Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-09-26_MONDAY_7AM

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Mr. Outdoors, Greg Roberts has the Outdoor report from Rogue Weather. The state session is over, what now? A recap on the good, and a lot of ugly (hey, its Salem, k?) State Rep. Dwayne Yunker has the story.

This hour of the Bill Meyer Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. Now more with Bill Meyer. And usually it's every Friday, but for the next, well, for the last few and maybe another week or two, we have the outdoor report this Monday morning instead. And the Monday morning outdoor report sponsored by Oregon Truck and Auto Authority on Airway Drive in Medford. Greg Roberts is here, Mr. Outdoors atrogweather.com.

Hello, Mr. Outdoors. Which show were you at over the weekend? Did you have a weekend off? I don't know. We had the weekend off. And so for Monday shows, we've got this one. We've got next Monday. And then that's it.

And then back to normal for the rest of the year. Yeah, we kick back to Fridays and, you know, life will return to normal because the one thing I did here while we were doing the Medford show was, man, it just mixes me up when you switch and do the Mondays. I know. I'm so used to Fridays, but I go, well, we understand, but, you know, this is, it's kind of just this little short-term thing. Well, get through the sportsman shows, does happen this weekend over in Klamath. And, you know, looking forward to that, more than I probably normally would.

This year, it's not just the last one because of other things I have going on. There's probably going to be a lot more people showing up in Klamath to see me than what we have seen in the past few years. But that's good, too. Always look forward to seeing people. We're probably going to have a lot more conversations about weather wolves. And, of course, I'm over there doing my Bigfoot town halls. But unfortunately, my new banner is so good. It gets so many conversations.

In Reading, nobody showed up for the Bigfoot town halls. And yet it really wasn't how many people were talking to me. at the booth, and it was so station started as, so have you seen him? And go, that right there is exactly what I saw at 3 a.m. on the morning of August 12th in 2011. Yep, there you go. And then evolved into people going, well, I just wanted to find out if you'd seen him, because I sure have. And that's pretty much what he looks like. And then people will feel very comfortable then about opening up to you.

Exactly. Yeah, I get that. I get that. Well, I wanted to ask you a question here about wolves. I had an email from Mark Johnson who was talking about what we're facing here with predators and deer, especially here, in Southern Oregon. And what he had mentioned is that you're going to have to, the only way you're going to be able to fix the deer population within the cities is to control the predator, whether it's going to be the wolf, you know, for, for, for several miles out into the Ashland watershed or the cats, you know, you're just going to have to get the cats be poisoned and shooting them, hunting with dogs, you know, all that kind of stuff. Would you tend to agree with that? You know, where do you see this? Because people complain about the deer, but the deer are there for a reason in most of our cities. Is that right? It's moving into towns before the wolves were acknowledged as being here.

Right. The primary pressure of that then would be cats. And if you're not going to have meaningful predator control, which Oregon doesn't, any predator, forget the wolf. I mean, any of our predators in the state of Oregon, the only one that there's really any kind of meaningful guys out there. I have a couple friends of mine that I follow on Facebook. They're very diehard coyote hunters. back in the day I was myself, but I wasn't out there just simply to kill them. There was definitely economic value to be had from coyotes in taking them

because in the 1980s into the early 1990s, there was a huge run-up in the value of coyote pelts, their fur. Really? I could go out on a weekend and make $1,000 to $2,000 every weekend shooting coyotes. That must not be the case. these days, right? Yeah, and what I concentrated on were the coyotes that were causing problems. And as the word got around into Shoots County, I suddenly found my phone lighting up from, you know, ranchers and livestock owners and even people living in rural areas. And you can shoot as many of those as you want, right? Isn't that pretty much the way it goes? You can shoot as many of them as you want right now.

Oh, yeah. You could shoot as many as you want. The thing that I found out that I learned in hunting coyotes, you better get the one that came into your call because if you don't, you'll never get him to come in again. They're not dumb. They get educated real fast. Yeah. Well, I know that in our neighborhood, we have, I have no doubt that a lot of the, not spare, but the stray cats that come and get some food from us and then disappear, I always guarantee you that given where we live over by the base of Roxy Ann, not too far from that, You can hear the coyotes in the middle of the night when they catch something.

You know that's what's going on. You're an ideal coyote habitat over there. In fact, you know, the city of Medford itself, there probably isn't any part of the city of Medford. I wouldn't be surprised. My dad and my stepmom while they were still alive, they caught a really late flight back into Medford. I can't remember.

I want to say they were arriving at around 1230. So I'm driving down Biddle Road. And if you remember, there used to be the Franz Bakery Outlet there on Biddle Road. Yeah, yeah. Right in front of Franz Bakery Outlet, two coyotes went right across Biddle Road, heading back in the direction of the little irrigation canal that runs through there. And I'm like, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Those things are probably roaming all up and down through the Greenway. And then all the creeks that run through Medford with the amount of vegetation around them.

coyotes negotiate through the city at will. Cougars will do the same thing. Do you think there is a change in the attitude about Cougars? Because years ago, the people ended up voting in, no hunting with the dogs. And you're not really going to control Cougars as a predator real well without the dogs. Do you agree or disagree on that? 100% I would bet even though Oregon has made it, you know, as they're cheap, they want people to buy them. They stumble up upon them by accident. Cougar tag in their pocket for the numbers issued has to be somewhere 1% maybe. Not very high, yeah.

No. Okay. When you stop hunting cougars with dog or hunting, in fact, now when they're going to take out a problem, problem cougar when they know, okay, we've got to take this cat out, and they have contract hunters that they use all by themselves a problem. Yeah. I know we had to have it done once on my sister-in-law's property out in the Applegate where she had that.

And they knew that, and the cats and the big cats were beautiful. They're just beautiful animals. I mean, you can't see anything about them, but just marvel at God's creation with these cats. but they were sitting there and just lying underneath the outdoor porch, you know, just lying underneath, not a care in the world, no, absolutely no fear of humans. And so that couldn't be kept. So three of them got taken from the hunt from that contract hunter. It's amazing.

Well, I know one situation that nobody came and took them away, but I knew people who lived up in the Angel Crest subdivision up there on Roxanne. they had a mother cougar that came and stashed her three kids underneath their deck when mama wanted to go hunting. She seriously, she left the kids to be babysat by them essentially. Boy, that's not great. Not a great location. Sorry. Well, you know, here's what's funny.

These people, they, you know, they didn't have anything but indoor cats. There were a couple times the indoor cats were sitting there on their side of the screen. or the sliding door, looking at the big cats on the deck, sitting there looking in at them. You do know that those cats would just be a snack for the big cat, though. Oh, without any question. And unfortunately, cougars will, coyotes will, you know, we can start running through a whole laundry list of things out there that will think of making a meal of your, or think nothing of making a meal of your pets. All right. Now, enough about my personal questions here at this point.

I wanted to ask you then, are we done with the winter? Is it really over at this point? No hope then for what's happening at Ashland? No, and, you know, that's about any question the worst, but because, you know, looking back again in September and October, oh my gosh, did we have a lot of hope for this winter? We knew there were going to be polar vortex oscillations. I'm getting it right.

What? Nobody knew was how, you know, when you do these long-range forecast, the thing, unfortunately, because we're going to have to see. Well, all great, terrible. And if you kept watching the weather, and you know, it's kind of funny, especially doing rogue weather, I'll notice the follower count. Yep. In the winter, it dropped down pretty good. And people had come running back, you know, especially there when we picked up that storminess in February. that everybody who runs a weather page says, but it's like that. People only care about the

weather when it's impacting them. Well, now what everybody's freaking out about is the coming summer and fire season. And I'm going to stick to two things that we have been discussing. The pattern we have for the summer is not one that generally creates a lot of thunderstorm activity. There's great news. And I'm hoping that's the case, because if we keep the lightning down, we keep the smoke and the fire issues down too. Exactly. And if we don't have a lot of wind driving them, and we don't typically get a lot of wind with the pattern we're going to have for the summer, even better news, because what winds we are going to see in the coast rain,

California to our south may go up in flames, we may see big fires break out to our north, and not coming in down here on us. All right, very good. Greg Roberts once again, Mr. Outdoors at Rogue Weather.com. and keep up with what's going on or else keep up on the good weather, I guess, this week, from the looks of it. Well, here's the thing. The weather this week, it's pretty funny because the Medford National Weather Service Zone includes Susquee County down in Northern California, and it goes up to the north to Douglas County. I don't know that I have ever seen them situation in more graphic terms like, quote unquote, looks like all the activity that's going to be coming in this way. week is going to go to our north because everything in the Medford National Weather Service zone

from the Cascades West, even within the 24 hour to, let's say, 72-hour windows, which means there's a lot of uncertainty, and watching the model runs yesterday, to these systems going north and give us some rain and some snow, but none of it looks like it would be big amounts. And then you get down into Northern California, you get into Shasta, Susquee County, a week until... Okay, duly noted. But yeah, I noticed that too in the National Weather Services forecast.

Chance of everywhere, chance of, but that's all they can say. Just chance of, right? That's it. Yeah, because the track of that thing is either A, going to give us precipitation or B, it won't, and being on the southern end of the thing, what snow that would fall up in the mountains still going to be more of a higher snow level, except that is, oddly enough, for today through Wednesday, when Douglas County, Benton County, Lynn County, and Lane County, the four counties that I have in my forecast zone on the north side of things west of the Cascades,

it's up to 1,500 feet, but we're just not... And nothing really sticking for that reason. All right, fair enough. All right, Greg. Mr. Outdoors atrogweather.com. We'll catch you next Monday for one more time and then back to the Fridays, all right? You'd be well.

Yeah, like I said, you know, next week, obviously next Monday we're on, but then probably could do the double dip and resume on Friday next week as well. All right, we'll see you then. Thanks, Greg. Oregon Truck and Auto Authority on Airway Drive and Medford sponsor of the outdoor reports. And once again, one more time at Monday, and then we go back to the Friday reports here.

Rogueweather.com is Greg's site, of course. 727 at KMED. I'm going to catch up on the business update from Fox News here too because that is a big one, a big sell-off going on to the markets this morning. We'll keep you up on the latest with that. We also have some local news on the way. And State Representative Dwayne Yunker is going to check in. kind of a post-mortem on that session. Boy, am I glad that session ended. They actually ended up sighing dying on Friday, and they didn't work through the weekend.

Thank goodness. Malek Construction has been a general contractor for 40 years for the last news talk 1063, KMED. You're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. What to roll another email out, been waiting to, sitting on some of these emails. It's been really busy the last few days. We've got a little break in the action here. Emails of the day, sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson at Central Point Family Dentistry. Randy from Ashland says, hey Bill, I think he's talking about the kids from Oakdale Middle School. They ended up protesting. By the way, they protested again on Friday night. This time it was outside of school, though. But Randy writes this morning, Bill, I am sick and tired of hearing leftists whining about a pathway to citizenship.

There is a pathway to citizenship. Title 8, USC, public record, includes every detail regarding the pathway to citizenship in the United States of America, up to one million immigrants. Follow that pathway every year. It's not a sacred bill. Entering the U.S. without following that pathway as a crime, which is also detailed in Title VIII, including the definitions of three classifications of alien, resident alien, non-resident alien, and illegal aliens. Alien is shorthand for alien to the jurisdiction, meaning not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. There is no such classification of undocumented immigrants or illegal immigrants. Those terms are a fiction fabricated by Democrats who are trying to infer immigrant status to illegal aliens.

It's exactly what those kids were all about, too. You know, they're talking about supporting immigrants. No, they're not talking about supporting immigrants. They're talking about supporting illegal aliens. Point well taken. And thank you for the email there, Randy. Email bill at Billmyershow.com. We'll catch up on the rest of the news.

And thank goodness the session's over. Well, kind of a post-mortem of it all. State Representative Dwayne Yonker joins me next. Did you know that SISQ pump service does much more than service pumps? Community that truly needs you. If you're missing meaningful medicine, send an email to HR at GPVetClinic.com. This is Randall with Advanced Air, and I'm on KMED. I couldn't help but chuckle as I'm hearing the Grants Pass.

You know, the veterinary clinic getting ready to open, and I'm thinking about all the food now that we're giving to the wildlife here. Because, you know, we talk about Punky, Punky, our feral cat that has been visiting us. And I'll get out there in the morning. 4.30 in the morning, I'm out there making coffee. And there's Punky. He's looking through the window, looking through the window, because we have a box set up on a table next to the window. And he's looking into me.

And I go out there and open the side door. And he always gives me a hiss, and then he meows. It's like he's always telling me, yeah, I know that you're fulfilling my welfare plan. but I'm going to make sure you're not getting too friendly here, right? And then at nighttime, it's Larry the possum along with occasionally his plus one. He'll bring another possum with him every now and then. Amazing stuff here. Gotta love the animals, though.

Got to take care of all the God's creatures. It's 20 before 8. State Representative Dwayne Yonker rejoins the program. Dwayne, free at last, free at last, free at last. the legislative session shut down on Friday. It is not a moment too soon. I wish it had shut down like the day after it started. But anyway, welcome back.

How are things? I am glad to be home. I'm glad I am no longer up there. I'm back with my people, my peeps. With your peeps. In other words, you feel like you're in with what? Are you in alternative life forms or like cryptozoology kind of? of a place when you're in Salem?

You wonder sometimes, don't you? Yeah, I wonder what goes to their minds of what is good for the people. You know, I'm saying? What country? What planet are we on? You know, it's just their thinking just drives me nuts sometimes up there. Well, I saw a picture of the Senate leader and the House leader. What is it, Julian Robb.

You know, they're doing a selfie and smiling, doing the big smiles. and I'm thinking of all the garbage that they ended up, you know, pushing through, pushing down the gullet to the people. I mean, yeah, there was some good news on House Bill 4145, you know, that gun bill will live to fight another day, you know, delaying measure 114. I think that was a good thing. That was a good gut and stuff. But for the most part, man, there's a miserable time for anybody that is even a semi-moral person and a conservative, even a, even a, you know, know, squishy conservative, wouldn't you say? It was a rough time over the last 30 days, wasn't it? Oh, definitely. And, you know, the only time I vote yes for a gun bill.

Yeah. I was talking to Kevin Staird about it. I'm like, you sure you want me to vote yes? And yeah. People just, it's a gun bill. And that's what he was talking about on Thursday, Friday. Yes, you wanted to vote yes on this because it's as good as you could get out of the current communist control system there right now because it at least delays. He's the can down the road. Yeah. Down the road more.

Yeah, that's all you can do. Kick the can down the road. So even if the courts were to come out and say that Measure 114 is constitutional, which it wouldn't be. It needs to be appealed again. But if they did, it still wouldn't go into effect until 2028, which means you can ready other legal challenges. And I talked with Luis Valdez from Gun Owners of America. And he said, we just had the Court of Appeals, D.C. Court of Appeals that ended up overturning, magazine bans as being against the Second Amendment because they're in common use, you know,

doing all that kind of stuff. So, you know, maybe this is the beginning of the end of for Measure 114. Hard to tell here, but we'll see. Yeah, it's definitely hard to tell, you know. I don't, I expect anything crazy coming out of Salem. Every year I've been there now, we've had some kind of gun something. So, you know, there's so ant, there's obviously a group of them are so anti-gun. And they think if you're going to take a gun away, it's going to

stop suicide or it's going to stop something else. Oh, they're happy if the state commits you or helps you commit suicide with a doctor, right? That's perfectly okay, right? You can kill babies or you can kill yourself with a doctor, but if you want to use a gun yourself to kill yourself, that's bad. Yeah. Really, really odd. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not talking.

I don't think suicide is good or anything that's good. I mean, the thinking of rationality around it is just, I think all of it's bad, you know. No one should be killing themselves. And, yeah, guns can be dangerous. And I do, and I encourage people that, you know, get training if you have never shot a gun. There should be Hunter's safety and stuff like that. I'm all for those things, you know. But I'm not for you trying to take my rights away.

I'm not, you know, I spoke about a story of a guy trying to break in my house with a gun. And my daughters were here, you know. And they, I spoke on the floor. I think you should be able to defend yourself, you know. And the thing about background checks is still ridiculous because anybody knows you can't go down to anywhere and buy a gun without a background check. I mean, it's not like there's some backdoor deal, you know, criminals maybe, but not, you know, law by instance. Yeah, they were already violating the law to start with, right? I mean, that's just the way it was.

What I, you know, there was one bill that I was really wondering, I forget the name of it or the number of it then, and that's the one in which it put all of these private. privacy protections on everything involving either killing babies through abortion or killing kids' opportunities to have babies in the future by protecting everything about the trans industrial complex here. And what was driving that? Is it because the federal government is now coming out and not all into the trans agenda? I mean, the rest of the world has been backing away from this. And Oregon doubled down in this legislative session. And I'm wondering, what was the thought process here? Do you know?

So this session was about, sorry, I'm probably my voice this morning, but this session was about, I call it everything that the federal administration was doing, we want to fight back against it. So that's what you had the ice bills. You had, what else did you have? Anything to do with privacy? I'm having a problem this morning. Here, go ahead. I'll turn down the microphone.

Give me five seconds, and I'll let you just cough your brains out. out and then we'll get back on, okay? Here it is. I'm turning you down. All right. We're going to let Dwayne cough. We're going to cough it out, cough it out, cough it out. Stand by, please. Well, okay. I'm good. All right, you're good. Okay, I'll bring you back. We got you good. You've been doing this for years, and I'm assuming you've been through the stuff that gets stuck in your throat sometime. Absolutely. Absolutely. And what's even worse, though, is when you inhale the coffee and you're on the air, so I had to be really careful about that kind of stuff. But go through your nose and stuff.

Yeah, yeah. Back to the bills, the bad bills. So everything was about fighting against the federal government. So you had all the anti-ice stuff that, you know, virtual signaling that we're going to do this and this and this because bad ice, we're going to have parenthood because Planned Parenthood was defunded because of the transitioning and abortion stuff. So we're going to give, you know, 10 more million dollars to, you know, Planned Parenthood. We're going to start funding with tax. taxpayer dollars so we can kill your baby and someone from a different state that wants to come here and have abortion or, you know, Planned Parenthood does a lot of transitioning stuff now,

so that's another one. Well, they had to expand their business model, right? It wasn't enough just to go after women. We have to go after the guys that think they're women or women who think they're guys, right? We have to help them with that. Yes, yes, yes. So that was like the theme.

It seemed like, you know, or how can we? If you listen to that video after the session, you had Julie Fahey and the president of the Senate of their talking. Yeah, Rob Wagner. Yeah. Or one of the reporters asking, because he's talking about revenue. And they says, well, yeah, we might have to look at hiring, you know, raising more taxes. I'm like, that's what these people are thinking about. It's always taking more money out of Oregonians' pockets.

And then you've got Republicans just constantly trying to fight back. I think Democrats talk out of both sides of their mouth because, you know, they're all about the homeless and the people that are hurting, and then they turn around and just tax the crap out of everybody else. Now, what about then, they say they're going to need more money. Now, didn't they disconnect? Wasn't there the bill that disconnected a lot of the big, beautiful bills tax breaks, but Oregonians won't be able to get those? In fact, that's how they ended up balancing the budget this time around. Wasn't that the case? Yeah, that was Senate Bill 1507, which disconnect.

next from the federal code, which strips this is a big beautiful bill. And so it's basically going after more businesses, higher adductions, writing off equipment and stuff like that that Trump and his bill allowed you to do right away. So Oregon will not permit that on the Oregon state taxes. They won't prevent the, or they can't stop the federal taxation from being better, but they can stop it from being a benefit in the Oregon state tax, right? That kind of thing. That's how that works. Basically, we have is fleeing Oregon, and what does the Democrats do? They go after them more, you know? They're not business-friendly. So nothing's being done with the prosperity director. What was that? Knoe? Former Senator Knoe, right? He's not going to...

You know, my feeling is always about that. That was virtual singing for the governor because it's an election year. And she knows it's bad. That's my opinion about it. I don't really see really anything come after. Until you tackle the bureaucracy with the agencies and self and roll back that stuff, nothing's going to change because that's where all your problems are coming from. You're permitting problems, your over-regulation to build. These are all bureaucrats making rules within side their agencies. So until we start rolling that stuff back, you're not going to see a lot of change. change because they have, I don't think agencies to be able to make laws. I think that's the legislators. Yeah, Trump administration would agree with you on that. That seems to be a big part of the rolling back of some of the various rules which have been happening. Now, I wanted to shift gears

here a little bit to what happened with that vote, the vote to move the tax vote, you know, the tax referendum, the no-tax Oregon deal. This is the the ODOT tax and the gas tax increase. And boy, what an interesting time it would have been to have that on the ballot, given that gas prices soaring right now here, Representative Younger. So is this just kind of frozen right now? I know that Ed Deal, who's running for governor, was going to file a injunction or a lawsuit against this. Has that occurred yet?

Do you know? I know you're a friend with Ed. Yeah, yeah, that's already occurred. That is, I'm not sure what the court date is. So there was obviously the three petitioners. You could only have three petitioners on a referendum. There's Jason Williams, Senator Starr, and Ed Dill. And then on the, they were on the court.

And then they tried to get one person from the 36 counties that joined the lawsuit. And so that was filed already. There also is a federal lawsuit too by another woman that filed a federal lawsuit. Yeah, that one was out of Klamath County, I believe. Yeah, I don't really know much about that lawsuit. But so now we're waiting for the courts to weigh in and say, is this lawful? Can they change the date? So it basically will be froze until the court comes in and says, yeah, you can move forward or you can't move forward, Secretary of the State.

Now, Secretary of State, Tobias Re, ended up saying that there was no way. I guess not last Wednesday, but the Wednesday before last was actually the deadline that he had given. I guess it was a soft deadline. Was that kind of fake news in some ways, you think, if for some reason it's approved by the courts, will Tobias, do you think get that squeezed into the May primary or not? What do you think? Well, I think he will. I mean, he verbally told our leader and several people that March 25th was the deadline.

It had to be passed and signed by the governor. That's right. Or February 25th, you meant, right? Yeah, February 25th, February 25th, so February 25th, we knew that was probably, or I can go down that road too, but the past it passed to the 25th, which we did. We passed away. We went into March. And then he comes back and says, well, we can, you know, we can do this and this, which I don't see how he could do that because the ORS is the law. and it says you have to have, you know, pay money, you have to have 30 days.

All these things are in there. Tobias Reid does not have the power to change the law. So that's part of the lawsuit, too. Okay. All right. I'll be really curious to see where that ends up going because a big part of this is the later that it gets, or the closer it gets to the election, to the May primary election, the less likely it is that people are going to be able to get statements in the voters pamphlet,

especially people that want to just go out and get a, what is it a little more than a thousand signatures and get it done for free? Because it's very expensive to put it into the statewide voters pamphlet. Wouldn't you agree? I mean, that's one of the challenges we're looking at here. Yeah, I mean, not only the deadline there is this it has to get down to the counties to put in their booklet. So every county has a different booklet, you know, because we're not all voting on the same thing. Right. You might stay wide stuff, but not really countywide stuff or district.

stuff. So, yeah, these local needs need time to get their booklets together. So, you know, you're pushing stress on them, too, to get the things out. And you also talk about, you know, veterans, not veteran, but military activity personnel that are overseas. They have to get their ballots. So this is definitely an effect some part somewhere. And we will see where it happens here. I think that if the courts do not do something, Tobias is going to definitely support the governor. He's a Democrat. He's already got to get his word. Yeah, that would be a safe assumption. He would pull out every stop possible to make it happen if they could. You've got to protect your party, and that's what he's doing. He's protecting the party,

the, you know, his establishment, which is to help the people not to a party or not to you know the governor boy what a difference it would have been to have had uh secretary of state dennis lynthicum huh what a difference when you when you compare the dare i'll never forget some of the republicans that endorsed tobias raid it's like oh man that hurts all right let me go back to yeah yep you can only um look around locally yeah exactly we'll just leave it at that okay now then um some good news for grants past josephine county uh three and a half million and i thought that, I guess I thought that there was just no money anywhere without raising all those gas taxes or something, but a lot of areas, he ended up getting some money, some funding to help

backfill some stuff. What's going on? Yeah, so a couple of these, well, all of them have been in the process. So the fairgrounds and the horse racing have been continued on for years. You know, so the cap on the fairgrounds, So even Jackson County Fairgrounds will continue to get more money because they get money from the lottery dollars to support Fairgrounds. Fairgrounds do more just a fair. They're the place for emergencies, fire. You know, you take animals. There's a fire, you know, well-out fire.

Yeah, it's kind of your catch-all public center, really, the fairgrounds in most any county. So there was a cap on this 1% for the lottery dollars that I don't remember the amount of money it is. but we've been finding to get this cap taken off because, you know, things are costing more. And the lottery is bringing, there is more than 1% today, so they promised them. So finally this 1% was lifted off in there. And it allows this money, this initial money, and then every year, every biennial, they'll get more money of the 1% now than they weren't getting before. So that's where you're getting the fairgrounds money.

The horse racing, I think there's four or five horse racing counties that still, do horse race. I think Josephine County is the largest one. Yeah, and it's a million bucks for that one, right? Was that from lottery funding? Yeah, a million bucks for that to go with, you know, which it would have been better if we just would have, you know, helped, I was forced, but out, we'd have a great facility. So it's kind of helping that industry out.

Josephine County has to get a million dollars there. And then last year in December, I had, I called a meeting with the city manager and the mayor, some state staff myself. I asked Senator Robinson to join me. And actually, the city has a lobbyist, just like it's the same lobbyist for Central Point, Craig Limhouse. And we met, and we picked up a different strategy. They've been trying to emboldened to bolster this industrial area. We asked for it last year. We didn't get it. Yeah, Spalding Industrial Park, right?

So it's just like a sewage treatment plant at the industrial park? They have their own sewage treatment plan? Is that how that works? Well, it needs a pumping station because of the ground elevation. We're not, you know, like you go out to White City, it's all flat. Grants Pass is not flat. It's up and down. We're in a bowl.

And so this part of the area to expand our industry over there, we need a pumping station to get over this kind of a hill kind of get down to the thing there. So it's quite a bit of money. You know, it'd probably be cheaper if we didn't have some of the laws we had, but, you know, we can go down that road. But, yeah, so that was a meeting that we set back there. We set a strategy up. We got a lot of help. We talked to the Chamber of Congress, Terry and his people,

at the season president of Chamber of Commerce. And then we got, you know, help from the citizens. And, you know, it was a collaborative effort. So there's actually a lot of moving parts to getting that kind of funding out of these bills, right? Yeah, you know, Greg Limhouse and I worked the building. That was our job. We worked the building. We worked the key players, the money holders, the gatekeepers sitting down and constantly having lunch or sitting with them.

We actually did this separately in the building, but we're all working the same people. And we just asked the city council to testify or submit to testimony. Pretty much all of them did. There's a couple of didn't. And then everybody else in the community. And I've been telling them it can't just be one voice up there. If the community wants something, the community has to get up. there and get behind a project or something. And we were finally to able to get a little bit of

voice there and get some money for Grants Pass, you know. I want to be clear. I mean, I did not sell my vote out. Well, I remember last year, it's like, boy, they were not happy with you. I mean, the controlling Democrats. And normally everybody who got money sold themselves out last year, at least in the last session. It felt that way, at least. Was I wrong in my assumption? Or what? I would feel there was a lot more selling out than this year. Now next year, though, it's going to be a long session, which means what? The sellout starts again. Is that how it works?

Because it's a long session? It's going to be tougher because these budgets are getting, unless they start cutting DEI and all these other ridiculous things out, they're going to continue to have budget problems unless they tax Oregonians more. And the referendum come out of that. We'll see. Okay, what's the 1507? Remind me that again?

I'm sorry. That's the disconnect, the tax disconnect. Oh, the tax disconnect. Okay, yeah, so might be a citizen initiative on that. Now, that would be interesting. Very interesting. In other words, we... There's myself and a couple people talking about,

maybe doing another referendum on that. In other words, we want our tax breaks at the state level two from the Trump tax breaks, right? We want our Trump tax breaks at the state. We want the state to start, you know, reduce the spending and look at things and their priorities. The priorities are just out of whack. You know, there's obviously things in our communities that need help in the state, but DEI is not helping Josephine County.

All right. Well, thanks for the post-mortem here, State Representative Yunker. We appreciate that. I have you back. You'd be well, okay? And that's what we know, and all I can say is, thank goodness. You don't have to go back in for another year, or a little less than a year, okay? All right. Thanks. I appreciate. Thank you. Have a good one. You too. State Representative Dwayne Yonker.