a provincial issue, or it's a federal issue, you know, we need to be all hands on deck. And I'm very encouraged by some of the motions in recent months in terms of getting community organizations around the table to address homelessness and to address objections. And I really hope that the intent and the outcome or the desired outcome of those committees is really to affect change and to improve the lives of individuals that are falling through the cracks. There's a lot of committees at City Hall, there's a lot of committees within the community. And hopefully, sometime soon, those communities can get into sync, and be given the Equal Opportunity and afforded equal platform to address these issues that are faced by so many residents in the city. If I remember a few years ago, there was a lot of complaints about downtown and there was a high tax rate on businesses that were already struggling in the core, this tax rate that the city has, what benefits does the high tax rate give to the people that live in the city? taxing is for taxation and more rates, really hard tools for the city to be able to run as an enterprise. We look at private enterprise when private enterprise face tough times with challenging times. They go through clap backs, they go through consolidation, they make changes. They don't just simply go and increase the prices of their products so their customers granted during COVID they had Spin profit hearing from a lot of enterprises, a lot of businesses, but also some businesses have maintained and said, You know what, it's business as usual for us. So I'm not going to speak to supply chain. But when we talk about taxation, it's common knowledge that we are from a commercial point of view, probably the most expensive jurisdiction in Saskatchewan, and probably most of Western Canada. You know, when speaking to business owners in the last two, three weeks, everybody is saying, you know, they can't just go and add 12,000 or 30,000, or $40,000, in taxes to my total exposure in the city. There's this misconception that businesses can afford this. And these increases, but you know, ultimately, a lot of businesses coming through COVID have barely made it through. And all of a sudden, there's a 30, or $40,000 increase, or 10,000, or even 15 $100 increase for these businesses. So when we look at the mall rates and the taxation tools and the assessment, you know, that is provincially mandated. But you know, ultimately, it is still within the city's power to number one, adjust the mall rate. So the tax rate is fair on businesses, as was done on residents within the city, because you know, that understand that a business owner that owns a shop or a workshop or a dealership or a restaurant, now they already paying taxes through their ways of paying for properties, they already contributing through their employees to the tax pool, we already double dipping and double paying for school taxes, project space, space, education was school taxes on your business. The business doesn't send kids to school, but you're also paying school taxes on your property. That's just one example. When we look at the number of businesses in the city, and businesses that have closed are meaningless right now, if you want to go have a decent sit down meal at a restaurant, you really limited besides the chain restaurants that are out there. I think there's two or three independent, non franchised restaurant franchise restaurants in the study, but you can go and enjoy a meal. The notions that business can just afford a tax increase is utter bullshit. When pipe campaign promises made with these no increases on taxes. And then all of a sudden the assessments come through and businesses are faced with these increases and made it appear like a promise that was made. But ultimately, the city could have gone back to the tools and safety not let soften the load on the businesses this year. Let's see if we can stage it in. Because quite frankly, if a business is faced with a $12,000 increase, or a 30 or $40,000 increase, that's a lot of money for a business, especially when there's some businesses that barely survive coming through COVID the old way of doing things as long gone. And when we look at an enterprise such as the city, the tough decisions that you need to make the same Well, what decisions to city council need to make to provide the basic essentials that the council is mandated to do, then what do you Trump that are the nice to haves, the ones versus the needs? What is the tax revenue and PA would not I think revenue for taxation, I believe, somewhere between 52 and 60 million dependent on the year. But frankly, I haven't looked at the budget this year, because there's a lot of user fees. There's a lot of provincial grants. There's a lot of federal money coming in, based on the population. So to tell the honest truth. I haven't looked at the numbers for the 2021 budget. But that's kind of the numbers that I remember. You just mentioned that there's a lot of grants, provincial federal, how much is the provincial and federal government help the city out? While you know everybody's hopefully just completed their census 2021. You know, when we look at the 2640, the 2016 census, the population increase then was fairly dismal terms of expectation. But I also need to just add that we do serve a large neighboring community we serve the North, I mean, as much as you talk about the gateway to the north, print sovereign is also the gateway to the south. So you know, when we talk about an economic impact area, probably somewhere between 140 to 180,000. Residents or residents of Saskatchewan, who interact either through the health services are through the penitentiary or through social services through the hub that is Prince Albert. We do have a big population as far as the region is concerned. But ultimately when we look at the resident that live in Prince Albert, we look at a property base of about 14,000. People check doors as far as I'm, as far as I can remember, probably more than half, I think I've heard the last time was about seven and a half 1000 rental doors in the city. So my dreadful business is a good business to begin, that when we look at the population, a lot of residents don't participate in that. And when we talk about the population, as you know, we get our funding from the province, as well as some of the Federal draw downs, based on our population, our model, and, you know, when we're looking at the provincial, the PSP money, you know, that has been up and down for the last couple of years. But it's vastly more than it was back in 2008, when there was a change in the provincial government. So you know, the provincial government is there to make sure that programs are funded, that they to find out 20 odd police officers, I'm not the kind of current current numbers. And you know, they need to make sure that healthcare is accessible, they need to make sure that the school system is funded, they need to make sure that the social services system is funded. But you know, as a city, and we look at the usage fees for our facilities, there's not a few was in fact not, I don't think there are any, and I stand to be corrected on this city facilities that are currently operation operational within the city that have 100% recovery, on usage fee. So everything in the city that we run from a facilities point of view, be at a hockey arena or be at a club, all of these things are running deficits for us. So these all taxpayer funded, whether it's the airport, or utility, which is supposed to be a standalone enterprise, you know, when we look through the numbers, and we look through the budget items, and I must commend my replacement Tony head, on making the motions to get a line by line budget, because that line by line budget, even though there was a cost of about 60 $70,000 attached to it, that will finally give city councilors, and residents of the city a better idea as to exactly where all the money's got. What's the story with the pulp mill? And then what's the story with the university. So just the city have anything to do with those two enterprises at all? Well, I think the university made the right choice by buying that white elephant downtown. Now finally, that building is going to be put to use and we'll be running at capacity that's been there was built to lead and trail and blaze the trail for the forestry sector, which have never really did ultimately with the university consolidating classes and classrooms within the city and bringing everybody together. That's a good thing for the community. And hopefully, we see some expansion of that facility. And the only way we see that expansion would be as they start giving notice to the non University tenants that are currently occupying that space. Great to see Let's face 100% University. But right now there are tenants in there that are helping pay the rent and keep the lights on. So the university is a good thing for the city. As far as the pop was pop mall is concerned, I have my opinions on the operator. And that's not for discussion today. We do see these flare ups and the PR exercises every six months or every year or every two years. I can't speak to the forestry allocation within the province. Will it be great for the city to have that facility producing something? Yeah, by all means, you know, I have friends who used to work at the power pole and I even got some paper from the last batch of that PowerPoint. It was great paper it was great product competing in the world market competing and producing paper or pulp with companies like sappy mondi or donta. You know, these are big enterprises, these are global enterprises. That boils down to a matter of cost per time or cost per mile of paper when they printed, or by the hectic time of pulp, if the province can compete on that. And if this partner can compete on that, I think it will be great. We also have a bear in mind. I think the last time the pub was operational, I'm going to shut down my memory serves me writers about 600 jobs that's affected, things have changed since then, it's not going to be 600 jobs might be 80. It might be 100 might be 150. But technology has changed things and if that Pokemon is gonna want to compete on the world market, they'll need to be able to compete the technological technological advances, but also the human capital and the human resources that they'll be appointed in that space. One of the common things we hear about Prince Albert is that they have an alcohol problem. I remember I had some criticism I actually voicemail one of the previous solo episodes that I did before about how the city sought to limit the number of cannabis stores that opened up to three cannabis stores in total, I believe, and they refuse to open anymore, for no real reason to me than what it seems to be just a morality sort of issue. But there doesn't seem to be any issue with the number of liquor stores. And even I remember the PA now article that I read, one of the counselors that even joked that maybe they can open up another liquor store in town, when many people are saying that there's already too many liquor stores open, that their city already has a problem with alcohol and alcohol consumption leading to criminal activity. So how does the city justify having so many liquor stores open but then turning around and saying, for the safety of people in the city, we have to limit the number of marijuana stores? And then putting aside the whole morality of drugs and alcohol itself? Thank you for that question. Because this is something which is very near and dear to me. So the whole cannabis debate, I'm not going to get into prohibition of that substance is probably one of the biggest charades that we've seen in the previous century and into 2016, not 27, not 2018 100. Remember what was legalized? When we look at our column, the city, it's ridiculous that a city our size has three or four, drive throughs where people can buy alcohol all hours of the morning, I fought hard to make sure that we have a decent Sony in place. I campaigned and wanted to make sure that the telco retailers are treated the same way that the cannabis retailers are treated. So if you had the money to buy a liquor license on the open market and print solid, you only pay $100 a year for your city license. And our cannabis stores corn as a honey remember it was $20,000 or$10,000 attached to to apply for the permit once they got the city or the provincial allocation. Fortunately, the renewal license was dropped considerably. And you know, I, we fought hard on this, we look at a cannabis retailer versus a pharmacist. pharmacies prescribe or provide Oxycontin, or any of the opioids based on subscriptions that are provided to them by doctors or medical professionals talk about the addictions problem we have we have in our city. It's not so much the number of assets we have. But it's the Hours of operation and the accessibility. So cannabis retailers have a limited frame in which they're allowed to sell cannabis. I've always said as our core retailers should be treated exactly the same. I don't think that a environment should be accommodated where alcohol and cannabis is sold under the same roof. But then again, you know, I'm open to have my mind changed on that. When we look at our police budget, which is 2020 plus million a year, yes. You can try maths that and say, well, we get some federal funding, the provincial funding for them says only $17 million. The cost of running our policing in the city is almost half of our budget at times in capital. I don't want to discount the work that our men and women in uniform do when we're looking at a majority of the poles that come to our police service, which are all directly related to alcohol. No good thing comes from somebody going to George's at midnight. And nothing comes from somebody going to George's at 1230 or one o'clock or after the bars close if you think that restricting cannabis retailers and they are of operation has made a difference. My understanding from speaking to both the operators at the time. I mean, there's a third one now. And looking at the statistics that were provided to us by the principal police service to city council. The impact of the cannabis retailers in the city was zero, the cannabis retailers in the city and I can speak for prairie cannabis and Canada have invested in social programs. They've sponsored community events. And now this is something where I don't see any of the liquor retailers actually stepping up to the plate and say, You know what? This initiative is a good initiative, we're going to put 300 or 500 or 1000 or $5,000 into it. We haven't seen that from any of the liquor retailers. So the cannabis retailers have been exceptional citizens and business owners in the city. And I think that's going to continue to grow you know when we look at Apple statistics on the number of calls, it's very easy to say, Well, you know, we're getting 35 or 36,000 calls for service a year. But you know, once we start drilling down into the numbers, and we'll look at how many of those calls, we had alcohol abuse or spousal abuse kind of gets back to normally the same locations within the city. And those are the drive throughs. So when we look at policing in the city, and managing crime, can't continue to base our policing on this historical colonial model, which is not working anymore. You know, we need to look and seeing what we can do as far as proactive initiatives, harm reduction initiatives. And not just saying to the province, that addictions is your problem, we as a city can do a lot to streamline processes and make services accessible, and work with these community partners when it comes to mental health and addictions within our city. You know, alcohol addiction is a big problem. That's something that's not going to go away. And it's not going to be something or something that we shouldn't just keep saying, I'm going to touch up to the federal provincial government. And we as a city have a lot that we can do. And we need to be able to provide access, manage access to harm reduction, and that's a huge Gambit. We had supervised consumption. We had managed alcohol consumption programs, you know, these are projects that are working elsewhere in Canada that's working elsewhere in the world. And we're starting to see like making a difference in an impact in Saskatoon and other jurisdictions within the province. I did have Jim, sell them on the podcast, and he is the owner of prairie cannabis. At the bottom of the hill. It was a really good episode, he talks a bit about some of the community initiatives that his organization sponsored. You know, you mentioned, you know, harm reduction. And by the way, pa does have a harm reduction group in Prince Albert, I've been trying to secure an interview with them as well. How can the city work towards harm reduction? I someone had mentioned, you know what your thoughts are in a safe injection site. Someone had mentioned using some of that space near the hospital for additional detox centers, things like that, like, how can the city contribute to the success of breaking people away from addiction, I mean, part of mitigation is removing the source. You can't go to the liquor store one o'clock in the morning, when you're already boozed up to buy more. So that's one mitigation method. But for the people that are already suffering from addiction work in the city step into really help and what do you think the city is doing and could be doing? Well, I mean, I must, I must applaud city administration on working with the YWCA for tsavorite and riverbank Housing Development Corporation about that right on the stepping stones, which was a winter shelter. And now it's also a summer shelter for cooling down. And there's some rather moderate temperature we haven't currently. But you know that there's more than that. And I'm very proud of the fact that we did get a resolution passed at City Council for the province to basically do whatever needs to be done, including, including, but not limited to a supervised consumption site within the city. As far as political drive, and ambition is concerned. I'm hopeful that city council and members of city council, our police, as well as our provincial and federal provincial MLS, and our Member of Parliament, Parliament could actually say, you know, this is a big problem. I mean, right now, and the number of calls that I'm still getting from friends and residents, downtown is not in a great shape with this solution for the city seems to be to put a fence up around that line, you know, that's not a solution. The city needs to provide a space. I mean, there was a motion passed recently for a public ablution facilities to be made available downtown. But anybody that goes into the downtown corridor, and the downtown is a very special place to me, because I still believe in the downtown. But it's heartbreaking when you drive in the morning, and you see three or four bikes. Earlier this week, there's about a dozen people sleeping behind the building within the city, let alone the consumption of chemicals, which you know, you can only imagine sanitation concerns around that. When we look at harm reduction strategies. The research hasn't been done. And I'm not talking about the boss's bullshit research that somebody saw on a Facebook post or read online somewhere but the intrinsic data and the evidence that exists over the years of facilities such as insight, and good shepherds in Ontario when it comes to alcohol management, the data shows that it works. The data shows that it saves money. every dollar invested in harm reduction is going to save 4%. On the long term, every dollar that the city and the police invest in gang prevention is going to save lives. And when it's going to give young people the opportunity to discover better opportunities, and not be caught in that cycle. When we look at mortality rates right now, and this is in the city, or homicide rates, it's daunting. I remember when it was the first spring or the first summer, I was on council about a phone call for one of my neighbors about a homicide, which was basically a block up from our house at the time. And you know, that was a reality check for me as a elected official, every single live lost in the city due to overdose or due to violence as a live loss due to our inability to work with organizations in the city. And that could be providing spaces. I mean, we have these community clubs, and we have these community holes, which, you know, things have changed, these balls stand empty for most of the week. But we have these spaces that should be made available, that sort of programming. In fact, there's only one community hall within the city of consolidate. And that's very nice is and the West Bay citizens group could do incredible work and should be could be running 24 seven if there was budget allocated. But we have these other holes in the city, which are just functions for weddings, or for events, or for training days or for elections, need to really look at this. When we talk about these facilities that we have in the city. The newbies get started very, very quickly, crime getting back to the original subject. Crime is not just something that it's unique to Midtown or unique to the west flat or to the west Hill. It is everywhere. It's on Dunn drive, it's on brand new drive, it's everywhere in the city, you can no longer say, well, it's a shitty area, crime is everywhere. We as a city and the city administration, the City Council elected official need to really address this. And as I said earlier, as they have started this commission to a committee to address homelessness and addictions within the city, expecting to see great things on that. But you know, as a city administration, we could do a lot it's within our power to restrict the Hours of operation. It's within our power to support the opening of a supervised consumption site. It's within our power to allow all pharmacies to dispense methadone or Suboxone is the client and not just saying, well, it's got to be in the commercial districts and God forbid it can be in our neighborhoods. It's within our powers to make change that will affect the lives of people across our city, whether they live in a four Plex on 28th Street East, or they live in a house on Lakeview estates everywhere in the city addictions is touching and affecting lives. And it's within city administrations and us as a community to affect that change. Is there any initiatives that the city is taking towards gangs, counselors, Lennox, and Miller and I believe kastler head at budget time made a motion, I'm not sure exactly who started that, for some funding from the police to be allocated towards this. I know that West flat citizens group citizens group has got a program already, the amount of funding that's coming down from the federal or provincial covenant on that is great for an exit strategy. I can only come in dawn and her team on the work that they're doing, as well as the teachers that are high schools and other schools within the city, who are referring kids at risk to these programs. The source of funding that is required for this, when we look at small little items like a 10,000 rent that's paid by a tenant at the Bernie sighs a center, for example, which the city takes, you know, instead of the city taking that rent given to the Bernie saiya Center, so they can run additional programming with the police budget and the border police commissioners invest more money in harm reduction, and harm reduction, the broader stroke of that now is not just what everybody believes, and that's supervised consumption anymore, that Gambit and that scope has increased because it now includes guys strategies, that now includes managed alcohol consumption, you know, anything that we can do to invest $1 now to say four or eight or 10, or$15, let alone a life as money was spent. Everett, I really want to thank you for coming on to the podcast today to talk a bit about your experiences as a city councilor. And really we had some really good user engagement here, you know, people from the committee Prince Albert are recognized a few people in the comments asking questions. Do you think that these questions are being answered by the City Council? You know, I mean, I haven't seen all the questions come through, which is probably I mean, also up until midnight, I think there is a willingness to listen, and a willingness to hear, there's always a refer to administration or refer to the Board of police commissioners. And that's how things die. And that's how things get delayed. You know, I would like to see the city council not have to wait four months or four years, when we talk about crime prevention and nuisance properties within the city. That was a thorn. In my side, there's a lot of these shepherds within the city that generate hundreds of calls from the police, you know, every call from the police's could be $500, dependent on the response to these properties. And when a property generates 400 calls in a year, surely, we should be able to do things better. And, you know, that's within the power of city administration and city council, just say, the bullshit and the buck stops here and to start penalizing, finding these property owners who have the ship pits that people living in squalor, that are occupied by gangs that are overrun by gangs. I'm just saying, as you know, for the safety of the neighborhood, and for the safety of the neighbors, the safety of the community, shattered down on, you know, there's that example of the snake, but apartment downtown before my time, but also with the CD building, where there was some action there at the time. But, you know, those are isolated incidents, you know, those numbers, pale by comparisons, when you look at a house on a street that generates 400 calls a year, the house, not an apartment building, nuisance properties and nuisance definitions need to be updated. I have an emotion, I don't even know what's going on with it. And whether that's ever going to come back from administration to clearly define what constitutes a nuisance. I mean, is it music at 4am? Is it five people in and out of the house between midnight and 3am is a cause in and out all hours of the day is that 50 people an hour going through a house buying whatever it is or fence, whatever it is to find those nuisances, and start addressing the concerns of the neighbors, listen to the neighbors, because you know, everybody is concerned about the value of their properties, everybody's concerned about the safety. But as a city city council can do a lot more to deal with these problematic properties. Because it's not just a case of boarding it up, because that activity moves to the next property. And it's the property owners of the ship pets that need to be held to task, name them and shame them, do whatever needs to be done to shut these places down, even if it means demolishing the property, because it's not fit for human consumption. And, you know, I've been in properties I've seen properties he dropped by bought bought a property that's boarded up that space thought you should wait to see what it looks like inside and some of these properties. I really want to thank you again for coming on to the show today, you know, giving some insight into kind of where city council is on some of these issues where they were at from 2016 to 2020. And also providing that kind of insider look at how the city kind of view some of these these issues and how you as a counselor viewed some of these issues as well. My show is produced 100% free, I don't ask for any money. I set everything up myself. So I do appreciate if people are listening if they don't mind. I'm liking the YouTube videos or rating on Apple or pod chaser because it really helps my show out. let your friends know. And if you're interested in being a guest, drop me a line. I'm always looking for more guests to talk about just about anything. I've had people on here to talk about all sorts of different topics. So again, thank you very much everyone for tuning in. And thank you very much ever. Thanks, everyone.