Jay Thomas Show: "Tim Flakoll Guest Hosts" 8-12-26

Hey, the Jay Thomas Show podcast is coming up and it's brought to you by Hot Spring Spas and Pool Tables too. And they're not just hot tubs and sanas and pools. But man, if you want some really top of the line, pool tables, foosball tables, Vinnie's with me, you have all that plus more in your stores. We do. And it's kind of a fun product, but it is wellness. It's bringing the family together and friends together. We carry Olhausen, which is made here in the USA. Brunswick, a name that's been around for almost 200 years. And with that, not only can you get a custom-made pool table for your home, for your basement, for your game room, but also matching shuffleboard tables, foosball tables, air hockey, bubble hockey, video games, anything that you could imagine for a game room or entertainment area in your home we carry and we have in stock. And you can come in and, like I said, design your own game room. Yeah, you have beautiful. I mean, it's literally furniture. The brands that you have, they're not cheap, they're not cheesy looking. They are beautiful works of art and you can customize yours. Get into a Hot Spring Spas and Pool Tables 2 store and check out the unbelievable selection of gaming that Vinnie has. Where are you located, buddy? West Fargo, Bismarck, Grand Forks. There you go. Hot Spring Spas and Pool Tables 2. All right, now the J. Thomas Show podcast. And welcome to the Jay Thomas Show. I am Tim Flackle, sitting in for Jay today. You know, Ronnie, I just saw both of these movies. I'm kind of a big deal. Ron Burgundy. Ah, yes. And actually, you know, I love the first one. I believe they call it San Diego. Yeah, you can only use so much of the quote. That's about as far as I can go with that quote. Yeah, yeah. Stans for a whales. I don't know. Yes. Yes, exactly. But, you know, I've always loved the first one. And the second one, I was like, to be honest, when I saw it in the theaters, I was disappointed. Really? Yeah. But this time when I'm watching, I'm like, okay, it's better. I don't know. I just loved so much the first one. And I don't know. The second one, I'm like, oh, could have been better. See, for me, that's, you know, some of the best stuff was during the second one. Like, you know, when they tried to do what I believe was based on the creation of CNN. Right. You know, they're, don't just have a great night. Have an American night. You know, I thought some of the best lines came out of the second one. Yeah, there's some. Some very good lines out of it. I think my favorite movie, and you can pick yours too, but I think my favorite movie for quotes is Tombstone. Sure, yes. I'll be your Huckleberry. Jay uses that quite a bit. Why, Johnny Ringo. Looks like somebody just walked over your grave. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, and then, oh, very cosmopolitan when they come out of the bar, the big shootout and everything. I don't know, there's just so many good ones that you can, you know,

I always love the ones that you could use in everyday life. Yes, not me. I'm in my prime. Yeah. Yeah, and then the Billy Bob Thornton scene and, you know, I would just... I mean, it's one of my top five. One of my top five. So later on on the show, we're going to have Don Kinsler Lawn and Garden Show. That's Wednesday. So at 235, Don will be in the studio. North Dakota State Senator from District 44, which is my district, my old stomping ground. Yeah. The district I represented Senator Jamie Selsler, who was about... Just recently named to that position. Eight years ago, yep. I was named to that to replace Senator... Then Senator Josh Boucher, who obviously became the... The current member of Fargo. Mayor of Fargo. Mayor of Fargo. And then Heroes Mission. They'll Tim will be in with us. They have a lot of things going on today, today, so it's timely. And then we're going to have Representative Scott Wagner from North Fargo coming in talking about the proposed new voting scheme in Fargo. What's new in the legislature? A little update from, I think, All Sager Meets is on tap. for today. And then we're going to play a new game. I don't know. We're calling it Ronnie's rank, rank game. Okay. We'll see. We'll explore this together. Yeah. We'll stumble and fall together. There's really only one big mistake you could probably make today. So it's all in the eye of the beholder. But if you make that mistake, then... I thought it was the eye of the beer holder, but yes. No, you'll. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yep, yep, yep. A couple things. Recap Minnesota election recap, Minnesota, House District 4A, the local one here. Mayor Shelley Tucker Carlson from Moorhead was bested by Erica Yoney, which was, I mean, for some surprise. My understanding is she's, Erica is a relatively new political newcomer, or am I getting wrong? I think that's, you know, relatively true. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes she got the endorsement at the local race and at the local convention and she just continued on. I just thought maybe that Mayor Tucker Carlson. I mean, of course, we really know her well here, but the district is bigger than just. Morehead kind of area. Yeah, yeah. And I haven't dug into the numbers to see how she did in Moorhead versus kind of outlying area. And then, of course, no big surprise, Amy Klobuchar. Yeah, what was it, 99.9% of the vote? I mean, I don't know that anyone's shocked by that, I guess. Against, you know, arguably, if I said I'd give you $10 for every name you could give me who ran against her, I'm guessing I would keep every dollar of my money.

And quite frankly, I mean, she's a very well-known name in Minnesota politics. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know anybody in Minnesota who doesn't know who Amy Klobuchar is. Right, right. So, yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, and she'll be tough to beat in the fall. I mean, very tough to beat. We all know that. And but regardless of what happens, Either will be a big step improvement, I think, for the current governor, just saying. Yeah, yeah, it's hard to argue that very salient point also. And then Mike Lindell, who was, you know, popular in a lot of circles that we have. He was beat by Lisa Denmuth, who's the... Dameuth, yeah. Dameuth, pardon me, who's been the Minnesota Speaker of the House since 2025, which represents Central Minnesota. first elected in, I think, 2018 to the Minnesota House. So it was 43.5 for Lisa and 32.5 for Mike. So even though Mike had the endorsement of President Trump, didn't work this time. And is that the same one that the GOP in Minnesota candidate Kendall Qualls was also a part of? Finish third in that race. Yeah. Lisa was elected to the Rokori High School Board of School Board as a writing candidate in 2007, so it must not have been a big amount and was then reelected twice. So she's got some of that in her background too. But we also want to talk. I want to talk before whenever. Dean gets in here, I want to talk about the, sometime today about the Cass County budget that just was recently passed. It will be up for final passage on September 21st at the meeting there. It's again, follows the caps that we're in place with 3%. It's a balanced budget, meaning that there's, we're not using any, you know, emphasis added on this, not using any of our reserve or bonding. We don't do bonding. We don't have, you know, bonding for general fund bonding. So Cass County does not have any bonding debt, so we're not paying interest on that bonding for any general use funds. And according to my calculations, overall general fund expenditures are $299 per resident of Cass County based upon the current population estimate of 204,317. But to be a little easier here, a home that is valid at $200,000, which has kind of been the norm, the actual is higher than that, but it's kind of a common reference point, that will go up about $11 per year on your property tax statement. For both budget is...

goes up 1.11 mils. So we're at 55.39 mils for the 2027 on property tax levies compared to our current year. And the budget for 2027 is up 0.84 mils compared to four years ago in 2023. So to note, though, our cap is at 75 mils and Cass County is 20 mils under the allowable cap, which... I wish other political subdivisions would be able to pull off, but just the way it is. But I think Cass County certainly before me has done a very good job of really focusing on core services. Law enforcement, for example, between the sheriff's department, the jail and the state's attorney's office is like 65% of the overall budget. And then you add to that roads and bridges, which is, you know, popular and necessary for everyone, and particularly those out in the real areas, you know, that is really the big, big bulk of what they're doing. For the employees, the cost of living went up. 3%. And we've had a study that shows that we're about 7% behind market. So we have a 3.5% adjustment in order to remain competitive. And we understand the need to remain competitive and retain employees and remain fiscal responsible to taxpayers. So that's kind of the balancing act we're trying to do within the... And we have growth that's occurring, so that helps out. So then that helps us allow to do those cost of living increases. For reference, Ronnie, the Cass County continues to grow. In 2016, we had 174 plus change residents, and in 2026, it estimated 204,000 plus change. So about 30,000 increase in the last 10 years. And the new budget includes six new employees in public safety, all in public safety, five in the state's attorney's office, and one death investigator in the coroner's office. Which is, you know, that's a coroner's office in my portfolio. And those are, let's just say, tougher to find because that's what I call a unicorn position. Not everyone can or wants to do that. Yeah. And is it one? person then that does that for Cass County? I mean, large county. There's a couple that can do that. There's a couple. Okay. Yeah. But I know, I believe in our morning show, Jenae and I had interviewed a coroner before. I'm pretty sure it was for Cass County. Great interview. Oh, Christy Ross. It's a very involved job, and you're doing it for a big area. Yeah, I mean, and it's tough. And right now they're short-handed. So the coroner and then one of her assistants, they're the only two in the office right now. Yeah. And so they're doing 12-hour...

rotation. Oh my goodness. That gets a little challenging. So God bless them for stepping up and making that happen. But public safety is 68.9% of the general fund budget when including the sheriff's office and state's attorneys. But then when you add emergency management, you get about 71% of the budget. General fund budget goes towards that. categories so okay and uh people ask this sometimes uh at a final note in 2026 the percent break out of various types of property uh tax uh property tax from properties is as follows four percent for agriculture 42% business and commercial and 54% for residential. Okay. So there we go. Interesting numbers. Welcome back to the studio, Dean. Well, hello, you got a little scruff on you like me. Are you trying to look like me? Yeah. Probably not. Yeah, right. So, hey, before you get into your thing there, we have a couple things going on. I had to, my speaker headphones here, had to ask you about it. As I understand, both a solar eclipse going on in some parts of the world. Which is done now. And, but also it'll coincide a little bit with this meteor shower. Perseid meteor shower tonight. Perseid. There, yeah. I, I, I. I missed that D&Cla. I missed the, I missed the meteor shot. What time is that happening this evening? No, it happened this afternoon. Oh, I did already. No, I'm joking. I was going to say, you knew you would get me with silly goose. No, it'll be tonight after dark, obviously, but anytime after 10 o'clock, here's the problem. Okay. We're going to see, well, first off, this milky white with the upper level smoke. Okay. Yeah. We're more than likely going to see clouds increase and some scattered showers come in here towards midnight. So here's my hope is maybe as we head towards about 3, 4 in the morning, you will start to see skies clear out a little bit. But I... I wouldn't put any money on it. And I'm a betting man, but I would not put any money on it. I just think it's going to be, we're going to have too much cloud cover to be able to see the show. And it's too bad because it's between 50 and 100 of these per hour. So it would be quite a light show. It would be quite a light show. Yeah. And somebody said, do you look north? Do you look south? Just look up. Yeah, just look up. You can look north. That's what I tend to do is look north because it's away from city lights. Now, if it would have been last night, I don't want to look up and be hit in the face. Like, did you see the picture I sent you from Porcupine, North Dakota? Holy cow. Baseball-sized hail. Yeah. And they had the same thing outside of Sturgis, the big bike rallies, obviously. Yeah, I saw people running for shelter at the Sturgis camp. Literally, I saw, I saw motorcys, this guy took a video of motorcycles driving. It looked like.

They just had a snowstorm. It was covered with hail. So a pretty nasty, nasty weather out around Sturgis, not good timing either. So is there a place if we could get, if you and I can talk Ronnie into using it as private jet, is there a good place in the world? Or in the United States where we could go to get a better shot at the media. I think our far northern valley stands the best chance. I think there will be less cloud cover, Grand Forks along that Highway 10 corridor. I think that that'll stand the best chance. I think most of the cloud cover is going to be along in south of that 94 corridor because that's where we're expecting any rainfall. And is this a situation where you... want to so-called get out of the city because of the what we'll call it light pollution that can dampen the amazement of all those much like the northern lights yeah so i mean if you're in the northern valley if you want to take a road trip go to the northern valley i think i think they'll have a better chance to see in the northern lights don't go south that the further south you go the worst it's going to be cloudy so you're not going to see anything so that's why i would head north i would head north and and see if you can catch the light have you ever seen them I've only seen a few so-called shooting stars. Right. They're amazing. It's so fun to watch. And, you know, you have to let get out there. You have to let your eyes adjust for about 15 minutes to 30 minutes. Let it adjust to the night sky. And then you can start to see them falling. And it's pretty darn cool. It really is. So if you do the old shooting star, I'd make a wish. Is Dean Weisaki's wish that his son gets to play for the Chicago Bears and wins a Super Bowl? He's too small to play football, but maybe the Cubs. That would be awesome. If he could play for the Cubs and get Dad some season tickets for the rest of his life, I would thoroughly enjoy that. I like your thinking. A lot of those same lines, if you believe that I have a private jet and if the Washington Post is listening. Tonight I will be transferred to a country hearth bread truck and then taken out to the Fargo Jet Center to board my private plane where I will be watching the shower above the cloud cover if they're listening. Hey, see, Ronnie's got the idea going. He's got to figure it out. Well, Ronnie, I mean. Here's my thinking. Because tonight's the power, it's a billion dollars, a powerball. Oh, I've got my tickets. You believe you, me. So at approximately 1015, after you find out, you are the winner, give me a call. We're going to drive up and board your private jet and watch the meteor shower from a loft. If I win tonight, you can contact me at my private suite at the Memorial Stadium. It'll be right next to Larry the cable guy. I love it. I love it. What do you got for real work here? Well, I'll tell you what. It's a nice summer afternoon out there. Now, boy, oh boy, last night, the rainfall that was along that 94 corridor. And if you want to know how much rain fell, log on to our Facebook page, WDAY's Facebook page. And I'll tell you what, there are some pretty impressive rainfall totals around an inch or more along the 94 corridor all the way from Heddinger County.

through Bismarck, Jamestown, all the way through West Fargo and Fargo. By the time this thunderstorm complex got two more ahead, it started to weaken and in the lakes country, it weakened quite a bit. But a good example of how these thunderstorms can really make a big difference in just shifting a few miles. Here at the station, we picked up 1.11 inches of rain. Five, six miles north at the airport, 1,600s. So an inch less at the airport. And this thunderstorm complex just hugged that 94 corridor from west to east. And north of it, by five, six miles, you didn't get squat. So that's the nature of some of these thunderstorms. And we're going to see another round tonight. And it looks like it's going to follow the same track, maybe a little further south, but generally along and south of the 94 corridor tonight. After a beautiful day today, if you like the summer heat, a little humid out there with temperatures in the mid-80s today, down to about 60 tonight. And again, those scattered. storms along in south of 94. And then Thursday is dry. We'll have partly cloudy, 83, and then Friday we'll see increasing clouds dry for the first half of the day, but showers and a few thunderstorms come in towards evening and become a little more numerous overnight Friday night. And that one's going to be a little more widespread throughout the valley and lakes country. And then on Saturday. We might have some leftover morning showers and then decreasing clouds late in the day, highs in the low 80s. We'll stay in the low 80s with more sunshine on Sunday and then a couple more chances of rain next week, one Monday night and one Wednesday. So the rain chances are in the forecast. And we have a caller, Crystal, commenting or asking a question about the meteor shower. Hey, Crystal. Solar eclipse. Yeah, hi, it's a solar eclipse. And with planning, you can be on a cruise ship. It's open to anybody. We were able to do that a umpteen years ago out in the Southern Caribbean. Right. And we're on this cruise ship. And so we've got the, literally, the sky in the middle of the day got dark. And the lights come on. There's a cool breeze. We're playing Age of Aquarius. Oh, wow. Okay. So there's 2,000 of us. that are all celebrating the fact of this solar eclipse. So next time, Dean, I would suggest when you know a little bit ahead of time, plan to be on a cruise ship no matter where it is in the world and just experience that. It affects you for the rest of your life. I like your idea. I've been through a total solar. I've been through a solar eclipse before when I lived in Nebraska, and it was something else. It really was. Yeah, it is an amazing event. You sure you weren't just looking out toward Grand Island? Thanks, Rodney. Boy, he's full of it today, isn't he? Don't tell my sister who lives in Grand Island. I was going to say, to quote one of my favorite personalities, you're either on something or you're on to something. I thought maybe he's coming out of Duffies at 3 o'clock at the hour. Now, listen, the happy hour can be any time of the day. All right. On game day it is. Yeah, yes. Well, thanks, Tim. Yeah, thanks for coming in. You guys have a good show and watch out for Ronnie. He's trouble over here. We got work for him today. That's a first. We got a new game, so. All right. Yeah, much like Fargo used to do, today is Ranked Choice Movies. Yes. All right. Only you don't know what's coming up next. Right. I like it. You can stay around if you want, but.

You can leave if you want. I've got to bring the kid over to Thunder Road. Yeah, you guys looked like you enjoyed Fargo's pools yesterday. Yes, yeah, brought Bentley out to Island Park and had a blast out there. Looks like a big pool. It's huge. My goodness. And then they got the floating river there. Oh, yeah. Relaxing that. And Bentley was flirting with the lifeguards. Oh, okay. Like Bentley, you're a little. Startum young. You're a little young for that, buddy. A little young for that. There you go. Oh, Ronnie, we're up against the clock, so I can't give you the first one at. In honor of tonight's Percy-eyed Meteor shower, little bad company, shooting stars. There you go. And I'm Tim Flockless, sitting in for Jay on the Jay Thomas Show. Again, if you want to call Studio on 71, 29339,000, thanks to Thor buildings, or you can email us at studio at WDi Radio Now.com. Thanks to Red Wing Shoes. We'll be right back after this break with our longtime friend, amazing guy, Don Kinsler, with the Lawn and Garden Show. And welcome back to the Jay Thomas Show. I'm Tim Flacko, sitting in for Jay today. The time check is brought to you by custom truck and auto shine and it is 237.30. Yes. Don Kinsler, our buddy back in for another Wednesday. Don Kinsler makes for an easy afternoon for me. Well, good afternoon. You know, I was just thinking our own Rose Garden has had a tough go of it, you know, since you got playing the Rose Garden theme song. It has been hot and dry, of course, and roses would like it cooler and more moist. So our roses, they've been done okay, but this has not been a banner year for Rose Garden. So I never promised you a Rose Garden. Yes, I just felt that was a little... Apropos there. Yes, thank you. You know, quite frankly, we are working on a project with our friends at S&S landscaping. Jeannay has a Graham Platner full of roses out here that she just deadheaded this morning. Tip the little, what would you refer to them as, Don, unbloomed or having bloomed? Spent. Spent flowers. There you go. Yeah, wonderful garden term. The spent flowers, those that are gone and. Yeah, past the prime. And then our area of Fargo, not all areas. I understand the further north you went, the less rain, but we got some rain in South Fargo last night. Yes, we live just off of 64th Avenue South, and we got a little over an inch. That was so welcome. Our lawn, we don't have sprinkler system. I save the water, as I've said before, for the vegetable garden and the flowers, and we don't water our lawn. And our lawn is so stressed to the point, and we've discussed before. that lawns can't go, can't stay dormant indefinitely. And ours was looking, man, awfully tough. So that inch was very, very welcome. And, of course, I feel for those who did not get that inch of rain, because it was a pretty narrow band, even within the Fargo Morhead area. Back home, home in Forbes, we got zero. And we need, you know, they need it down there, too. Yeah, I'm told, according to Dean, this morning, Hector Airport. 1600s. So the further north you went, you really didn't see a lot.

And for lawns that have gone dormant, of course, there's lots of farmsteads that can't water their lawn either. And for lawns that have gone dormant, as we've described before, every four to six weeks, even a dormant lawn, excuse me, even a dormant lawn needs a quarter inch just to keep the crown hydrated. So it doesn't wither away in dust bowl fashion and just blow away and die because eventually a dormant lawn can do that. We learned in the late 80s. during that drought. And so a quarter inch isn't going to make it all green and nice, but it will keep some hydration in that crown, in that crown, that's the spot between the leaf plate and the roots. It'll keep a little hydration in there so that at least life will still be there. So does it shrink, does the soil shrink back away from? The top, we'll call it, during that time when it's really dry or no? Yeah, so when a lawn goes dormant, when it's hot and dry, that is a self-preservation mechanism for our adapted grasses. They just become dormant. But even though they're dormant, there's still life within. It's almost like a seed, you know, a dry seed that isn't in soil. You know, it may look like just a dead seed, but there's life in there that when that seed gets soil, moisture, it comes. to life. And so there's life within that seed, similar to grass that's gone dormant. There's still life within that crown. But that life, similar to a seed, most types of seed you can't keep indefinitely. Eventually they'll just kind of run out of steam. And grass can do that same thing. So the bottom line is every four to six weeks, they need a little something for hydration. So how about watering the trees then? I mean, I'm kind of going through my about eight to ten questions I have here, you know, that people have asked are prepared for. I've seen, I mean, should you do any deep watering now with the, whether the evergreens around the yard or any other? precious trees, that might be a family heirloom kind of thing? Yes, and of course our own yard is a good test subject for many things. So we've got some trees that were planted within the last five to seven years, plus some new ones that were planted this year. Okay, those that were five to seven years and established somewhat, but still, you know, a relatively small canopy. I've noticed with the lack of rain, they had started to wilt. And of course, that is tough when a tree actually starts to wilt. So I put the soaker hose around the last couple of days and trying to get hydration down into the root. Soaker hose, the type that exudes water out through its surface, so it slowly percolates down in. And now, okay, the big concern is if the drought continues or if you're in an area where drought continues, boy, if a tree starts to show wilting, We've got to get some moisture down into that. And even a larger established tree, such as you mentioned, Evergreens, Tim. Going into late summer and fall, they need to get hydration. So if the drought continues in areas where it's continuing, it is important to get water down in. And now, conventional wisdom has always said before things freeze up water evergreens. Okay.

they can't rehydrate with a one-time watering right before it freeze up. When we have extended dry period, they need to have some hydration. They need to get some hydration long before that. So evergreens and areas of drought, I would definitely be soaking them down. We have a caller, George, with a question or comment. George, welcome to the show. Well, I got a comment. We could give you some of our rain we've had up here. I'm north of the sea for over falls, 30 miles. Eight inches of rain and 11 days. Ooh. And three of them storms, we had a heavy wind and some hail, so I've got like 30% hail damage on my oats field. And when I'm swathing with the swather, I'm getting stuck and got to be pulled out. And then about a day or two when he comes with the combine, he can just barely get through. You know, and that's what makes this, boy, and I don't, you know, I sympathize with the climatologists who are trying to make sense of all this because, yeah, some areas are just terribly dry and in severe drought, and others are too much moisture. And then we get 30 miles west of me. Their crops are really bad, and the wheat got light, and it's high protein in the dry year. But markets just don't want to go up. They don't want to say that we have a shortage of grain because we had a little bit left in the bin from last year we're trying to market. So it's tough all over. All right, thank you, George. I used to be the swather guy, so I know the perils of getting stuck with the swather. You got that big, however big your header was, you know, it was 16, 24 foot, whatever, you know. And if it gets that down, you're so dug in, there's only, the only way he can do is go back. So I got a couple of questions I'm going to throw at you, and then we're going to jump to emails. I'm guessing most of these are just hold your powder, Tim, and everybody. Too early to trim back peonies? Hold your powder. Hold your powder. Yes. The time to trim back, even if the foliage looks kind of ragged, they're still doing their photosynthesis thing, sending energy into the root. So don't trim them back until after we've had the first frost. Is it a bad time to plant trees or perennials right now? During the heat of the summer, it's always riskier. But we are approaching a very good time. September is a great, you know, we're only a couple of, what, a couple of weeks away from September. September is a great time to plant trees. Generally, the weather moderates a little bit. Hopefully the soil will be less dry, I hope, than there. And so September, great time to visit the garden centers and plant trees. And I have this one. And shrubs. I have this one from Sadie. asking about, they have like, you know, the typical cracks and stuff on their sidewalk and driveway. Does torch burning weeds really do anything permanent or does it just make you?

get some of the angst out of yourself. Yes, well, burning down the weeds depends on the type of weed. If it's an annual weed that doesn't come back each year from an established root, if it's an annual weed, that'll usually fry them off and kill them. Of course, they've probably gone to seed already, so you've got seeds for it. But if it's a perennial weed, such as a thistle, quack grass, et cetera, that root is probably not going to be killed by burning. For example, we can burn ditches and the grass still comes back, you know. That's a way to kind of clean them up. So it depends on the type of weed. Annual weeds, yes, they'll be killed by the friar. And I was in the backyard of the mayor of Forbes this past week, Carl Kromberg, and they were digging or killing up and putting a new spot in there for a new flower bed on the west side of their house. So they get that combination of sun hitting it directly and then bouncing off the house and down. Is there anything people can do that's somewhat easy, practical to... kind of not have so much heat pounding on them. Because it's pretty tough. You know, he says, boy, the ground is really hot. And I'm sure, you know, with those things, the amount of water you have to keep putting on them to keep them hydrated is tough. Anything that... Exactly. Two things that can benefit. One is work a lot of organic material into that soil. Two inches of peat moss, compost, something such as that. manure, if you're sure it was not treated with herbicide that passed through the animals. Two inches of organic material work down in. Organic material will keep soil much cooler than hard-baked clay. Down there, it's maybe not hard-baked clay, but still work in the organic matter. And then plant material that is adapted to those conditions. Prennial salvia works well. Let's see. Sedum loves the heat. Ah, let's see. I'm sure there are a couple others aren't coming to mind. Annual flowers, zinias, marigolds, selvia, all love the heat as well. Okay. We have about five minutes. Potentilla for shrub. They do beautifully in the heat. Five or six minutes to break. We have a Derek who has a question of comment for Don. Hi, Derek. Hey, question. We have an established raspberry patch, and it's always done well in the summers. We keep it wet. This year, it's... producing berries on a cane, and it'll be real nice, but as soon as those berries are picked, the cane dies off. Is that because of the heat or why would that be this year? So we have new canes coming up, too. Sure. And the new canes coming up are the canes that will bear next year. That's kind of how raspberries grow. The canes grow one year, kind of greenish canes. They overwinter, then they produce the following year. And within that raspberry bed, then you have the current canes that are producing fruit, and then they die. And so with the heat and conditions we've had, when those canes bear their fruit, it's probably accelerating their death. Usually they won't die until the end of the season, but yeah, that's kind of the nature of that that they bear and then die, but it sounds like it's accelerated. Should we clip those out? Usually we wait until fall, late fall, but can we clip them out now as they're dying? You got it. As soon as they die, like you say, usually you do that in the fall. But as they die, if there's no more berries being produced or flowers, then you can cut those down.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. For the call. We have another caller, Ronnie. Dave, we have a call or comment for Don Kinzer on the Hanna Garden Show. Yeah, you had mentioned earlier about trimming trees this time of the year. I got a guy coming in a couple weeks. I got a 75 foot. maple and oak and I think of cherry wood. These things are super tall, and is that going to hurt them to trim them back this time of the year? Where are you located? Excuse me. In Fargo. In Fargo here. It... Maples, maples and oaks, generally in our area, the reason I asked where you're located in, parts of the country trimming oaks at the wrong time of year can attract a serious oak insect and disease. But this time of year, it would be nice to delay when it's not quite so hot. But your tree trimmer, if you've got an experienced tree trimmer, experience is always the best teacher. And if they're confident, then I would be confident in their knowledge as well. Okay, super. Thank you. Generally, yes. Yes, is my answer on that. But again, a good-experienced tree, they're not going to do something that is going to harm your tree as long as you have a good, good-experienced arborist. Okay. Thank you. A lot of people have, so I'm glad he got it out there and asked. The other one I have is now is now a good time to kill thistles and dandelions in your yard because everything else dies. It seems, you know, goes dormant. And so the thistle and danisles are like, yeah, here we go. They are just as green as can be and thriving well. And so this time of year when it's hot and dry, they're a little tougher. And you could try spot spraying those, but the best time would be to delay until September. In September, those weeds sense the day length, the shortening days, and they're starting to carry food down into the roots so they can come back to haunt us for next year. And by applying herbicide, so we're talking September, mid-September, by applying herbicide at that time, the weeds carry that down into the root more effectively than they would when it's hot in kind of mid-summer. And we're going to shoot over to Ronnie. He's got a couple of emails over there. Yeah, we now have four emails, and we've got about three minutes here. So, Don, first question. Don, we had two boulevard trees removed eight to ten years ago. The grass where those trees once stood is starting to turn brown this time of year. It has done that every year. Our lawn is well watered, but those two spots require more water. Is that just old wood taking in the moisture? They had 7,500th of an inch last night in Fargo right along I-94.

Yeah, it's likely the old wood rotting, and until it gets rotted, it's not like real good soil, so it's not holding the moisture well, such as the surrounding soil. So eventually, as that decays into good compost, your grass will get better. It would have been nice probably to fill in those areas with some good soil before grass. But again, you're right. It's due to the decomposing wood. and not being able to hold water as much as the surrounding soil. Okay. Next question. Don, my tomato plants are loaded with green tomatoes, but don't seem to be ripening anything I can do to help them out. And, Doug, I feel your pain. Don's watching my mortgage lifter plant out here on the terrace as well. And I don't see anything yet, but Don tells me I've got to wait a little longer to see that. Yeah, area-wide problem. Tomato growth shuts down from 85 to 90 degrees. above we've had a lot of that and ripening is a growth process so when growth stops ripening also halts so we need temperatures in the upper 70s low 80s and not so warm at night so now much you could do back to the tree question back to the tree grass not growing over the tree a top dress with one to two inches of soil over that the grass will grow up through it but it'll give a little more teeth to hold water Okay, quick question, Don, what is the best way to kill willow shrubs? They are taking over an area of my yard by the river, and we've got about one minute. Yes, cut them down to ground level and squared a little bit of 24D immediately on each cut surface. 2.4D, the regular lawnweed herbicide, you can get at farm supply stores or in most hardware stores. garden centers. Okay, and then last question, and we'll ask Don how to get a hold of them. Can you ask him why I'm having a lot of soft spots in my tomatoes, bell peppers, and spicy peppers? The spots are normally dark brown, seems to remove the flesh of the produce. A lot of sunscald. A lot of sunscald and heat damage. It's likely that if it's on the bottom end of the pepper, there is blossom end rot, same as tomato. But I'm seeing a lot of, and our own peppers too, a lot of just heat. heat sunburn. Okay, and Donald, how do they get a hold of you? Donald.kinsler, K-I-N-Z-L-E-R at N-D-S-U. Well, thanks for being here and thanks to all of our sponsors. Again, another week of Lawn and Garden Radio. You can catch down every Wednesday. Yeah, Tim, thank you. All is a pleasure to be here. The time goes too quickly. I'm glad you to come on. You know, they say that Kentucky Derby is the fastest two minutes in sports. This is the fastest 30 minutes. Custom trunk and auto shine time check. 307, the J. Thomas Show, guest hosted by Tim Flackle. And. Trust me on a day like today, you might need something cold to drink or maybe you need a quick bite to go or top off your vehicle while you can do that at a PetroServe USA. There is one near you. Always great grab and go food items, specials. PetroServe USA rewards program that can save you money on all kinds of things, including fuel, helping America fuel better. PetroServe USA.

And welcome back. It's Tim Flacklegan sitting in for Jay today. Jay will be back, I think, certain on what days tomorrow. Friday. Monday. Oh, he's off Friday, too. Gone filming. He's out filming now, yeah. In Blue Earth, Minnesota. Oh, okay. Good for him. Always good stuff. Hey, I'm excited to have our next guest, Senator, newly minted Senator Jamie Salsler from District 44 in North Fargo is here. Eight days ago, he was appointed by his district, District 44, so that's kind of from Main Avenue north to about, I don't know, what it is, 28th. I can't remember now exactly up top of my head. And he will replace Josh Boucher, who became mayor, and then as a result had to step down or didn't have to, but he decided to, which I think is, of course, the right course of action, because it's really hard to do both, and both are very full. So welcome to the show, Senator. Well, thank you so much, Senator Flackle. I don't know if it'll ever feel normal for someone to call me a senator, but it should be noted that this is a seat that you once served in. And I absolutely loved it. I'm an honor to be able to sit there now. I hope you have the same experience I had. It was heartwarming and gratifying to represent such wonderful people in the community and beyond. I mean, I guess once you're elected, you... You're from a certain spot, but you really have to act as a board of directors for the entire state of North Dakota. So first out of the shoot, just a kind of a process question because, you know, you're familiar with it. But in terms of the general process for a sitting senator, you know, resigning in the selection of the district or, you know, by the district of replacement, how does that goal kind of, in big picture terms? Yeah, so state law has changed a number of years ago for this. Essentially, whenever there's an opening, it could be from a resignation. It could be, you know, an unfortunate death. Representative Comedy, for example, passed away a few months ago, so they had to do this up in District 11. So any time that there is a vacancy, the chairman of legislative management, in this case, Senator Hogue from Minot, notifies the district, hey, you have a vacancy. Of course, the district is aware of it, but... Once he or she, the chair of legislative management, officially notifies as the district, they have 21 days at that point to have a meeting and decide who to appoint. And the decision is made by the executive committee of the district. And so that would be like the chair, vice chair, secretary, treasurer, for example. And they just decide, they have a decision and decide what to do. And then they notify legislative management, in this case, Senator Hogue and the secretary of state. And at that point, it's official. Well, it's official. I'm appointed. Then I had to go get sworn in and fill out all the paperwork. But especially the district decides, in my case, the district had an open process where they allowed people to apply. I think six or seven of us applied for it at about a month, a month for people to apply. And then the district committee got together to meet. Now, did they actually visit with you an interview? I mean, you had to turn in like materials about whether it's a bio or something and why you think you should serve. Because I think I saw some Representative Carlo Rose Hansen posted some stuff kind of, you know, we want to answer so we can kind of know if you align how well a candidate, we'll call it in this case, a candidate to replace Josh aligned with kind of what the district felt. But then did you also have a face-to-face with them?

I did not. They did not do the face-to-face interviews. They said they may have done it had they not had gotten enough what they needed from the written application, but I think they felt they got enough from folks on the written side. Well, and in those cases, I mean, they know everybody pretty well, so it's not a big secret to hang on. Is it one of those jobs you got to send a cover letter for, Senator? You know, there was no cover letter specifically, but, you know, it really did feel like a job. I mean, it was a job application. Yeah. You had a bunch of questions. You had to put your bio in. You had to say, you know, you know, a regular job. They asked, you know, what are your strengths and weaknesses? And in this case, that was, you know, if we appoint you, what do you want to accomplish? You know, how will you make the district better? And so it was very much like a regular job application. So what do you view as your strengths? I mean, in terms of whether it's your... you know, day job and career path or experience that you've had. What for the people, not only District 44, but beyond, do you think are your biggest strengths coming into the position? I mean, I know what I would answer if I were you, but, you know. Well, you know, I have a long, extensive career in business where I've been leading people, managing and coaching thousands of people. And so when you do that kind of role, you learn how to be a good listener. And I think if you're going to be an effective senator, you have to be able to listen to the people in your district, listen to their concerns, listen to their hopes, and be able to identify what role you can play in. helping them achieve some of those goals. It's not much different than what I've done as a leader. And in my case, I have an extensive business background, which is, you know, probably more rare for a Democrat in the legislature. And so I'm eager to apply that background into this rule. I remember when I was first elected, I had not been in the state capital until after I was elected. Because we didn't get to do that on a field trip or anything. It was a different era. You just didn't run to Bismarck and check out the legislative session during the wintertime. It was just something we didn't do. And so it was kind of weird for me. So you have a huge leg up because of all your experience and you know a lot of the players, which, again, I didn't hardly know any of them. So, I mean, you have a lot of advantages going in, but you're also on a fast track because in a couple weeks you'll be going into special session too. So. Yeah, and, you know, for my background, I was the executive director of the Democratic campaign party 20 years ago, and actually the year that President Obama ran the first time. And so I spent a lot of time at the session that cycle, just learning as much as I could. And then I've been on the, I've been a national committee man for the Democratic National Committee representing North for the last three years. So, yeah, I think, you know, I just have a bit of experience there from politics. You know, the first time I went to the legislature, I think I was 13.

And I sat with Gary Katie Porter from my not state representative. And Gary was a fantastic guy and still is. But it was really great to sit with him. And so I never thought I'd be in one of those seats one day. But I'm so glad that I am. Well, and it is a great honor to be able to do that because, you know, the ability for you to. cause change is really significant when you get into those roles. So my first Senate Majority Leader, Gary Nelson, Senator Nelson, I remember he brought me into his office in the, you know, December organizational session during that time when they were all deciding which committees and, you know, where do you want to serve on? Where do you want to serve on? What do we have room for? You know, he said, Flacko, you can't be an expert at everything. You need to focus on, you know. a couple areas and really dig deep, deep, deep into those. And they said in your case, Tim, I think it's, you know, with your background and interest in education, we're going to put you on the Senate of the Education Committee. So what do you perceive as kind of matching up your background with committee assignments? Because at some point, not that long, you're going to have to fill out a form that they give you and say, I would like, you know, this is my first choice. This is my second choice for committees. Where do you think you see yourself if, you know, if you get a chance to make your way, knowing that you're the new guy on the block and that doesn't always lend itself to getting everything you want? Interestingly, right now we only have five senators. I'll be the third highest in seniority at the next session because we have two who are leaving. And so part of it is like if I were to answer, I'd probably say so IBL or industry business and labor would be my preference. Democrats, because our numbers are so small, we have not had anyone on that committee. So it's been a while. Okay. And so I think we'll probably add two or three Senate seats this election, which will be really good, I think good because it'll allow Democrats to be on all the committees again. So I think I'd be else industry business and labor would be one. And then state and local government's kind of interesting to me, how the operations of how the government works. You know, I've managed. budgets that are tens of millions of dollars and thousands of employees. And I have a sense of how organizations run. And so I think that might be a space for me as well. Honestly, though, like, there's a case to be made for me to go into a committee. I'm not an egg expert. You know, I could make a case to go work with agriculture because it's a great way for me to learn. I'll just be open to try to fill in whatever space we need, I guess, at the end of the day. So Senator Selser, that having been said...

You're heading into special session, as Tim mentioned, coming up in a few weeks. Yeah. Does it kind of give you a little bit of pause considering what the special session is going to be about? I don't know if North Dakota has ever really done one of these kind of things, but the Kratum issue, very emotional on both sides about what the nature of the special session you're going into, having just been appointed senator and what it's entailing. Yeah, well, I'm certainly grateful. I'm grateful that I'm going to have this opportunity to learn during a special session. And so the first time I show up won't be in, you know, the organizational session in December or in January. So I'm eager just to like get the experience. This is an issue I think is really important. A number of years ago, someone who I was close with died of a accident on drug overdose. And that was the first time I'd ever heard the word fentanyl. And obviously we know what's happened since then. And when Governor Armstrong announced Kratom, like many people, I had heard of it. Actually, I'd only heard of it a week before. I'd been in Florida for work. And I saw every store was selling this Kratom. They had Kratum signs. And I texted some pictures to a friend. And I'm like, or to a few friends asking, what is this? I'd never heard of this before. And so clearly they're, I believe they said 23 North Dakota have died in part due to the cratom use in the last five or six years. And I look back to when I first lost someone to fentanyl and how I sure wish at that moment early on we would have done more. I don't fault anyone. You do the best you can with the information you have. But hopefully we've learned the lessons that when we see something that's killing people, we should move quickly to figure out how to mitigate some of that harm. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's a steep learning curve on some of this. I mean, at least you understand the process, which will help. And you, you know, so you kind of get rid of some of those first day concerns or jitters. The. You have any thoughts on the Veterans Museum as far as... Because, I mean, I'm hearing rumblings. And again, we don't know until we know, but there'll be a delayed bill committee. I think every proposed bill has to go through them and get voted on whether they want to have a hearing for that or not. There's going to be a lot of them that won't get a hearing. But the ones I continue to hear are the Cratum laws and regulations as well as the, you know, maybe something the... patchwork, the Veterans Museum. So any thoughts on what you think might be doable on the Veterans Museum?

Yeah, well, I mean, I should probably separate my feeling about a museum from my concerns regarding how it's being paid for. I'm a huge supporter of there being a museum for veterans. I've been active with the American Legion for 30 years now as a volunteer with Boy State and have those deep relationships and respect our military and our veterans deeply. How this went about, however, it was totally backwards. You know, they were supposed to raise a certain amount of money before they... before they started doing the work. And I sort of view it this way. They were supposed to get, before they got the mortgage to build the house, they were supposed to get the down payment. And they didn't. They started building the house before they had the down payment ready. They didn't get the down payment. And now they're going to the bank saying, sorry, I didn't get a down payment, but we're in trouble. We need you to pony up the rest of this. to finish building this house. That's what it feels like to me. And it doesn't matter if it's a military museum or a school or whatever you want to call it that's a government build. They shouldn't have started until they had the money in place. And so I want to know, you know, it's more than a hole in the ground, but I want to know if they just stop construction right now and revert back to what was there before, how much would that cost? I'd want to know what efforts were put into raising this money. They needed, I think, another 10 or 11 million by this point. As the governor or some of the people who championed this gotten on the phone with donors and said, hey, we have a lot of oil folks in this state. Can you give half a million or can you give a few hundred thousand? I want to know how far they've gone along there. I also don't want to say, here's what I'm going to vote on because I want to, you know, listen and learn before I make a decision. But those are the concerns I have generally that I'm going to want to explore once we show up in a few weeks. And I've worked with the so-called the fundraisers that were, I don't know if they're still on board or not, but we finally said, no, we're going about you because it just wasn't happening. They weren't, you know, they would give us, we'd give them names and they'd go, okay, I think here's where you should ask first and second and third. It's like, well. What do we need to pay you for here? I know a number of years ago we built a new governor's mansion under, I think, a somewhat similar model. And I actually, I don't know, to be honest with you, I don't know if we should be building anything in the government where we're relying on private donations to help us along the way. If we think a military museum is valuable and really important for the culture and heritage of our state, then we should just pay for it. rather than go out and try to get people to pony up some cash. Yeah. There should either be a publicly funded thing or a privately funded thing. And when you try to mix them, you end up in situations like we have right now. Yeah. A little more complicated question here. You know, in terms of your top three or five, you know, things in terms of making progress in the 2027 session, because your term will run through 2028. And, well, maybe first of all, I'll ask, fair question. I'm sure you were asked this. I'm assuming you will plan to run in 2028 barring some kind of unforeseen incident, family situation, whatever. Yeah.

I think that's a safe assumption. Yeah. But I'm not saying yes because I'm keeping an open mind that I might hate doing this. I don't think that's the case. I think I'm going to enjoy it. And if I enjoy it and I find that I'm that I'm reasonably good at it, then I'll run for it in two years. But if I get there and I just don't like it or I think I'm not that good at it, I won't run. But at this point I anticipate, yeah, I'm going to run for it. So this is my most complex question. No legislator or even the governor can do things in a vacuum. Nobody gets to, you know, no one person really gets to make a big decision. You know, so you're going to have to reach across the aisle. You're going to have to reach across to the other chamber, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, three of my, you know, I'm a Republican, you know, back in the day, but there would be, you know, like Senator Heciman, Senator Oban, Dave O'Connell, were, you know, examples of people I'd reach across. particularly specific topics, like special ed with Senator Heckerman, you know, most anything education-wise with Senator Oban, Aaron Oban, you know, who might be some of your go-to people? Because you have to build the alliances because, you know, we see this in, you know, small, medium-sized... cities, counties, whatever, where somebody comes up with these, I'm going to do this and this and this. It's like, well, you've got to have more than one vote here, buddy. You've got to talk somebody else into it. So who do you think are some of the go-to people with respect to, whether it's the IBML that you might want to serve on or other committees? Yeah. I mean, when I'm looking at some of folks who I think I can learn from, certainly, on the Republican side, I think Senator Klein is an interesting person to learn from. I know he's, you know, a rules expert, and I care a lot about how the rules are written. I think Senator Beckadall from Williston, with appropriations, I think, is someone to learn from. But, Tim, one thing I've committed to do now that, you know, I'm in it and going to be another bit of an announcement sworn in. is I'm going to travel the state over the next couple of months. I have more flexibility to do that with, I work remotely and so I can work from anywhere. It's my intention to sit down with every single Republican senator in their town and have coffee with them and lunch with them, at least the ones who are willing to meet with me. And just try to get to know folks on a personal level. You know, I come at this. I have an extensive partisan political background with the, you know, Democratic Party North Dakota. which may cause some people who don't know me to think I'm just some, like, raging partisan. Not that I don't have, I have serious principles, but I'm much more pragmatic than I am partisan, especially when it comes to government policy. And so I want to meet with all these senators and get to know them on a personal level and then figure out, like, what are the things that we probably disagree on a whole bunch, but what's like the one thing that we can work together on? And I think that's how you accomplish things in government. So I'm going to try to meet with them. with all of them over the next few of months, and I'll probably have a better answer for you after that. Yeah, one of my few pieces of advice or suggestions is, you know, I always say, you know, we need to attack problems, not people. And, you know, on one bill, Judy Lee and I may be battling it out, not agreeing and not agreeing, but.

On the next five, we're the only two that are jumping at it for, we got to do this, or Tony Grimberg or Gary Lee back in the day. So, yeah, I mean, we all have our people we go to, like an education for me. It's like Sorvog in the Senate and people like Nathie, Carl Ross Hansen, and Swantec in the House to try to get some of that stuff navigated through education committee. So we're about up the clock here, but the standard question we ask, new legislators often is. What is your position on how the legacy funds should be used that interest and income off of it? What do you see as the kind of philosophically the proper use of this? It's been in place for quite a while, so I'm guessing you've had time to contemplate that over the years. I think we should put as much of that back into growing it as possible without pulling money out. If we do pull money out, I think they should be for one-time expenditures that are very much needed. I don't like pulling anything out of there for operations if we can avoid it. That really should be a rainy day. I mean, it's a legacy fund for a reason. And I was around when it first passed, and it was. You know, it was a bipartisan opposition and a bipartisan support of it. Yep. Yep. I think that we should use it as. I'm going to approach it the same way I approach everything. I'm not thinking about two years from now the next election. I'm trying to think about 50 years from now or 100 years from now. And that legacy fund, the work we do to grow it now is going to make a difference for people that we will never even know, and they'll never know our names. But we can make their life better by the decisions we make today. Senator Selsler, we got about 50 seconds left. Anything that we didn't get to that you want to go, I want to make sure I say this when I'm on the radio today, what people know about me or what I want to do. Well, if anyone out there is particularly in District 44 but elsewhere has ideas or thoughts about the legislature and laws feel pretty reached out to me. You can find me on the legislative website right now. I am really grateful for this opportunity. I'm especially grateful to John Boucher for the work he did. If I can be even half the legislator he was in terms of how well he built relationships, I think I'll serve my district well. So I appreciate the example he's leaving behind. Great. Well, we wish you all the best because, again, everybody needs to pull their weight, you know, no matter what part of the city, state, or community they're from. So, you know, it all matters because those voices are very important. So again, thanks for coming on. I'm Tim Flackle, sitting in for Jay on the Jay Thomas Show on 970 WDY, 93.m, and 1100 of the flag. Custom truck and auto shine time check 337, the J. Thomas show on your Wednesday afternoon, guest hosted by Tim Flackle. About to bring another guest in studio here in just a few moments. Also, we will be doing a great, great iron getaway qualifier because Tim, I completely forgot to do that. So I apologize.

But we will be before the top of this hour, be doing a qualifier as we need to. So somebody is going to get registered for that fantastic trip with yours and mine, favorite college playing sports in the city of Fargo. Gotcha. So. And you're going to handle that, right? I will handle that, yes. Yeah, because I think everybody knows. Be listening for the sounder you should have heard in the 2 o'clock hour. I apologize about that. Yeah. But one of the great folks that makes the J. Thomas show possible, all the fantastic people at Fix It Forward AutoCare, the name you trust for car repair in Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo, and now Fix It Forward Speedway. some exciting stuff going on there. Five Fargo Moorhead area locations. They do a lot of stuff, including tune-ups and oil changes, larger mechanic jobs. They sell tires. I mean, trust me, they are great people, and everything they do goes to support Fix It Forward ministry as well. They give cars to people who need them, so they do a lot of great work. Fix It Forward. autocare.com. But we bring a friend of the station and the coffee club morning show and just all around great guy. Tim Cook, Heroes Compass, thanks for coming in and being on the Jay Thomas show. Hey, thanks for having me back. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So one of the big reasons we brought Tim in, Tim. The other Tim? Yes, yes. It's a good name. Tim squared. I was here first. You could be Tim, too, if you're okay. You're a military guy. I don't want to mess with you, but okay. But we have a drive to donate going on in support of Heroes Compass in their mission today, Tim. Yes, we have Valvline helping us out today over on two locations here in Fargo. The first one being by Shields Arena, the second one over on 52nd by Happy Harry's. So it's drive to donate where $20 from every oil change goes to help out Heroes Compass. And, you know, we are very familiar. I know, Janae, my co-host, has been to a number of care package events for Heroes Compass. I might still be full from the last Heroes Compass wing cookoff we went to. But for those who may not be familiar with Heroes Compass, it's a great mission. Tim, tell us a little more about what you do. Yeah, so Heroes Compass were local to Fargo. We started... Back in 2022, 2023 time frame, my dad had passed away, Rick Coon. He was a VFW commander in downtown Fargo, a 20-year Army Guard vet. He unfortunately passed away, and when we're going through his phone. He had a 2.2 mile walk that he wanted to start up with the VFW to signify the 22 veterans a day that take their own life. So we started up Heroes Compass as a family. And since then, we've kind of snowballed this thing to something that we didn't expect what happened, but at the same time expected what happened with our community backing us. Since we've started, it's been...

2,000 care packages since we've given back 150,000 in grants from our Heroes Fund to college scholarships, anyone from a veteran all the way to please firefighters and first responders. So we just kind of give back that money that comes on in through donations and we're 100% volunteer-based nonprofit. So in terms of your background, I mean, you talked about your father, but what's your day job? Because this is kind of a passion for you. And nobody in your organization is compensated, as I understand. But what's kind of your, what's your day job? Yes, my day job. I'm a pilot here at the 119th wing here in Fargo, North Dakota. Next month we'll make 16 years in with the military for me. My dad was a strong proponent of... getting both myself in and my sister. She's in the Sioux Falls Air National Guard. Military mom. My wife is a military mom as well now. Yeah. So it's a huge military family also on the board. We have Karen Shriner. She's a military mom, but she has three kids that served, her husband served. So our entire board is full of, you know, military members. We also have two other military members on with Mason and Jason. So, yeah, my background is definitely living and breathing the military side of things. So you talked about, like, whatever they're called grants or donations, 100,000, is that I understand? I mean, can you drill down a little and give me some examples? Because that's one of the things people are always curious, like, okay, what are you using it for? You kind of reference some, but. Yeah, so most recently, so we created this thing called the Heroes Fund. We kept having donations come in left and right. And some of the examples I can give you are we had a, An individual, he was a veteran going to American Legion's meetings all the time, and then he had a back surgery. No longer could make the meetings. He needed a new bed to kind of help him out. So we went and paid for that bed. This last weekend out in Devil's Lake, we had Steve Larson, he's a lieutenant colonel at the Air National Guard base, reach on out. They're doing a fishing tournament for roughly 30 veterans and their family members. So we said, yep, we can definitely come in and sponsor that. We came in, sponsored it. They all could have a meal, help pay for lodging for some of the individuals who needed help. Also some raffle prizes. Earlier this year, we sponsored a shooting event out in Woodworth, North Dakota. So it's, think, like, trap and hunting side of things of shooting. So it's their ninth annual. So we stepped in, and vortex optics came on in, gave us some. product donations for that as well. So it was roughly 40 to 50 military members and first responders in that community that needed it. So the Heroes Fund is just kind of taking this life of its own. We've also had the Woodworth Fire Department come on out and they said, hey, we need some money to get some life saving equipment. That ended up being some rope that they were waiting to purchase. They didn't have the money. So we said, yep, here's some money. Go on purchase it. So those are some of the key examples of... how we can give back through our heroes fund. And it's just, here's the check. Go do your thing. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's great work. I mean, it's valuable and, you know, shoring up many of those areas and really vital. And today's drive to donate again at Valvillin. What time do they go tell today? It's all day today. All day for you might be different than all day for Ronnie. You know, Ronnie, he's the late night guy. I don't remember what time they actually closed. Okay. Look it up and...

On the interweb, as they say. Yeah, it's fantastic. $20 from every oil change, which is tremendous. Goes to Heroes Compass at no extra cost to you. And again, 3981, 53rd Avenue and 825 32nd Avenue East. Anytime open to close and oil change gift cards count too. So you can donate now and cash in later. And every oil change is one more care package, one more hero supported. And I think, you know, obviously the military mission as well, but you guys all encompassing managed to include first responders in there. Just fantastic. Yeah, we like to say the hero's part is all encompassing. So like a compass, it has four directions. Our four directions are military, police, firefighters, and our first responders. So that's the northeast, south, and west part of the compass. And then some other events, I know, Tim, that are rapidly approaching. We just got done talking with the Cass County VSO here a week or two ago about Veterans Stand Down is coming up soon, September 10th. Yeah, September 10th from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., downtown Fargo. There's going to be roughly 40 service tables there. Veterans can come on out, get free haircuts. There's going to be a variety of flu shots, things of that nature. But it's a way for the community to get together, come on out. So we're going to have a table on out there, giving away some of our heroes compass swag, talking about what we do, showing off our care packages, things of that nature. But 10 a.m. 2 p.m. September 10th, downtown, Fargo. I want to drill down a little deeper on the care packages. Are they all kind of a, is it a standard care package or is that just kind of an overarching term used to, you know, we help this people, you know, this group or person this way, we help that one that way. I mean, or are they kind of somewhat standardized? Yeah, so that's a great question. When we first started, we didn't have a standardized process. We had 150 or so military members from our local area with Air National Guard Base deployed. We gave them. Anything that we found on either Costco or Amazon and said, here you guys go. We're shoving these things full, pass them on out. Since then, it's become very standardized. So some of the items that we have in there. anything from a phone charger. So we try to say, make the connection, do a buddy checks. When you plug in your phone, you should be, with this phone charger, you should be reaching out to a buddy and saying, hey, how are you doing? So we have that in there, a deck of cards, we have notepads, we have our challenge coin in there. We have mental health journals now. And then we also have roughly 30 or so companies who have come on in. giving us some items. Anything from sunflower seeds to the Fargo form actually did some newspapers so that we can put in local stuff when we're sending them out overseas. So it's anything from that side of things to just purchasing wish list items. So there's the Lisbon home for veterans. They had a whole wish list item on their websites. We said, yep, we're going to honor every single thing on there. So that side of the care packages is different. So it's anything from bird feeders that need that they needed.

alarm clocks, the socks with the, you know, little scrubbers on the bottom. Oh, yeah. Deck of pinnacle cards, maybe. Yep, there you go. Yeah. And then also we have the homeless veterans. That one was specifically hygiene items that we did a whole entire kit. There's approximately 350 homeless vets in the region from North Dakota and the western side of Minnesota. So we did care packages for that and said, what do you guys exactly need? So we gave them hygiene kits that from like shampoo and toothpaste, things of that nature, all the way to the biggest items that they needed were cell phones and Walmart gift cards. The reason being they needed to connect. with different family members throughout the region, but also to get a job. You also need a cell phone to apply to have callbacks, things of that nature, and to say, like, yeah, I can report to work. So we gave them cell phones and cell phone gift cards with the minutes on it, Walmart gift cards, so that they can get what they needed. We paired up with the VA in downtown Fargo with that, the CRRC. Sort of the things you're still looking for, like... Oh, we could use these all the time. I mean, for example, I always think, you know, when I leave a hotel, like, you know, you got the little bottle of shampoo, a little bottle of conditioner, or the, you know, the soap or the whatever, that's the unused soap, just to qualify them. But, because sometimes people bring their own. Yeah, so. I mean, are there things, or you're going to look for a company to say, Give me this or we could use that. It's a lot of the gift cards, to be honest, because those go directly into the hands of these members. But on the hygiene side of things, you just hit the nail in the head. Anything from dentists giving us toothbrushes, toothpaste, that type of thing, shampoo, conditioner. We don't want to have them be used or anything like that, but obviously anything helps. So when it's... Overseas sunscreen is a big one electrolyte packets like liquid Kay Ivey that type of thing Ronnie, you could give you, you know, not to pick on you, Ronnie, but you could give you your shampoo. You know, I do save hundreds of dollars a year in shampoo, yeah. Some of the other things that I know you can do out there if you're listening and there may be a hero in your family or someone you know or work with or something like that. I know Jenae has and myself incredibly honored to receive this honor. But it's something that you guys do with swing barrel brewing in Moorhead called hops for heroes.

Yeah, so you can, so a swing barrel brewing, we've paired up with him over the past few years for our annual wing cookoff event. Yes. One of the things that came out of that was how can we give back to our heroes? So swing barrel brewing is in Moorhead in their downtown-ish location off the train tracks. So each week we're honoring a hero with a free beer. So you can nominate a hero on our website and go to upcoming events. And there's a simple form that you fill on out. And each week we'll. draw a name out of the hat and say, here's a local hero, they deserve a beer. So they can go on in, have a beer on us, and just actually enjoy. So we've had anyone from the Cass County VSOs on both sides. of Moorhead and Fargo be nominees for that. We've had Ronnie and Janine be nominees for that. So it's just kind of a cool way to give back. So it doesn't have to be just military members. It can actually be teachers and things of that nature. Any hero in your life can be mom, it can be dad, a military member, police, you know, fire, that type of thing. Fantastic. And then I know another event that you want to tell us a little bit about. I hear sweat for vets is going on. Yeah, so the theme of the show is events. So we have Sweat for Vet September 12th. So it's All-Star Nutrition next to Target. They came on out where they're looking for a local nonprofit to support, and they picked Heroes Compass to give back to the military charity. So it's a $15 entry fee to that. It includes a T-shirt and swag bag. There's going to be the group workout, live DJ. They're going to present the colors at the beginning of it. It starts at 10 a.m. to noon. And then we'll also be giving away our Heroes Compass shaker cups there and a challenge coin for completing that. And all the money raised during that event, like we've been talking about, goes back to our Care Package event and our Heroes Fund. So yeah, sweat for vets, September 12th from 10 a.m. to noon next to Target at All-Star Nutrition. And I have a challenge coin that I believe I got from you, Tim, on my desk as well. That's something that means a lot to me. And I know it means a lot to one that may be a recipient of those coins as well. So tell me a little bit in the time we have left about those. Yeah, so our challenge coin is, challenge coins go all the way back to World War I. It's big in the military community, but also police and fire. These challenge coins are, they represent membership, camaraderie, and belonging. They can be used as an add-a-boy or a thank you for your service. We use them in a couple different ways. On the coin itself, it talks about our four.

areas that we serve, military police, firefighters, and EMT. And then on the back, we have 22 stars hidden in it to represent the 22 veterans that take their own life. So we're losing more towards suicide every single year than we have lost since 9-11, killed in action. Then we also have dial 9-88 to signify the suicide hotline. So if you are listening to this and you're going through something, call that. You can also be used as a family member. If you are struggling after a family member is committed, you can also call this number and get the help that you need. Just know that you're not alone. And one of the ways we like to do this is do a buddy check. So if you know someone that may need this, you can always keep it in your car or in your pocket and say, hey, you guys should check out Heroes Compass and get the resources that you need. Dial 988. There's... many different outlets out there. So we like to use in a variety of ways as saying thank you, you know, for, um, for your service, but also, hey, get the help that you need. Well, fantastic, Tim. Thank you for being on the show. And again, that event going on all day today at the two Valvalene locations, drive in to donate, $20 from the oil changes going to Heroes Compass. And you can find out more information by going to Heroescompass.com. 8,030 people a year take their own lives. So appreciate the work you do. And, I mean, it's great. So I'm Tim Placko sitting for Jay on the Jay Thomas Show. Custom truck and auto shine time check 406, the Jay Thomas show in the final hour, guest hosted by Cass County Commissioner Tim Flackle today. And we have another guest on here very momentarily. But we will do a qualifier. By the way, I apologize, Tim. I once again forgot to do that for the bottom half of the hour. We get busy. What can I say? Yes. But, you know, we are going to do a great green iron getaway qualifier. In the interim, though, Valley News Live now carried at 5.530 and 6 here on the WD-A-Y radio airwaves. The folks that are listening on AM-1100, the flag, and 1090 out in Tioga, get the great one, Mark Levin. But let's bring in Jessica Bringey Valley News Live. Good afternoon, first of all, and what are we working on with the news this evening?

Hey, good afternoon. Happy Wednesday. Yeah. We are looking at flock cameras in Minnesota. There's a lot of changes being made across the state, specifically cities and counties announcing decisions to end their contracts with flock. So we're kind of giving just a broad overview of the cities and why they're choosing to do so, as well as... A V&L exclusive, a whistleblower story here. This one in Moorhead near the MSUM campus. There's a new retention project that means neighborhood streets are being torn up for weeks. So a lot of just neighbors upset about that. Yeah, I was going to say we think road construction's been bad this summer in Fargo, Moorhead, but it seems like Moorhead's been on construction for the last five years. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, there always seems to be another project, but such as a life break. Can't get there from here. You need your own helicopter. Yes. Need Ronnie's company helicopter to get in and out. Sure, yes, yeah. What else are you working on? Well, we're also looking at DeAngelo Hunt's defense asking for two separate trials that. happening today. That's the Spirit Lake tribe member charged with killing his brother and date and his dating partner. They filed a motion in federal court. And then Kay Fire is also following that story as well as a life sentence for one of two Stanley Foster parents that are charged in the child's death. Oh goodness. That's from 2025. Okay. Yeah. So, Jessica, do you know on the plot cameras? Because I've been kind of out of the loop here in the last three days. Were they part of the way law enforcement found out where that trailer that was stole went? I mean, I've heard that it was, but I'm not going to necessarily trust. You're referring to the Veterans Honor Flight trailer? Yes. I know that there were comments, especially on our posts about it. directly asking that same question. But to my knowledge, no. Okay. Yeah, I just don't know. You know. I appreciate to, you know, if the answers, I don't know. That's better than making it up like happens on the Internet, right? Yeah, I definitely want to get those facts straight. Well, watch tonight's story. I know it's a hot topic. There's a lot of discussion on both sides. Some, you know, talking about it being a tool used as part of investigations. Some ending the contracts, as Jessica mentioned. I mean, there's a lot of sides to this particular issue. And a strange bedfell. as they say, just because it's like, well, normally those, that person and that person don't agree, but one way or the other. So thanks, Jessica. Yeah, thank you, Jessica. And, of course, you can catch Valley News Live 5, 530, and 6 right here on AM 970 WDAY. We'll talk to you again tomorrow. Sounds good. Thanks, guys. All of us, yeah. Jessica bringing, and of course, that is the Warehouse Wonders Valley News Live Roundup.

Warehouse Wonders, have you been over there yet? Yes, I have. Yes. Do it yourself in the Industrial District in Moorhead. Now, if you like things like outdoor lighting, listen, I've seen all the viral videos of your flower garden, fantastic. Maybe it needs some outdoor lighting, or maybe you've already got some out there. I've got some out front. Yeah. You can get some of those things, yard items, indoor ceiling fans, appliances. Like, I don't know what they don't have, but I know they have a lot of stuff. And it's at Warehouse Wonders, again, in the Industrial District in Moorhead, and they have a Facebook page, Warehouse Wonders. Very good. Yeah. And I should do this now, Tim, because I had forgotten twice already. So we might as well just do this. And give Ronnie a call. We'll take the ninth caller at 7-1-293-9,000. Thanks to the Thor building line. And then again, if you want to email us, I know a couple have for our next guest, that's studio at WDAYRadio.com, thanks to Red Wing Shoes. And I'm just going to put a plug in. The time now is I've got to stall for two seconds. 412, thanks to custom truck and auto shine. It brought you by that. So. Hopefully, good luck. Again, it's a qualifier now. Don't just run over here with your suitcase packed. which can happen, I suppose, sometimes. But I am Tim Blacklist sitting in for Jay today. I'm not sure who will be in tomorrow. I guess Ronnie will tell us later on, but I always enjoy being on, and I always enjoy my next guest, Scott Wagner, represented from North Fargo. He, former Cass County Commissioner for 12 years, a variety of leadership roles in that realm and has really distinguished themselves in these first, we'll call it, four years of the legislature. He is in the same district as like Ron Sorvog, for example, is a good example. So they have kind of northern part of Fargo up into Riley's Acres area, the Harwood area, that kind of, and... County line, yep, so up there. And, you know, one of the things I appreciate, I've known Scott for quite a while, shall we say, I'm not exactly sure when it started, kind of it's all of a sudden here he was. A long time. Yes, he has.

He would be what I would consider the most studied person I've ever met in terms of voting processes, procedures, you know, the intricacies of elections after they're done, before they're done, and, you know, cities, counties, legislative districts, and even statewide. But he's really, he does his homework. He puts in the time. He asks the right questions. He backs up. His belief on not only that topic, but a variety of other topics. So he will be up with us next. And Ronnie, we have a winner. Who is the one of us? Yeah. Paul, last initial T is our winner. So congratulations, Paul. Very good. Move on to the next round. It'll be great being down in Vegas for the game. Yeah. But welcome to the show, Scott. Representative Wagner. Thank you, Tim. Good to beer. Yep. I'm just going to kind of bounce a variety of questions off, and they may not stitch together very well, but we're just going to throw them out there for you. Has Fargo ever had the ward system in place? Yes. Actually, Fargo converted from a ward system in 1913 to its current commission form of government. I understand history. Yeah. Because that's talked about. The proposal right now is to add You know, change it towards. So instead of you representing the entire city, you would, in essence, represent and have to live in a certain area, which will likely cause some people to move. So they might see, okay, I'm a leaning Republican. I'm going to live in this area. Or I'm a leaning Democrat, so I'm going to live in that area to run because that happens. It happens at the legislative level. It happens in Congress and the like. So what... You know, just kind of walking through what's proposed and in terms of what you see as either strengths or weaknesses with that proposed system. Sure. Thank you. I appreciate being here and just, you know. giving you my perspective, I guess, and these are mine. And if they make sense, great to you. If you have a different opinion, that's great. I think the great part of our democracy is that we debate things. And hopefully through this process, we'll have informed voters that go into the ballot box and make a good decision for the city of Fargo and its residents moving forward. Yeah, from my reading of it, it's going to convert our... current system where we have four city commissioners and a mayor which are all elected at large to a six-member council form of government with a the mayor elected at large no six council wards would be the council members would be elected individually within those wards so what you're giving up and getting rid of is citywide representation as a citizen. So as I understand this in the 2028 election, so the next election cycle, there would be a reset of all six of these. They would form the districts through a committee that would make a recommendations to the city commission to approve it. And then in the 2028 election, those six awards would be up for election.

And my understanding is three of them would be staggered to a two-year term, and the other three would be a four-year term to get back to a staggered form of representation where half of your governing board at least is turned up for election, every election cycle. And so that's what I understand, you know, what the structure will be. And I think if you want to, I mean, some conversations with, I think, what we're giving up. and potentially what we're replacing it with. And I'll just be straight up front. I am a proponent of keeping the commission form of government and for a number of reasons. First off, when I was a county commissioner, that's a commission form of government. And though there are some differences, there's a lot of similarities in how a commission form of government operates. And I personally... find that I believe it represents the people the best. And so what this would do, right now you could elect all of your city commissioners. So no matter where you live in Fargo, they all work for you. And I would just ask people to think for a minute, and this is how I've been thinking this, what is the greatest power that I have in influence over my elected officials? And that's my vote. That's how I hold them accountable. I hold them accountable at the ballot box. And if we're going to go from a system where all of the elected representatives are accountable to me and to every single voter to a system that isolates that vote to one person. I feel that I am losing a substantial amount of representation because they're all my city commissioners now. But under this proposal, I'd have one council member. The other five are not elected by me. What power do I have over them? So to me, I just think you isolate your representation. And the other part of that... I hear about some of the arguments, well, you know, South Fargo. Well, South Fargo is going to get fragmented as well because there will be a number of wards. And so you will still only have that representative within your geographical area. And I don't know if I'm correct on this. I'm making an assumption here that the proportionment for the wards would have to be off the 2020 census. And I think Fargo roughly had 125,500 people. So you're saying just under 21,000 people per ward. And when you look at representation, South Fargo, it depends on the Lindenwood Park area doesn't look like the West Acres area that doesn't look like, you know, the new growth areas that farther down, you know, south of 64th, 70th of the south. You know, there are things that are important to all of us.

good infrastructure, making sure that the roads are plowed in a timely manner, garbage is collected, public safety, fire protection, police protection, those are, you know, for the whole entire city. But where there are uniquenesses in neighborhoods, I'd say this, I live in Edgewood First Edition in North Fargo. It was built in the 1960s. I think it has a lot more in common with, say, the neighborhoods around Lindenwood Park area that were built in the 1960s than maybe parts of South Fargo. South-Fargo. So it depends on how you defined, you know, similarities within neighborhoods and, you know, where things are similar. But there again, the fundamental thing that I believe people are going to lose is they're going to lose the fact that they get to elect and hold everyone accountable. And so if I can just on one part of those, though, just think for a moment that you get the counselor in your ward. Maybe it doesn't work well with other people. Can't build consensus. And how are your needs going to be met with that type of representation? In the current system, you can go to the other four commissioners and say, hey, wait a minute. I am your constituent. I need help on this issue. This is important. And you know, they are, you are their constituent. you have the power at the ballot box. And you're going to remove that during this system where you're going to say, hey, my counselor won't help me. Will you? And they have their own ward to worry about and their own constituents within that geographical area to worry about. That concerns me, Tim, I guess, when we look at changing this. Yeah, we're just parsing out numbers. And I couldn't quickly find the number of votes that the top two vote getters got commission, but I just did the mayor race and took that, which was a little over 10,000 votes. Now, if you divide that by six wards, that's... like 1,820 people. Now, if you have two people running and one gets 51%, you can win with 928 votes. Or if it's three people, you can win with 620 votes. So that's one of the things I worry about is now a smaller number. of motivated people, and maybe that's one of the reasons why it's being been introduced is they want to, you know, segment this up a little bit. It takes fewer to win. You don't have to have mass appeal, we'll call it, for lack of a better term. I mean, I don't know. I mean, Mike, you know, there's a number of concerns I have because, you know, it would be hard, you would be hard pressed to think that there's a similar thing, which is actually what happens in Congress. U.S. House of Representatives is a better system than we, you know, have. Well, and Tim, it's interesting you bring that point up, too. And I would ask Scott his take on this, too, because Jay brought up a couple of points from emailers and callers on yesterday's show. That is still a concern of mine. You know, we bitched about the 20-some-thousand-votes cast in the mayoral race specifically.

that Fargo is a city of 130-ish thousand, and you had 20,000 elect the mayor. But what you're stating is sounding like it will even make it more so that less people would elect a commissioner or mayor in the wards system as well. And then the other concern that was brought up, we hear a lot of talk on the national level about redistricting. what that potentially would look like and could the commission itself make decisions then once it's enacted in a ward system of government to redistrict the wards well and they get to set the lines so at the end of the day this is undetermined what those boundaries will be And so, you know, we're the most competitive political city in the state of North Dakota between Republicans and Democrats. And so... where those lines are drawn are critically important. And that power is left ultimately, you know, to the city, Fargo City Commission to make that decision. But, yeah, to that point on the election, so I roughly figure, if they're, again, if we've got to use the latest census data, you've got just under 21,000 per ward, a legislative district is 16.5,000. So you're within, you know, you know. your 3,600 votes of a residence that it would have to be. And just look at the last primary because this election takes place. The regular municipal election takes place in the June primary. That's 17 to 20% average voter turnout. So we had, you know, primary elections here in those legislative districts that are up. I mean, mine, I got the top vote in 45 out of four candidates, two Republicans do Democrats, and you had to stay in your political lane, but you still had the voters come out and vote. I got 1,382 votes. There were some districts where it was like 500 and some votes. So add another even 20% or so. I mean, theoretically, as you're saying, you could have people that elected under a thousand votes in a ward. And tell me, how is that representative of the greater city population? I just don't think it is. And can I get to where I think it really is kind of the issue that I've been trying to champion for some time? It's the fractional pluralities. When we have very low voter turnout in a primary and we have 15 people running for two spots and people win with 15, 17% of the vote, you know, that is our current system. People win under that. But is that the, does that best represent?

the citizens of our city. I have stated for a long time that we should move to a primary general schedule like they do with county government because every other election in the state of North Dakota is a primary general election schedule. So in the county is the only local one. So if we move to our primary general schedule, we will get to. a majority, you know, a position of what the public believes. So like it will work out to be that 50 plus one majority, but it will be during a time. A general election is anywhere between 45 and north of 60 plus percent. eligible voter turnout. We'll get to a critical mass of voters. I think that's our bigger issue than overhauling and dumping our current form of government, which I think even if it has, you know, there are some minor tweaks, it has served the citizens of Fargo well for over 100 years. A little rhetorical question here, and I know we're going to get up against the clock, but, okay, so my last election, if you compare that to, you know, if you split it, you know, in a six... wards and you know it's you could win with 620 votes like I said my last election for county where you have to vote countywide I had over 70,000 votes now I'm responsible now to all 70 plus thousand of them as opposed to 620 so we'll be right back after this we have a couple emails we want to get to I'm Tim Flacko sitting in for the Jay Thomas show here on 970 WDI 93.1 FM we'll be right back with Scott Wagner Final segment of the Jay Thomas show for this Wednesday. Guest hosted today by Cass County Commissioner Tim Flackle. Custom truck and auto shine time check, as I mentioned, 437. And, of course, tomorrow we have Mayor of Harwood and lawyer Blake Henke guest hosting the program. And then Friday, I know I'm going to shock everyone. Jay's not here. So best of the Jay Thomas show on Friday, which. So don't call in, don't call in, don't call in. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to complain about it. It gives me a rare moment of respite, if you will. A couple of emails that you made reference to. One in particular said, hands off Fargo. Following up to remind everyone to vote no on wards and definitely not trying to tell people which way to go, make up your own mind. But we know from a number of conservative groups in Fargo, some are in favor of the ward system. I think one is iffy on it. Another email on the ward system. Emailer says wards would give Fargo residents.

direct, localized representation similar to how state legislators and members of Congress represent specific districts while still serving the entire community. As Fargo grows, Ward's would ensure every neighborhood has an accountable voice on the City Commission, preventing the largest or most organized areas from dominating citywide decisions. It's not about dividing Fargo. It's about making representation more balanced and responsive. Love the show, Wards Now. And I know at least two of the conservative groups in Fargo were stating this looks like it's going to pass. via landslide unopposed. And in recent days, we had heard there is a group planning to mount an opposition campaign. Okay. So. Well, you know, we'll see what happens. You know, I guess I would be, I'm hard pressed to be convinced that what's happening in the U.S. House of Representatives is a good thing. Right. And I have a, and again, if anybody wants to text me, you can text me at 701-36759-54 because I give that out. And a Steve M sent me a couple short hitters here. They're not really questions, I said. Bringing, you know, no to bringing a Washington style. system of politics to Fargo. When is making government grown been a bad thing? I need my glasses on and not wearing them. And then lastly, are they unelecting two of the people that were just elected? So that was a comment from Steve M. Representative Wagner? Thank you, Tim. Yeah, that's a big question I have too. We just had an election here for two. four-year terms. My understanding under this proposal, the mayor retains his four-year term, but you have two newly elected city commissioners that, and that'd be a great legal question. I have no idea what the answer. Maybe somebody does that, how to two duly elected officials, when this place wasn't in place prior. all of a sudden, elected by the people to a four-year term, have half their term removed. And what does that do to their term limits? Yep. Exactly. Yep, because that still stays within the whole world charter. But as you're saying earlier, I would agree with the person that emailed you. I mean, I'm a Republican. I'm proud to be a Republican. When did ever-growing government? When was that ever a great idea and created more representation or solutions? Well, and I know, Scott, there's one point that is typically brought up by people who are in support of this measure as well, and it's that...

Fargo is one of the very few who still operate under the city commission form of government is their contention. And to that I say, I mean, it's my opinion. But to that, I say, well, we also were one of very few that tried ranks choice voting, and how did that work out? Yeah. Approval voting. I'm sorry, approval voting, but yes. And I think that to even further, I mean, it's like growing up as a kid, it never worked with me with my parents to say, well, everyone else is doing it. That was somehow a good reason. Yeah. If you jumped off a bridge, would you, you know, if Billy did, would you follow them? And can I say this? Can I just because I think it's important. I'm going to just be frank, I don't want to be Minneapolis, I don't want to be Chicago, I don't want to be San Francisco, I do not want to be L.A. And yes, I know other cities have that form of government, but I think it just becomes a level of, you know, parochial politics. It grinds down. You're kind of, and in Fargo, I mean, in North Dakota, look, we've got, Fargo has, like, hit every major economic indicator, quality of life, all the things we have, like, been at the top ranking for a number of years under this form of government. West Fargo has boomed under this form of government. The second largest city in our state, with over 75,000 people, Bismarck is a commission form of government. I would contend maybe more cities should take a look at a commission form of government because I like the idea that people are elected by every... Every elected official is accountable, as Tim said earlier, to every single voter, every single citizen because they can hold them accountable. Because as a county commissioner, I felt when I went into the rural area, they elected me. They went to the ballot backs. And whether or if I went to West Fargo or Fargo, it did not matter. They were all my constituents. I was accountable to them. And I will go back to what I said earlier. You are actually isolating your personal power and influence over your elected officials down to one. Now you have all of them. Yeah, and I don't want to get into a situation where it's like... You vote for my road and I'll vote for years. I just don't want to get to that. You know, one of the questions that, you know, people talk about downtown, downtown, I mean, I don't even know who the, in this, you know, we have new people on the commission now, but who the closest one was? Was it Dave Pepcorn? Because he was up in what, like, we'll call it, give or take the 2,800 blocks. So it's like 28 blocks away. I don't know. I mean, that's not downtown. That's not really downtown to me. You know, and I mean, I don't know on the south side because a lot of them live in the south side. So I'm not buying that as a viable reason why. So Scott, I want to ask you in here with Representative Scott Wagner, because I know you do your homework. Have you talked to Secretary of State Michael Howe or the Attorney General's office? And as far as, because there's been a lot of talk about, you know, the.

the voting and what had happened because they have this special election timing thing. And I mean, we know it wasn't that long ago that some of these saved people were the ones that were advocating for approval voting, which was on the fall ballot once upon a time when it was passed. So have you done any homework in this regard or checking that out? I have. Because first I'd like to say, you know, I'm... I try to seek the truth and sometimes, you know, people can disagree on the facts of something, but, you know, I just, to bring some clarity for myself on this process, and it's going to be a moot point. Once the petitions were submitted to the city, there's a natural clock that runs, so there's 30 days to approve them, and from that you have a 60 to 90 days to call for an election. And so one month later, July 6th of this year, if they were submitted at that time, they would have aligned perfectly with the requirements to be on the, from a timing standpoint, on the November ballot. And what concerned me on that was we know that the municipalities have the ability. political subs to access the statewide ballot through the county. In fact, the county has to do it at no charge. So they can access that, and they do it routinely for elections. The primary election in June, that's a statewide primary, your municipal, school district, park district, they're all on that ballot. So reaching out to the Secretary of State, he had indicated to me that in 2024, there were... Not this specific question, but there were nine special elections that coincided with the statewide general election in 2024. Is that statewide? I mean statewide, right? That was statewide. We had nine cities. That's a community, that community? Correct. There were nine cities that held special elections during the general election. And so the issue of a special election, as I understand it, is any election out for municipality is any election outside of its regularly scheduled election which is the on a biennial basis every two years, the second Tuesday in June of even numbered years, which perfectly lines up with the November, or I mean the June primary. That's a regular scheduled election. So my understanding is that any election outside of that is technically a special election. And we have special elections from cities that coincide with and are administered by the county. on what I informally call it consolidated by ballot that's got the you know statewide the county and then if there's any special election like say if a city's calling a special election that can be on that ballot so I reached out to Michael Howe and I posed a question because there was a statute being referred reference chapter 40-0410 saying that the special election

The governing body should call a special election, which only that question of changing the form of government from a commission system of governance will be submitted. And here's what I have from him. He says, we understand, this is his office, it's not legal advice, but this is his understanding as the chief elections officer of the state, the correspondence that he provided me. We understand this to mean that it is the only measure the city can place on the statewide ballot. For example, they wouldn't be able to ask the voter to move to a modern council form of government with seven members and on the same ballot elect two additional council members. We believe the city question could have been placed on the statewide general election ballot if the timeline's under 40410. but defer to the city's legal counsel for any final decisions. That's just their interpretation and understanding. Because one thing I forgot to mention, too, is that the other political subdivisions can access a primary and a general election ballot. And if it's administered by the county, they don't have to pay for it. But there's a timing requirement that it's 64 days prior to the election day they have to have their formal ballot language and all that approved from their jurisdiction and sent to the county, and why I mean that. And I think here comes down to where I have a concern in interpretation is that. There are multiple ballots that are on a single sheet of paper. So that's for convenience of the voters. So you have your general election. You know, your statewide offices, your legislative, then you go down to your county portion of the county ballot. Then you have a city ballot if it's a special election. So they're all separate individual ballots from my understanding, but they're allowed to be under the same, you know. on the same piece of paper for convenience for the voter. And so unless anyone else, and I think that's kind of the biggest concern that I have is something this big. And it's, I know it's a moot point. We're going to have the, we're going to have the special election. But. something of this weight, you know, we get 43 to 45% eligible vote or turnout in a general election. What I've researched, we get 7 to 12% in a special. And I hope we have a lot more than that. But I also reached out to the attorney. We're getting close on time. Okay. We got three questions to go yet. Yeah, I did reach out to the Attorney General office and a staff member did get back to me that they plan on getting back to me within the next few days. So that's kind of. The update that I have. One quick question for me, and then we have a couple emails that have come in. Does the mayor, in your opinion...

become more powerful or less powerful and why? Well, I think they become more powerful. Right now, the mayor actually, all the mayor has is one vote, just like the other city commissioners. So the mayor has to build consensus if the mayor wants to get anything done. You have to count to three. So you have to have a majority. So I think... I like that system. Under this proposal, the mayor is not a regular voting member. They can break a tie. So if it's a three to three vote, they're the tie breaker. But here's the thing I become really concerned with. They have the veto power. So if the mayor doesn't like something and they veto it, it takes a super majority to override the mayor, that's a four to two vote. And if I can just really quickly say, what happens if you have, as an example, reforms that members of the board want to get through? Say, for instance, you want to maybe change or eliminate a needle exchange program. If the mayor likes it and doesn't want it changed, Today, it takes a simple majority. Under this form of government, you'd have to override that veto on a four to two vote. Yeah, I mean, it's food for thought. Ronnie, you got a couple of email comments or questions. Yeah, there's, I guess, more comment than anything, but the same emailer, Derek, Fargo can't grow much more as Bismarck or West Fargo anymore. And Tim, please mention the DFLLPs and who's involved in them. Yeah, I mean, it's... You know, I mean, I know it's led in part by Arlette Preston, if that was part of the question. And then, I mean, you see a lot of the DFL members that are on the pictures anyway. So, yeah, you know, and to be honest, sometimes that worries me is, you know, they've been working on figuring out this map. And then, you know, controlling the map is the next big thing because, you know, you get to kind of pick your voters. And when you get to pick your voters, as opposed to serving everybody, it can create some problems. Yeah, well, we went from approval voting when that was banned. Yeah. You know, this came up right after that. Yeah. You know, and again, I go, if you're down to one, just think if it's, you know, I'll kind of take. more the, I'll call them the extremes, you know, politically. I mean, you know, if you had John Strand as your representative or in your ward, are you happy with that or not happy with that? If you have Michelle Turnberg, are you happy with that or not happy with that? If you have Chad Peterson, are you happy with that or not happy with that? If you have Nicky Gullochson, are you happy or not happy with that. So, I mean, that's one of the things I worried about. I was like, oh, you know, my person, I really don't see eye to eye, and they're not going to care what I think. And it kind of throws out the whole

Well, you got your person that, you know, you can control and you can, no, it doesn't work that way. I mean, to me, it's encroaching on partisan politics is what I worry about. Right. I mean, yes. You have your one elected official on the council. So. You know, that's your representative. The others are not your direct representative. They're not, you are not their direct constituents. You'd hope they do the best thing for the city, but that doesn't guarantee it because you have no way to hold anyone accountable but that one in your isolated ward. Yeah, I mean, because, you know, booth things and needles and everything, not exactly my, you know. A lot of people would have trouble supporting that with their person. So I kind of worry about that. So hey, thanks, everybody. I'm Tim Flacko, sitting here for Jay on the Jay Thomas Show. Thanks to our guests today, including Representative Scott Wagner from District 45 in North Fargo, who is kind of helping us provide some of the information on, you know, the facts and his thoughts as a studied person in this area. And thank you, Ronnie, as always. You're doing a great job. Yeah, I appreciate you. Everybody will be back tomorrow. See you then.