The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Mike Pruitt, AlbCo Board Of Supervisors; Trump's War On Iran: Pruitt's Thoughts & AlbCo Impact

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

The I Love CVille Show headlines: Mike Pruitt, Albemarle County Board Of Supervisors Trump’s War On Iran: Pruitt’s Thoughts & AlbCo Impact $727.7M AlbCo Budget Passes With No Tax Increases Why Did Pruitt Suggest Increasing Taxes In AlbCo? Redistricting/Gerrymandering – Where Do You Stand? AlbCo Development Area – Will You Push To Expand? Rivanna River Homeless Encampment Impact On AlbCo Are CVille’s Homeless Issues Albemarle’s As Well? Read Viewer & Listener Comments Live On-Air Mike Pruitt of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors joined me live on The I Love CVille Show! The I Love CVille Show airs live Monday – Friday from 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The I Love CVille Show on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible, Rumble and iLoveCVille.com.

Welcome to the I Love Civo Show, guys. My name is Jerry Miller, and thank you for joining us on a Wednesday. It's a pleasure to connect with you. As promised, today's show will feature what I think is a household name. Mike Pruitt, he's the Scottsville District Representative on the Alamara County Board of Supervisors. He is authentically Mike, and I genuinely, genuinely, genuinely mean this. I wish more of our local electeds were truer to themselves. more authentic. That's one of the reasons I love Jesse Rutherford. Jesse Rutherford comes into any room.

He shakes hands with donors. He shakes hands with Nelson Countyans. He shakes hands with folks that are on the show on this network here. He's oftentimes wearing a hat. He's got a beard. He's wearing jeans and an unbuttoned shirt or untucked buttoned-down shirt. And he is true to himself, just like Mike Pruitt is true to himself. And I think it's almost a generational thing. It's this new age politician that understands that authenticity is just easier way of living, frankly, because you're not having to put all these different disguises on. But it also breeds human connection with constituents. I think you're going to see that with Mike Prude over the next 50 minutes here on the program.

We're going to talk about the war in Iran. I didn't know this. I learned this before the show. just a little bit ago, that Mike Pruitt's military training is in intelligence. And this portion of the world and what's going on with the war in Iran is his specialty. So we'll talk about that with him. I want to talk about the budget for Almore County. $727 million for the back of the napkin so I can burn it in my brain.

I'm just going to call it roughly $730 million, the budget for Almore County. No tax increases. I breathe this eye of relief. Mike, tremendous respect for him. He did ask for some tax increases. I'm going to ask him why. I also want to talk about the development area, whether he will consider leading a charge to expand

or try to expand that development area. 5% of Almore County is allocated to growth in development right now. I want to talk about homelessness. Mike's district, the Scottsville district includes Pantops, and many folks in his district are concerned about that Rivana River encampment. I'm going to ask them this problem. I'm kind of prepping. Yeah, I'm going to ask them this problem.

Are Charlottesville's homelessness management issues, also Almarall counties, because they're neighboring jurisdictions? So much to cover on the show. We'll give props to Stanley Martin Holmes. We had Jimmy Evers on the show yesterday, the general sales manager of Stanley Martin Holmes. Did you know Stanley Martin has built 600 homes in the last two years in central Virginia? 600 for Stanley Martin Holmes. They are doing it the communicative way, the innovative way, the honest way at Stanley Martin Holmes, and they've done it more than any other developer and home builder in this region, Stanley Martin.

Judah Wickhauer is behind the camera. If we can go to the studio and then a two-shot as we welcome Mike Pruitt to the program with a lot of people watching the program right now. I sincerely mean this. Thank you, Supervisor Pruitt, for coming on the show. I appreciate your time. I understand how valuable it is. And I'm looking forward to further getting to know you.

This is your second rodeo on the show. Take a moment to start to introduce yourself to those that are watching the show that may not know Mike Pruitt. Sure. Yeah. So as you mentioned, you know, I'm an Almanaw County supervisor. I served in the Navy for eight years. Not as an intelligence officer. Weird kind of technicality here.

But it's one I take a lot of arbitrary pride. in. So I was a surface warfare officer, a combat line officer assigned to ships for two terms. And then there's a whole division at the Office of Naval Intelligence that specifically takes officers from combat specialties and has them serve as kind of opposing force experts in their bailiwick. So as a surface warfare officer, I led a team that was focused on specifically analyzing threats from the region I worked in in the area I worked in. I was an intelligence professional, but not an intelligence officer. I say that with some kind of pride because intelligence officers are not combat officers.

And so I'm like, hey, hey, hey, I worked for a living. I'll call you a Renaissance man. Can I call you a Renaissance man? Military guy, retired military, attorney, lawyer, elected official, proud Almoreau County, dog lover. Dog lover. Dog named Joe. gets after it at the planet fitness and down Southside

and the Wegman shopping shopping center. And, you know, an important dimension that you haven't mentioned is Pastor's wife. Pastor's wife? There you go. There you go. I love the content during your campaign that featured your partner. I thought it was fantastic.

It humanized you, dude. It was all, I sincerely, sincerely mean that. As someone who absorbs a lot of content, it humanized you. Thank you. Yeah. So I normally keep busy. Of course, these days, the congressional campaign's in the rear view, and I am slowly getting back to my day job, which is to say I have not yet gotten back to my day job of working as a civil rights attorney focused on Fairhausen. That will be in the near future. But currently I'm focusing on getting my house back in order. I actually took the bus here today because my car is in the shop, because I have put off so much maintenance and basic stuff in my life around the house because, you know, running for Congress while still trying to serve Alarmar County, it can be pretty demanding. So there's a lot to catch up on. So you took Charlottesville Area Transit here? I did. I did. Honestly, I got here earlier than I expected because it was more reliable than I expected. Wow. This, don't often hear

that. It has been something that I know that city council, our friends and neighbors, have been focused on a lot. And this is actually, this has come up a few times during the budget. You know, sorry to jump all around on your Kairons that are sitting here off to the left-hand side of the screen. Sorry, right-hand side of the screen. He watches the show. But a way I've talked about the budget to a lot of people is that there's several things that are driving the budget that we control. And there's several, or things that we picked. And then there's several things that were picked for us. So there's kind of a trend of tails wagging the dollar. And in our budget where we, by contract, pay a portion of some agency's budget because they deliver

services. So if 20% of the, sorry, it's actually almost exactly 50% of JMRL, the regional library, of their patrons are Almaral County residents, that means we pay half of their budget, or we pay a 50% portion of contributions from local government to them. When their budget goes up, that kind of pulls our contribution up regardless of whether or not we have a say in that. This has been something that's happened actually with Charlottesville Area Transit. Our contributions to Charlottesville Area Transit have gone up significantly because Kat has hired a lot more drivers to try and improve route reliability. The interesting thing I find here is that this is an unusual thing where it's actually

another government is essentially driving our budget because that's a political decision with Charlottesville City Council. One I happen to agree with, so I'm not bad mouth. Yes. Right? Yes. Yeah. And so not only unionized, because they're unionized, I should say, paid more and a more prolific in

number, what you're saying drives either budgetary strain, if you look at it that way, or budgetary allocation if you look at another one. Well, I'm just saying there's been position growths, right? There are more drivers. They've hired for additional drivers. They've advertised for more drivers to try and decrease throughout wait times. And so setting aside even, because I'm not sure if their collective bargaining agreement has gone into place to drive wage. I'm not that close a watcher of city government.

So I confess, I'm not sure if that wage growth has happened yet. But yes, as their overall budget goes up, it drives ours up. There was a pretty significant increase in our contributions to CAT this year. That kind of repeats with several other agencies. There was a significant increase. this was actually pretty well public, because it got kind of messy in the public, the contract negotiations, but the SPCA.

We significantly increased our contributions to the SPCA. And there was a good reason for that. It was under an old contract that honestly did not compensate them adequately compared to regional partners. But yeah, it's an interesting dimension of the budget, and I have forgotten how I got on this table. No, no, this is good. Well, I can all adapt to you here.

In fact, this is a perfect segue into that, houseless headline, although it's on the bottom of the headlines here, it's a segue here. I'll be straightforward here. I have heard through very reliable sources that Charlottesville City Hall and City Council is preparing to ask of Alamaro County and its Board of Supervisors up to $10 million of taxpayer resources for the 2000 Holiday Drive homeless shelter that currently in planning stages. All set the stage, then get out of the way. $6.2 million allocated to purchase 2,000 holiday drive,

a 27,000 square foot office building. The purchase was done in the fourth quarter of last year. Now three different nonprofits, the Haven, the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless, and then there's a third one that's escaping me, are trying to corner the supply chain and or the budget to bring this homeless shelter to market. It went from 225 beds down to 80 beds,

which I found incredibly disheartening. And now the city of Charlottesville is realizing that this is going to cost, initially the anticipation was an additional $14 million to get it to $20 million. Now they're realizing that $14 million is light, and this may be checking in between $25 and $30 million, depending on when you're going.

instruction actually starts because gasoline, cost of goods, and labor are all escalating. The longer this goes to start, the more expensive it's going to be. I have been told by reliable people that Charlottesville City is going to ask of your board up to $10 million to fund this homeless shelter in city limits. Now I stop talking and I allow the smartest guy in the room here to take it from there. So the way you frame this right before we went live is Charlottesville. issue Albemarle counties. Yes, that's a headline on screen.

Oh, wonderful. Yeah, I watched the show so well that I can guess what the Chiron's say. That's a headline. He's got it on screen. I think I would say yes, but I would say it differently. I think regional issues are regional issues, and regional issues demand regional partnership. I think homelessness is a regional issue. Yes, people might be physically pitching their tent that night in Charlottesville,

but that, you know, if you're homeless, it's right there in the name, right? you're homeless, you pitch your tent where you can that night. And tonight, it might be Charlottesville, tomorrow, it might be in my district. On the subject of, I'm going to go in order, Freebridge, and then talk about the shelter. On the subject of Freebridge, I said this recently at the Pantop CAC, because we get a lot of questions about this there because of the proximity. I'm going to very grossly kind of categorize things as the conservative talking point and the liberal talking point. but I recognize it's more nuanced than that and complex than that.

I think both a conservative talking point and a liberal talking point here are both correct, right? The thing you might hear conservatives say is, oh, well, if you allow for a certain level of disorder and you create amenities supporting it, then, of course, you're going to have aggregating effects, right? You're going to have more people camping. If you build it, they will come. I don't think it's unfair to say, yeah, that's probably accurate. And I think that makes sense. And for the individual, for the individual homeless person, that makes sense.

It is the rational thing for them to do. And at the same time, the talking point that I think homeless advocates and the liberal point of view is also true, which is, yes, but those people would be there anyway. It's just a question of where they physically are. I think a very, an example I've used, right? I frequently walk from my house and use the biscuit-run greenway connector to get to Wegmans. So going through the woods to the Wegmans. And right behind the Wegmans, there's historically been two homeless encampments, one at the top of the hill and one at the bottom of the hill.

And this time last year, they had probably a dozen different campers and families. I counted one when I went there earlier. I just poked around. I saw one tent, and I would venture to guess. That's because a lot of those people have gone to, yes, exactly. So it's not that we're growing our homeless population, it's that they're concentrating where services are. And trying to forcefully eradicate,

disperse this encampment isn't going to fix the problem. It's just going to make it so that we're not looking at it. And I think in a pluralist and diverse society, sometimes you have to embrace the fact that if parts of your society are suffering and you're not going to fix it, then well, damn it, you've got to at least look at it. So that's kind of where we are there. The city has proposed one of several different ways that I think they're looking at a long-term solution to homelessness. And to be clear, I point this out to a lot of people, and a lot of people don't know this. We do not currently have a year-round overnight shelter that is low barrier in this region. People, my peers on the board, have been surprised when I've said that to them.

We have Pacham, which offers shelters during the winter. Well, surprise, Jerry. It's nice weather right now. Pacham ain't operating because it's not necessary for people to live, right? They operate in the winter because people will die if they don't have shelter in the winter. People will not die overnight right now. And so these people literally don't have other places to stay. There are two different low barrier shelters that are in the pipeline.

One is our friends and neighbors down at Salvation Army, which I will just recognize is a significant shift in their mission. And it represents, I think, a lot of growth from the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army historically has been a very nationally, a hard organization to work with. They have high standards they've been in the past, a little homophobic, a little transphobic, and did not operate

low barrier shelters. And they have been confronted with how that's not meeting a lot of the need of the homelessness community. They have a high barrier shelter. They have a high barrier shelter. And again, this is consistent with the national trends in this organization, so I'm not trying to cast aspersions to any local leaders in this organization. But I think there is a recognition that that's not meeting

the need in this community and in other communities. And so I'm pleased with the growth there. And then, of course, the other shelter that's in the pipeline, newly in the pipeline, is the city's holiday drive shelter that they acquired the property for, and I'm going to have to significantly renovate. Our neighbors in the city, I've said in the past, are really good at having ideas that are bold and, I think, really innovative. And then, like with a lot of local government, I think the struggle is with implement. The thing I've expressed frustration about pretty consistently is that this is a regional problem. I think our boards are cooperating better now. I think we're on the same page as governments.

And I learned about this shelter. Jeff Richardson, our county executive, learned about this shelter, to the best of my knowledge, on the news like everyone else did. Unbelievable. Which is a little frustrating because I think we understand that we're going to be asked to partner with this. Hearing that we're going to be asked for $10 million is

news and also deeply unsurprising. That would have been the number I would have guessed because it's about half of the projected costs. Right. And how they're going to position this with you guys is it's a transient population and these are Almore counties

that will be served as well and it's damn near close to the county city line. Yeah. I am willing and excited. to partner with the city on this. That being said, I think there's serious concerns that I've heard just about value engineering, about service duplication, about efficiency, and again, about our own coordination and partnership that I would like to see done.

I think the current estimates are surprising, and I'm sure there can be some meaningful value engineering. I am not sure that you need three discrete nonprofits providing these services. Patcham is the third. Patcham. I was about to say, I couldn't remember either if it was Patcham or if it was support works. Both would have made sense. Patcham, Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless and the Haven. Yes. And so I think there's a lot of opportunity for consolidation or for even hiring and training professional staff from one of our governments to take on those

roles. I'm not trying to be prescriptive here. I'm just saying concepts as they come to mind. But that strikes me as an area for a significant service duplication and for significant cost creep. I think we're seeing a lot of cost creep in this. That being said, I'm not a builder. I'm not next. Dude, I think we're on point. 100% on point.

I think I would want to go over any proposals with a bit of a fine tooth comb before we're actually cutting checks. I'm not saying that I don't think it makes sense for Alamoire County to partner on this. But I think we owe

our taxpayers due diligence? 100%. Well, one of them is watching the program right now. This is Vanessa Park Hill in Ehrlichville. And viewers and listeners, you could put your comments in the feed, and I will relay them live on air. She's in Ehrlichsville. She says, Almaro County already funnels plenty of money to the city of Charlottesville via the revenue sharing agreement.

I think it's roughly $22 million, right, this past year. No more money for holiday drive, please. No more money for holiday drive, please. This is from Almorea County. Vanessa Park Hill. This is all over the feed right now. Again, viewers and listeners, and I'm going to throw it to Mike. I've been told that City Hall and City Council are going to ask Almaro County and its Board of Supervisors for $10 million for this holiday drive homeless shelter. This is, what do you call that? That's like deep throat is better at math here than I am. He's

watching the program. He's got questions for you. It's like 1.5% of the budget. It would probably be paid out of the CIP, so this is it's a little different, right? It's something we do with like a 20-year government bond. But just guessing, you know, I don't have my, I'm so used to having our CFO Jacob Sumner for me to pitch

hard questions to, but my assumption would be that this is a capital investment, we do it through the CIP, meaning what we're actually paying is the debt service on a 20-year bond to that tune. Okay, I'm with you? That's just me guessing, and that also presents its own challenges

because a big, you mentioned before the show, the school debate, specifically around the possibility of a fourth comprehensive high school, one of the big constraints that we're facing is we're building three schools currently, and that means our CIP capacity, not the amount that we have to pay in debt service, but just to maintain our bond rating, we have to have no more than 10% of our revenue allocated toward CIP debt services. And we're at about seven and a half to eight right now. Just the capacity of new debt we can take on is really limited,

which has to, we're at the point where we have to start being a little bit more precious about what we fund through the CIP. Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciated your response to schools and a fourth high school in the northern feeder pattern, where on the record, you were flabbergasted. I mean, it was almost in the borderline reaction of appalled. with the ask from the school board.

And we'll throw that to you here. I loved everything that you said about Holiday Drive. The thing I loved the most that you said about Holiday Drive was Almore County, if you're going to ask us for some money, I want to go through this plan with a fine-tooth comb. And what's shocking to me is A, you, one of six people who is responsible for roughly $730 million budget. I mean, that's

tremendous responsibility. $730 million roughly Almore County's budget. He's one of six people responsible for allocating it. You found out about Charlottesville spending $6.2 million right next to Almore County

to convert an office building into a homeless shelter literally on the county line. And you found out about this on the news. That is, that is these are my words. These are my words, I'm not putting you in a hot spot, these are my words, that seems to be at best, the definition of bad communication, from my standpoint seems to be leadership malpractice,

my words, my words, especially if they then come on the back end and ask for you guys to write a a chat. If I were to be generous, and I try and be generous, you know better than anyone here, I think that real estate deals move fast. This was put into pretty sharp perspective since my time on the board with a few deals where we have tried to work with local non-profits to intercede when some affordable housing is put up for sale. We talked about the, you have followed in the past, I think, the interactions that I had with Bonaventure and their acquisition of Cavalier Crossing. I think we're on a much better track with that, but there was also a transition ownership with Mallside, which is currently a low-income housing tax credit community. Those tax credits are about to

expire, and it's likely to be redeveloped. A lot of our partners, tried to work with us to get together the money to acquire that, to buy it outright. And we, it was a counting, it was a fast ticking clock, and we just weren't able to figure out a funding mechanism for it fast enough because we would need to make a bid so fast. So I, to give the city a little grace, I think they were probably running around with their hair on fire to try and get a deal together to acquire the property. and maybe that meant that there were processes of notifying and reaching out for partnership that they didn't have time to go through.

And frankly, the level of communication and partnership we have with the city is new. So I don't want to throw around malpractice. I don't want to be too negative or damning to our partners over at the city. This is more of lessons learned. Hey, this was disappointing. I think we could do better in the future. How would you, I should ask that question, how would you characterize the relationship with Almore County's board of supervisors and Charlottesville City Councilors from communication, in-person meetings, like planning? You guys are, to say that your neighbors is an understatement.

I mean, to combine we're talking over a billion dollars of taxpayer resources, how do you characterize that? I think it's improving a lot. I think it's much stronger than it's been in a really long time, and I think that's good for the region. I think a lot of that reflects the fact that, frankly, Alamaral County has changed a lot. What we look like as a community has changed a lot. We've become a lot more populous.

We've become a lot more urban, frankly. A lot more of our residents are urban. A lot more of our residents are younger people. We're economically developing and diversifying, and I think that makes us look a lot more like the city. It makes a lot of the city's concerns sound a lot more like a lot of our concerns, which means we're on the same page.

I think there's always going to be issues where we don't, we're not entirely on the same page, we don't entirely understand the other's perspective. This is something, you know, I'm very close with a lot of Charlottesville housing activists, but I think there's dimensions of how housing and growth area expansion would have to look in Albaal County that are lost on people, right?

Like I can, we could turn the entire county into neighborhood density tomorrow, right? Rezone at all to R12 or something, which I think would be a bad idea on a space. Let's set that, be very clear there. But even if we did that, you're not going to have apartment buildings cropping up in Esmont tomorrow because unlike the city, we don't have water and sewer infrastructure. There's significant capital investments. And that's just a dimension of what our housing concerns look like that is different than the city. So there's always going to be perspective differences,

but I think we're doing a lot better than we have in the past. And I think the last piece of the puzzle is going to be to extend that level of improved cooperation to the university. We need to be three governments, because the university is a government, right? We need to be three governments working in lockstep towards shared goals. I think the important thing that we're going to have to partner with in the near future is transit. I think transit has to be all three of those agencies with equal amount of buy-in. I think ideally we need to be moving toward a consolidated transit

where all three of those agencies have their assets pooled together in the regional transit authority, and we're working on that. While we're working to create that possibility, I'm sure there's some people who want to maintain a little bit more independence. Well, I would imagine UVA is going to want to maintain independence across the board and everything. And they would probably say, and a lot of UVA watches the program, foundation, and I've been told

the President Beardsley's right-hand person watches the show and puts a synopsis together of what we talk about on the show for him to consider. I'll play devil's advocate with you, and before I play devil's advocate with you, I want to say that I absolutely agree with you that UVA should be a part of the table because what's best for Almore County

and what's best for Charlottesville is undoubtedly tied to UVA. And as I've gone, from a single man to a married man to having two kids, I gain different perspective. And I think the perspective has made me better. And I want what's best not only for now, but in Almar County and Charlestville for our sons as well, which is down the road. Devil's Advocate, though, why would UVA want to open up that dialogue or have that like triangle of communication when they know it's probably going to lead to, say, Michael

Payne's pilot payment in lieu of taxes? push that he's trying to make, or the city and the county asking for significant sums of money to create a regional transit brand that vertically integrates, back-end communication, transit routes, buses, all the same line to drive consistency and efficiencies. And frankly, I think where it's really going to come is the city and the county pushing the university to be even more of a developer of housing tied to students, and grad students to pull them out of the taxpayer housing ecosystem, which would create more supply and potentially breed more rooftop affordability for the marketplace. So why would the university want to do that?

Besides being good stewards. I want to begin with kind of a point you mentioned, which is Michael Payne has been consistently allowed advocate for payment in lieu of taxes, pilot. I agree with Michael Payne on a lot. I think of them as a friend. But this is something I think we diverge on, not because I don't like the idea of UVA cutting me a check every month. Sure. That would be great for the county.

But we don't have a like to stand on, right? There's no mechanism we have to force it other than just be by being loud and cantankerous. Yeah. And I don't think that, you know, we're talking about partnership. I don't think that builds better partnership. I think the approach that we should be taking with UVA is frankly the same we should be taking with Charlottesville. because we also, he mentioned revenue sharing, right? I don't have the ability to unilaterally kill revenue sharing.

The best I can do is work in partnership and say, hey, Charlottesville, if we're going to give you this money, let's make sure it's serving our purposes. And if it starts to, I'm concerned that as Al Barl County continues to economically develop, that revenue sharing portion is going to become egregious. 100%. It's $22 million now. I think showing good faith and working on shared priorities is how we can build the goodwill necessary to cap revenue sharing in a new agreement. That's something I want to start opening a dialogue for a really. Great idea. We have a realistic pathway to that. But both of these strategies involve, involve building goodwill, building relationships, and identifying shared priorities.

I think a regional transit authority would legitimately benefit the university. I think it will benefit the city and out. County more, but it'll benefit the university because transit is something that benefits from economies of scale. That's obvious. So you're saying it makes life better for students? Yes. That's what you're saying. Well, I think it makes life the same for students. I think their experience of using Transloak to track their buses and wait for their buses is going to be identical. I think what it does is it probably drives down costs for the university because they'll be able to consolidate staff. They will be able to rely on the economies of scale of a consolidated

transit authority that is managing the assets across both, well, all three jurisdictions. And I think that would be something that would long term decrease costs. And also there's an important dimension here. And a big reason I want UTS to be one of the direct transit authorities that are part of CARTA. Federal transit subsidies are based on riders. You know who's got the most ridership? Of course, the student. UVA. It's the student.

So we would boost their ridership numbers by adding cats' numbers to them, but golly, they would boost our ridership numbers. And our total, the total size that we would pull down in federal subsidies would increase. This is a model that we see in other kind of town-down, mixed government communities. We see this in Blacksburg.

We see this, oh, I was just. I want to say we see this in Chapel Hill also. There was another local government I was just thinking, I think it's Chapel Hill. It is a common approach where you consolidate all the different transit authorities into a single unified transit authority because just the economies of scale work better. I think we can work toward that, but it's going to involve building trust with these other organizations. Okay. Comments are coming in quickly. We got handsome Hank Martin.

We got Philip Dow of Scottsville, William McChesney of McChesney, of McIntyre. deep throats on the feed here. We've got print, radio, and television all over the feed right now. Charlottesville Sanitary Supply has been in business for 62 consecutive years. I would like to highlight the Vermillion men, Andrew and John Vermillion, a three-generation strong business, a family that's lived in Amarral County for five generations. Their businesses, Charlottesville Sanitary Supply and Charlottesville Swimming Pool Company are who you should keep top of mind for anything cleaning related, vacuum-related, and swimming pool related. I'm going to open a lot of it up to Q&A from the viewers and listeners in about five minutes.

I have a few more of my own here. Revenue sharing agreement. So far, I'm going to be, so far, everything you have said, I have completely not in my head in agreement with. Like, we, maybe we're not as far off on politics as I initially thought. One of the best things I've heard in an extremely long time is capping the revenue sharing agreement. This is what you said.

As Almar County's economy becomes more, you know, vivacious, stronger, AstraZeneca, biotechnology, Paul Manning, Biotech Institute, data science, and all these businesses

that are going to build this little ecosystem. Almaro County's economy is booming. Emily Kilroy, you're watching this program right here. Emily Kilroy, you need a race.

Emily Kilroy, you are effing crushing at Emily Kilroy. Okay, I'm giving you some props, Kilroy here. She came on the I Love Seville Network a handful of months ago, and I don't think she's been asked

questions like I've asked anyone. in a public setting, and I could tell she was cringing. Like literally cringing on the show. You're not. You do this all the time. She does not. Okay, it was very different. But she's crushing it, okay?

She did used to handle a lot of the county's public media engagement. Communications, right. She's an old hand at this. A comms director, though, does it behind the scenes often. That's true. Where you're used to doing this. I think, again, I'm always trying to give people grace. You're right.

Emily is extraordinary at her job. has done a great role there. If anything, I'm concerned. I said this to our county executive the moment she was selected for the role. I'm like, this is great. She's going to be so great at it. Are you concerned about flight?

She's concerned about flight? She's a county executive writing to happen. Emily Kilroyd. Because on her resume is Coms director, economic director, and soon it's going to be like, look, Jeff's going to be here for a while. He's got a sweet spot in Glenmore. He ain't leaving.

This is the finish line here. Okay, so Emily's going to be like, am I capped out with Jeff staying here? I know she's thinking that. Somewhere she's cringing right now. I think I'm making this lady cringe. I'm sorry for talking. I'm sorry for making him blush,

but my point is this is Al Morrow's economy is crushing it. Charlottesville's economy is flatlined at best. I'm very critical of Chris Engel in City Hall and the Economic Development Director there. I think he is not doing a great job. Those are my words. Your economy is crushing it. The revenue sharing payment every year is going up. Astroseneca, biotechnology.

I mean, are we going to be talking $50, $60 million here? And then Charlottesville City is just like the fat cat laying in the sun as mommy and daddy is like Joe the dog laying in the sun as the parents bring the sirloin

to feed Joe. That's what Charlottesville is. She does like to sunbates. She likes to just if it's hot enough, she goes on a walk and she just lays down on the sidewalk instead of going on a walk. You have Joe here you're creating with Charlottesville. I, you know, I don't claim to be an expert or know much about Charlottesville's economic development activities. The two things I think that are driving kind of this difference is, frankly, one,

we have still undeveloped land. And Charlottesville is out. They're capped. And the other thing, though, is that Charlottesville already actually has a pretty, for its size, a pretty favorable, what we would call tax composition. And this is, you will probably hear every supervisor and every member of senior county staff, this is one of the biggest stories that we are trying to push right now, is we have become a much more residential county, and the portion of our revenues that are coming from businesses, commercial industrial, has decreased over time

just because residential is growing, residential costs more to serve. I think it's important that we be able to have, obviously. It's what I run on is what I talk about most of the time when I'm not on this show, apparently, is housing, and our needs. to house more of our residents and prospective residents,

but the truth is it costs more. And so we have identified a strong need to kind of push recomposition of our tax base, which means attracting new businesses. So it is a, we are in a position of greater extremists than the city, and

because of that, I think we're approaching this with a level of intensity, economic development with a level of intensity that the city isn't, because it's going to be really critical for us to not continue to have to rely on our citizens for for revenues to provide services and instead be able to rely on you know some pretty robust economic growth we're talking 10% roughly of the revenue sharing agreement is the city's budget and as your con your jurisdiction gets stronger with its economy and you guys are crushing it you are crushing it and you're going to crush it

even more with diversifying county money with business and biotechnology. I mean, we're not even talking at, what, Home Depot? We're not even talking the Rio Road, small area plan, that development. There's still quite a few land bays left at Rihanna Future, right? This is just the first land bay, and it's not even the type of industry we expected to. Exactly, exactly. We expected her to go across the road, right? we expect North Point to be the folks who are getting on all the biotech.

Bingo. So you guys are crushing it. Charlottesville, these are my words. They're not Mike's words. I see counselors watching the program. You guys are not crushing it. That's why I've been pushing this door up for downtown as a way to drive bodies, the designated outdoor refreshment area for the mall, to drive vitality.

That's a different show. Dude, like, why do they need to be economically focused if that revenue sharing is going to go from 10% to 15% to 20% and even higher. The cap is huge. I mean, this is coming from a lawyer watching the program. If I were in Almore County shoes, I would tell the city that we are going to sue to invalidate the revenue sharing agreement on the theory of frustration of purpose.

The agreement was given in order to stop further annexation of county territory by the city. Annexation is no longer legally possible. That was not foreseen at the time. Seems like a viable enough threat that you could bring the city to the table. and he says, I'm doing this as a city resident and feel like I get almost zero value for the taxes I pay. So this is an argument against my interest in the situation. I've heard people suggest, and I can't speak for the county. I am not the county's counsel.

I am myself, also a lawyer, but like barely, right? I've been practicing for a little over a year, and my specialty isn't in contracts, although I did well in contracts in school. I've heard the argument about frustration of purpose or impossibility. My kind of knee-jerk reaction is you could make that argument. Frustration of purpose and impossibility, though, are pretty high legal standards to meet. And the counter-argument would be, okay, it was anticipatable.

And even if so, we've already, you know, there was a meeting of the minds, there was actually good consideration that was given because they didn't annex us in the year that it was possible. I think it would be a challenging at best lawsuit, and it would certainly undermine that kind of good faith we're trying to build with the city. I just don't see that as being the best way to get toward the solution that we want.

I don't want to be paying Charlottesville $20 million. If we did not have the revenue sharing, I could effortlessly get to the target, that I've committed to very publicly on the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and fund a bunch of other things I want to fund. Right? We have a lot of urgent needs in the county and I would obviously be able to much more easily meet those needs but for revenue sharing. So don't hear me as trying to make excuses because I want to keep giving our neighboring government more money. I'm just saying I don't see that as being the best way to get what I agree we want as a county. That's fair, fair, I appreciate your straightforwardness here.

Comments are continuing to come in. This one is from, I mean, this is a great one from Hank Martin. This is in the news. What is Mike's take on the recent, and Hank Martin's photo on screen, Mike's take on the recent denial of the Zoning Commission for additional affordable housing in Beaver Creek citing water issues, and if water is a deed of concern, how does Old Trail Village, et cetera, get approved? Beaver Creek would assist affordable housing that seems too,

easily dismissed. The optics are not good. I'll add a little bit of color here. Hank Martin is talking about trailer park. And it's not the Zoning Commission, the Planning Commission, who basically said we're not in favor of this. You guys have the final set. The optics are trailer park, white, bougie, affluent croz-e, not wanting a trailer park. The flip side is, and I'm putting this in very simple terms. Almore County, housing issue, trailers are affordable, anything affordable that has a roof and walls is good. Planning Commission says no because they're trailers.

Activists like livable Seaville, heck, Sally Duncan left a comment I read this morning in the Facebook comment section. She's extremely authentic. You talk about calling, and I appreciate that about Sally Duncan as well. I hope she hears that. I'm giving her props. In the comment section of Matthew Gilliken's Facebook post, the co-chair of Livable Seville,

basically is like, this is a travesty, what the Planning Commission did. What are your thoughts on that trailer parking crozee and what the Planning Commission did? Yeah, of course. So I have a new Planning Commissioner, Catherine Brown. And so I talked to her about this on Monday, and also right before I came here,

I was actually texting with Matt Gilliken about this outcome. We don't text very frequently, but he, I think his heart is very close to this issue, and he expects that mine is. And he was, I think, a little surprised to see the planning commissioner representing Scottsville in the no category. Five two, I think. Yes. Five two against. It might have been four-two because I'm not sure if everyone was there.

I confess I have not watched the recording yet. Nor, and I say this all the time, I make a point of not reviewing zoning applications until they actually come to me. Because things change. So I'm not going to talk about the individual merits of this specific proposal because I haven't reviewed it yet, because it is not ready for my review. And I don't want to burn time reviewing something that's going to be different than what's going to actually come to this. Fair enough. So the things I will say, I am frustrated and I see it as a talk about travesties. Our zoning ordinance currently, our comprehensive plan, does not meaningfully contemplate the possibility.

of trailer parks. It is not a zoning category that we have and they're treated just like any other house. That means our zoning code forces them to be in the growth area. Trailer parks are economically unfeasible in the growth area. In no small part

because once upon a time you could have trailer parks all work off the same tap, right? You could have five lots off the same service authority tap. Service authority taps are expensive. Now they require individual tap fees for every individual lot. You're right there adding 15, 20,000. I'm forgetting

the exact tap fee currently. To the starting price of any trailer lot, that makes it instantly unaffordable unless you're charging way more than anyone would ever pay for a lot rents for a trailer. So they almost de facto have to be in the rural area where they can have either a private septic system or a wells and tanks. I didn't know that. Yes. It's a really important dimension of the economics of housing, if we're going to have these. And we do not currently treat trailer parks as anything other than just other housing. And that just doesn't work for the realities of this. So that's right there a problem.

This is in the rural area, but immediately adjacent to the development area in Crozé, which is part of why it's even up for review. There is, I think the way the planning commission is going to review something is always different than how the board's going to review something. in two ways, right? One is that the Planning Commission is tasked with reviewing things for conformity, for zoning compliance. Basically, they're saying, does this follow the rules?

The Board of Supervisors is supposed to be approaching, you know, not to put ourselves on too high pedestal, but we're approaching things from a Nordve perspective, from a philosophical perspective. Does this meet the needs of our community or not? So that will always, I think, demand different outcomes. And on top of that, just very practically, the Planning Commission isn't the final authority. And I think they know that when they're voting on it.

So a Planning Commissioner can look at something and say, this is going to do so much good for the county and still vote NOAA on it and have a clean conscience on it. So I think something I know my Planning Commissioner was looking at is thinking, this is going to do a lot of good things for meeting our housing needs. There's ways I think it could be improved. She has expertise on water quality issues that I confess I lack. She's a landscape architect. And I think she had some concerns on this.

Again, I don't claim expertise, and I don't claim to have reviewed this in depth yet because it hasn't come to me. I think there are people on the planning commissioner, there are people on the planning commission who saw this as an opportunity to improve the project before it got here. There's also probably people on the planning commissioner who commission, excuse me, who just, don't want to see this move forward. I, for one, think that so long as we make it economically impossible, we are forced to seriously consider housing in the rural area in the form of trailer parks. But I'm not going to say right now, yes, I'm going to vote for it

because I don't think it's good to get in the practice of saying, yes, I'm going to vote for anything. When I've said several times, I have not yet reviewed the proposal, because again, it's not too many. But I expect I would be one of several people who would view this more favorably. Fair. Appreciate that.

How about the development area? The push to expand. This is probably where we're going to disagree, but we're going to do so in golden rule in respectable fashion here. You've pushed to trade out parts of development area for non-parts of development area, specifically Rivana Village,

where a neighborhood I used to live in, Glemour did one of the best lobbying and strategizing and coordinating efforts I've ever seen against Breezy Hill, which is a, was a southern development-focused neighborhood. Now is a significant amount of homes with Stanley Martin. They're about to bring them to market. I think he said 80 yesterday, Jimmy Evers, $600 to $700,000 starting point for those 80 homes at Breezy Hill. Glemore kept that from being a much more significant development. And as a result, you've pushed to sub out Rivana Village with a plot of similar acreage or geographical territory that's not in the development area.

I found that intriguing. You've also pushed to expand the development area or suggested alluded to it. Where does Mike Pruitt today, Wednesday, April 29th, 2026 stand with the development area, expanding it from the 5% and or trading parts of the area out for other parts of the area. I think there's two different processes that are being talked about

and I want to make sure that we're talking about them very cleanly because both of them potentially involve expansion. One is the swaps, right? Which I get a lot of credit for this idea and I want to be very clear, you know, I've been in favor of it. It was Ned's idea.

It was Ned's idea. And then I immediately, like, two minutes after he voiced it, said, that's an interesting idea. I like it. And it became Mike Pruitt's idea. But Ned was the bright idea fairy here. Say if Ned's watching the show. Go ahead.

And I think that's compelling, right? Because there are parts of our county that are, I mean, let's put it bluntly, policy failures. Insofar as we say, our development area exists for us to concentrate development so that we are maximizing utilization of limited land, so that we're making it so that people don't have to drive as far so that we can be an integrated and urban community. while still preserving rural areas, then Rivana Village as a development area, right? Rivana Village includes all the land around Glenmore

and the neighboring developments is a policy failure because it meets none of those objectives. And the political history of it is kind of dicey and unfortunate, I think. If we're going to look at that, then I think we need to grapple with that seriously. If we're saying this is a policy failure,

if we're saying that, you know, this is something that I know Neil Williamson brings up a lot, It's great that we have Biscuit Run, a wonderful community asset that's going to connect a lot of communities that are very siloed currently. It's great that we have that, but that also would have been tens of thousands of housing units to house a growing county. All of that's true, and all of that's in the place where we say we're going to try and build as densely and urbanly as possible. Then I think we need to offset that with nibbling around the edge of our growth area in offsetting that. then there's the separate thing of what I would call the big bite, serious growth area expansion.

That, I think, involves a lot more planning. I think it's a lot bigger in scale. And I think what our goal should be is creating a community that is still just as integrated and thoughtfully planned and able to support urban living environments. If you keep nibbling around the edge, you're going to actually undermine that, right? What you want to do is generate, create a second node of activity.

Sure. I might picture in 50 years from now a dumbbell-shaped Albemarle County with a second node on the northern edge of 20. Or, yeah, right, can you kind of picture what I'm talking about? The northern edge of 20. Sorry. 29? Yes, yes, 29. Because you see this being around that biotechnology hotspot.

We're investing so deeply there. Yeah, that makes sense to me. There's going to be increasing residential needs. And I see that as a future. of the barbell would be 29. And the other end of the dumbbell would be Charlottesville. Yeah, I totally see that happen. That is, of course, a longer conversation.

And I think that's going to be something we need to plan very intentionally and deliberately based on the needs of the county over a long period, right? I'm not talking about radical development expansion in the next 10 years. What I will say is our build-out analysis that we're getting routine updates on is becoming more alarming at a faster speed than I expected. Okay. So what does that mean? We are seeing, so our build down analysis already contains some assumptions that I think are pretty busted.

Okay. Right. It includes assumptions that we're going to, that individual landowners are actively going to redevelop under capacity lots. Okay. Which we know just doesn't happen that much, right? Sure. There aren't hundreds of Charlottesville residents chomping at the bit to plow down their

single family residents to build three single family residences. Or even do an ADU. Right. Because it's too expensive. It's expensive and it's not what you want, right? I bought this because I want a large yard, that kind of thing. So it already includes that assumption on our build-down analysis. And even with those assumptions, we're showing five, 10-year projections that show over 75% capacity.

That's bleak, right? That's when you start to have serious what is developable left in the county conversations, not even to mention how is the dearth of developable land affecting land prices. I see that I'm starting to have my mental clock tick forward, right? That doomsday clock on Al-Marl land capacity is moving faster than I thought it was. 100%. And so with that, I am, I will say personally, I think I'm seeing this as a more urgent thing, and I think we need to be doing some active planning around what it's going to look like

and when we're going to expand the development area, which is, I realize that still sounds a little mealy mouth. No, no, no, no. That is stronger than I felt a year ago, two years ago. I think we are starting to see... The frog is boiling, and it's starting to realize it. I realize in the metaphor, the frog doesn't realize it's boiling. I'm saying the frog is realizing it's boiling.

Yeah, yeah. Drew is struggling off screen here. He appreciated that, dear. So did I. So what he means by the frog is boiling is economic vitality is happening. New jobs are being created. Those new jobs that are being created, those new jobs that are being created are being filled by folks that don't live in the region by large part, and as a result,

people are moving here. Population expansion means boiling, and finite housing means expensive housing. Back of the napkin, what are you hearing the back of the napkin estimate for the population increase over the next three to five years? I don't try and throw out numbers if I'm not in a position where I've either just reviewed those numbers or have them in front of me. I've heard six to eight thousand people. That sounds realistic. Which is bananas to me. And it's banana. Okay, so it sounds realistic. Six to eight thousand people

moving to the area in the next three to five years with maybe 800 to a thousand units of housing for sale on an MLS. That's bananas. And that is not even considering the fact that our affordable

inventory is even further behind. Is it. Is even further behind than our inventory aggregate, right? So we need to develop about 10,000 to meet our 2040 goals in new housing units. And right now we're struggling to maintain our current level of inventory. We are treading water. I mention this because people don't think about this, but you actually, you're actively always losing affordable housing inventory. You're losing affordable housing inventory faster than you're losing unaffordable housing inventory because it's the, it's the affordable housing that gets redeveloped because it's at the end of a 30 year, 20 year life cycle.

Sure. And we, a major concern I have, what I see as a major crisis in this county, is that a huge chunk of our affordable inventory was built through low-income housing tax credits in the 90s. And those tax credit properties are all set to expire, meaning they're no longer required to be affordable. And what happens when you have tax credits expire is unless there is some local government stepping in and saying, okay, how about you redevelop if we give you X. many dollars and stay affordable. If they don't have that, what they do is they sell to someone who specializes in redevelopment of distressed or low-income properties.

Bonaventure. And they, yes. Yeah. And these are all, you know, I had a professor in community development. You know, I have a master's in public policy, or sorry, master's in policy management. And he would always say, you can't fault when the lion devours the guy at the search. It's not the lion's fault. It's the lion handler because the lion is going to do what a lion does. You know, the corporation is going to do what the corporation does, which is maximize profit, public interest be damned.

The lion tamer is the one who's supposed to bring those interests to heal to serve the public. And you're the lion tamer. I think government is the lion tamer. It reminds me of when elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers. that's basically what you're saying. Yeah. Elephants are fighting and they're fighting over housing. Bonaventure has the $20.5 million, ballparked.

I think that's what it was. They come in after a 1031 exchange, a Northern Virginia real estate investment trust. They buy Cavalier Crossing for an incredible price. I mean, this looks like in today's dollars and this just happened a few years ago, like they stole. especially if you're going to build $25 million for 80 Cots on Holiday Drive. That's effing insane right there

as a comp. Okay. And props to you, the housing advocate, you were like, we should have done something about this, Cavalier Crossing, Yamoral County, and now in hindsight, you've given you props, you clearly were right

because you're about to get, my words, shaken down by your neighbor, the city, for $10 million on a holiday drive, when that would have been 50% the acquisition cost of cab crossing, which was, what? I have to look at my notes, 144 apartments times three bedrooms per apartment?

And I want to be clear, so we have looked at acquiring properties that are low income that have gone on the market before. Cab crossing is actually one, I will confess, snuck up on me. I didn't realize they had gone on market because it wasn't one we were monitoring as well. closely because Cavalier Crossing is actually an uncommon thing. It was naturally occurring affordable housing. It was not a lie-tech property. $500 a better. And that is because it was originally student housing. It is very, very hard to underwrite the kind of housing it is, especially if you're

not claiming to serve primarily students. So much of the housing shortfalls that we see across the country, so much of the housing crisis we see across the country has to do with how housing finance is structured and incentivized, which is why a lot of these projects, I mean, this is why I want to serve in Congress. I think there is a significant role for Congress to step in, use the federal housing finance agencies, authorities to reshape and restructure how financing of housing goes, to further lean on the role of community development financial institutions, CDFIs, to reshape how housing finance is structured. I think by reimagining some of the key building blocks of housing finance,

you're also able to disincentifies and break up the trends that create these kind of little petty monopolies, regional monopolies of housing developers that are also driving up costs and extracting, frankly, undo rents from, rents in an economic term, not literal rents, from residents and from communities. There is a lot more that we can engage on this as a country, And I think it just requires a willingness to run up against banking interests,

which is something that unfortunately the Democratic Party is not as keen to do, as I might hope, from the party of the working class. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because the banking interests are the ones that are funding a lot of the folks into office. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so he's basically saying banking is so set in its ways and so influential and powerful that it's not going to underwrite deals. for developers that want to bring housing affordability to market. And as a result, you get luxury housing like Stonefield,

luxury housing like they're doing on West Main. That's 2,2,500 a month and far from affordable. Like what we're seeing on the bypass. God, there's so many comments coming in. I'm mindful of his time. We're at the 140 marker, and we have a lot to cover here. I'm going to try to pick up the tempo, because I have a lot I want to cover with you. $727.7 million the Admiral County budget which passed with no tax increases.

I'm going to ask you a straightforward question. How do additional taxes on rooftops making it more expensive to stay in homes coincide with housing affordability? Because you asked of real estate tax rate increase and personal property tax rate increase. How does that translate to affordable living in Amar? So quick clarification for the folks at home. I asked for a real estate tax increase or a personal property tax increase. What I proposed was one cent on real estate, 29 cents on personal property,

giving us the, because this is what we advertise, meaning that's the most we can do. This gave us the flexibility to potentially chop and screw some combination of those or to see which of them the community was more opposed to. I see that as being essential, So let me begin by saying, I am skeptical. We talk sometimes about progressive versus regressive taxes. I would say traditional wisdom says that both of these taxes are regressive.

And I'm not going to disagree with that on its face. There are two things I'll say is one. They're the only ways we have to realistically raise revenue. We have a limited toolkit that we're given by the General Assembly. If I had my druthers, we would be relying primarily on a progressive income tax administered by the state and the state would just give us a heck load more money, right? That's the cleanest way to do this. But that's not the situation we're in. I have to work with the tools I have. And it's also not clear which of these taxes is more regressive. There are progressive elements built in to the

personal property tax rate, right? There's exemptions below 20,000. You get essentially half off your tax bill below 20,000, and no taxes below 1,000. So people who are driving absolute lemons aren't paying taxes on them. That being said, obviously, everyone has a car, but not everyone has a mansion. So it's not clear which of these is less progressive. Probably real estate is slightly more, or slightly more less regressive than personal property. I'm with you on that. It's not clear.

The individual burden on a low-income person caused by a tax increase is real, but it's also going to be negligible. compared to the benefit that they would receive from the Albemarle Housing Trust Fund. First off, if you're in rental housing, I will just confess, yes, the straight economics of it would suggest that higher tax rates mean higher rents. When we are in a position where the housing market is so tight, is so strapped, I don't know that that becomes strictly true anymore. I think most Albemarle County landlords are charging the highest the market would demand because they can, right? because they know that there is a dearth of inventory,

and so they can demand the highest possible rents that people can come up with. Which means if their overhead, if their taxes decrease, they still know how much they can charge. They're not going to decrease their rents just because taxes go down. So let's start with that assumption. And then the other thing is, yes, most people have to rely on a car, even low-income people. it is always a hazard to mention personal experience because personal experiences can vary dramatically.

But, you know, I made very publicly $55,000. There's a news article about how much money I made when I was working as a civil rights attorney, which puts me in a lower bracket in Albaughal County. Granted, my husband makes a little more than me, so we're not uncomfortable, and I saved pretty well when I was in the Navy. So you guys are at the median family household income

above the median family household income with combined? With combined. Which is 125,900. When my husband moved in with me and before he had gotten his new job that he has with the Diocese of Virginia, we were below. We were around 60% AMI with my supervisor at salary and my personal salary combined, maybe closer to 80. So we were moderate to low income before he started working again. I drive a 12, 13-year-old car, which is. is about the average in this count in in Virginia.

I, we have six month assessment periods on cars. I pay about 60 bucks in assessments. So 120 a year. My husband just got a brand new car because he commutes to Richmond all the time. He pays like 300 something in assessments. Per six months? Per six months. So 600.

Yes. Okay. So the proposed tax increase that was closer to the finish line of 15 cents on personal property would have been about three. percent higher. That is Nichols a month for me. But if I was in a subsidized

apartment that we would be able to build because of AIF, that would be hundreds of dollars a month. Respect how you're putting in. So I think the cost radically, radically is outweighed by the benefit for our low income neighbors. And I think that we have to grab with that. Almeral County

is a wealthy community. We have the ability to uplift some of the people who are struggling. We have the ability to make this a more affordable community. And I'm particularly frustrated because we are, as a board, we have committed really publicly and really consistently to these standards. And I think if you state a goal and then you do not come with a roadmap to get to that goal. You're disingenuous.

Then you're disingenuous. Yes, this is what my whole issue with Trump is and how we ran in the second term. And I have to throw that to you. I'm going to respectfully push back on this. This is the, I think, the first time in the interview that we've disagreed. You just eloquently explained why a marginal increase on personal property has very little impact on households that are doing well, or even at AMI, at median family household income, or even at 80% AMI. You're saying it's nickels, it's a few dollars more. My response to that is it's a few dollars.

more at the time when gas has gone from $2.79 to $4.20. It's a few dollars more when groceries are expensive, when credit card debt, floating debt is more expensive than ever, when assessments in Almaro County last year, excuse me, the real estate tax rate last year in Amar County jumped 4% at the time where the assessments also increase or the assessments also increased this year, where compensation, salaries are not upticking at the rates that household overheads, has increased. So it's in the grand scheme of things extremely nominal.

The personal property tax rate increase, yes, but it's compounded by all the death of a thousand cuts the household is suffering right now. And that's what's led to the frustration of the Almaro County in with any tax rate increase. Fred Missal changed. We anticipated it was going to be potentially a fourth re-vote because Missal, Ned Galloway, Sally Duncan, and you

voted yes to advertise a 15 set. Lipisto-Curtly B and supervisor Anne Malick said no. Then Fred Missal, after hearing from constituents, shifted his vote from the yes to advertise to the no on the personal property. And then you guys took a fine-tooth comb and found the money anyway. We found some of the money.

We didn't meet our goal. Okay. Because of that vote failing. The money that we found was a foregone conclusion. it was going to go to A-Hif, and this goes back to my previous point. I am frustrated and disappointed, and I would say this to his face, probably have. With Fred. Because I see he's disingenuous. You think he was being disingenuous? I do. I think you commit to something very publicly, and you don't have the plan and the work to show how you're going to get to that in this calendar year.

You're saying he committed to it while campaigning. He committed to it while campaigning and at Nehemiah impact. Yeah. And then within 90 days of- Nehemiah actions. of being in office, he did the opposite. I find it frustrating. And I understand his position, right? He spoke to constituents, and he probably had pretty robust resistance. 100%. Samuel Miller district.

Fred represents the most profoundly wealthy people in this county, in America. I live in that district. Yeah. Didn't realize you had moved. I moved. MyP. One of my best constituents. And Ivy.

Thank you, Mike. You're a comedian as well. Look at Judas slamming his ass off over there. Pruitt's got jokes. He's throwing funny shade over there. I appreciate that for Prue. Missile changed his vote. It surprised me.

In fact, I will go and say, the dude listens to the show. You've got Planning Commissioners watching you here now as well. Missal, his vote, is going to determine so much of what happens in Amarrow County. Because it's clear Galloway, Matt Galloway, front of the program. Sally Duncan, don't know her from Eve. Very willing to get to know her. Mike Pruitt, respect you tremendously. You guys appear to be a voting block.

Lipisto-Curtly, be-Lipistow-Curtly, don't know her from Eve. Anne Malick, know her, are a voting block. And if Missal joins the Lepistow-Curtly-Malick block, that's a 3-3 and nothing happens. I think it's always worth noting you can't put everyone on a clean, you know, scale, right? I, for example, am a little more attuned and have to be because of my district to certain rural needs than, say, Sally, or even B. B is, I mean, B is in a lot of ways, one of the most conservative people on the board. 100%. And so she is less enthusiastic about taxation and is more inclined toward being more of a spinthrift than maybe some of us.

But also, she- Which surprises me because probably on paper the most well-off of the supervisors living inside the gates of Keswick. Well, the other thing I was going to say, though, is she is really enthusiastic about business development and is closer with some business interests. And with that, I think she is maybe not always the most opposed to more forward-leaning on development and growth. It's always going to be. But this is just to say, like, things are idiosyncratic, right? I think sometimes Jim Andrews, who preceded Fred on the board, was characterized by some activists as being anti-housing, because he was anti-growth.

He represented a very rural district, and he ran and cares deeply about rural area conservation. But he was also, I mean, he was someone who volunteered his free time with the Legal Aid Justice Center. And in my first term, I remember I pushed really aggressively for increased funding for our emergency relief program, an eviction diversion program. He was the one vote that was with me on that. So we're idiosyncratic in our different ways. Respect. I want to do three or four more minutes and then we're mindful of this time. It's 152. This guy has been awesome here. How do we, gosh, we could spend an entire week talking about these last two topics.

And the last two topics are redistricting, gerrymandering and what the heck Trump is doing right now. You totally were right at the beginning of the show. been like the budget and like Iran. You're totally right. I got to put the meme on screen. Okay. Can I put the meme? Yeah, let's talk about Iran and this.

Okay, okay. Put, if you could put the meme on screen, this is from truth social. Uh-huh. This, I honestly, and this is me being authentic when it comes down to it in a lot of ways, like the maturity of a middle schooler, okay? I saw this meme this morning. This made me vomit a little bit of my mouth and I had to swallow it back down. This is Donald Trump on truth social.

I think it's AI probably. Yeah. with a machine gun or a rifle? Is he wearing sunglasses? Is he in a suit? And what's the headline on it, Juna? No more Mr. Nice guy. No more Mr. Nice guy.

This is everywhere now. This is humiliating. Let's talk. What are we even doing? What are we doing? What's the goal? What's the accomplishment? Okay, okay. You know, I served in the military for a long time. I'm obviously not afraid of military conflict

and of the idea of America exercising power, but I'm also a Christian. Okay. You don't engage in violence and bloodshed unless it's in the service of mitigating violence and bloodshed and harm. Strategic intent objectives inform strategy and strategy informs tactics. I have not been clear for a single second what the United States objective is, because we've been inconsistent in what we've said our objective is. There have been some who have suggested it's about eliminating Iran's nuclear problem. program, which I find a really uncanny, we had effectively eliminated Iran's nuclear program

almost a decade ago. Jikpoha, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal, had problems. There's a lot of things that didn't do it. Didn't try and rein in Iranian proxies. It didn't try, their funding of terror in the region. But what it did do is it curtailed Iran's nuclear ambitions. It created an inspection program, and they complied with it. It worked.

also cooled tensions. We were able to de-emphasize the Middle East to focus on our real actual strategic threats in Russia and China because of cooling tensions, right? It was very embarrassing when our sailors in the Riverine detachment were detained by Iranian officials, but our sailors messed up, right? I'm sure people have seen this image, and it feels like a black eye, but the truth is, we accidentally encroached on their territorial waters, and they returned our sailors without punishing them. That reflects a massive cooling intentions. And we have thrown that out. We have actually made it more likely that Iran in the future be a violent and unpredictable threat. We have put a more untrustworthy and violent person in charge of Iran, right?

Mjtabakhamani was not likely to ever be the Supreme Leader. His father opposed him. a lot of the Council of Experts opposed him because he was seen as deeply embedded with the besiege, with the IRGC, with the industrial interests that support the IRGC. He is a violent and mercurial person by his nature in a way that outstrips his father. And he was unlikely to, even with hardliner control of the Council of Experts, he was unlikely to ever be the Supreme Leader. He is now the Supreme Leader because of the situation that we created, we have created the necessary ingredients for a more dangerous and unpredictable administration.

And the only way we can fully ensure that they don't have a military capacity or the ability of threaten us would be absolute destruction, as in no Iran left, which is not our goals. It would be something that would require a ground invasion. It would require the deaths of Americans, of Iranians. The only realistic, and this is a challenging thing to say, the only realistic, strategic explanation, strategic set of goals, Israel has very rationally been opposed to our cooling tensions with Iran. And I say that setting aside the fact that Israel is a Jewish state,

setting aside everything in Gaza, it is a near threat to them that is existentially opposed to them. A rational Israel wants America to continue to be an adversary of Iran because that gives them additional cover, that gives them an additional ally. to turn to. It is the role of a rational American government to identify when our interests don't align. And I think something we have always seen with Donald Trump is that Donald Trump is easily wooed. Donald Trump is someone who is so willing to not along and repeat the talking points of the last person who spoke to him. I think in this moment we did not have someone who was strong-willed

enough in office to say, actually, no, Bibi, Netanyahu. This does not align with our interests. This, yes, us engaging in a war with Iran takes a threat away from you, but that is not in the region's interest and that is not in our interests. We did not have someone with that kind of strength to say no, and we got pulled into a war that doesn't align with our interests, a war that actually hurts our own interest. It is going to be at least half a year. And I could, the thing that kills me, every single part of this conflict has been so utterly predictable. It is the exact way that we could have anticipated this, right? Iran knows they can't defeat us in a military conflict. Control the straight.

Yeah. All they have to do is make it so that the political, the global political consequences for the United States are so untenable that we have to negotiate. And that's exactly what's happened. We knew they would try and deny access to the straight. and ultimately the big thing that they have to threaten us with is mining the strait. So far, my understanding is they've had a very limited number of moored mines, so forcing people to use a channel that they identify. And they continue to have that last trigger.

The last trigger Iran still has is deploying significant additional mines, including unmoored mines to the strait, which would make it so that the strait would be impassable for at least a year. Every Western Navy has an embarrassing. minceweeping capacity. This is public news. It is something widely remarked on. It's a known blind spot in the United States' naval capacity. It is going to take us months, half a year at least, to clear even the amount of mines that are currently there, meaning we could say anyone can pass it tomorrow. You're not going to have routine traffic because no maritime insurance industry

is going to certify passage through the straight. It's going to be too high risk. They're going to lose their cargo, so they don't want to do it. This is going to affect, this is about one-fifth of all crude in the world. Yeah, 20%. That touches every single part of the economy globally, because we have a economy globally that is built around the idea of logistical interconnection. And so every, every product has like a four-stage process that involves shipping across the country and in between each step. So this is a massive price increase that is. That is a massive price increase that is put onto every consumer good in the world. Our CFO, in between the beginning of our budget process and the end of it,

asked us to set aside an additional $350,000 purely because of the Iran War, in budgetary buffer, because of additional costs, additional fuel costs, additional ways that would affect procurement. And this is like a more embarrassing thing. This has a little bit to do with tariffs also, but like we are seeing such cost increases, and especially on consumer electronics. This is being driven by this and tariffs and the AI race, but all of these things are creating a...

My husband, for my birthday, got me a gaming computer, plays Steam games, right? I'm a nerd. I play it in bed. It cost him a pretty penny, I think it was like $4,500. It is more than doubled in price in the past two months. It is now a four-figure device. I'm very lucky to have it because it's basically untenable. There's a lot of... of this is the only time in American history where game consoles have gone up in price within the same generation. That has literally never happened in U.S. history.

And that's just one aspect of this. It's egregious and it's not clear what the hell the U.S. taxpayers getting out of it, what the U.S. is getting out of it, other than a few dead soldiers. 13. Yeah, too. That was a master class right there. Judah. Master class.

Sorry, that was just a ram. Got something on my heart pass. I could tell. We should cut that into a sizzle reel and air just that on our network. That was awesome. Like, seriously. And here we are dealing with $4.20 gas. Here we are with Crozay seafood supply, the seafood company in Crozay.

Like, dude, we're going to go out of business. Like, literally put a post out there. All our supply chain and all our vendors are passing these additional costs to us. and there's only so much that we can raise seafood prices at our tiny store in Crozay because people are just going to go to Harris Teeter across the street who have the economies of scale. We've already seen that, speaking of seafood vendors, yet another small business loss in the town of Scottsville, hilltop seafood, which is based out of Zion's, but had a branch location in Scottsville closed in the last month, I think. It's 2 o'clock. We've gone 92 minutes.

I sincerely mean this. Your schedule permitting, I would love to invite you back. You are tailor-made, no BS here. No-B-A-A. You are tailor-made for long-form content. I do enjoy it. Boy, howdy. Can I just say, ooh, I miss being a congressional candidate

because nothing makes me happier than being in front of a crowd fielding questions. People... You're good at it. Yeah, I just eat it up. I love answering a question. Yeah. I mean, you get to pontificate for a living.

It doesn't want to... This is my favorite part of my job. The job that does... does the least amount of revenue, but my favorite part of the job is this. All right. Mike Pruitt guys is Scottsville District, representative of the Almore County Board of Supervisors. He's impressed me again. This is the second time on.

I thank you for your candor, your authenticity, your willingness to speak for 90 minutes on anything and everything. Respect. Like, sincerely mean that, dude. Like, seriously, thank you. Jude Witt Carrey is behind the camera. I really do want to cut the sizzle reel for what he just did on the war and I ran because I think that is a master class on what's going on.

Mike Pruitt, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's our pleasure. It's not raining too bad. The viewers and listeners that we didn't get to your comments. We apologize.

Tomorrow we're back in the saddle at 1230 with the I Love Seval Show. So long. Mike, we're awesome. He's going to tell us when the cameras are off. They should be off shortly. Dude, you just cry.