Jeremy Stanley Discusses Flood Mitigation and Agricultural Grants in Cumberland County

Peter Pappas: And welcome back to the Carolina Cabinet. I'm your host, Peter Pappas in studio with Mr. Jeremy Stanley, running for Cumberland County Soil and Water Board. Welcome, sir. How are you today? pretty good, sir. How much so? Not too bad, not too bad. Good to see you. So, well, Jeremy, I've known you for a few years now. We've we seem to have run for office before and things. So you're not an unknown to me, but to Cumberland County. Now tell me about yourself. Are you from here? I've been here since I was fourteen years old, so that would have been ninety five we moved here into the East Over area and I've been in the East Over area and the Cedar Creek area since ninety four. Okay. Okay. So I I'd make you an honorary Cumberland County resident then. You've been here for more than two thirds of your life. Pretty much. I think you like me are not a young man anymore. I think we were talking about that where yeah, when we used to what what did you say when I used to live? Yeah. Yeah. I think family, like what's Tell me about you. What do you do for a living and family? What's going on? I own a paint and body shop here in Kermelin County out off Cedar Creek Road. I have a daughter that's 10 years old, and my mom and dad live about a mile from me, and my sister and brother-in-law live in Holly Springs. Okay, okay. So definitely a guy from the area. so now this is well, let's just I'm gonna ask some more Easy stuff, right? There's nothing you can't handle. But I'm gonna ask some more maybe fun stuff. So you're a Soil and water guy. Cumberland County Fair shut coming up and the it's the theme is the agricultural express. I have a couple buttons I meant to bring you. It said Cluck Yeah, the fair's coming. I was at a Civic Center Commission meeting yesterday and they were handing out their marketing stuff. Okay. They're gonna be wearing buttons, and then when you go up to somebody and you like say I like the button, they're supposed to take it off and hand it to you. So but You think that's gonna be is that a business trip for or a day off for you if you go to the fair? it'll be both. I mean you wanna you wanna politic anywhere that you're at because folks is what matters, but you also want to have fun while you're doing it. Gotcha. Well so what's your favorite part of the fair? Livestock, ag exhibits, straight to the midway. Are you a ride guy or agriculture guy? just taking it in all together, but the rides make it more fun. Okay. You definitely gotta ride them broken down rides at any given time and make a lot of noise. Well, rumor has it that Labor Secretary Farley is gonna be here to for the ribbon cutting and he will certify all the rights. So we should be safe on that. fair food. Favorite horrible fair food that you look forward to? I would probably say the I would probably say the hot dogs. Hot dogs? Yeah, they do. And funnel cakes. Well those are dependable, I think. Yeah. I think some of the adventurous stuff they do, it kinda concerns me. You know, fried deep fried Snickers and you know, is that really what we're eating in there? Yeah, I have to wonder. So have you ever entered anything yourself in a state or county fair? No, sir. No? Okay. No, you didn't la raise livestock growing up or anything? Well we did. We had we had cows and we had we did bunch of coon hunting so we had blue tick hounds as what we always hunted. Okay we had a grand knight champion in West Virginia and in Ohio. His name was Odie. Okay. but I never answered Never never answered anything. Okay. I had a girl I went to school with she entered a lamb or lammikin. We used to make well a lot of made fun of her. I told her Greeks use those lambs for food. She didn't like that too much. So State fair in Raleigh was last time you've been. Have you been? It would have been two years ago. I took my daughter up there. Okay. I think it's more fun through a kid's eyes. Yeah. What do you think she liked the most of the fair? I don't remember. Now we did do the pickle festival. She loved it because she does love pickles. Okay. That might all. What is that? Just a bunch of pickles to try or what? Everything pickles and P VR made pickle beaker, believe it or not. Ooh, how was that? Give it a shot. I even bought one just to sit in my office in the sh in in my shop. Okay, I got you. Who who can say they had picklebeer? Yeah, I well not me, so I guess that's something I gotta get in the get off. That's first. So are Ferris wheel or are you saying on the ground? Ferris wheel, okay. All right. That's a boss to any fair. So I think so. Yeah. I not me. I don't like heights. I I like being close to the ground like I normally am. But it's okay though. Well, why soil and water? It's I mean look, it's a low profile race, but I think a lot of voters underestimate what the down ballot really does in their daily lives. So so why soil and water? Well, soil and water, believe it or not, a lot of Cumberland County people don't even know what it's there for. They don't even know that there is soil and water because you know it primarily caters to the farmers and grants and things like that. And it's very important to all them because that's how they get the resources to produce our li livestock as well as our produce and all and everything else that goes with that. Tell me about the grants. Like what what i I'm a farmer. What could I go into the soil and water board and ask for what's available to me. you can get share grants. So the grants will actually what you're producing it'll share with you on like the money side of things. So then that way the profit share, if you made fifteen thousand, then the grants will produce fifteen thousand that you have to invest back into it. Well then that hopefully next year you'll grow and then you can get water grants. So if you needed to dig a pond or something to water your crops and things like that, because those are all expenses that you have to endure as a farmer, as just like the drought we've been going through, it would have been important to be able to dig a 10 foot pond and you hit water at seven, eight foot down here in Cumberland County. So, you know, there you would have two to three foot of water just to, you know, water the crops because look at your watermelons and things like that. The centers of them was kind of hollow because we didn't have the water and the moisture to really produce a solid water well like no okay. So so those grants obviously grant means don't pay back. That's the government that sets aside money for the farmers to pr to promote that industry. What is there anything for the homeowner? I d I don't know. So I had a soil and water person here from Johnson County earlier this week. and she was talking about her kind of mission was trying to get homeowners involved with the soil and water that there could be rain barrel stuff that they could do. I mean, is there anything that you've seen from Swan Water that would go for the homeowner? I haven't seen much of Cumberland County that yes, because your drainage, you know, creeks, just take for example Lox Creek and the flooding and the issues there. Well, all the way to the Cape Fear River, they need to be contacted soil and water because they can widen the creek, do that. Like we're always Cumberland County paying for over five hundred miles of ditches that have not been cleaned. Since the seventies, believe it or not, it's on our taxes. Everybody Wh where are the ditches? What are you talking about? What what ditches haven't been cleaned? All of They disappeared. You might have a subdivision there, you may have a Baldinos there. Okay. They it's all mapped out from the seventies. They added a tax to Cumberland County. Everyone in Cumberland County is paying the tax right now and they have not been maintained. So did the did they take and give us all a tax break? No. They didn't. So there was a network of and these I guess were for flood mitigation. I mean what was the first flood for flooding and drainage and it all went towards the Cape Fear River initially, so then that way we produced the you know, to keep the wetlands down and all that. Well naturally when you stop up water it creates a wetland, changes the soil type, and then it's unproducible land. Mm-hmm. So yes, it has life I mean you know, like crawl fish and things like that, which come in by birds or anything else. But it's unproducible land. So if you you know, change the direction of a ditch, you should still have to keep it there, but you know, produce it in a different question. Okay. So this is a down ballot race and th and this is kind of I don't want you to toss shade on anybody that's been incumbent on this board, but how many incumbents are running in this cycle? I mean, I've I've gone over and seen the list. There's a lot of people running, but How many are incumbents? Just one. Just one? Okay. How many seats are total on this board? Two. total on the board? Now you're gonna catch me line. Okay. I I don't know. Well how about how many electeds are there? I think there's four or five. Okay, so we have a small board. Most of them are incumbent. Yeah. I would think I know th I know I recognize the one name that's incumbent here. what about the other seats? Are they generally been there forever? Seems like I think one of them because we had a new elected one last election. the other one was income. Okay. So what I'm hearing is we have a down ballot race that doesn't get a lot of attention that is for an office that sounds like could help me keep my house from flooding. d if we would clean some damn ditches. Exactly. Okay. And keep the roads from flooding and all that. I was on the phone with I I'm not gonna mention the name, they're building a new fire department on Cedar Creek Road. I called just because it clicked in my mind when I was passing by today that that's in a flood zone. There's houses across the street built on still, which is at Locks Creek. I said, You do know that if we have a day of rain, there's over three to four inches on that lot. I got told that, hey, we know, but the engineers and stuff's gonna do that. But the engineers helped build the one on Bragg Boulevard that isn't done yet that we gotta tear out. Well the the tomato and friggin' bowling ball, I think, on that one. But I I agree with you. They so the I know which I I'm pretty sure the answer you're gonna get is we've mitigated the risk by controlling what stormwater retention they call it. And having a pond. You know, have you ever you've been to BJ's or Sam's? You got these big ass ponds where all the geese are. Yes. But that's what that's for. But you're wrong on there, 'cause I got told that it was gonna tie into the drainage of Lox Creek, which is still clogging up and still plugged. excellent. So okay you know So they've mitigated it by dumping it somewhere else that already floods. Yes. Sweet and I'm part of the Lox Creek crowd that helped get that and bring that to light and attention that was clogged up and flooding in there and houses built on steel. So they're saying that that's going in there, but they just put a new pipeline in But they didn't fix the drainage when they put the new pipeline in right there. Is the project completed or the pipeline? I mean the pipeline's completed is completed and you're still seeing standing water. Yes. Hmm. I don't see how that can work out bad anyway if they keep adding to it. But nobody's falling through. That's the problem. If we have organizations and we have things and boards that doesn't follow through, then it's just an incomplete process. Okay. So and that's a city project, is it not? Yes. City Fire Department. And it is adjacent to property that's being developed by the mayor. Is that not correct? He he sold it. Has he gotten out of it? Okay. Okay. All right. So soil and water could help us. Flood mitigation, it helps with farmers getting grants so that they can afford to be farmers, I guess, which food security is pretty important these days. What do you have to do with countywide public water access? Is there any any role that Soil and water can play in that? They could play in it by showing and getting the proper channels that, you know, with the contamination of water and all that. They can test or they have the the ability to work with, you know, the testers and everything else because they're they're going to call in the the favors or not the favors, but you know, the the steps to have the soil and the water tested in that area that's the next board and the next hirees that do those kind of things and then they can present it. So, you know, that's just like developing, you know, developing in Kermelin County. You know, we're we are developing, which is fine. And those guys, the developers are bringing in public water to those areas because that's part of the the laws that's put in. But at the same point, we're not adding the water to the schools. So the kids that are growing up in these new subdivisions, the developers are doing what they need to do and spending the money, but the county's not spending the money to the schools. that's just like Gray's Creek is now getting water. But if you look back 10 years ago or a little bit longer, I didn't pull the dates. Gray's Creek did position petitions not to do City Water because they didn't want they didn't want it. They didn't want to Well but doesn't doesn't some of that predate when we really knew how bad P FAS was? I mean P FAS didn't really become a thing until the mid twenty tens, did it not? Yeah, exactly. So so yeah, it it does predate that, but we're they're getting water now, but they didn't want it and now all of a sudden they had the opportunity back then. So now we're giving it to them. But we've got the west side, the east side and all that's been overlooked and we didn't have the options to have water back then. Well or in and now the conflict is if we bring municipal water to these to the country, we'll call it. You know, I always say anything over the river as country. You know, we're bringing municipal water to them and now because of the PFAS contamination, but now the question is are we still going to charge the homeowners to hook up when The PFAS contamination is no fault of their own. So y you know, it's like we're we're taxing the people to put the water in, and then if you want to hook up to our water, you still gotta pay. Doesn't seem fair to me. Camar says that they'll pay to put it in to a certain extent. So if the water line runs in front of your property, they'll pay the tap fee to put it in. Okay. If it doesn't, then PWC has to extend it. Well, but you're talking tap fee, they ain't gonna pay the plumber to dig it dig up the pipe, are they? Yeah. Are they taken care of? Okay. So they'll pay for the tap fee and for the plumber to dig that ditch and bring water line to your house. To your house. Yeah. Okay. Now if your water line runs out the back of your house, you may have to pay the plumber to plumb it to the front. So, you know, what's a It's not running it's not a one size fits all solution. So there i you know, there is stipulations in there, but like my shop was it was on well and they did hook it up, didn't no expense, I just started paying a PWC water bill. That was just as simple as that. Okay. And that was Camoros. so it is available in the areas that are run, but you take my subdivision, there's four houses on each side of the road. We're still on well. The The other part that they developed is on water. Mm-hmm. The houses that pass those four houses are on water, but they won't extend those four houses. They're saying that we have to pay to the extension to P W C. Well, I don't think that's right. Well, but are those wells contaminated with PFAS? Yes, they are. Okay. So did P FAS give you whole house filtration or any other mitigating anything to Yeah, they offered that. But but why would you not why would you want that when you could be tapped if PWC would just run it? They just gotta run one side of the road and then tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. I I don't know. I mean you might be better off with the filter, at least you know you're filtering it. Yeah, PW because PWC does have PFAS in their water. People overlook that. they are working to get the amount of contaminants lower. But they got PFAS all day long. They they're not better than anybody else. No. they just have less of it instead of what your well could have. So your so you roll on soil and water, like how long what what's the commitment? Like, do you meet like once a week, once a month? What does that mean? Once a month on Thursday month. Okay. All right. And what does a normal meeting look like in there? I I think it's like an hour long now. I mean, I really haven't attended much. I've been doing my homework. you know, 'cause Thursday mornings, you know, sometimes get away. what I would do is kinda change and rearrange my job. And so Thursdays I'd pretty much go to the meetings and then go pick my daughter up. But any elected job any elected official It's a seven day a week job 'cause you're here to help help the community. If you're not willing to invest seven days a week, then why are you doing this? Yeah, I don't think you're gonna go to a grocery store and somebody's not gonna recognize you and say, Hey, by the way, what can you do for my farm? Yeah. I mean if you're lucky they'll recognize you. Or maybe unlucky. I don't know how that works. Maybe you just like to shop in pieces. Or you just like to talk a lot, so it all works out good. I don't think you have a problem with small talk with people. I think you're good on that in that regard. so what What do you want people to know about you running for soil and water? Like why should they choose you? Well, I mean, I'm pretty much available, like I said, seven days a week. I'm at my shop at least six days a week, you know, and they can come in there and just talk to me. They can talk to me while I'm working. and you know, that that way we can move forward with things and I can help them out. I mean, I got a call about some stuff in Raleigh last night and the phone call was made it was ten something or eleven something at night and it was an hour long phone call. And it was about some statues in Raleigh that I was not familiar with, but I had to make myself familiar with. So I mean, you know, it interests me, all of it does straight across the board, but I'm more knowledgeable with the soil and water types of things. And that was why I ran as county commissioner what we did two years ago. Twenty four, yeah. Twenty four because of the the knowledgeable on that aspect now. You know, as far as running for a different office, I wouldn't because I'm not knowledgeable enough to try to run. But I know that I can be available seven days a week to soil and water. Right. Plus we got the farm down in Samson County. And, you know, I work with soil and water in Samson County and work with you know, different people in the that's interesting. Samson County versus Cumberland County, who's getting it better, who's doing it right. Well put it this way, have you ever seen somebody dredging a Cape Fear River? No. Or a creek in Cumberland County. I mean, I haven't looked. I mean, I don't know, do they? I don't know. Never had in my never never since since I was fourteen, but you know what Sampson County was doing? On the back side of the farm on the South River? They was dredging. Okay. What does that what does that accomplish, dredging? Well, it cleans up for the wildlife and all that. So if you go down the Cape Fear River to the Cloney line in Blayton, so you leave here and anybody that wants to go, I can take on a boat and show them the cliffs. the the the steep inclines so our animals don't get water. So that actually keeps the wildlife from be able to get water, produce more wildlife and everything else. So you take you got a fifteen foot drop on the Cape Fear River, there's a problem. They can't get down there. Plus, if you look, that keeps say you're you've got a farm on the Cape Fear River. You've got a 15 foot drop, 20 foot drop of a straight wall was say you got cattle. Why would you not want the fence up to the Cape Fear River? Your cattle will be able to walk down, get water, they're gonna lay around there, cool off in the water, 'cause your cow's not gonna swim out to the the center of the river. I don't think they swim. They swim. Yeah. Okay. All right. But I mean you know what I'm saying. So that helps farmers out and everything else, and then you're gonna hear the story that the Corps of Engineers has something to do with it. Soil and water can make it happen. They're making it happen in Sampson County. They met with us on the farm. Well, Okay. So we have cliffs and things you what caused all that? Is it because we have erosion? Just erosion and And what does soil and water do? Okay. Erosions will be think you handle the erosion. So the flooding and stuff, so you take you raise water twenty five, thirty feet on something that's only used to eight foot, mm-hmm. Well, what's it gonna do? It's gonna and you you start putting a ton of force behind it so the water's traveling at forty mile an hour because of all the force behind it, it's just steady wash from our banks out, well it creates a cliff. Okay. Okay. So I'm thinking that's just bad for wild. So is there a solution available to smo I mean I'm not smooth the cliffs out? I don't know, to let animals go up there and how are they gonna water themselves if it's fifteen foot drop? They don't. They can't you've got to what would you fix? You've got to pump water into holding tanks to feed your cattle, feed your horses or to water are farmers pumping their water fr directly from the Cape Fever? No, not really. I didn't think so. But I mean, you know, dogs and everything drink it. They don't care and they live. Not like us for whatever reason. But you know, by dredge and they have it's called amphibious excavators. Okay. So they had big, big tracks on them that flow so the excavators can actually float. They also have barges with excavators on them and things. We're not deep enough in a lot of area for that. But at the same point in time, you could slope it. He goes in there and just slopes it and drags it, but the dirt's gonna have to go somewhere. So we would have to haul it off by the design of the K fear because we're so shallow. But at the same point in time, now we're gonna roll into something else, the data centers. Okay. So the data center we also have to be proactive on. We can't just be negative because we look like toddlers just screaming that we don't want something. But being proactive is what? our water sources. We're already complaining about the water source. We have the opportunity to dredge all the way to Lillington. If we was to dred the dredge the Cape Fear River, make it wider, dredge it, you know, 25, 30 foot deep, the w amount of water that we would have in the Cape Fair River would be astronomical compared to what we got now. We're only going to affect downstream about two to three weeks. And then at Lock and Dam, it backs up And then starts to flow again the same way. So we're saving our community and our county by adding more water region. And that's dredging north of here. Well, that's dredging. Well, I mean, you know, you get up to I'm just using that as an example. You get up to you know, Lillington, you can walk across it on the rocks and stuff, so you know, foot, two foot deep. But even starting above Well, right where the Highway Twenty Four Bridge is, it may only be two to three foot deep there. Even though it looks like there's water 'cause it's a Cape Pierce dark water. But it's not very deep. And you get to Lock and Dam, you're only looking about thirteen to fifteen foot at the deepest point. Halfway down you're you're floating between six to eight foot all the way down to Cape Pier from Riverside. Yeah, the boat ramp all the way down to Loch and Dam and Loch and Dam's about thirteen foot. I didn't realize that. That's so that's that's how shallow that is. Yes, sir. So like when we had that hurricane Matthew? Yeah. And it was above the bridge. Twenty seven foot. That's that's wow. So the the river isn't as deep as most rivers when it was flooding over flooding. And we could solve some of that by dredging? Dredging would take care of most of it. Now, like PwC, I think they're doing two hundred and thirty-something thousand gallons per day pumping out, and they're putting back in two hundred and like twenty-eight thousand. So they're only consuming a little bit and but then you know, cleaning and pumping back in. But, you know, we wouldn't have a water pan really ever because we would have the amount of water to sustain. So if we have a drought and it drops ten foot. We've still got fifteen foot of water throughout all of it, so we're not really losing because PwC is only using a small amount. I I've just never thought through these things and I didn't realize that your office actually could impact those things, but that's exciting. I mean, if you get some things done. Who do you think's running that knows do you think the incumbent knows what you know? I'm not sure because you know, I haven't really talked to him. you know, let's look at it like this. Has any of this stuff been happening? No. And the incumbent's been there more than one or two cycles, right? Exactly. So I would say he doesn't know. And I'll be and everybody so just to clear up for anybody watching, so the only people the people that I've reached out to would be Jeremy, the incumbent Ellison Ellison, Mr. Halichek, Chris Revis, and Dwayne Waterford. Dwayne has been reached out to, has not responded, but Mr. Halichek and Mr. Revis, have no email or phone number on record for me to reach. So that's why they haven't been able to been invited to come on. But sounds like you're pretty knowledgeable. Definitely more than the incumbent, because if the incumbent knew he'd be doing these things. so what else do you think you can add to the board? you know, those are some of the things and it's not just about adding to the board. It's about getting the community involved. You have to be out in the community and you have to be discussing the things that the community wants and why are we not seeing these people at community watches, you know, town halls and things like that. So we know what the community needs and we get involved with that. Just because one person wants it and tries to do it, we have a board that makes the decision. So that is the key thing is having a board that works together and wants to do it for the the whole county. And it's not a city thing, it's a whole county thing. I don't know. It's kinda like I served on human relations for a few years and it was like they wanted us to go to like First Fridays and stuff like that and have have a booth of human relations. Like, what do you want us to talk about? talk about fair housing. It was like they wanted us to go out to a fun festival situation and make people eat their vegetables. So I think that's kind of the problem with Soil and water. How do you market that? How do you How do you sell that to the to the community and say, hey, you need to be involved in this? Well, it was like the data center meetings and things like that that I was at in East Over where they're planning where they're trying to put the data center and at the and at Fayetteville in their meetings. It's not about selling it. It's just about talking to people. If you're there and you can talk to people and help them understand the different resources and who they need to reach out with with their concern, because we can complain to certain groups, but unless we get all the groups involved in understanding, then we get action. So do you think it's a failure of the current soil and water board that there was no presence whatsoever? So from what I've heard, soil and water could play a role in helping to mitigate or educate about the data center situation coming in, good or bad. And from what I'm hearing, they have dereliction of duty. They have not shown up in these rooms. Is that correct or not correct? I have not seen any of them. Okay. you know, and that may be because they didn't do their due diligence and know when it was happening. well what else is their concern and responsibility? I would think anything soil and water related should be on their radar. Yes. I don't know. I it should I I'll well when you win the office I'll show you how to set up a Google alert so it'll you know it'll clean your inbox every day. You okay, there you go. All right, yeah. Dollar down, dollar a month, you got it. So I can I can afford that. You can afford that very so it just sounds like to me that you're very knowledgeable. I mean you farm your family farms. What do you grow what do you guys grow? Trees. Trees. That's not fun. That's not sexy at all. Well trees in West Virginia, my grandpa we had a three hundred acre farm out there, which he still has. So I grew up from the time I was, you know, a baby on that. with cattle and and stuff. Okay. down here it is trees and it's long leaf pines and regular pines. Well that's a fifteen year a fifteen year so what you do is you fifth row them and you timber in certain areas. Then it's through North Carolina. North Carolina pays you to do it because trees are again are important for our oxygen and everything else. So with The lease is signed with North Carolina. After you timber certain areas, you can't go in and clear cut the whole forest. Then you make the money off the timber, then North Carolina comes in and replants the trees in all fifth rows. So then you're looking at about a 15 to 20 year turnaround on those fifth rows so that they're mature. Then, you know, you opt over to the next area and then do that as, you know, but it takes a lot of land management because What I know we've all seen it. If you got a pine tree in your yard or something, you see little sprouts of pines growing up because of the needles and the seedlings get spread. Well, with that, the only way to get a mature tree is you need the equipment to be able to run and clean. So if you have a span of about five so North Carolina plants them like five foot apart. Well, you have to be able to clean so really it's about a ten foot you're gonna get the maximum amount of growth out of the tree and you know, the board foot when they timber because when they timber it's actually goes off of board footage. So if you take a smaller pine that's called po pulp wood, so what they do is they grind it up and that's what makes our plywood stuff, which isn't the money. You know, when you get into Two by fours and two by sixes and all that, that's when you're bigger round trees. That's more money that you make. So it's important to have excavators and tractors and skid loaders and everything else to be able to clean and keep it nice growing because if you let it overgrow, you're gonna cut your in fifteen years, you know, you're gonna have pines every two foot because of the seedlings. And you're not gonna be able to produce They won't be as big a tree. Okay. Well I would think the other seedlings steal nutrients and things from the soil too, so there's only so much to go around. so you said every fifth row you're doing that. So how many sections do you have? I mean that's for a fifteen year harvest. Well a fifth row would be it may be you know, twenty five foot wide. So it's every twenty five foot. It just depends on how they figure So it's not just one row of trees. It's like a twenty five foot swath. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah. So they I'm not a farmer, I'm a sandwich maker, man. What the hell I know for this. So I need to come down and check that out then. But you need to learn because where's everything on your sandwich? A farm. Yeah, well, you know. So it's important. Farming and all this is important to everyone in today's life, whether they like it or not, or don't even care about it. Without farms and the death of a farmer is what? subdivision. Mm-hmm. It sure is. And from your knowledge, North Carolina, are we up or down with farmland right now? We're down. We're losing farmland, aren't we? And it's it's a shame, but you know, it's a lot of your farms have left Cumberland County. Why? Because of tax rates. You know, you're taxing the next generations out. And you know, when you when you tax somebody out, you it's tough to you Proceed. You know about a tax rate with your businesses. And and you know, every year it's like, my gosh, it's a dread to think about what you're gonna have to pay in property tax. I don't know. I so my mom and I'll probably disagree on this, but I just I'm like, Well, it's September again, here we go. I don't you know, she does not like writing that check ever and I'm just like, Well, that's we're in business, that's what we do. Let's not argue about it this year, but we're gonna argue about it anyway, 'cause that's what that's what we do. Family business. You gotta argue. But So Jeremy. Tell me where people that are looking for more information about you, where can they go? do you have a website or a Facebook page? I've got the Facebook page. Jeremy Stanley for Soil and Water. they can reach me on my telephone (910) 527-3113 They can swing by the body shop at Quick Fix Paint Body. I mean I'm always Well, they can also stop by if they get a defender bender. Like let's talk about that for a minute. Quick Fix Body has been open for how many years? Twenty two. Twenty two. Okay. And what kind of jobs do you what's your favorite kind of job to take? I mean any that make money, I get that. But like what's your favorite thing to maybe see the work from your hands, the the fruits of your labor? I don't mean all of it's relatively the same nowadays. We used to do a bunch of custom stuff and the custom world's just like anything else, it evolves every year. But at the same point in time it's not you don't see as many custom cars on the road like you used to. so You know, customer pay usually make a good friendship and stuff out of insurance shop, everybody dreads dealing with the insurance. But the insurance is not favorable for you and I. It's not favorable for the customer or the shop. There's so many laws and things that needs to be changed and put in place. And our insurance commissioner does not like to do it. He's set in his ways and says it is how it is. And would that be an incumbent by any chance? Has he been there a while? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, time to change it up. Well, for the cabinet, I'm Peter Pappas you've been watching Jeremy Stanley running for soil and water. And with that, I appreciate you being here and good luck to you in the election. Thank you, sir. a good afternoon. Yes, sir.