Mr. Jason House. What is going on, my friend? Good morning. I think it’s afternoon at your time, but it’s morning in our time. So I’m going to say good morning, afternoon. Yeah. You what? An hour behind, right? Yes, sir. Yep, yep, yep. So how’s it going? How’s everything been? Well, I mean, I think the reports, you can tell that things are pretty challenging out here. It really is.

And I want to kind of take a brief moment to just say, of course, I’ve been a fan of the show and following you for a while. So thank you for the great work that you’ve done and really impartial because I know you reach out to all sides, which is the right thing to do. Also got to give some acknowledgments to some of the other content creators. O’Shea, Duke Jackson.

Yeah, that’s my guy. Shawana Burns, pink book lessons. So a lot of great coverage and content. And really it’s been helpful to the community for Dalton because it really does make sure that transparency is being had. Even when there’s the fight for transparency in the boardroom, a lot of this has gotten it out because people at the next poll, they deserve to know what’s going on and who’s going to be representing them.

Or you get a real mean and it does it for all of us on the board. So thank you. No, thank you. And you know what’s so funny is know I’ve been paying attention to you for a while and you have a pretty impressive background. I mean a resident or a native. They say a know. That’s what the profile says. A native of Dalton. So I’m guessing you’re born and raised there, spent the majority of your life or nearly half of your life residing in a village, graduated from Roosevelt High School.

It also goes on, if I go into your profile, it says that you actively engaged in a community professionally served as bank president of us bank and Dolton for over twelve years, accepting as your current position as chief finance officer for healthcare consortium of Illinois, so on and so forth. It goes on to talk about your hobies, but more importantly married spiritual growth, faithful member of the Valley Kingdom International ministries.

You have a pretty impressive profile. And so my question then to you is how are you not the one that’s in this position? But then we got Tiffany in this position instead. Great questions. I know you start off with the hard hitting questions, can we talk me a lob or a softball first? But no, I appreciate your reading of that. And that bio is actually outdated, so everything in there is, of course, factual, and it was at that time, I want to say that bio was put up there about seven or eight years.

Okay. Seven or eight years ago. So, in total, I have about 15 years in banking experience, about ten additional years financial management, in terms of being CFO and VP of finance for a myriad of other companies. So all factual information, a little bit outdated. Also went through some, like many of us, went through some marital challenges, but those things happened. Definitely faithful member of my church and always looking for spiritual growth.

But to the question, how am I not in that position? I generally don’t fancy myself as the face of a community or anything. Well, not the face of community, because I’m in this position, but I really just want to do service, and I think service gets done in many capacities. So, when the last election came, I was asked by many people to run for the position, but at that time, I really was focused on my own personal growth, spiritual journey, and I elected to run as a trustee.

I felt like one good service I was one term in, and I felt like I was still growing in that role. Now, this. What’s going on in our community now has really pushed us to grow faster, be stronger, and do better. And I really have to give a lot of credit, a ton of credit to my colleagues on the board. Trustee, Keanu Belcher, trustee, Brittany Norwood, former trustee, Edward Steve, trustee, Tammy Brown.

And an unspoken hero that goes in there, our village clerk, Allison Key. I mean, together. Everybody bands together to make sure that transparency is done, that we really do get democracy, or we try to impose democracy on here. I think, timeline wise, it wasn’t the right time for me when the last election came around, but we’ll see what the future holds. So, it’s funny because, and I got to throw you some hardball questions in there.

I don’t want this to be a completely softball conversation. Right. Okay. From my understanding, you guys, initially, prior to. And correct me at any point if I’m off or give any misinformation, initially supported Tiffany Henyard in the position that she’s in right now, under the guise that she was actually probably best for the job, and she actually had a mindset to actually help and put Dalton or do the thing that’s in the best interest of Dalton.

At what point did you guys realize, wait a minute. We might have made a little bit of a mistake throwing our support behind Tiffany? No, that’s a great question, and that’s very true. I think during that election, we had three choices that each had their own flaw. We had the former mayor who we felt like may have reached his peak in terms of effectiveness. Tiffany at that time was a strong advocate.

And it’s so ironic because many of the things that she’s doing today, she was the biggest critic and the biggest one advocating that and be done on transparency. And that’s what connected me, because I had already made the decision that I was not interested in running for mayor at that time. So Tiffany was the advocate. Mayor, include your board. Mayor, we got to do this. We do it right.

And she promised to work with the board, work with myself and the other members to really bring unity. And that just, of course, didn’t pan out. Then there was one other candidate as well that had his own challenges, but no need to smear. But from my assessment, there were three candidates that each had challenges. But the one that I thought at the time I could work the best with or that was going to really bring some kind of aggressive advocacy for the community was Tiffany.

Now, once she got into the seat, and, I mean, the indicators started showing virtually immediately. Time. Yeah, trying to give it time. I was getting calls from residents that. Residents that I personally had asked for support and asked to support her, and then I was starting getting calls from them. Well, she won’t respond to my phone calls. What is she doing? And in our position, we are here to represent the people, so she and I can have differences anytime.

And that’s no big deal. We don’t have differences. Our families all have differences, but we learn how to work that out. But once the residents are starting to get involved and the residents are seeing and they’re asking for questions and they can’t even reach you to get an answer, that’s where it became a problem. And for me, I think the point that I realized we really had a challenge was once we got into board meetings and we would propose ordinances, the ordinance is the law.

Our position is to create the laws and to watch the money. We had a board meeting. We had an ordinance that we put in place. I don’t remember the specific ordinance, but she said, okay, well, you guys can put this on there and go in and vote on it, then I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do that let me know. The law doesn’t matter to you anymore.

You feel that you’re bigger than the law, you’re unable. And we really have a problem, and it’s been a challenge ever since. What about supporters that she still has? Do you think that there’s a supporter or a base that’s in Dalton and in the surrounding areas that still support her. And why do you think that she still has that level of support? Well, good. And this kind of ties back into the last question and a point that I didn’t bring up, but, yes, I’m sure there are supporters, and you can’t be in this position without helping some people.

So for me to come in here and say that she’s done all bad would be an exaggeration, or it would just be kind of me being on the other side of the coin. The reality is, there have been some people that she’s helped. There are some people that she’s grown up with and she’s known for years that are going to support. So there is a level of support here in Dalton for her.

I think the overall sentiment is not positive or not favorable, and that’s the reason that she’s trying to mute or limit. Everybody’s mute their conversation. You see, in the board meetings, if I try to speak, she wants to direct me on how to speak, what to say, how I’m supposed to say it. And that’s for a board member who’s rightfully entitled to ask questions. You look at the citizens address, they make comments and get no responses back.

So there’s a ton of residents that are stating their claim, in which now the game is to try to control the narrative, and she tries to do it through deflection. So if you ask a question, you don’t get an answer. If you try to call for an interview, the only way you’re going to get an interview is let her know specifically what questions you’re going to ask. Then maybe you can’t ask a follow up question.

Don’t do that because she ain’t prepped for it. And if you’re fortunate enough that you give specific questions that appear to be favorable, you just might get an interview. But the whole game now is trying to control the narrative, to paint the picture that everything is okay, and it’s really not. And that’s the obligation of myself, my other trustees is, of course, our first obligation is to try to work with the mayor’s office, which we’ve done.

And even on this day, and I’m going to say this because I limit the interviews, and I have to, because as a board, we have pending litigation against the mayor’s office like that. Every interview, we have to comment. But having said that, and on this interview February 16, I was saying, should she be willing to work with the board starting today? That would be the benefit of this community and the board would find a way to work through real issues.

Let me ask you another question before I ask about some of the other things that I need clarification on, because I want to be fair. Right. And similarly to how I kind of started this, and I’ve been saying this for a long time, I leave out a lot of the things from information that I get because I think that it’s my responsibility to also separate how people may feel about her from the job that she’s doing.

Right. And so my thing is, I want to know what’s happening with taxpayer dollars and whether or not she’s doing her job effectively. And that’s the thing I care about. I don’t care about what’s going on in her personal life. But you know her better than I do. So, in fairness, let me ask you a question. Are there some things that you like about Tiffany and what are they? If there are, I would say when she came on board, I think there’s some redeeming qualities.

I definitely think she does have some strengths. I think persistence, energy, you see in the meat that energy is nonstop. And if funneled properly, it could be done. So I think those are strengths. But I also think the strengths are now becoming weaknesses, because the persistence now is preventing her from listening to just logic. I mean, you got media all over the place saying, this isn’t wrong. We got residents here everywhere telling you we don’t like this, but through persistence, you’re going to force it down everybody’s throat that, no, I’m doing the right thing.

Everybody else got it wrong. You know, what’s that old saying? Everybody don’t tell the same lie on you? Everybody else is saying it, but that persistence, the strength, is really becoming at a detriment. It’s almost like she’s got one tool in the toolbox, which is a hammer. And sometimes you need a hammer, you need a screwdriver, and there’s no softening it up for her. She only has that.

There’s no compromise. She doesn’t understand compromise. She knows fight. And there’s a time that you have to put your back against the wall and fight. There’s a time you got to drop your sword and negotiate. There’s a time for all of it. But if you only got one tool in the toolbox, this is what it looks like. Let me ask you another question. I want to show something really quickly, and it’s a letter.

If I could show this really quickly. This is a letter from. It looks like state bank. And it basically details, and it goes over the idea that there’s, I guess, some negligence on the behalf of bills being paid and things that’s happening within the city as far as even police vehicles. Right. And I’m trying to figure out, because the way that she presents it is there is really no problem, we should be able to do this and so on and so forth.

And I’ve even done some research as far as the property taxes, how much you guys are paying property taxes. It seems like you guys are paying an extraordinary amount in property taxes. And I don’t know what the equivalent is because I didn’t necessarily compare it to anything, but it seems like you guys are paying an extraordinary amount of property taxes. And then I’ve even gotten insight that basically says that police vehicles or leases for police vehicles are looking to be repossessed due to lack of payment.

Could you give us any clarification on that? Yeah. And that one, of course, recently made headlines, and it’s probably the biggest illustration of the challenges that we’re having here. But the presentation that’s given, it’s just that it’s a presentation before the board meeting. We have another former staff member that informed us that the mayor would force the employees department heads to role play the board meeting before they got into the meeting, just to be ready to have the conversation, because it really is at the last few board meetings, you hear me say it and I’m going to keep repeating it.

The agenda sets everything up to have the dialogue and the back and forth, because it’s really just being orchestrated to try to prove her point. So with this, I’ve got about at least 15 different vendors who the board has already approved, because the board, we get the packet, we see if it’s something we feel like we need, we’ll ask the question, do we have the money in the bank? Oh, of course I got money.

I go get the bag. I do all of these things. So, yeah, there’s money in the bank. And then after the play and the circus is over with, at the board meeting, we’ll come. And then there’s somebody send us an email. The state bank one was extremely concerning, and it first came to my attention January 31 when I got an email from them. And that’s kind of where a lot of the exposure initiated.

But my first receipt of it, I get the message, I send it over to the finance department, send it to the administrator. It wasn’t intended to be a media thing that puts a bad light on the community. Yeah, of course, like many other communications, it goes unanswered. No response. I communicate with the vendor because I don’t want police cars being repossessed. I say, hey, can you give us a week? I’m really trying to work and reach out to their staff.

One week later, I’m told in the meeting, well, it’s been taken care of. Trustee. I’m relieved at the moment thinking that things are fine. Pick up the phone the very next day, and the guy, he’s actually irritated, like, why are you calling me? You guys haven’t made it. Haven’t talked to me at all. Yeah. Again, I follow that with another email. Mayor, chief, everybody, you said it was taking care of what’s going on.

No responses whatsoever. So we fast forward another week later and we get the letter. Now that you’re posing here, and then the media is involved, and now we got the stories unfavorable. The police cars are at risk of being repossessed. But it’s all because it was a facade. There’s no validity. Now, I’m pleased to say this morning I’ve had a chance to speak with them and they finally have received communication and a check is being released.

But the board released that check months ago, approved it in May 2023. As a board member, if we approve it, it’s supposed to go out the same week that check should be released. Yeah. So now that leads to many other concerns. How many other checks are out there that have not been paid? What’s our true state of finances? And we do have current litigation. One of the things I mentioned earlier, just to try to force the mayor to authorize her staff, because her staff is just doing their job.

The problem is right at the head. So we’re trying to encourage her to allow her staff, I shouldn’t even say force. Allow your staff to do the job that I know that they’re willing to do. So let me ask you another question, because I think that from the outside looking in, it looks easy, right? It looks like, hey, listen, you’re supposed to just be able to cut the check.

This is where the money is coming in, so on and so forth, as much as you can. Can you give us a little bit of insight into how cities are run, whether they’re smaller or larger? I know that larger cities obviously are a lot more complicated, but in a general sense, where does the money come from? How is it then allocated? And then how do you guys determine how the budgets are supposed to be balanced or where the money is supposed to go? And then how does that work as far as how you work with the mayor? Because I know that with maybe, let’s just say, other cities or larger cities, the city council, and I’ve talked to a lot of different mayors and city councilmen and things like that.

I know the city council generally controls or they determine whether or not, hey, we want to approve this or we don’t want to do that. As far as checks and balances, how does that work? Where does the money come from? Does any of the money come from outside of Dalton, like a federal agency or something like that? And then how do you guys allocate the monies to be spent throughout the city throughout the year? How do you balance the budget? So, with the budget, where the money comes from, there are several different ways that we get money.

The largest factor that we do is your property taxes. So out of, I think, Dalton’s budget is approximately $28 million. Roughly 1213 million of that is property taxes. The homeowners paying their property taxes. And that money ultimately gets funneled to many different areas. The school districts, the park districts, and the municipality. Okay. In addition to that, we get, like, motor fuel sales tax. We get sales tax from the purchase of people going into the vendors and the stores in our community as well.

Basically, the community is still the ones. Even if after they paying property taxes, when they going to get gas, when they buying products at the store, it all goes into. All of that stuff still comes back into the city. So essentially what you’re describing is that it makes sense for you to create an environment where people would love to live, work, and play and spend more money because it goes back into the culver’s and Dalton.

Absolutely. Okay. And that’s why you want to encourage people, shop, Dalton, shop in your community, because that money, ultimately, it fosters jobs for those that work in those positions. It also brings more money back into our community that we can continue to recycle and build a better community. Okay. Yeah. And then when we’re talking about the budget, the board’s responsibility is, and it should be similar to a corporation.

You have a CEO, then the CEO reports to a board, and the board’s function is oversight. Our positions are deemed part time positions because we should not be involved in day to day unless something’s going wrong. Okay. The day to day functions of it, there’s a whole finance team that should put things together, and if they present it to the board in a manner that seems reasonable and realistic, we will look it over and say, okay, we approve, but we also have to be knowledgeable enough to know which questions to ask and where to go, and make sure and look at past year’s results to see if the numbers being presented are realistic.

It’s really a check and balance. The mayor’s office, the administration, they create the budget, they propose it to you, and then once we get it, we say, well, for example, when I looked at the previous five years of numbers for overtime in the police department, we never exceeded $600,000 of police overtime. Last year, we were at $1. 6 million in police overtime. Really? Yes. It’s like 150%. That’s a million dollars extra.

Right. And it’s attributed to the security detail that’s running around, that’s causing a lot of overtime and a lot of the manpower. So when it’s presented for what, though, what is it going? I don’t understand. The security detail that follows the mayor everywhere that she goes. Those are police officers, basically. The taxpayers are the ones that’s paying for that. Yes, absolutely. So as a board member, when we get presented with a budget and we see, well, for five years straight, we’ve never went over 600,000, but this year we’re asking you to approve 1.

6 million. Of course there’s going to be questions. Of course the board is not going to be in favor of it because clearly we can’t afford it. We can’t even afford to pay the police cars. And now you’re asking us to get more, to put an extra million dollars so that you can have your own personal security following you around. If those officers are going out on the street, you’re in the community.

That’s a totally different conversation, and you’ll get a different outcome. So how does that work, though? Because let’s say, for example, she says, okay, whatever special circumstance, I need these people to come and protect me or whatever, so on and so forth, because I do know that there were situations where she felt like she needed extra protection for whatever reason at that particular time. Right. Because a budget is put together beforehand.

Right. And so when we’re projecting what it is that you guys need to allocate resources to, but then she say, okay, where I’m declaring a personal emergency or something like that, where I need to allocate additional funds for this. Two questions. A, what happens if you say, no, we’re not giving you no more extra money? Because this makes sense. This doesn’t make sense. That’s number one. And then, b, how do you deal with the fact that you did approve a budget proactively as far as how the city is supposed to be operating.

But then you go outside of the parameters for that budget, or she personally goes outside of the parameters for that budget. And then I’m also leading you into a conversation about this ice skating rink. Right. How do you manage that as a trustee or oversight for what the mayor ultimately determines that they’re going to do, regardless of whatever it is that you say. A lot of good directions on there.

The budget itself is a plan. There’s nobody that has the crystal ball that can really give you the exact what’s going to happen. So your budget is your blueprint that you want to stick to. And if you get so far off the budget, you know, it’s time to sit back down at the table and re budget no different than what you do in your house. I got an idea.

Every month, if I make $2,500 a month, I know I got $1,800 worth of bills and I got my blueprint. But if I were to have a furnace blow out or something else that’s not budgeted for, or if it is, it’s because I plan for savings, but you can never predict it. So when we look at the budget, we’re going off of the best expectation based on what we know today.

And if an emergency comes, it still should be presented to the board and say, well, we didn’t budget for this, but we’ve had ten water main breaks. This is an unusual year. Yeah, you all did. You all had a lot of water, so let’s present that to the board. And of course, the board is going to say, yes, we know we need it. And if we go extremely off budget, we’ll sit back down at the table and look, well, we needed the money for the water main breaks.

What else in the budget can we reduce to make up for that? And that’s the way it should go in a functional community. Or is it an increase, though? Right? Do we increase property taxes? How do we play that out, though? And all things are opportunities, because you could either increase revenue or decrease costs somewhere else. So you can increase revenue, you can go out there and look for grant money as an opportunity.

And those are things that should happen, of course, amongst the board, and they should happen publicly in front of the resident, so the resident understand what’s going on. My thing is always, if we’re going to do a tax increase, let’s make sure that the residents know that we’ve exhausted all other avenues, or we’re going to do an increase, this is what you’re going to get for that money.

So you know that you got the bang for your buck. But all those things should happen openly in front of the community and transparently. The way it’s happening in Dalton is we’ll pass a budget, and then the mayor will go out and commit to expenses that are totally outside the budget. Yeah. How do you deal with that, though? That’s why that’s the chaos. Because that’s a great question.

And there’s not a solid solve for it. Because when a vendor gets a phone call from a mayor, the automatic assumption is the mayor has the authority and is working within the confines of the budget. And then they’ll send an invoice, and then we get the bill for. Let’s say we budgeted $400,000 for a sidewalk repair, which is a great thing. We get an invoice for a million dollars, $600,000 more than we budgeted for.

Now, as a board member, I’m in a really tricky position, because I can either say, yes, I approve it, because we want our residents to have those nice things. But now that took a hit on our budget, and it’s going to strain the cash to the point that we’re at right now. And the mayor’s office has repeatedly put things out there, gone, paid for things, hired, and then gives it to the board and says, well, I already did it, so you got to approve it.

I’m going to Vegas first class. Yeah, that’s done now. You’re going to now approve it. Okay? Because I have seen meetings where you’ve personally brought her to the front of the congregation, or certain spending and expenses into the front of the congregation to say, hey, listen, hold on, man. You over here at bubblegum shrimp, and you know what I’m saying? I know you all over here having a good time at Ruth Chris, and you all spending $600 for pizza, and you all got these hotel rooms, and you’re making it rain over here, and then all of this and so on and so forth.

Hold on now. Why should we have to pay for that? So what happens when you say, no? I don’t necessarily agree with the way that you all spending money. Does she have to pay for that out of her own pocket? Does the city still have to pay for it? Is it a warning to where? Hey, we let you know. Listen, we don’t want to keep having this happen.

How do you guys resolve that? I don’t understand how that works. It ultimately is going to end up in court, because once the mayor’s office commits to it, the vendor feels that they have a commitment or an obligation from the mayor. Now, the board is the one that’s the rightful holder of approval and non approval, but the vendor has done some work, and then the vendor can either we sit down and try to settle it, which is the ideal way, or the vendor can sue.

However, the legal defense to that is they entered into a contract with a person that wasn’t authorized to enter the contract. And most people will assume, oh, that’s the mayor. She must be authorized. She’s not the corporate authority. That’s the entire process of the checks and balances. I have one attorney that kind of shared with me. It’s similar to if you were to go into Target today and just start washing the window, sweeping the floor, and then send target a bill.

And they’re going to say, why am I getting a bill? Well, I did the service, but I didn’t talk to anybody who was authorized to tell me to do the service. And that’s what we’re running into in Dalton. But it looks very bad for the community, for everybody involved. What about. Because a lot of people are, or even myself? Because I was thinking, okay, wait a minute, she’s holding two different positions.

Thornton Township and then Dalton mayor, right? And then obviously, they did the news report that basically said that apparently she had passed some kind of law or ordinance that basically illustrated if anybody was to run and unseat her within a township office or the township supervisor, that their pay would then be reduced to whatever the crazy amount was that it was reduced to. But you guys kind of oversee what’s happening in you, because it’s kind of bleeding over.

Right. What’s happening or her ability to do her job effectively in Thornton Township as a supervisor is kind of sort of bleeding over with what it is that she’s supposed to be doing as a Dolton mayor. Right. Because it seems like the city is just her personal piggy bank, and it’s her credit card for her to be able to do whatever it is that she want to do.

And her total compensation, if you really go based off a lifestyle, is exceptionally more than whatever it is her combined salaries are. Right. How do you guys manage through the visibility that’s being created and even things that she’s doing in Thornton Township starting to affect what it is that y’all already going through in Dalton. It’s a big challenge, but also, we try to do things as much as possible through partnerships, because that’s also going to be the way we’ll have to get out of the financial challenge we’re in once everybody sits down at the table, but we really just try to manage again.

I give a lot of credit to my fellow colleagues on the Dalton board because we work very well together. We also get some support from other elected officials, other state senators, state representatives. So that’s the part of it that, as you keep exposing and keep talking about what’s going on, you lean on each other, you try to come up with the right solution, and over time, I’m sure all things are happening.

I don’t understand exactly why, but I’m sure it is God’s will that this is occurring, and I’m sure that as we persist, we’ll get out of it. Are you scared? Scared? No. Who? I want to be scared of her. She controls the police department and stuff, right? You don’t have some semblance of fear because, hey, listen, I’m in Dalton because there’s been business owners that said, hey, wait a minute.

She leveraging her power, you know what I’m saying? To squeeze me out of the business and stuff, you don’t have some level of unexpected question I’m going to ask the questions that I really do be thinking about. Like, man, wait a minute. I’m no more concerned than I would be. Just as a human that’s going out into this world. You got to look around, you got to keep your eyes open for potential threats and everything else.

At the end of the day, I believe that all the employees are doing as instructed, and they are good people. So a lot of times, people say, okay, well, who’s talking to her? Where is she getting her advice from? I think she’s taking her own counsel. My issue at this moment is strictly with the mayor’s office. Those who are reporting to her are doing as instructed, but I think they’re good hearted people.

They’re well intentioned, and they’re getting bad leadership. So I’m no more concerned today walking out the door than I would have been two years or three years ago, because there’s obstacles out there in life, and you do your best to prepare for it. You do the right things, and you get taken care of. Do you think she hates you? She. I can’t even really give it any brain energy to care.

Well, you know, you becoming an op now, right, because you used to love her or you used to support her, but because you’re holding her accountable, and even though you being objective, because you’re looking at it from the perspective of what’s best for the know, people don’t think like that. They just. Man, look, look, jason, he the op now. And that’s really unfortunate that it’s viewed, and that’s part of the divide that we see in Dalton specifically today, because people are instructed.

It almost feels like you have to choose a side. The trustees or the mayor or this one. I have a lot of great residents that call me and the ones that really help me to be a better version of myself and a better trustee, they challenge me. I get challenged all the time. I have a couple of them that I refer to. I say may. You guys are.

They love me to death. They are my biggest critics. And every time they make me to be a better person, look at things through a different lens. That might be a man thing, though, Mr. House. Yeah, because we don’t take constructive criticism or people holding us accountable as a negative thing. We take it to mean they’re actually just having a conversation with us because they want the best out of us.

Right. Whereas I tend to see more women, not all, but I tend to see more women take it emotional or taking it personal when you hold them accountable and then it turns into a dumpster fire versus it just being exactly what it was that we could have mitigated what the problem was if you would have took it a completely different way. I think that’s just because you’re a man.

Well, no, I see it as a human thing. You such a good politician. What are you running for mayor? Mr. House, think about this. Those who are not doing the right thing have a problem being held accountable. Okay. Those who are doing the right. I have three amazing women that serve on the board with me and behind the. We, we back and forth at it, and I hold them accountable.

And I’ve heard trustee Norwood and trustee, but, okay. You write about that one, and sometimes they come at me. So I think that’s a human thing. And when we’re ready to receive the criticism and the feedback, there’s times that I get defensive and I got to walk away and come back to the table and figure it out. But as humans and as we progress to try to be better people, it’s really our challenge.

And in the position, the seats that we hold, it’s our duty to try to figure out the right things. Would you ever consider running for these positions? And then here’s the second question of the day. Do you even have the capacity? And actually, I’m going to ask a third question, so I’m going to ask three questions. Would you consider ever running for the position? Because I personally feel like.

I believe that based off of what I’ve seen over a period of time, especially with your level of transparency and wanting to do the best thing for the city, and me even having this conversation with you right now, I believe that you probably are best to be the face of what Dalton is supposed to be. Right? So, a, would you ever run for it? B, do you have the capacity? And then c, do you even want that level of visibility? Because now y’all got the spotlight on y’all.

And it’s not just managing the city anymore, it’s actually cleaning up the mess. That if you were to even go for that position and get it now, you have to kind of sort of take a step back in order to take two steps forward. Would you even be interested in that type of position in the first place? Because it’s a lot. No, it absolutely is. A. Well, I’m currently given strong consideration, so would I do it? Yes, I would do it.

I’m giving consideration now. I have a lot of friends. You might need to be the mayor of Chicago, man. I’m going to just be honest. No, I’m going to be honest with you, Mrs. House. You might have to move over to Chicago and take over, because I don’t like what’s going over there in Chicago. I don’t like it. Hey, I love Dalton. Born raised here. So that’s what my heart and my commitment is to.

I’m going to stick to that. I really want to stick to that. But no, there’s been some strong consideration given to it. I still have some very close loved ones that I want to make sure I get the blessings and things from. But there’s a little bit of a timeline before petitions go out, and that’s when all official announcements will be made. As you talk about what it would take to clean this up, I definitely think I have the capacity.

I have the skill set. I’ve been through some difficult times personally and made it out there and come out on the other side very successful. I’ve managed with other organizations through some difficult times, and we’ve come out extremely successful. So I think this is actually probably in my wheelhouse, if I had to be honest about it. But the biggest thing for me is the opportunity to serve. I come in this because I don’t like the term.

When people say politician, I consider myself a servant. And the minute we start looking at it like I’m the leader, I’m the most powerful this and doing that, we’re losing perspective of why we entered into these seats as well, because leadership is responsibility. Anybody who’s been a husband, any parent, knows that you’re really not in charge of anything. You’re just managing to try to make sure that everybody else is in position to be successful.

That’s a huge responsibility. And if God blesses you to be in that seat, it must see something in you. So I think that it’s important right now. And one of the biggest things I want to kind of bring out is the way that Dalton is being portrayed, because sometimes I see reports where they’re saying, oh, this lowly community of people that earn, on average, 25,000 and things like that.

That’s not Dalton. That’s not the Dalton I live in. The Dalton I live in. We do have some homes that might sell for 40 or $50,000, but many people don’t talk about. We have homes that approach 275, $300,000 in value. Yeah, we got doctors and attorneys and the whole gamut. Dalton is just a very real community of hardworking people, intelligent people, and I think we’re being judged because of the dysfunction, and it doesn’t really show our bedside.

I’m one of your biggest advocates. I’m going to be honest with you. I am a huge fan of who you are and what you represent and your spirituality and your background and your mindset towards people and even your ability to be able to answer some of my questions. It’s incredible, because a lot of people get tripped up, but you don’t seem to be. I will tell you what.

Next time, you got to give me a list. I’m not coming on here. Wait a minute. You know something I don’t know. Let me ask you one more question, because I don’t want to keep you for a long time. And plus, I want to know. Be in your good graces, so when you become president of the United States, you can invite me over. Like Tiffany was over at go visit and Biden.

Let me ask you one more question about Tiff specifically, because I don’t think that she’s a bad person. Honestly, in her core, I personally believe she got drunk with power, and that’s just my personal belief, just observing her. I’ve even had to try to have a conversation with her, obviously. And so, obviously, that didn’t go nowhere, but I believe she just got drunk with power. I don’t think, at her core, she’s a bad person, but I believe that the more that she resists accountability for her actions, the more that she becomes the villain.

As far as the face of what you don’t want to see, Dalton, is do you actually think that she’s a good person at her core and then agree with the idea that she’s also just drunk with power? I think she’s well intentioned. And the things that she says, I think she really believes them. So I think she believes it. And she’s going to keep repeating it until she does believe it if she doesn’t believe it.

But I think she believes those things. But I think there’s a lack of maybe training or a lack of development, of corporate development that is really preventing from being able to see to a real end. So I think you look at the ideas and some of the things that come out, it’s like, who wouldn’t want a water park for their community or who wouldn’t want all of these things? And it sounds really good, but what is really going to take to accomplish that all the way till the end? There’s not a plan and there’s not the vision or the foresight.

So I think it’s because of a lack of training and a lack of willingness to work with those who can guide and direct her in that path. Yeah, I understand what you’re saying. I think the one thing that’s really unfortunate, because I know many other elected officials, and the good thing about, from what I’ve seen and being a trustee and I know as a mayor and talk with other mayors that the minute you get in that seat, everybody, well, most people, 90% of the elected officials will extend arm out to you and say, hey, how can I help you to be better? How can I do so? The mentors are out there, but you got to have the willingness to start working with people and the willingness to kind of humble yourself in your spirit to say, look, you’ve done that before.

How can you help me get there and then take it and make it your own flavor, but do it and do it the right way and do it for the people. Yeah. I also want to give some credit to Dr. Nikita Cloud. Awesome. I almost didn’t take this interview because there’s no way you’re going to have me come behind her. She was on there, her blunt, raw honesty, her passion, her presentation, unmatched.

Absolutely unmatched. And I want to give her a shout out to her. There’s so many people I could shout out. Stephanie Wiederman, Nikita Clark. We have so many amazing residents. We got Sherry, we got Mary, we got Dan Lee. And there’s so many people that continue to push. So the group of trustees we get a ton of support. Nikita specifically doesn’t right now live in Dalton. She could have resigned and walked away, but she didn’t.

And many of the people I mentioned, some live in Dalton, some are outside of Dalton. But all. So even though it’s dark right now, I know Dalton has a bright future. No, I think that you guys would be okay. How much longer is her time? The next election is February of 25. So we got one more year before the election. That’s a long year. That’s a long year, man.

Listen, a year is a long time when you under fire. Yeah. You know I’m praying for you, right? Well, we accept it. We really just appreciate all the outreaches and the support. So I thank you for what you’ve been doing in the honest reporting. Well, listen, like I said, I’m behind you. I think that you’re a great guy. I also appreciate you for even taking time out of your day to come and speak to us and speak to the people.

Thank you. I’m going to joke, but I’m going to continue to be objective about what it is that I see, because I don’t want to ever talk about anything personal with regard to her, but I am going to just. And if she did something awesome, I’m going to be honest. Like, if she’s doing something awesome or she’s spinning around or something like that, I’m going to talk about that, too.

I think that you all going to be fine. You all got a year ahead of you all, so we’re going to see how that play out. But I think that you all going to be fine. And I think that you are absolutely a phenomenal person, man. And thank you for continuing to come on the platform. And thank you for being a servant leader for the people. Appreciate it.

Thanks for the time and the platform. And I wish you continued success. And, ah, rest assured, I will be watching. All right. Thank you, my friend. .

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