The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Phillip Riese, AlbCo Republican Committee Chairman; Business Owner, Husband, 3 Kids In AlbCo Schools

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

The I Love CVille Show headlines: Phillip Riese, AlbCo Republican Committee Chairman Business Owner, Husband, 3 Kids In AlbCo Schools The Top Albemarle Storylines You Are Following? Albemarle County $724 Million Budget Proposal Albemarle Wants 13.5% Budget Spike (Year Over Year) What’s The State Of Albemarle County Schools? Redistricting (Gerrymandering) In VA (early voting 3/6) What’s The Vision For AlbCo Republican Committee? Read Viewer & Listener Comments Live On-Air Albemarle County Republican Committee Chairman Phil Riese joined Jerry Miller 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 Seville Show, guys. My name is Jerry Miller. Thank you kindly for joining us on a Thursday afternoon in downtown Charlesville, the Water Cooler Content and Conversation, the I Love Seville Show. We're going to talk with Philip Reese. He is a man of connections, a man of networking, a man of influence, an entrepreneur, a husband, a father, and a man that is committed to leaving Al Morrow County in a better place than when he first arrived.

He's now monikered in time. titled the chairman of the Almaro County Republican Committee. And he gets all the good and all the bad that comes with being the chairman of the Admiral County Republican Committee. It takes a lot of courage to take on this responsibility. One of his tasks, some would call it a dubious distinction. Others would call it invigorating the challenge is to revitalize, reposition, reimagined the Amar County Republican Committee, a party, a team that last

put somebody into office a generation ago with Ken Boyd on the Almor County Board of Supervisors with the Ryo District. We're going to talk all things, Almaro County, all things Central Virginia, all things Commonwealth of Virginia, including what some people call redistricting. My standpoint, it looks like gerrymandering, a vote that comes to fruition on the 21st of April, but early voting starts on the 6th of March. how will Virginians respond to what appears to me to be the definition of gerrymandering? I do not want politicians selecting other politicians. I want politicians selected by voters.

We'll talk about that with Philip Reese. We'll give some love to Katie Mullins and 919 Druitt Avenue, and then we'll welcome Philip Reese to the program. Katie Mullins is a talented, talented realtor. She's got a new listing that literally is now active now. We'll highlight some of the photos for her active listing, potentially later on the I Love Seville Network, but it's in Belmont, 919 Druitt Avenue.

It's got a basement income-producing apartment. This fantastic cottage remodeled by her husband, Ben Mullins, of Bledham Builders, and by partner Chris Koiner of Desham Design Builders, and it's marketed and, brought to market by Katie Mullins. Check it out at 919 Druitt Avenue. It's adorable. It's well positioned. It's well priced. It has an income producing basement and it's walkable to anything super cool in the city of Charlottesville. Judah Wickhauer is behind the camera. Studio camera if you could

as we welcome Philip Reese to the show. You are on camera. I'm glad we are doing this. I will start the show by saying I will ask you challenging questions, but first I want to say I respect you. I admire you. I think you're an asset to Almarl County. I think you're extremely courageous with what you're doing right here. And I'm excited to spend 45 minutes to an hour with you. Take a moment to introduce yourself to the viewers and listeners that are watching. Thank you, Jerry, for having me on the show. I appreciate this. This is, I guess this is my third time. I was on one of your other, the offshoot shows. This is my first time. But yeah, my name's Phil Reese. I'm the new chair of Elmore County Republican Committee. I'm a father,

beautiful wife, Miracle Reese. I got three kids all, well, I got two kids in Elmorel County schools and then one's going to be in kindergarten next year. So one's in eighth grade, one's in seventh grade, and then a kindergarten next year. She's in preschool right now. Business owner, I started unlocked history escape rooms back in like 2017 and we opened May of 2018, so I've been doing that for a number of years. It's a fun business. It was a challenge. It's always a little risky.

Starting a new business. But a couple years ago, the business has been successful, and a couple years ago, it allowed me to resign from my, I guess, my former career now. I was an intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency. I did that for 16 years. Started at the Pentagon, served in Iraq,

served in Germany, spent some time in Tunisia, working at the embassy. And then I ended up here in Charlottesville back in 2017, up at Rivana Station. And so I am still very much interested in all things, national security, intelligence, and so forth. But yeah, that's a little background, and here I am. How does a guy, and maybe your wife, Miracle, has asked you this question, Not as a guy that seems to have all the T's cross and the eyes dotting, his business is humming, he's got a wonderful wife, three great kids, semi-retired, right? Well, I would say, I mean, this new job that I have as a chair, to do it right, it's a full-time job.

But before you did it, before you took that job out, you had things that were in cruise control. and you, things were good. Now you jump into the lion's den here. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly the case. Well, you know, for a number of years, I was working two full-time jobs when I was working at DIA and starting my business on the side.

I would say I like challenges. I think it makes life more interesting to try to do hard things. And I think that's what we're often called to do to do hard things in life. I remember during COVID when we had a little time off, I guess from work, I was bored. Like I thought I wanted to retire early when I was in my 20s.

I was like, I want to retire in my 40s. I quickly realized, especially during COVID, that's not what's meant for me, nor would I be happy, just sort of live in the easy life. So taking on challenges, I guess I do enjoy that. It's a lot of stress. It's a lot of hard work. But I think that's what I'm called to do.

Give us the flipbook on how it materialized, how you became the chairman of the Amork County Republican Committee? Well, I had been considering over the past year, year and a half, I had been considering running for either school board in Elmorel County or Board of Supervisors. You know, I definitely felt called to help my local community in some capacity. I didn't quite sure, I wasn't quite sure exactly what that should be. But just a number of months ago, you know, some folks from within the Elmoral County Republic, committee, they asked, would I be willing to lead the committee as chair? It wasn't on my bucket

list. I didn't even, wasn't even considering it. Certainly not a focus. And I talked to my wife. I talked to a lot of people around me. I prayed about it a lot. And I've come to the conclusion that this is what I'm called to do for this time in my life. So it is a big challenge. I mean, look, Elmer County certainly leans blue. There's no doubt about that. I think it leans blue. It's strong blue. It's hips over blue. It's strong blue.

And it really wasn't so blue 10, 15 years ago. That's true. And as it has become more blue over the last 10 to 15 years, well, trends can reverse. And I think there's a lot of things going on locally where, look, I get it. There's more Democrats and Republicans in this area. No doubt about that. But some of the direction of the school board and board of supervisors, it's not necessarily the best for Elmore County.

I think the spending, for example, the spending and the tax increases, there just seems to be no end in sight. And there doesn't seem to be, you know, some of these members aren't asking the tough questions that need to be asked. And that's what you get sometimes when you got single party rule. You know, it's the purpose of the people on the school board and board of supervisors is to ask the hard questions. and to make sure that the county government,

the Elmarral County public schools are just held accountable. And I think we lack that a little bit. It's not to say that every member of the school board or board of supervisors is not doing their job. I'm not saying that at all. But having people who are more willing to ask the tough questions, I do think we lack some of that locally. Stacey Baker-Patty watching the program, Philip Downe, watching the program, Logan Wells Claylow, watching the program.

program. The Nelson County VA, Virginia, GOP leaves this comment. Phil is going to do a great job. We look forward to working with him and the ACRC. That's from your counterpart in Nelson County. We have, I mean, all of Central Virginia is watching the program right now. We have supervisors and counselors watching the show. Meg Bryce, welcome to the show. Travis Wilburn, welcome to the program. Viewers and listeners, if you want to give props to Phil Reese, put your comments in the feed, and I will relay them live on air. I encourage you to hammer the like button. Please do us that favor. Mary Carmen Martinez, Angela Klein, Michael, Hevener, Nancy Muir, giving you props on the program right now. We just have the state of the union. I'm going to ask you some state of the union questions.

Sure. I have a feeling your execution of the state of the union is going to be a little bit different than Donald Trump's execution of the state of the union. What is the state of the union of the Almaro County Republican Committee right now? We've got a lot of people who've worked in the Elmoral County Republic Committee, and I've said this before, they are absolute workhors. They've done a lot of hard work, knocking on doors, calling people, trying to get as many votes out there as possible. But we do have a lot of work to do. Absolutely.

We have to, you know, one of my goals is to, a lot of times within the local media, local press, there's no one in the Republican Party that they can go to for comment, right? And if it is, it might be John McGuire. He doesn't have time to comment on every local news story. And so, you know, I mentioned to NBC 29, CBS 19,

Seville right now, you know, all the, as many local outlets as possible. Like, if you need a comment, I'm going to try my best to give you a comment because I think being able to see both sides of an issue is absolutely important. And if you only get one side, you're going to think, oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But having alternative viewpoints is for the best, for everyone involved, but especially the county government. Like, we need to consider all options that are on the table.

So that's what I'm trying to do. And we have to modernize the ACRC. We have to use some new tools. I'm really focused on trying to improve our social media, trying to use the data. We get a lot of data from, you know, other campaigns from the Republican Party of Virginia. And I think there's a lot more opportunity to use that data to, you know,

there's a lot of people that only vote during presidential elections. And they should continue to do that, but they actually have more influence over local elections than the presidential election. just given, you know, the electoral college and all that. You know, a lot of these local votes for Board of Supervisors and School Board, you know, they might just be, you know, a couple hundred here, a couple hundred there. I mean, that can influence an election, absolutely. So we have to motivate our people, conservatives, independents, moderates,

and I think even some Democrats, dare I say it, aren't happy with all the tax increases, aren't happy with how our county and our school board, just the budgets are just going up sometimes by double-digit percentages. And so I think there's a lot of room and there's a lot of frustration and maybe even apathy within Elmoral County that having a different perspective is positive for the whole county. So yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. Jeff Richardson, the Elmoral County top executive presented yesterday to Elmore County Board of Supervisor.

supervisors, a $724 million budget proposal. I did not make a mistake with that number. This is just an astronomical Amarral County budget. $724 million budget proposal. It's a 13.5% spike. I'm not going to use the word increase. I'm not going to use the word incremental raise. 13.5% spike year over year. And In his presentation, as pointed out by some viewers and listeners, I've been feeling you're going to pontificate about this. The 13.5% metric was not utilized. One of the reasons 13.5% is not utilized, I call that smoke and mirroring, is because 13.5% year-over-year is a boatload of money, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to talk about that on the show. I'm going to pass it to Philip Reese in 30 seconds.

I will highlight Richard Fox, who says this. It's very refreshing to see the Amar County Republican Committee leadership out in the media. The local party is not dead and the local Democrats are getting complacent. Now could not be a better time to bring forward real solutions to real kitchen table issues that affect residents. Phil is the right guy at the right time to bring these issues and this party back to the spotlight locally. 13.5% increase and thank you Richard Fox for that, year over year, and a $724 million budget, open-ended. Where do you want to go with that? I mean, last year's budget, $638 million, going from $638 to $724.

So that is 62 plus 24. That's 86. I usually don't like to do math in public. That's an increase of $86 million, if my math is correct. 13.5%. You know, when the inflation rate is 2.7%, and the county budget spending is 13.5%. That's unsustainable. The only way to sustain that is with taxes.

Now, you know, the county executive said this is a balanced budget that does not increase the property tax rate, but it does include $49 million of extra debt. Based on my, I was able to look in the budget that's a hundred-page document. Looks like $49 million of additional debt, $260 million over the next five years. that's got to be paid over time. And, you know, they shared that right now they pay $27 million of debt service a year.

In five years, it will be $55 million. So more and more of the debt is, or more and more of the budget is going to debt service. And so we're not really... We're not getting additional amenities or value proposition from the budget. We're paying what was in the rears. Absolutely. And we're paying interest on that. They're kicking the can down the road

because they understand there's a boatload of potential money low-hanging fruit with AstraZeneca that's coming in the next 24 to 36 months and what's an extremely dangerous business model to build is building business models on revenues that are years out and that's what Almar County government is doing. They're building revenues in accruing debt, in accruing debt service because they think that they have this rabbit and the magicians hat, Astrozenica on the very near horizon that's going to solve all their problems.

I'm glad you brought up Astrozenica and I want to be 100% clear. This is a phenomenal deal for Elmore County. This is a great deal. But I think what's kind of come under the radar, I have not heard any press outlets share the following. So Astrozenegas, you know, is the, it's the largest company in the UK. 300 billion market cap company. This is a huge company. This is a huge company. And Alamara County, the board of supervisors just approved the executive, the following. Over $120 million in financial incentives to give to AstraZeneca. What was that number again? Over 120 million. I'm going to break this down. So they're extending the road. If you've been up there at Rivano Futures, it's kind of like a half road, and they're going to extend it so that it touches 29 again.

That's going to cost $42 million. dollars. The state of Virginia is going to cover 20 million. Almaral County is going to cover 10 million and AstraZeneca will just cover 12 million dollars. Believe it or not, we're going to give them the land that they're going to be building on for free. Do we know for certain on that? Carly Wagner's watching the program. She's asked this question numerous times on the I Love Seville Network. Is the land literally theirs passed from Almore County, which they purchased right from Wendell Wood. $58 million. $58 million. $58 million of taxpayer money. They're giving the land officially?

That's a, so this just passed just about two weeks ago after a close session. So I wasn't, I have not actually followed the video, but it said they're going to convey the land to Astrozenica. Now it's not all of it, right? It's, I think it's like 400 and some odd acres, and there's five pads that companies can build on. And they're giving the two prime ones to AstraZeneca at no cost, at no cost. So the county has paid $58 million for all. the land. They're given the two prime locations. So the value of that is maybe $25 million, you know, some here or there. So they're given that to them for free. And then the board

approved $95 million in financial incentives over 25 years. So, and this will, this allows the executive to put in different targets. So if they reach a certain level of revenue or business, you know, they're going to get, the county's going to get tax revenue from AstraZeneca. And, I've reached out to Emily Kilroy. They have estimated... Economic Development Director, Outmore County. Yeah. So her office has estimated that it's going to bring in,

and this is good news, $700 million in tax revenue over the next 25 years. That's great. That's great. So if you look at it, we're giving AstraZeneca about $120 million in return for over the next 25 years. We'll get $700 million.

I want to be clear, that's still good numbers. Was that just under 6X? Yeah, yeah. But AstraZeneca has a whole lot more money than our county. 100%. And it seems, you know, we did something similar with Home Depot where we're just paying these large corporate firms. And there's, why don't we do this for small businesses? Why don't we do this for other areas? Why do we only do this for these big corporate firms? Asherzeneca can afford it. Yes, we want to make sure we Astrozenica lands here. I do agree with that. I'm not in the negotiating. room to, you know, understand if we got a really good deal, but giving the largest company in the UK over $100 million of incentives, that's hard to swallow.

James Watson, I'm curious of your thoughts, James Watson. Carly Wagner's watching. I'm curious of your thoughts. Mike Kachis, welcome to the program. Supervisors and counselors on the show. Conan Owen, welcome to the program. Andre Xavier, welcome to the program. Jesse Rutherford.

Supervisor Rutherford, great guy watching the program right now. radio and television that's watching the program, you should be covering with your legacy media this AstraZeneca dynamic, the unpacking of the, you know, the incentivizations to lure AstraZeneca here. That's essentially what that is. Alamara County incentivizing a, are they Fortune 100, I'd have to look that up. A Fortune 100 company to call Alamoireau County its global headquarters. I mean, it's like $315 billion market cap. InVIDIA, what's the, what are they? Two trillion. I, I, I, that happened.

So they're, they're in the largest companies in the world, for sure. And it's great to have them come, but boy, it's a lot of money for us to, to give in financial incentives. Comments continue to come in, viewers and listeners, put your comments in the feed. This is from handsome Hank Martin, his photo on screen. You've made the program better, handsome Hank Martin. He says, Godspeed to fill. Sadly, in my experience, the Almar County Republican Party on the national, excuse me, the Republican Party on the national level has simply written off central Virginia. It is my hope that the local Republican Party under your leadership, Phil, can approach things on a door-to-door level.

I'm more concerned with the potential tyrants on McIntyre Road than I am with those in Richmond or Washington. I'm going to echo Hank Martin's thoughts by saying this. all politics matter, local politics matter the most. A vote in Almar County or a vote in Charlottesville or a vote in Green County very much impacts what happens in your community, your household, your children, your futures, your jobs, your neighborhood, much more so than I would say at the federal level. I want to give some attention to another partner of the program, Jerry Rackleaf.com. We've partnered with them.

They've launched a substack. team at jerry rackliff.com and we encourage viewers and listeners that are fans of uva sports to subscribe to jerry rackliff's substack jerry rackliff.substack.com and support journalism because if we don't support journalism journalism will not continue forward subscribe to jerry rackliff and his substack at Jerry rackliff.substack.com. I want to get to the budget. Why was 13.5% that metric not utilized or emphasized

on PowerPoint slides or it would seem extremely logical. How much did you spend last year? How much are you proposing this year? What's the incremental increase? 13.5%. That should be the first thing. Yeah.

I mean, I had to actually look at the full document this morning to actually find that number because I don't recall the county executive sharing that. I mean, that's sort of the baseline. I mean, yes, he focused on this would not require a property tax increase, and that's important. You know, we saw a tax increase last time, but 13.5%. I mean, we can't keep going in this direction.

It's just going to... Alba Marl is becoming less and less affordable, and one of those primary reasons is because taxes are going up. You can't make Albuhrall affordable and keep on requiring people to pay more taxes. The tax assessments went up by an average of 6%. Six and change. Six and change. But I think if I recall correctly, for people whose houses are $20 million or less,

which is almost everybody, it was about 8%. And I think you've heard on your show, people, 13% or higher. Ours was knocking on the door of 10%. I mean, that's... It's two-xed in less than 10 years the assessment. What the county should be doing, when assessments go up that much, they should be trying to figure out how we can lower the property tax rate.

I mean, at least it was even. I mean, that's a little bit of a win, but it should be lower. Like, why do property taxes have to keep on going up and up and up? they never seem to go in the opposite direction in this county. How about this statistic for the viewer and listener? And Judah headlines on screen. You can do them strictly in PZI fashion if you like. I know you're grinding over there.

We appreciate Judah Wickhauer behind the camera. 52 cents of every $1, Allmar County receives, goes to Almar County Public Schools. I'm going to say that again. 52 cents of every $1 that Almore County collects tied to your money, it's your taxes, goes to. to outmarl county public schools for the parents that are watching the program listening to the program that have children in outmore county public schools i want to ask you if the value proposition

of albemarle county public schools has improved or upticked for your children your lifeblood has it is it flat or is it dipped the value proposition what you're getting from your school system with your kids guess what we got a parent here who's got two kids in almore county public schools and soon to be three, a youngster that's about to enter kindergarten. Where do you want to go with this? Well, you know, I remember hearing 10, 15 years ago that you would have parents from outside Elwhamarle County who would send their kids to Elbe Marl County schools because of the quality of the education.

And they would pay the schools to do that, given that they were out of the county. I don't hear that happening anymore. And, you know, we have some of the highest cost per pupil in the whole county. I think it's in the top 10%. And the whole state. Sorry, in the whole state. Yeah, in the whole state, it's in the top 10%. It's $20,000 per student, which does not include capital expenditures like buses, like new schools, and so forth.

So it's probably closer to $24,000, $25,000. I haven't done the math on that, so don't quote me. But at that cost per student, are we getting a top-level education? Are our students getting that? I would say that maybe we are probably about average in the state, even though our budget would look like that we should be in the top 10, 15%. So I don't know that we're getting our money's worth in Elmore County right now. And you look at some of the passing rates, like third grade reading, it's not good. I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but it is, it's not good. And it's gotten worse. And you look at the, the, the, the educational outcomes between, let's say, white students and minority students, there's like a 40 or 50% gap in that. And that's supposedly been one of the focus areas of the superintendent and the school board. And it does not seem like it's going in the right direction.

It seems like it's going the opposite. Well, even the most progressive, arguably the most progressive and liberal-minded school board member on Almore County School Board, Allison Spillman, even acknowledged on the record that what we're doing with Almore County Schools is disenfranchising black and brown students. Like she's straight up saying what we're doing, even our fix of what we were trying to do, ain't working. I agree with Allison on that. She straight up said that.

She straight up said that. Comments are coming in extremely quickly. Nancy Muir is watching the program. She says, Phil is working very hard to represent common sense for Almore County. I support him 100%. Flint Engelman is watching the program. looking forward to partnering with Phil to advance conservative values in Almoreau County. Then he does hashtag AFP skyline.

Carly Wagner's watching the program. Carly Wagner's photo on screen. She's a key member of the family here. Carly Wagner says, let's be sure to follow up with the projected tax revenue that's fictional money until it's in the bank. She's talking AstraZeneca and the $700 million that has potentially, you know, rallied incrementally for Almore County from this biosephersonal. technology conglomerate. She says the cost total, the taxpayers for this land, when we need

to high school is real money. And she says, correction, the taxpayer is not the county paid for the land. It's the taxpayers that paid for this land. Absolutely. Not the county and the $58 million. The county doesn't generate any revenue. She says a tax rate increased. They definitely have increased the property tax revenue, though, for the 14,000 kids of the 120,000 population. I want to highlight this. The Elmorrow County executive Jeff Richardson said, hey, I'm not going to raise the tax rate. We're not going to raise the tax rate. And he kept driving that home yesterday.

And that was the headlines by some of the legacy media. I think NBC29 had this. There's not going to be a tax rate increase. The headline should have been this. County Executive proposes 13.5% budget increase, eclipses $700 million for Almore County as assessments uptick 6 to 13% across the board for county residents. That's the true story of what's happening.

And county residents, we're still paying Almore and more money. Why we're paying Almore and more money is because the assessments have gone up. If it was truly a balanced budget for Almore County ends, the tax rate for real estate and personal property would have diminished to offset the six to whatever percentage increase that our land and property values have upped it. It's spin-doctoring what's happening by county executive and the supervisors. And we've all fell victim to it over the last generation.

I've been here 26 years. And as you highlighted, it was never this blue. It was more a purple hue. But for some reason, it's so blue now. You know what it is? It's either Alamoire Countyans are, it's three things. it's either Almaro Countyians are so filthy rich

that they don't care. Could be that. It's second thing. Almoral counties are apathetic and they don't care. Or it's the third thing. Almoreal counties have just given up

and they just take it where the sun don't shine because they know they don't have any other choice. That's terrifying. All three of those is terrifying. The best situation is they're so

filthy rich and they don't care because at least they're in tune mentally with it. But that's still terrifying because that shows a county that's been homogenous and gentrified and as a playground for the rich. I think on your third point, I think there certainly is some apathy. And I'm trying to change that. And I think if you're listening, if you're if you're conservative, if you're independent, if you're moderate, if you're frustrated when you get your tax bill in the mail and you just see it go up by six, 10, 15 percent, I want to give a voice to you. I want you to help, you know, be the change in album world that we need.

And I'm trying to do that. It's an uphill battle. It is not easy. It's going to take a lot of work. I need a lot of help to do that within the ACRC. But just even generally, just, you know, having people show up to public comment, having people send emails to their board of supervisors and school board members. That does have some influence.

A lot of times, you know, when no one comments on a certain policy, the school board and the board of supervisors think, well, no one had any problems with it, so I guess it's okay. And we got to have people who are more willing to speak up, even if you don't identify as a Republican, but you have some concerns with where we're going. Speak up. Speak up. I think there's a lot of opportunity there.

Dr. John Shabe, watch the program. The owner of Pro Renata, big fans of Dr. John Shabe. Bob Shada, the mayor of Birdwood and the vice mayor of Avachi restaurant. Welcome to the program. Two counselors, two Elmore County supervisors, Nelson County supervisor, Louisiana County supervisor, and a delegate watching the program. Mona Daniel says I'm very proud to see Phil serve our community with integrity, transparency, and commitment. Mota Daniel, fantastic human being, as is her entire family, Trevor Daniel, will give him some props on the program as well. James Watson's photo on screen. I like the incentives for AstraZeneca

as long as they improve the roadway and transportation options because we know that there's already some level of gridlock and likely a lot of land acquisition would have to take place to build any kind of highway bypass to ease up traffic there. I'm going to add some background to what James is saying. AstraZeneca's, when they come online,

600 employees, average wage of 125,000. The true impact of AstraZeneca from a high standpoint is the indirect jobs, and I'm not talking construction jobs. Those are 3,000. Those will be fly-by-night jobs. Once the project is done, those 3,000 jobs won't be tied to the market. I'm talking the supply, the jobs tied to the AstraZeneca supply chain. There's going to be a boatload of businesses that are birthed around Astrozenica in Paul Manning Biotechnology Institute that want to, I hate to use the word leech, that's the wrong word, that ride the coattails of a global conglomerate like AstraZeneca. And at the state-of-the-art educational institute like the one on fontaine avenue that's about to open so i've been told by the people that signed the checks that the incremental citizen impact tied to biotechnology is six to eight thousand people and there's a partner of the program stanley martin homes will give them some attention they're building a couple of thousand homes in green county on the almeral green line which is genius because that's right where astrozenic is going to be stanley martin is dedicated to building homes

that cater to each person's unique needs and lifestyles, high-quality, single-family homes, townhomes, and condominiums, designing constructed with innovative techniques to ensure exceptional efficiency and aesthetic appeal. If we have six to eight thousand, six to eight thousand additional citizens, Phil, Philip, we already have a throttled housing market. It's extremely throttled. In the next 24 to 36 months, where are six to eight thousand additional people going to go?

that are earning six-figure salaries in Almore County, Charlestonville, and Green County. I think that's a great question. I used to work at Rivana Station, which is where Astrosenica is going. So I talked to a lot of the folks working at Injik, working at DIA. And I don't know the exact percentages, but probably half of them live in Green County or one of the other counties, just because it's so close to the border on Northern 29. There's, you know, it's definitely an issue. there's not enough supply for housing in this area.

And, you know, I've talked to some developers and kind of understanding the obstacles, and it is a complicated issue, but I don't think the county government makes it easy. The county, Elmeral County, it seems like their primary strategy is to increase taxes so they can subsidize affordable housing. And so in other words, they're making housing less affordable for everybody else in order to focus on a certain segment of affordable housing.

That's 100% what's happening. That is what's happening. That is what's happening. He's basically saying they're, who is that? That's Robin Hood. That's Robin Hood right there. That Almar County is Robin Hooding the middle class and Robin Hooding the upper middle class, the lower middle class and the upper class to give to the poor. Yeah. I don't, and I don't, I don't think it's the best strategy.

100%. It's, it's, it's, it's, not only that, it's not going to, when you force developers to have certain levels of affordable housing and they don't pencil out. Yeah. When they don't pencil out, they don't build. There's nothing, there's nothing that can force developers to build. So if you, if you put these requirements that you have, you must have 20% or 40% or whatever these requirements are, that ends up meaning that there's less housing. That's, being built than more. Bingo. This seems like, and I shouldn't take this for granted. You're off the charts, bright guy. But this seems so obvious.

It's not obvious to everybody. That's clear. Okay, so I'm taking it for granted. Is that what it's... Does this not seem obvious? It doesn't look like that's... The strategy looks like let's raise taxes

and let's subsidize affordable housing. That seems to be the strategy in the county. So it's not obvious to a lot of folks in the local government. The Robin Hood of Housing is what's happening with the Board of Supervisors. John Blair's watching the program. This dude's literally off the charts IQ. He says, I'm curious if Chair Reese and the committee will work to develop a platform related to county land use policies. That's an enormous issue for local voters. See, this is the tricky thing about this job because I'm not running for elected office.

And usually it's the candidates that will come up with proposals. But I also see that there's a need to give some alternative viewpoints because we don't have them locally. So I think for the folks who are very interested in land use and all that, we need some help. I'm not an expert on land use. You know, I have talked to a number of developers, and I've got a lot of friends who can't afford housing in this area.

And they've been searching for a year, year and a half, and nothing's affordable. But the ACRC needs some help. If we're going to develop a policy, I want smart people and helping design that policy. So that's certainly something I'm interested in. So if anyone's interested in that, help us draft some policies.

I think there's certainly a lot of opportunity for that. Comments continue to come in. Mary Carmen Martinez giving you props. Angela Klein, giving you props. Grace Bolden Cotton, given you props. Cole, Bittler, giving you props, boatload of elected people watching the program now. This comment comes in from Blake Hoxton. It's easy to spend money. It's much harder to spend it effectively. It's obviously

the money is not going to things that are helping these kids. I think parents feel like they aren't being listened to or that their voices do not matter. The school board seems to do whatever they feel like doing regardless of what is best for students. Jason Noble on a completely different Facebook page. This show airs everywhere on social media. 15 Facebook pages rearing this. He says, Jason Noble, my family spends a ton of money to avoid Almore County Public Schools. Our family, I've said this on the program as well, is spending roughly 25 grand for the second grade for our oldest kid at a private school on top of paying our tax allotment for ACPS. So we're double paying for school. Yeah. I think there's this view, there's this

assumption that they're seeing a lot of housing going up, and so the enrollment in the schools is going up. But if you actually look at the data since 2018, I think that's when Dr. Haas started superintendent, the schools have only increased in enrollment by 160 students. And part of that was COVID, you know, people dropped off, but they haven't all come and they haven't all come back. Only 160 students since 2018. How many staff members, as Alba Morrow County hired in that same time. 269. So if you only, you had one student, you're going to hire 1.7 staff since 2018.

Who on the school board has called out this? He's on fire. This is incredible. I mean, I saw a Crozé Gazette come out with this information. I'm like, I don't believe it. I don't believe this chart. I think I shared that chart with you. I did the math myself.

I went into all the sources. I'm like, it's right. And it is bad. So the student enrollment has only increased by 1%. But the staffing is increased by six, seven, eight percent. I mean, this is financially unsustainable. And are we even getting our money's worth? Are we getting a super high quality education with the amount that we're paying in taxes for our schools?

We should be in the top 10% of Virginia and we're not. We're absolutely not. Gary Grant watching the program. Gary Grant says the county executive and the Alamara County Board of Supervisors will not use the term tax burden. The average burden for property owners for fiscal year 2026, 27 is 6.17% because that's the average reassessment increase countywide. You both are correct. The zero increase in the tax rate announcement by the county executive is not the headline. Here's what's happened.

This is such a sad state of affairs what's happening. Folks, we shoot you straight. I think why the show is really working. The legacy media, print radio and television, is literally dying. And as a result of a slow death tied to advertising revenue that's going by the wayside to print radio and television, they've stripped staff, and the staff that is currently hired or in place are fresh out of college people.

and the fresh out of college people are turning news that is often press releases reposition. So the news that you're getting from print, radio, and television, oftentimes is what the county or the city or government wants you to read here or understand. That's not how it used to be. The lead of the story of what happened yesterday is a year-over-year increase of 13.5% above. budget that's over $700 million that's been proposed and the fact that Al Morrow County is increasing its debt position and dipping into reserves. I passed the baton to you on that. Well, you know, NBC29 interviewed me after that budget proposal that was revealed yesterday. And I mean, I said a few things, but I told the reporter Kate, I said, look, it's going to take me some time to actually

dig into the budget. And it was amazing. I had to open this 160-page document. I had to open this 160-page document in order to get the 13.5%. And I had to do the math myself. I had to, I mean, it's not that hard math, but the fact that that wasn't a data point that was talked about yesterday or even asked by the school board, and maybe, I mean, I think they had the whole budget proposal in a binder before them. I didn't have that, but I mean, that's fine. The fact that we have to actually do work to figure out that it was 13.5%. We need more transparency. We need more transparency. We need more transparency. How about a quarter of a billion dollar high school that's in the hopper? Almore County school board even surprises the eager to spend Almore County Board of Supervisors by saying, hey, guys,

we think we need a $250 million high school in the northern feeder pattern of Almore County. This is actually your stomping grounds here. Mike Pruitt was effing flabbergasted by the request. and we're talking an extremely left-leaning, he's liberal, and he was running for Delegate at the time, and one of the cross-isle unifiers in any political race is schools and children, and even Pruitt, who's running for Delegant at the time, was like, what did you say, are you effing crazy? $250 million for a school?

We don't have that. That's how much it caught him off guard. Where do you want to go with a quarter billion dollar new high school? All right. Well, I think first, the data needs to support a new high school. If the county's going to move forward with it, the data has to be 100% clear. And the board of supervisors, to their credit, they want to see stronger data. And I have shared with both the school board and the board of supervisors some data that would suggest that maybe a new high school is not needed. I'm going to look to my notes here. According to Albemarle County Public Schools own estimates, so they do these 10-year projections on enrollment, 10 years from now, there will only be a 146 student overcapacity across the three high schools. So we don't want to be an over-capacity, right? But it's just 146.

They want to build a new high school with a capacity of $1,500 at the price of a quarter of a billion dollars. So are we going to spend $250 million dollars? to in order to not have that 146 over capacity. That to me suggests the data does not support a new high school. If more data comes out, I mean, I have an open mind. Well, you've seen the Weldon Cooper data, right? I mean, they're using Welding Cooper data to make this projection. Got it, got it.

So this is the Weldon Cooper data. This is Weldon Cooper's. This is Alvin-Murall County's own data that suggests that estimates a, 146 high school over capacity. Does that mean that we should spend that much money on a new high school? That data suggests we don't. 100%. And common sense, I'm just a common sense kind of person here. Common sense would suggest as Almorea County becomes more expensive, and we just explained that there's 6 to 8,000 new people that are moving to the area, and those 6 to 8,000 new people

that are moving to the area are six-figure jobs just for one member of the household. If you have a two-member working household of those 6,000 to 8,000 people moving to the area, you're talking households that are extremely above the median family household income. According to HUD, this past year was 125,900. So 125,000 is what AstraZeneca is paying at 600 people. One person, if the second person in that household is working, they are well above the median family household. The people that are moving here, guys, are moving here with ridiculous wealth.

that are going to populate private schools. There's a reason why, then I'll pass it to you, that the private schools locally, their enrollments are booming, and the private schools locally are all doing capital raises to create more infrastructure for more students. I know this first hand.

I don't know why Elmore County has not shared. They should be talking to all the private schools and what their enrollment figures look like. I have not heard that being done. Well, because Elmore County doesn't want that information out there. They don't because it's going to, going to hurt their narrative. There it is. But the state of Virginia does publish homeschool, how many homeschools? In Elmore County, homeschool students increased by 10% this year. Okay,

so when you have homeschool enrollment increasing, when you have private school enrollment increasing, that's going to help with the capacity issue. And what I think that a lot of people miss is the fertility rates. And so we see a lot of new housing being built, but people are having less children. So in Elmore County and across the country, the average fertility rate is about 1.6. So each woman has about 1.6 kids. The replacement rate is about 2.1. If you want to maintain your population at its current levels, each female is going to have 2.1 kids. And so because we're under that, we are losing about 1% of our population each year. Now, granted, we are bringing in more folks, but when you kind of balance the two, it would suggest that perhaps student enrollment is not

increasing despite all the housing being built. Well, it's because the housing is so expensive. The people that can afford the housing are either wealthy that are pursuing private school or homeschooling or their boomers that sold a house in Northern Virginia and are coming down to Almorea County with Scrooge McDuck gold coins in a knapsack and paying cash for housing. 30% of transactions in 2025, 30% of real estate transactions in 2025 in the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors' footprint were all cash that did not need financing. That is numbered, that is backed by car, ladies and gentlemen. Comments continue to come in. This is an anonymous comment from an elected official who's asked for anonymity. And this comment is for Philip Reese. An anonymous question

for your guest. The issue I see is how to balance growth and funding the infrastructure needed to support that growth. To play devil's advocate here, is it necessarily a bad thing for people to live just over the county line, which means we won't have to pay for the schools, water, and other infrastructure? I actually don't think that's,

it's certainly not bad for the county government because I think they estimate that for each residents, it costs, for every dollar they gain in tax, revenue, they spend $1.32 in expenditures. So at least if you're only talking about Albemarle County tax revenue, having them live in another county and having those people, their children going to another county school, I mean, that doesn't hurt Elmoreville County. It is expensive because of the infrastructure, the schools, and so forth. That's why they're

trying to diversify the tax revenue, which I agree with, trying to make it. bring in more corporate tax revenue. Commercial. Commercial. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a, that should be a goal. And I do support what the Board of Supervisors and the county government is trying to do to improve that. I think it's 11% of tax revenue is coming from commercial.

And they're trying to get it to be 15, 17, 17, 18%. Yeah. And look, the top two industries right now are UVA and the defense industry. and neither of those provides commercial revenue. Like when they buy land, it comes off the tax rules. There's no business, their tangible personal property taxes because they're government institutions.

The county gets nothing. So I've encouraged Emily Kilroy, when they were wanting to make that more of an intelligence campus for Rivana Futures, I said, look, I'm an intelligence background. I think it'd be kind of cool, but it's not in the best interests of the county because the county will get no,

tax revenue if the federal government is using that land. Neil Williamson, watch of the program, the president of the Free Enterprise Forum. Comments continue to come in. Put your comments in the feed. We'll relay them live on air for Philip Reese. We'll take your comments, shape the discussion, folks. Brent Lillard, welcome to the broadcast. I'll throw this to you.

It's $1.31 is the number. So for every dollar collected in taxes by Almar County, it spends $1.31 to service. properties, infrastructure, and residence. Every dollar collected, 131 spent. Every dollar collected, 52 cents, go to public schools. That's why some folks say, Neil Williamson's going to cringe when I say this, that the benefits of incremental housing, additional housing,

are financially a net loser for any jurisdiction. Because that additional housing that comes to the jurisdiction means more bodies in schools, which is the number one budget line, more water, more road, wear and tear, more police, fire, and rescue. Now, the flip side of the argument is this. How the hell are you going to have a diverse community if you don't create more housing? All you're going to have is a homogenous society that's a playground. for the rich and wealthy. And I don't know any parent that's out there.

You have three, we have two, that want our kids to grow up in a community that's white and rich. Those are my words. We want diversity. So those are the arguments succinctly there. The obvious to me is to drive economic development. No, economic development is easier said than done.

Because how do you drive economic development if the people that are moving to Almaro County are working for internet service providers outside of Almara County and are retired baby boomers that came with the Scrooge McDuck knapsack of gold coins and paid cash for their house and are retired.

So it's a really fine line here. Do you have a solution to this, Philip Reese? I think, I mean, look, it's a challenge and I think having different viewpoints, think of it is only for the best. I think you might even find some board of supervisors members who might say, yeah, there's an advantage to having Democrats and Republicans and

independents and moderates all helping to make these tough decisions. Who? You should ask them. You should ask them. But, you know, one of the other issues is a lot of people come and work in Elmore County and they can't afford to live here. And so that does increase the cost for some infrastructure, namely roads, and it increases traffic. So you got to figure out a way on how to make Albumaral affordable for all kinds of

different income levels. I think, and I think it is becoming just a place where only the wealthy can afford. It's a, it's a playground for the, for the wealth, for the wealthy, is Almara County. And the folks that were able to, to, to purchase a home pre-COVID or during the, during, the pandemic and secure historically low interest rates are pre-COVID before the real estate boom are the ones that can afford to live here. Don't ever sell your house because the chances of you buying something else in Amaral County are extremely difficult. The values have spiked tremendously and now you don't even have two points or three points on your debt. You're at six points on your debt. Yeah.

Okay. So you all know this. I'm not telling you anything new. Elliot Harding is watching the program. Elliot Harding is very politically connected. If that's not somebody that's on your short list over there, Elliot Harding should be on your short list there, Chairman Reese. He says, personally, I wish the county would just quit cutting the city's check

for the revenue sharing agreement and increase the growth areas. He says the growth areas, which are now 5%, 5% of Almar County is allocated to development. I'm going to do Neil Williamson a solid by saying that 5%, not all of it can be developed because of the topography. I'm now going to do a former superintendents. Supervisor Diantha McKeel is solid, who sat on the chair next to you and said, honey, we ain't increasing the development area until the development area is at capacity. And then Neil Williamson would say, Supervisor McKeel, the topography won't let us do it.

And then Neil Williamson would say, Supervisor McKeel allow commercial conversion to residential to get it to capacity, because right now we have skeletons of commercial, empty, vacant commercial. I'm not in favor of increasing the growth area. I'm curious of your take on the revenue sharing agreement and the growth. area expansion. I'd love to talk. Let's talk about the revenue sharing agreement. You're doing a hell of a job, by the way. I appreciate that. The fact that no supervisors are challenging that revenue sharing agreement, nor have they asked our local delegates, Amy Loffer, to change the law to allow Elmore to get out of this agreement. This agreement has no sunset.

that we're, I think it's $20, $25 million a year that we are, the Elmoral County taxpayers are sending to the city of Charlottesville with no end in sight. I mean, if nothing is done, we're going to still have this agreement 50, 100 years from now. And what that allows the city of Charlottesville, they're able to pay their teachers more. They're able to provide some services because Elmoral County is sending all this money to the city of Charlottesville. City of Charlottesville is able to get a full fleet of bus drivers to get kids to school on time. home on time where Almore County is still struggling to fill its bus driver staff. How's that? Are everybody sharing your agreement looking for parents who are sitting at bus stops with their kids in the freezing cold?

Sincere question for you, $25 million of your taxpayer dollars are going to the city of Charlottesville, and the city of Charlottesville is doing nothing. And that number is increasing every year. I would like to see the board of supervisors to talk to the county attorney. You know, I think there maybe there should be a lawsuit or something. Look, I have a business in the city. So I care about how the city's spending money. I care about how the county is spending money.

But if you're representing the county, you have to put the county's interest first. And I understand the desire to have friendly relations with city government. I get that. I do support that. But to let this agreement to not try to either renegotiate with the city, maybe you can give sort of a like a, you know, one or two years of 60 million or 70 million. We have to figure out how to get out of this agreement because it's making it less affordable to live in Elmeral County. And it's taking three, four percent of the budget every year.

How much could $25 million be used to improve how much we give our teachers? Well, how about just to make the $25 million a year that's the revenue sharing agreement to the city of Charlottesville allocated every year to housing affordability? and then say we're going to reduce the real estate tax rate on Amar Khanians. So you're like, we're kicking Charleston, 25 mil. Let's give that to affordable housing initiatives. And then we're going to say, Amar Khanians, you're going to pay less taxes because we're going to lower the tax rate because we know your assessments are going to go up every year. Conan Owens watching the program.

Albert Graves is watching the program. Olivia Branch, Philippe Andrew Hamilton, Holly Foster, watching the program. Todd Williams watching the program. More people than I can keep up watching the program right here. We'll give some love to Charlestville Sanitary Supply and Charlottesville swimming pool company. The Vermilions are five generations in Almaral County.

I can assure you that John Vermilion's watching and listening to this program. He's a good man. They're located on East High Street where they've proudly served this community for 62 years, and they have an e-commerce website at Charlottesuitary Supply.com that will deliver goods to your doorstep, often the same day for $0 in shipping fees. And the price points are cheaper than the big box brands. There's no reason you should not be shopping at Charlottesville Sanitary Supply.

We do, and their sister company, swimming pool company is everything consulted for swimming related, our provider at our swimming pool at our house. Phil, you speak a lot of common sense, dude, and I think it's going to be up to you to, this is the biggest challenge you have, and this is probably the toughest question I'm going to ask you here. This is without question the toughest question I'm going to ask you here. for the Alamara County Republican Committee to make any momentum in diversifying the ideology of bleeding blue Alamara, you are going to have to navigate or threat a needle that distance the Almar County Republican Committee from Donald Trump, who's as polarizing a president as we ever had, and is certainly,

driven incredible momentum for Democrats and gaining market share locally. And doing that while also threading a needle that our mission here is going to be about keeping more of your hard-earned money and your saved money in your pocket as Almore County residents. It seems to me your mission in succinct capacity and fashion is a vote for us or a fundraised dollar for us or a volunteered hour for us. is an effort for Alamara counties to keep more money in their pocket. How do you navigate distancing yourself from maybe the most polarizing president of all time,

one that clearly has driven massive momentum behind the Democratic Party in Al-Moral? Is that fair to say? Yeah, that's absolutely fair to say. To this new version of the Al-Morrow County Republican. Well, I would say this. If voters are going to decide who to elect at the school board and board of supervisors, because whether they like Donald Trump or not, if that's the basis, we're going to struggle. And I think if voters are more focused on what's actually happening locally

and having an open mind and finding independent voices, moderate voices, it doesn't necessarily have to be a Republican who's running for these races. I'm not opposed to strong independence running for some of these local races. And with a common sense approach, I think that's a strategy. And I'm going to try to support candidates who are focused on local issues. And look, if you don't like Donald Trump, I got some good news. He's not going to be on the ballot again. Right.

And Donald Trump, look, no one has said this. I'm going to say it right now. AstraZeneca would not be coming to Elmaral without Trump's tariffs. And I know that that might scratch in people's heads, but if you actually look at what the AstraZeneca CEO has said, and he's talked to other pharmaceutical companies in Europe, they are moving a lot of their operations from Europe to the U.S. because of these tariffs. I was very skeptical on these tariffs, right?

I'm kind of a free trade guy. And I see, and I look at the inflation rate and it's 2.7% despite these tariffs. So I have an open mind. I don't know that I want a lot of increase in tariffs, but without those tariffs and without Glenn Yonkin going to Europe and talking with these pharmaceutical giants, these CEOs, and then the cooperation with the local government to get this deal done, that is one of the best things that's happened to L.

Morrill County, and I get it, Trump is not popular, I get it. But there is, there's a lot of opportunity when Republicans and Democrats are working together, and people are frustrated. They, they're frustrated, I think, with both parties. I think they're frustrated with both parties. And, and I think they want to see Washington and Richmond and here in Elmaro County, both parties finding practical solutions to to the issues. And, and I, unfortunately, we're not seeing that in Richmond. We're not seeing that in Washington. I don't know if that's, I don't know if that's possible in the next five or 10 years, but I wouldn't be taking this job if I wasn't optimistic in that. And, and I think, I think there's a lot of opportunity for common sense approaches to these, to these issues.

And, yeah, I'll just leave it that. Astrozenica also would not be coming here if it was not for Alamaro County's purchasing the acreage and northern Almar from Wendellwood and a sweetheart deal for Wendell Wood because this was afterthought acreage that would have been incredibly difficult to develop. And AstraZeneca certainly would not have come to Almaro County if taxpayers had not gifted one of the biggest companies in the world, $120 million in tax incentives. but to your point, to your point, the tariffs, Yonkin's diplomacy and negotiation also have contributed to this headquarters here. Carly Wagner, the committee, your committee, you're the chair of,

will also have to dismantle the passionate narrative that all conservatives are racist, homophobic Nazis, and that's how Republicans and conservatives are silence. Many conservatives despise Trump just as much as the progressive, Richard Fox says, yes, you absolutely have to distance the committee from Trump. It's 100% necessary. Then Jason Noble in the same feed says, I would caution with distancing as to not overshoot.

So I think even Republicans are splintered on the political science of, and that shows you the influence and the impact of Trump. We're talking about him in Almaro County, ladies and gentlemen, just shows you the impact and influence. Another thing we should talk about here, and we're gone 70 minutes straight. You still go on? I'm good. I'm good.

Okay, sorry. Redistricting. I call it gerrymandering. I don't know. Curious of what your take is on that. You might be more diplomatic than me. The General Assembly is Democrat. The governor is Democrat.

Was it Senator Lucas? She had a Portsmouth. Is that where she is? Portsmouth? Yeah, that sounds right. She screamed. Ten to one, baby. And she also offered a couple of profanities with 10 to one.

The Democrats want redistricting in the Commonwealth to basically be a democratic stranglehold where northern Virginia is going to determine what happens in the rural areas and where basically the General Assembly today is going to pick politicians for tomorrow. I want a world where politicians don't pick politicians. I want a world where voters pick politicians.

But that's not what's happening. Early voting starts a week from Friday, a week from tomorrow, and then the actual votes the 21st of April. we could do an entire show on redistricting or gerrymandering open-ended first and then I'll ask specifics yeah we so I wrote an op-ed in the Daily Progress I don't know if you saw that but you know thankful to the Daily Progress for publishing that you can drive from Alexandria 30-minute drive from Alexandria to Dulles Airport 30-minute drive you would cross if this new map is approved by the voters

you would cross five congressional districts. You could have five congressmen from Alexandria to Dulles Airport, all representing that. That's almost half of the congressional districts in Virginia. So if you want Northern Virginia, they already have a lot of power and influence. If you want Northern Virginia to dominate the political discourse in Washington, D.C., for the state of Virginia,

vote yes, but I don't think people of Charlottesville, I don't think people of Elmoral, I don't think anywhere else in the state of Virginia is supportive of giving Northern Virginia all that influence. They already have a ton. Why do we need to give them more? I think your point that voters should elect their politicians, not politicians, selecting their voters, I think that's absolutely on point. And we've seen these maps drawn to favor only Democrats. You had one of the persons, I don't remember his name, it's somewhere a little bit north of us,

who was involved in the Democrat effort to change and actually design where these boundaries should be. He's now running for a district that he helped draw. And New York Times pointed that out, the hypocrisy. When you have 47% of people who voted for the Republican presidential candidate in the last election. And you want to bring that down where only Republicans have 9% of the representation, one out of 11 seats, even if you're not a Republican. That would be unfair if it was happening to Republicans or Democrats. I'll tell you right now, I think gerrymandering is wrong,

whether it happens in Texas, whether it happens in California. I don't have any influence over those two states, but we have influence here in Virginia. And we had a bipartisan commission In 2020, we voted on a constitutional amendment. 73% of Alba Moral residents said, we do not want gerrymandering. We want a bipartisan commission that draws the maps fairly. What year was that? 2020, six years ago.

And what we've seen is the Democrats, they are trying to fast track this to the 10th degree on getting this constitutional amendment passed. We're one of the only states in the whole union that has a constitutional amendment to have a bipartisan commission draw our maps. And we want to get rid of that in just six years. And they say it's temporary.

Well, it's the next three congressional elections. This would far outlast Trump. Trump only has less than three years left. They want this new map, this 10-1 map, to be in place for four years after Trump is out of office. Right? I understand there's a lot of Democrats in this area. But if Virginia chooses to gerrymander, as bad as this is, this would be one of the most gerrymandered maps,

this would be the most gerrymandered map in the whole United States. It would be much worse in Texas and much worse in California. If Virginia does this, I think what we're going to see, we're already seeing it, is more and more states are going to gerrymander their maps. And it's just going to be a race to the bottom. You're going to have essentially the same number of, you know, strong. held Republican seats and strongly held Democrat. And when you have more gerrymandered maps, you get more of the extremists or the, you know, the far right or the far left representing those districts.

And it hurts, it hurts the moderates or hurts the independence. And I think at the end of the day, yes, there are more Democrats in Elmore County than Republicans. But the independence far outweigh the number of Democrats and the number of Republicans in this county in the state of Virginia. If you want extremism, if you want extremism in Virginia, if you want extremism around the country, you should be voting no

against this gerrymandering, against this amendment. And early voting starts next Friday. We are, the Republican, El Morrow County Republican Committee, we're having a speaker forum. We got delegates

Tim Griffin and Tom Garrett coming next Thursday to talk about this. We actually invite, the local Democrat Party to co-sponsor it with us, they didn't want to have anything to do with it. Well, of course not. I personally invited Amy Loffer

to come be one of the speakers, silence. They don't want anything to do this, and that's why... Well, that would mean if she said yes to Amy Loffer should do it, but to Amy Loffer's point, if she said yes to doing this, she would be cast off by the Democrats and Richmond. She would be... Well, she can speak. She doesn't necessarily. have to, she could speak her. She could speak her support of, of why we need to gerrymander.

And look, the, okay, you're saying she could speak in support of why it should be 10-1. Absolutely. So it wasn't necessarily to sort of get her on our side. I still think Senator Lucas, if she even entered that room, would cast her off. I think it's that kind of, I think it's that kind of, and you made the point earlier today. I've lived in this community for 26 years. I am as engaged politically as I've ever been in my life. I don't even recognize what it means to be a Democrat or what it means to be a Republican right now.

They are legitimately character-chures of their former selves. Where is the cross-isle moderate? One that could lean left or lean right, but straddle the aisle on various issues. like now it's either you're on this side or that side and if you consider straddling the aisle on any capacity you're a cast off you're tom hanks with wilson and like that's no that's no world i want to live in like it's and we're not going to do anything about it because what we really need to do is legitimate third party there's no legitimate libertarians aren't close to being a legitimate

third party and some of the stuff the libertarians are doing i'm like what are you doing here if anything, it should be like a splintered off version of either the Democrats or the Republicans that are like more in the middle. Like maybe that's what we're trying to do here. You're trying to do here. I don't know. I mean, it's tricky. I mean, like, it's a politics, unfortunately, has gotten nasty.

And for the benefit of our country, we got to improve the discourse. We got to be able to have. Republicans and Democrats talking at the same table, talking about issues. It's for the best of our country. And if we're only going to just name calling and, you know, this person's a Nazi or whatever, that's not going to get us anywhere. That's not for the best of our country. You know, I, it's, if I didn't believe that it's possible, I want to be getting involved

in politics. I think you have to be an optimist to get involved in politics. And I do believe that there are opportunities to improve, improve the local discourse and the national discourse. And, you know, I mean, I, I was at the budget presentation, and, you know, you had a Democratic supervisor who just said, you know, congratulations on your new role. I mean, I was talking with three supervisors yesterday, and I appreciate that because there's, there's, you know, good discourse about it.

And I don't, when we are close-minded to what the other side thinks, our county and our country are going to lose. This was sent to me by someone over the weekend that has not given me permission to use their name, but I will relay what they passed on to me. This is direct message capacity. Redistricting or gerrymandering. And, Judah, I think this will resonate with you. This individual says, redistricting, connected individual guys.

Redistricting or gerrymandering erases. our culture of a republic for that of a democracy, something our founding fathers would have been against. It redistricts to give even more power to the more populated DC, Northern Virginia area, and takes away power from the less populated rural areas. In turn, this gives city dwellers control over rural folk. It eliminates a balance of power in the Commonwealth,

akin to an atomic bomb, no, akin to tyrannical power, and a threat to life, liberty, and property for all? Absolutely. And he sent me that in response to Don Gatherers, who on the show said, what he said? What Trump is doing is an atomic bomb on Virginia, basically, and I push back.

That we have to respond, yeah, and I push back on Don Gathers. We're 81 minutes in, I'm feeling he's got a business to run. We've got to go make some money here, too, so we're going to wind down the interview. I'm not going to get to all the comments that are on the feet here.

I'll add Conan Owens because a lot of respect for Conan Owen. He says politicians talk about things out of both sides of their mouth, and no one holds them account or accountable. Just before, there's realtors literally texting me, cold calling if I'm interested in selling my house, because they know I like to sell homes every two years. That's literally happening right now. Sorry, I'll go back to Conan Conan Owen.

There's ADD, Jerry. Just before the state of the union, Conan Owen says, Spamberger said, Virginians are being punished because of the president, because the president doesn't like the governor. Isn't this whole gerrymandering punishing Virginia Republicans because the governor doesn't like the president? I mean, there's so many instances in Almore County,

in Charlottesville, in Virginia, of Trump's impact. We're talking like momentum for the opposition. We're talking potentially concerned to join a conservative movement. we're talking gerrymandering, we're talking school curriculum, the Federal Executive Institute, DEI at UVA, like protesting Target, the Golden Girls, Blanche and Sophia and Rose and Dorothy protesting Target and singing protesting carols? That was insane to me on a Saturday. I know you don't want to touch that. It's just so many examples of this in Charlottesville. It's wild to me. closing thoughts, as much time as you want, anywhere you want to go.

I want to roll out the red carpet to you in future. I think you're a great guest. I sincerely appreciate everything that you're doing here. I think you're going to have the thickest skin in the whole wide world. I think you mentioned your wife's name is Miracle. She sounds like she's an amazing lady. Absolutely. To green light this.

Miracle, if you're watching this, to green light what your husband's doing here. I definitely married up. I mean, there's no doubt about that. He out kicked his coverage over here. Miracle, to green light. what he's doing here, props to you, anywhere you want to go. You know,

if I agree like this, I mean the fact that you're doing, you're volunteering your time to do this. You're not getting paid to do this. That's correct. How much time are you putting into this? Well, I've been on the job for about a week. I don't know if it will always be this busy,

but yeah, I mean, it's a full-time job over this past week. This guy has given 40 hours of his time for free to do this in a community that is overwhelmingly demonstrated, Democrat. Is that not true? That's... No, that's absolutely true. Look, I'm a student of history, and this might sound very sentimental and cheesy, and I apologize for that if it does, but it does come from the heart.

You know, I look at our founding fathers when they signed the Declaration of Independence, and they said something about we pledge our treasure, we pledge our blood, we pledge our lives, you know, something to that effect. And they had the skin in the game, right? They knew that what they were doing was treason against the British government. Look, what I'm doing is not treason, obviously, but I think it's important to have skin in the game and knowing, I know the risks. I know this is not the... This is why...

How do I want to say this? there's a lot of people that have conservative views and they're afraid to share them because they live in Elmore County and Democrats love that liberals love that and if

I'm asking conservatives and Republicans to speak out I have to do the same thing myself is it scary? Sure but I want to help build a county an estate and a country that I want my kids and grandkids to live in.

I don't this sounds cheesy, but I think this is what we all want, and we have to be able to sit at the same table and talk. If we don't, our country's doomed. Our country's doomed. So, you know, if for any listeners kind of on the fence, maybe they're frustrated with how things are going, whether you're conservative, whether you are independent, whether you're moderate,

I invite you to come to an ACRC meeting. I want to have a big tent. I think that's the only way to move in the right direction. And are we all going to agree on everything? No. I mean, there's not one candidate that I will agree on him or her on everything. And that's not realistic. But if you want to have a role, if you want to help,

I need the help. The executive committee of the ACRC needs your help. The existing members of the ACRC needs your help. You are invited with open arms, and I believe to the bottom of my heart that we can have a positive direction on where Elmore County is going, where the state of Virginia is going,

where our country is going. Guys, his name is Philip Reese. He is on social media, so you can find him. he is the newly minted chairman of the Amar County Republican Committee. Most importantly, he is a husband, a father of three, and he's looking to make Amar County a better place. I thought you went 90 minutes, dude. You crushed it.

Thank you. Yeah, sincerely me that. I thought it was awesome. The interview is available wherever you get your podcasting and social media content, literally on every single platform. And in some cases like Facebook, airing on 15 respective Facebook pages at once. There's no platform in Central Virginia, period.

And I think you would find a few in the Commonwealth that are reaching the amount of people that we are, viewer, and listener-wise. Judah Wickauer is the magician behind the camera. He did not contribute on-air today, but he carried the weight of the program off-camera. And I sincerely mean that. Props to Judah Wick-Cower.

This is the water cooler of content and conversation. Thank you for joining us for, Phil for Judah. My name is Jerry Miller. So long.