The New LINK CEO Talks Moneyball Economic Development

We talk to Iain Vasey, the newly hired CEO of the Golden Triangle Development LINK, to talk plainly about how the Golden Triangle can win industrial recruitment with limited resources and a lot at stake. 

We get into Iain’s “Moneyball” approach to economic development: focus on the industries where you can win, keep your information accurate and verifiable, and build relationships that lead to repeat projects instead of a single splashy headline. He shares hard-earned lessons from high-dollar negotiations, including how incentives and tax limitation agreements can help when they’re structured well and hurt when they’re not. 

We talk solar, workforce development, data centers and housing. If the region lands hundreds of new jobs with its latest Megasite, where do people live, especially the “missing middle” workforce that earns too much for assistance but not enough for new-build prices? 

Transcript

Cold Open And Show Intro

SPEAKER_01 0:01

I don't know what he has come up with today to talk about. I'm not asking you to hide anything. Yeah. You know, put it out there. Let the people see it.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

I've never not worked in a hostile working environment.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

You can't argue with anybody when they're putting facts in your face. Zach, that's a hard question. I have no answer for it. From the opinion page of the commercial dispatch, this is between the headlines.

Bassmaster Takes Over The Marina

Meet The New Link CEO

SPEAKER_04 0:29

Buckle your seat belts, friendly city. We are pleased to have in the studio today the new face of the Golden Triangle Development Link. And I am really excited to see what he has to say about industrial development and this new era coming in. But first, retirement looks different for everyone, so your plan should be built around you. For over 40 years, Financial Concepts has helped people create retirement strategies that fit their lives. Our team in Columbus takes the time to understand your goals and build a plan that works for you. Wherever you are in your journey, we're ready to help. We plan retirement. Financial Concepts is a registered investment advisor. This episode of Between the Headlines is brought to you by Bank First, a bank headquartered right here in Columbus, Mississippi. That means your banking decisions aren't made hundreds of miles away by someone who doesn't know you. They're made here locally by bankers who know your name and care about the community. At Bank First, we're more than bankers. We're your neighbors. Whether we're cheering in the stands, catching up at a local pancake breakfast, or celebrating milestones across our community, we're part of the moments that matter most. Stop by your local Bank First branch or visit BankFirstFS.com to learn more. Bank First is a member FDIC and Equal Housing Lender, Bank NMLS four five four zero six three. Well, Zach, before we get our guest in here, have you been out to the pier, to the marina, and seen any of that stuff? I haven't, but I know they're I know they're here. Oh, it is absolutely happening out there. I'll tell you, there are booths, there are trucks with stickers all over them. It is a sight to behold. Um they're selling stuff, there's a place for live music. Bassmaster Elite. There is a jumbotron on the pier out there. So like you can stand out there and if if somebody catches a fish, it's gonna go to him and he's gonna be pulling it out of the water. And you watch it in real time. It it's interesting. If um if you don't if you're one of those people that complain about there's nothing to do, go down to Columbus Lock and Dam, take a right, go check it out. It'll be happening now through Sunday. All right. We are pleased to introduce to the City of Columbus the new and freshly minted CEO of the Golden Triangle Development Link, Mr. Ian Vasey. Thank you so much for being here. Hey, did you bring a fishing pole into You know what?

SPEAKER_02 2:56

I do. You know, and my waiters are somewhere in a box, too, so I, you know, I'll have to figure that out. And uh, you know, day nine.

SPEAKER_04 3:06

Oh waiters, you would fit in well. The very first thing I saw when I went down to the Bassmasters was this guy on the right had a 350 outboard right there. That's a little overkill, don't you think? Dude, the thing was way off in the weeds. I couldn't get a kayak up in there. I have no idea. I don't know how he could get it out. Oh, he's he's gonna be stuck. There's no question about it. But thanks for coming in today. And uh thanks for coming to Columbus. No pressure.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

Zero pressure whatsoever. You know. People are like, you're okay, you've got two weeks as your honeymoon period, and then we expect delivery of results.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

You well, I mean obviously you're gonna be announcing something at uh a major plan at Cinco in in two weeks, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Uh we don't talk about the secret stuff that goes in the pipeline. Uh you know, uh I'm the last to to to make those announcements. Um I'm when those announcements are made, I'm usually the guy standing in the back of the room and um, you know, let the folks who are important kind of be up front, and I've already moved on to the next deal by then.

SPEAKER_03 4:06

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well, uh that is going to be uh very that's gonna be a very different aesthetic from the link reputationally.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

How do you think how do we know what I was uh in when they were checking my reference, it got back to me that w one of the uh consultant and publisher of one of the trade magazines in uh in Birmingham called me the silent assassin, meaning like he just operates pretty quietly, j goes about his thing, and just and then pops up and and something happens and then he goes back to doing whatever he's doing.

SPEAKER_04 4:38

So Well, there was nothing silent about your predecessor, just I you know, I'm just I've been doing this 32 years.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

It's just easier if you do it, you know, just keep plugging away, go to work every day, and you know, hopefully good things happen. That's that's what you try to do. But yeah, this guy was the publisher of Southern Business Magazine and and uh named Mike Randall. And apparently when they were checking references, you called him, Yeah, he's one of the silent assassins. Yeah, you don't hear a lot from him, but he's you know when he pops the silent assassin.

SPEAKER_03 5:05

I like it. Now you mentioned when you were at the supervisors meeting on like you were like 30 minutes into your first day that it took you five days to get here.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

It did. That was a long drive. So my significant other Shelly and I, she was driving the she was driving her car. I was driving to U-Haul uh with all her stuff in it, and um, you know, it w it took us I mean, it's a long drive. And it you know, I'm not a great truck driver, so you know there's many things I'm not good at, and truck driving apparently is one of them. So uh she yeah, we it took us a while to get here, and but we're we're really pleased. She's uh she's actually a lawyer who does all her work on uh online. She does all her hearings online, she specializes in super smart lady. Um specializes in workman's comp defense, so when companies get sued, uh they're you know technically she works for I she says a Beverly Hills adjacent law firm, but I can call it a Beverly Hills law firm.

SPEAKER_04 6:02

So is she worried she's gonna get replaced by an AI robot one day? Like that's the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

They use you know, the attorney's business is is kind of a weird one, but she'll write all her, you know, pleadings out and filings out, and then what they do is they'll download it into uh AI and it you know puts the margins in the right space and things like that. But I would tell you, she was she was in a um like a you know a training session with some judge doing you know the online thing, and they were talking uh that some AI models, quote, cases that don't exist. And they've that some lawyers have been sanctioned for you know for for just doing an AI filing and and and case law. I had seen stories on that. Yeah. So no, she's she's you know, really she's really smart at this. But don't burn it. So she you know so yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:54

My biggest challenge is I still follow LSU. Well tell your wife that uh I'm an Arkansas fan. Y'all can have Eric Musselman. We're good with calibrates. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

I will you know what? I'm still I'm still not the the jury's out on Elaine Kiffin right now.

SPEAKER_03 7:11

I don't get I'm Well, I mean you'll get two, maybe three good years out of him, and then he'll go to be something else.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

And then he'll burn at the end. And then he'll burn and then he'll burn the bridge down while he's still standing on it. So yeah. I don't know what to think of this one.

SPEAKER_03 7:25

Well, other than the uh other than the pollen, obviously, and trying to get used to the pollen, we got more of that that we've got different pollen down here than in Oregon, probably. But but how are you settling in?

SPEAKER_02 7:36

Um it's you know, I'm moving at about 100 miles an hour. Um I've got a great team that I've walked in on, and my my job is to try and fit in with those guys. Hopefully I can contribute to their successful efforts so far. And they've got me booked, you know, you know, 8 till 5, Monday through Friday, and even the night meetings too. So, you know, I'm just hoping I can keep up.

SPEAKER_03 7:58

Okay. Well, I mean, the first one on the inside corner here. Uh you've got I mean, it's it's it's a pretty known thing that your CO applied to be in that top spot. So how is that adjusted?

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Yeah, she and I are really good. I I think, you know, she's gonna be one of the wor one of the real rock stars in the in the business. Merrill's super smart. I love working with her. And I mean, I think we we work we mesh very well together. We both come out of the same kind of deal-flow background. So I, you know, I'm it's a pleasure for me to be able to work with somebody who's as experienced and you know, as sharp as she is. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:37

Aaron Ross Powell And I guess changing the personality of that office from um outfront, loud and proud kind of uh way of doing things to that silent assassin mode that you're talking about, I guess how are they adjusting so far to that different philosophy? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

All I do uh my my goal in life is to treat anybody who would as as I'd want to be treated myself. So you treat everybody with respect and you build an organization and you try to achieve some results, so that's that's what we're really focused on.

Moneyball Strategy For Deal Wins

SPEAKER_03 9:08

Okay. I've I've also heard you talk uh to others about sort of a uh a moneyball approach to what you do. Trevor Burrus And by moneyball, we're talking about the uh the baseball theory that small park teams were using to use data to make uh small budget teams still win against larger budget teams.

How Site Selection Really Works

SPEAKER_02 9:29

You know, yeah, w when you're a a relatively small organization, you know, if you're running the economic development group for Dallas or Houston, you can throw money at problems. You can you can target any industry you want, you can throw a million dollars at it, you can you can you can be at every trade show, you can sponsor every event, you can do all those things. And you can be anything to anybody. Now, when you're in a small market, you're you have a little bit more limited resources, you have to be very laser focused on on the industries you focus on, the events you go to, and I I I call it money ball economic development, meaning if you've seen the movie or more importantly read the book, the book's a bit more in-depth, but it's how do you position yourself to be in a high win percentage scenario. So if you're targeting specific industries, you know, historically, you know, this this region is is has operated in some of the same as I did in Texas, which is, you know, we were operating in the steel business, working with the steel companies. Um we'd be at the steel show, we'd be at, you know, aviation-related companies, uh trade shows and things like that. We weren't going to do the low percentage shots. You know, we have to be focused, we have to be use the data. Everything's data-driven these days. You know, the thirty-something years ago, economic development was very much, you know, smile in a shoe shine and backslapping and come on here, it's great. Where you you know, I I won witnessed a guy say, Oh, you got to come here just because we're Texas. You know, and I was sitting there just dumbfounded by that. And when I got to s to speak at the presentation, I went through the data points. This is why, this is these are the compelling reasons, this is the business case. And the the company we were all presenting to was like, yeah, that that that makes sense. Nobody does it because it feels good. It's companies, Fortune 500, Fortune 1000 companies make data-driven decisions. That's exactly what they do. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: How does the data look in Mississippi? If you talk to Tate Greaves, it's like, man, we're just rolling and going. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It's really significantly improving. You know, that one of the things when I first got a call by by the consultants that were working with the link to take a look at this back in December, I did a lot of research. The educational system is really making significant pro progress. And that's that's starting at you know the the the not the kindergarten grades, but the early grades all the way through high school, community college system and and then the and then the college system, the four-year college system, making great improvements on that. And when you really boil economic development down, if you have the best workforce within 300 miles, you start to win every deal. That's one of the things that and if you look at you draw a 300-mile radius around this area, you cover a lot of major markets in there. So, you know, think about that. Education is one, uh business-friendly regulatory environment is the second one. Um low taxes are important. Um low cost of doing business is a compelling reason for a lot of companies. So, you know, you go down the list, and if you were competitive in each one of those, you know, top five or six sectors. I should maybe I should even back up. At an early point in my life, you know, it's in a prior part of my life, I was a site selection consultant. I worked for two big um companies that do corporate real estate. So we were retained by companies to go, look, analyze these 10 markets, these states, give us recommendations on where we should build our new call center. Uh Fidelity was one of our biggest clients. And they would have multi-states, and we would have a what's called a site selection matrix. So I A, we'd have it on a spreadsheet, but I also put it on my whiteboard. Of these are the critical factors. And you can stack up one state, one city against another, and and you can build a case for which one of those one of those cities is is the best one. Actually, the you know, and I'll give you a real world real world um example. Um 2017-18, um a law firm was representing a very large petrochemical company, um plastics facility, and it was for$10 billion. The RFP looked like a thousand jobs, a thousand acres, ten billion, awfully squared off. We didn't know who it was. Um and we go down through the process and they're asking hundreds of questions. And we got down from, I think they started looking at about eight states, and they then they started drilling down on multiple cities. And I I was representing Corpus Christi, Texas. And um we find out that the four cities that they've drilled down on were Corpus Christi, Victoria, Texas, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which I used to work for, and I think it was Lake Charles was the other one in Louisiana. So it got down to two states, four cities, and we built the business case, we understood what the company was looking for. And it turns out, you know, it got to a point where I was gonna have to start spending a lot of money on engineering, about a hundred thousand. You don't do that with a blind company. You don't know who it is. And I'm sitting, my my chief operating officer and I, Mike and I, are sitting in the office and on the phone with the lawyer, and he says, Look, I'm gonna send I said, I'm not spending$100,000 on engineering for until we know who you guys are. Because you can get killed if, you know, you all of a sudden it's a you know company nobody's ever heard of. And he says, Okay, I'm gonna send you a non-disclosure agreement. It was 26 pages in the email, and you know, your firstborn child is gonna, you know, and it and it I can talk about it now. Um and but he'd neglected to he'd neglected to to block out their side of the signature block. And and it was Exxon and Sabok. And Mike's like, who's Sabok? I'm like, it's the Saudis. You know, when the Saudis show up with a it Imagine this. I often imagine this. When somebody says, is that$10 billion? These guys are like Scrooge McDuck. No, keep shoveling gold. Actually, it'd be more like shoveling the oil, I suppose. You know, no, keep shoveling, you know? And things got very real. You know, that those are the things where and and you build the business case on all the things from how we're gonna do workforce training, how you're gonna structure we call them tax limitation agreements. You know, so if you look at how you're gonna get benefits in the long run on your taxes versus the short term, you know, you you give people a bit of a tax break coming in, and then when when they get fully operational, then you start coming on the tax rolls. And I mean by the end of the by the end of the agreements, you know, these are you've got a$10 billion plan, you're generating, I don't know, fifty million dollars a year in in city we'd call them pilots, but you you know, pay payment in lieu of taxes. Um you do those extra externally to your your paying your regular property taxes. It's because it doesn't count against limitations. You do all these exotic agreements. Maybe I should even back up. I come from a finance and tax, you know, state and local taxation background. So you you you have to be familiar with the finances of these things. And it goes back to my earlier statement: the days of doing economic development with a Willie Lohman, a smile and a shoe shine are over. This is data-driven. Can you make the business case? And I at some point, by the way, on that on that$10 billion Exxon deal, they had asked for things. It was called Project Yosemite, the code name. And you know, we had we had built the case. They were starting to ask, their lawyers had started to ask for certain tax limitations that it got to the point where I was looking at the models and uh uh and and it could if it if some delays had occurred, the project could come on the tax rolls, then go off the tax rolls because of the delay, it could cause a what's called a rollback election, and it could theoretically cities and counties don't go bankrupt, they go insolvent. It could cause the county there to go insolvent. One of the hardest conversations I ever had to have was in a closed-door executive session with that county board and say, you can't do this. We can't And actually at first I was like, I I don't believe my own analysis. I'm gonna have to I went and hired a law firm out of Houston, Jones Walker, who helped us through that. And they were like, no, you're right. You it can cause insolvency at a count uh at a county if things happen in a certain way. And I had to go into executive session and say, don't do this. And the county board said, you're right. And they've the lawyers explained it all, and the tax people explained it all. I walked around for 90 days, they we pulled out of that deal. I Mike and I walked around like somebody like I walked around like somebody shot my dog. And uh and 90 days. Yeah. It was terrible. Yeah, I mean, we'd been into it about 18 months. And uh 90 days go by and they come back to us and go, we analyzed this. Exxon came back, and they're like, we analyzed this. You're right. We were asking, you know, you you guys weren't making it up. We were asking for something that wasn't, you know, could endanger an entire county. And they came back and they said, we're gonna reopen negotiations. We're not gonna ask for that, we're gonna modify it. And so we changed the name from Project Yosemite to Project Lazarus, you know, came back from the dead. But it was the large-scale. It was the largest deal in America in 2018. And you know, business facilities give us an award and some other things. I mean, the Governor Abbott had me on speed dial for for a lot of things. And, you know, you work through the the very complicated issues of not just the taxes that we had EPA emissions issues. We had brought in University of Texas to monitor, and we actually tied, you know, if there was an emissions release from the plastics plant, it was tied to the school district um incentives. And the reason for that is school districts are the big stick. You know, it counts for about 70 percent of your tax bill. We had to go to the Attorney General and get a private letter ruling to make sure that this was okay, first time it was ever done. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_04 19:40

This sounds so familiar, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_03 19:42

Oh, yeah. I mean, now you're in a place here where there's not as much money uh to throw around as you don't throw a lot of money.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

I I don't believe in throwing a lot of money around. You have to be very smart and very strategic.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

Well, but I mean this is a Lowndes County in particular is a place that hasn't really ever shied away from what do you need and investing in those. I mean, four megasites and or four megasites in in Lowndes County. Uh they've been very aggressive.

SPEAKER_02 20:08

And they've had a lot of success. And I'm going to tell you that they play major league economic development. That was one of the things that when I got the call and started looking and doing research, I realized that this is serious stuff.

Relationships Over One Big Win

SPEAKER_03 20:23

Okay. Well, going back to the to the to the money ball bit and uh talking about, you know, kind of how that that works, uh on the baseball front, it's who gets on base. It's not who hits the most home runs, who gets the it's who doesn't strike out, who walks, who gets on base. So what is getting on base here? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

Actually, yeah, yeah, you talked about so winning economic development deals, you have to turn it on its head. You're not you're think of a large funnel, and you start out with a number of cities and you get down to one. You're the last person eliminated. You're not the first one to you're not the winner, you're the last eliminated. Because there's no perfect deal. You know? But you asked what what does it look like? We have to be in front of major companies, we have to be talking to major site selection firms, we have to be talking to the law firms, the engineering firms, people like that. And I would tell you, when I started doing it, you get a fax that came through on the old thermal paper that would say, you know, you got 30 days to fill out all these questions and answer. And then even a couple of years ago, it was, you know, you get an email that came in and said, look, we need the answers to these 50 questions by Monday and come in on a Friday afternoon invariably. Now companies are shopping you before you even know it. You know, they're site selection firms, engineering firms, they're using AI models to go where where would be an optimal location for a facility, a factory of X. These are the criteria. So you have to be making sure that that information is accurate about yourself, that it presents well, it presents in the in a fa not just a favorable way, an accurate way that can be verified. So you you know, you you're not you don't shade the truth on things. You just put the accurate information out there so the so not just the site selectors, but now the AI AI models can find it, and then you can, you know, your job is to oh is to get that first conversation. And then to s then once you're in the first conversation, they're probably talking to, I don't know, could be any number of states, could be could be ten states, could be, you know, could be half a dozen cities, I don't know. But you have to you have to open the conversation and then keep going and then be accurate with the information that you're presenting to them. And it has to be professional standard. That's what you got to do.

SPEAKER_03 22:39

Aaron Ross Powell Okay. Well, do does the link has the Golden Triangle grown beyond the point of the link take it meetings with$50 million CapEx? No.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

They'll take a meeting with everybody. That's the thing. You you meet with everybody. Because you know, one of the things I've got some friends in the economic development business who they're known as pulling off very large deals, but they only generally do one deal with companies. You know, they turn the screw so tight they don't give everybody a chance to have the win. You have to be looking. You know, one of the things I pride myself on is building kind of reputation, but also, you know, just kind of relationships so you can do multiple deals with the same people. That$50 million deal that you're saying, eh, why would you waste your time with them, you don't know if that's just the first phase, and then the next phase is$100 million. And the second phase is$200 million. And before you know it, you know, you've done multiple phases on a project until you get to a billion dollars. And I'll an example of that, you know, and I'll I'll tell you. The first time I competed against the Link region, the Golden Triangle, was in probably 2011. And those of you who have been around a while remember there there was a deal, Hawker Beechcraft. I was representing Baton Rouge. That was the other the that was the other finalist. And I mean I came up with some of my staff and we we, you know, we we looked at the sites, we we were opposition research doing opposition research against you guys. And and you know, that when I was re- representing the Louisiana folks. That deal started out as a single-phase project, 782 jobs was the first. By the way, I have a photographic memory, so if I if I can see it, I can kind of recall it. And it starts it was five - ultimately it was for single-engine planes. And then it got from, you know, the the company then had five divisions, single-engine, twin-engine, military jet, corporate jet, and composite. And I'm still never sure what composite aircraft, but new materials. And, you know, we and the Golden Triangle put proposals in place so that it wasn't just that the company liked the single engine, but they also liked the proposals so much that we reached putting them forward. They wanted a five-phase project to bring the entire company out of Wichita and then, you know, to either go to to Columbus or to go to Baton Rouge. And ultimately, I mean, uh they they selected Baton Rouge and get this, uh uh, you know, the CEO flew down, and a bunch of us are standing at Baton Rouge Airport in the conference room, overlooking the tournament. CEO's plane comes in, he doesn't get off it. And it starts to leak in the press. And then the Wichita Eagle covered it, and then the union started getting involved up in Kansas. And um the imagine I'm sitting with the governor and the mayor and the counterpresident and every I mean all of us. And they're their team wasn't picking up their phones. And they sat there for about an hour. And you can imagine we've got agreements ready to go, like five piles of agreements, big binders. And uh boy, this is taking that back. And uh and we ended up with um, you know, he turns the plane around and leaves. And can you imagine at the time Governor Jindal was just-I mean, he's as dumbfounded as the rest of us. And it turns out that, you know, that when we started as a single phase, it was probably doable. But when it was the entire company, the union that was covering it, it was a union shop in in Kansas, and then it was going to be a non-union shop if it came to either Louisiana or Mississippi. You know, lower cost of labor, much more affordable. And the the union basically marched into, or made calls, I suppose, um, to the two owners of the company who were Onyx Capital and Goldman Sachs and said, if you execute these agreements, we're going on strike. We're we're deals, we're going on strike tomorrow, we're shutting the company down. And uh in the end, they they didn't pull the trigger on that expansion. They ended up staying in Kansas, they were in a not great financial position. The company went through a bankruptcy restructuring, and now it's now a shadow of what it used to be. But the thing I learned on that is we should have probably just executed the same the first phase for the single and then told them, we'll worry about the other phases, you know, down the line. But you know, we were all very we thought we hit a home run. Trevor Burrus, Jr. But you were setting people's hair on fire. Right. We did, and we pushed them into a corner where it was a zero-sum game. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 27:18

And if you get on base, you probably end up scoring the Trevor Burrus.

Navigating Politics Across Different States

SPEAKER_02 27:21

We should have got on base and worked our way around the, you know, around the diamond, and then you know made it over time. We should have done that. I learned a bad lesson, and I've not forgotten that one.

SPEAKER_03 27:30

Well now uh looking at the three places where you've most prominently been, a Baton Rouge, uh Corpus Christi, and uh, and most recently Oregon, the political landscapes of those three places are very different, and then the political landscape in the Golden Triangle are even different still, at least on paper. So I mean how do you navigate through all of that? Trevor Burrus, Jr. Two of them are very similar.

Solar Farms And Data Center Reality

SPEAKER_02 27:55

Baton Rouge and Corpus Christi are very similar to the Golden Triangle. Oregon wasn't. Now, I was working in a place in Oregon where it's a bit more libertarian. We're, you know, we're not Portland Metro, we're the other end of the state, east side of the Cascades. You know, people like their guns and being left alone and they like small government. You know, does that sound familiar? Um But I will tell you the folks up, you know, that run the state up there, because it's dwarf their population center is dwarfed by Portland Metro and down the Willamette Valley. Quite liberal folks in those areas. They they like their taxes and they like their I don't know what else they like. They like all kinds of things. Um but my my point is um you know, we executed an agreement, um uh sold a city business park site to pretty large Amazon distribution. We couldn't even get the state to pay attention to it, you know. Um they they don't place as high level of importance on economic development. Uh and uh without speaking out of school, there there's some large uh choosing how am I saying my words here because there's probably still still some confidentiality grooms. Large large petrochemical not even petrochemical large, well, I'll just say a large LNG facility could easily go on the Oregon coast to sell natural gas out to South Korea and Japan to offset the coal that we're burning right now. You know,$25 billion plus deal. Probably generate somewhere, but some, I don't know,$500 to$800 million a year in state revenues. Bear in mind the state of Oregon has a state budget of$5 billion. They're short about a billion dollars, and they're talking about raising everybody's taxes again. My understanding is that uh some very well-connected law firms representing companies approached the powers that be, and they got told we have no interest in fossil fuel industry or anything like that, even though it would take American natural gas out of the Powder River basin, which is Wyoming, Montana, you know, big oil fields and gas fields up there by pipeline, and be able to build that and generate$800 million a year to the state. They don't want to do it.

unknown 30:03

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_04 30:03

Speaking of that kind of thing, we have a lot of outdoorsmen in this area and we have conservationists and uh subsequent to that we have people who are anti-solar and anti-data center.

SPEAKER_02 30:17

Solar deals are hard to do, man. You know, because you know I've been involved in a couple in Texas, and those guy you know, they they they they take up a lot of land. Now, if you're putting them in specific locations, yeah, fine. Um but at the end of the day, there's not a ton of jobs attached. You know, I I I you know across some of the folks in Oregon, because they're like they're wanting solar farms all over a sudden or they think that's the economic development strategy there. I said, have you you guys ever been involved in one? No, but we've you know maybe one or two small ones. I said, I have. It was a 2,500-acre deal in Texas. I said, do you know how many jobs came out of after the construction? They're like, no. I said it was probably two. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: One tech to make sure it was plugged in right and the other one to mow the grass. And you think that's the data centers follow that too. Yeah, yeah, that's what I was about to ask. I'm gonna tell you the the data center deal is somewhat still the Wild West. It hasn't yet shaken out. Now, there's some good parts of it and some bad parts of it. Now, I, as you might have guessed, I'm a pretty analytical guy, and I don't want to make a recommendation on somebody that turns out to be a on a deal that turns out to be not a good deal for for everybody involved. On the negative side, they are they take up your big industrial sites, they take they took a massive amount of power. And if you've if you've got power to spare, fine. But if in certain areas, you know, you might have power limitations, so you have to be careful of that. Big water user, you know, because of the cooling and things like that. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I think they can actually lower the water table of the river? I don't know about that. I I I I would need to take a look at that. I wouldn't agree- I wouldn't necessarily agree with that at this point. Because you know, but it does take it puts it could put pressure on your water system and your pipelines to remove it. And the last thing is the number of jobs. Not a ton of jobs. Now, on the positive side, they are they do create some jobs. They're quite high paying, more limited number. They do provide a lot of property taxes and payments in lieu of taxes to the counties. There's franchise fees that come to cities from the amount of power that's being gone through these things. Now, the other thing, and we executed one of those agreements last year with uh up in Oregon, more limited, you know, not a huge one, but a significant one. Um there's people running around trying to broker deals that you don't know how many are real. You know, you don't know how many of these have a real client or they're just trying to lock up a site and build something and then shop it to, you know, the Googles and the and the Metas and the, you know, the the the the other folks, the Oracle folks. Now, I on that deal, I wasn't willing to execute those agreements and tie up a site until we actually got to say and it turns out BlackRock's involved. You know, so when BlackRock shows up, they've got a trillion dollars. You know, these are legit. So you you you know, you have to be very careful when you're executing agreements. You have to do a lot of due diligence, you have to really think your way through before you do those deals. They can be very good, but how many of them actually get executed versus the ones that are a bit more speculative? Do you want to tie up one of your prime industrial sites and give a you know a will serve on a large amount of power, large amount of water, and it sits there for five years because these guys have you know are trying to shop it to somebody else. Plus the regulatory environment. You know, these things are they're difficult things to put together. Now, you know, you tell me.

SPEAKER_03 33:49

So all right, well you you tell me. Five billion, say a five billion dollar data center, I'm just pulling numbers. So five billion dollars.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

That'd be a really, really big one.

SPEAKER_03 33:57

Yeah, five billion, okay, four billion dollar data center comes in and says, we want to govern to Cinco, we we can do it, fifteen jobs, twenty jobs, whatever. Are you can are you considering that?

SPEAKER_02 34:09

We know that's not my decision to make. That's the policy decision from the elected leadership of the government. Well, yeah, but you're the you're the guy sitting in the middle of the state. We present them with information, and I'm not going to sit here and tell you, yeah, do this or don't do that. We'd have to have a very, very frank conversation about what it does. And if it's a part of a site, maybe if it's if it's providing a large amount of revenue, sure. But you have to I I I'm pretty old-fashioned in economic development. I think the biggest and best impact deals are one that really creates a lot of jobs for local citizens. You know, you need to be thinking about You know what the number one predictive factor on everybody from housing outcomes, health outcomes, educational outcomes for kids, all of those things. You know what it comes down to? Is there a high-paying job with benefits in the family?

SPEAKER_03 35:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

That's it. That you when you get down to it, you want as many high-paying jobs in your community as you can get. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_04 35:09

Second to that, is there a place to live in a good school district?

Housing Shortage And The Missing Middle

SPEAKER_02 35:12

Well, you and I were talking about that earlier. I'll I'll tell you. Um, one of the things and and and the link historically hasn't been the very purest economic development. One of my challenges is I think outside the box, and I mean some people say I lost my box a long time ago. But you get into some economic limiting factors, housing being one of them. And let me tell you, if you land a thousand-job company and say 500 are here and 500 people are needing to move into the community, where are you going to house them? You know, that's a challenge, it would put a lot of pressure on the housing market. Now, let me talk about the three structures. And we had this to address in Oregon, because we had a house we had two major issues. And you look at housing from both an availability index and an affordability index. So the availability, how many months of inventory do you have, and then what happens if you nuke that by somebody coming in and saying, I need 500 new homes, your availability goes down. At the same time, your affordability index goes off the chart. And if you're doing old-fashioned math, you know, a family can buy a house using traditional financing mechanisms. You know, there's a lot of formulas and it's all on computer, but let's think of the old formula, which is three times income minus debt. So let's say you're making 80 grand a year, then your family unit. That's$240,000. And let's say you got$10,000 worth of car payments and uh medical debt. That means you can afford a house at$230,000. That's an$80,000 family. Now, the three areas of uh of housing, if you really break it into, if you really look at it, you've got very low income, and there are housing programs for that, and there's you know rent restrictions and things like that. So low-income housing programs exist. Once you get above a family making, I don't know,$120,000,$150,000 a year, some number, the market takes care of it. You can march into any bank and go, I make X amount of dollars. I can will you let me. Because that's what the contractors want to build. Trevor Burrus, Jr. They do. Now, there's a piece in the middle where I'm gonna say a family making$50,000 to$100,000 a year. This right here. Right here. And those are the I call that the missing middle. Yep. Meaning like the contractors and home builders, you know, they're gonna make a hundred grand. Yeah, that's a relatively easy math problem for them to solve. But let's say you're making fifty, sixty, seventy grand a year, you don't qualify for home for low-income housing, but at the same time, the the contractors aren't lined up knocking on your door going, I'm gonna build you, you know, a$400,000 house,$300,000 house, whatever it is. So we have to be thinking about those. And one of the things we did, you know, we had a housing problem in Southern Oregon, and we started looking at this thing, and God, you know, the state folks put more and more regulations on it every year. Um we had you know, I was looking at it, and I don't like price controls. Those are horrible things. That you so we ended up um by the way, the state told us we couldn't waive permit fees, system development chargers, impact fees, you know, because they the they again.

SPEAKER_04 38:31

Which were quite steep up there.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

Yeah. Well, yeah. But I mean, if you think about it, a house, by the time you had city and county fees, it was probably 20 grand. 15 to 20,000, you know, on a ha on a house. And so we ended up you know, we sold some land to Amazon, we did some contracting with the Air Force to build some of their facilities, and we made some some fees and interest on some of those things. But we created a fund so we could crate a credit fund. So a home builder that came in said, I'm gonna build, you know, after a lot of debate and a lot of research, we didn't, again, didn't want to touch price control. So we ended up uh settling on 1,700 square foot houses or smaller, you know, regular family, three or four bedroom, you know, you know, family can working family can afford. Just, you know, by your square foot costs, you're gonna be able to, you know, that family making 60 to 80 grand a year can probably afford that. And we waived, we created a fund to create a, we didn't waive, because that's t that's a technicality, because the state wouldn't allow us to do that. But we created a credit program that we used this money from Amazon and Air Force projects to offset some of those. So it reduced a developer home builder's cost by, say,$15,000. And so that sometimes it doesn't sound like a lot when you're building a$280,000,$300,000 house, but it's sometimes enough to offset your to make give them more confidence in their profit margin. Just a little bit more ability to, you know, kind of have certainty that they're gonna be able to make some money on building a house because their their costs just got reduced by$15,000. They're not doing it as a ministry. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah. We doubled the number of housing starts in that in that community. You know, and again, we weren't sure it was gonna work. So we set it up as a pilot program, just kind of try this, and it was successful. And that's one of the things that, again, it let us relieve some of the pressure on the availability market, availability index, and somewhat the affordability index. And I'm gonna tell you we didn't want to do seven more big houses, because the last thing you want to do is use public dollars to offset cost of houses for rich people houses. You know, if you're building a million-dollar house, that$15,000 credit really you know, it's a small piece. But when it's workforce-level housing, we need to do that. And one of the things I think, and you know, my research and studies on this is the Golden Triangle has a little bit of a housing shortage. It's it's I've I've read a couple of numbers in different places. Somebody said like 500 houses short, something like that. I I think you know an a large economic development deal that creates a lot of jobs is could put some pressure on that. So we probably need to all have a community-wide conversation about how do we how do we get home builders here. That's the other thing is you need home builders that are going to pay attention to rural areas versus going to a big metro where you can sell, you can, you know, your square footage costs to build aren't that much different, but your profit margin could be a lot bigger.

SPEAKER_03 41:34

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, where do those houses need to go? Startwell, Columbus, West Point, Caledonia?

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, I think it's the entirety of the area, entirety of the region. Because I mean you think about it, a a home builder or a actually a company, if you will, they're not going to pull their employees from one county versus another. It's all about drive time. And once you get to about, I don't know, an hour drive time to whatever wherever your facility is, people will will drive an hour. But when you start getting to, you know, will somebody drive 90 minutes each way every day? So that's three hours a day. Will they do that? Better be they will for very, very high-paying jobs, but you know, you have to think about it.

SPEAKER_03 42:14

Well, right now, you know, uh ADI, SDI say their people live in some 40, some odd counties in uh Alabama and Mississippi. A lot of them are in Monroe County. And they're driving they're they're driving 80 miles a lot of them one way. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Trades, Community College, And High Pay

SPEAKER_02 42:30

It's a little over an hour. Um but you really need to, you know, would those people make some people weren't. Some people are gonna be happy where they l wherever they live and they're gonna tolerate the drive. But if you think about it, you really need to be within I'm gonna say an hour's drive is your sweet spot. You know, that's where you start having kind of a it falls off where people are willing to do it.

SPEAKER_03 42:50

Aaron Ross Powell Well now uh the what do you see as the sort of the landscape here of of of these of these three counties? Because you know, typically Lowndes County has been the industrial hub, uh you know, sort of secondarily clay with Yokohama some things, and Startville has been kind of seen as the the housing hub where where we want all of these workers to live, and maybe Caledonia secondarily there. And then Startville's kind of been tertiary where uh industrial development is concerned. How do you see that? What is the link? I think how does your link plug into that and maybe change some of that? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 43:31

I think at the end of the day, that's a decision for the elected officials at the city and county levels. Our job is to is to identify deals, bring them to the table, give recommendations on how you might structure the development agreements, incentives, labor agreements, things like that. And it's up to the elected officials to decide whether they want to do that or not. And you know, that's that's that's their role in the process. They set policy and you know, they can decide if they want to, you know, Job is to bring a deal and put it in front of whoever based on the clients and the customer, I call it the customer, the project's needs, and it's up to the community leaders whether they want to execute on that or whether they want to steer it somewhere else. I mean, that's that's that's what the that's the way it works.

SPEAKER_03 44:16

Aaron Ross Powell Well, to your knowledge, is there are are there industrial uh clients interested in all three counties right now on varying levels?

SPEAKER_02 44:25

Aaron Powell I don't talk about projects and pipelines. I mean it's one of those things that is just a bad practice to do, and it leads to a lot of speculation. But my I've looked at our deal flow, and there's there's companies that are looking across the entirety of the region.

unknown 44:37

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 44:37

Okay. And you know, some some high probability, some low probability, you know. You just work your way through and you know you start at low probability, that first conversation with a consultant or site selector or a law firm or a company itself, and then you work your way up from that 10 percent probability, whether more of a suspect than a prospect and or a project, and you work your way up till you get to high probabilities. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_04 45:00

And what what is their general view of the availability of our labor force just in consideration of we've got good workforce development here and then the uh present-day environment of a four-year degree as that's ever changed? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 45:14

You know, I I get myself into trouble on these things. I have got myself into trouble on it. You know, because if you really think about it, you know, somebody asks me, you know, you see a lot of these projects coming into an area and how many where do I position my kid to take at to get access to these high-paying jobs you're talking about? And I used to I got once got myself in trouble on this. And I said, look, at the top have an honest conversation with yourself and your kid. At the top 20 percent academically, study whatever you want. It doesn't matter. The the world's gonna need doctors and lawyers and whatever. The next 20 percent down, you know, a STEM subject, computer science, nursing, you know, things like that. Just go to college and study those STEM subjects. There's gonna be need for that. But the you know, if your kids lower 60 percent uh academically inclined, and go to community college, study something that has practical applications, you know, whether it's welding, pl I've got a friend who's a plumber who makes 300 grand a year. You know, I I'm gonna tell you, I mean, there was a lot of probably booked up so solid he can't get places on time. Yeah, there's need for people. And I'm gonna tell you the disruptions that are coming in the labor market based on everything from AI to you name it, uh foreign competition, what have you. AI won't be able to replace a guy who can install electrical panels, will he? Will it? Or be able to hook up a plumbing system or be able to put roofs on houses. AI can't do that. Think about that. There's gonna be a lot of opportunities moving forward. You know, I'm I'm gonna tell you a little story. One of the things we did was um in Texas, we we landed a site, we landed a steel dynamics plan, just like here. And one of the things we had to do, and we worked with the company to understand their labor needs, their training programs, and what were high priorities to them. And one of them turns out to be millright technology, you know, the stuff that wheels and moves and things like that, all the stuff that goes through a steel mill. And uh after we were successful, we set it up with this institute at Delmar College, the local community college. You know, we had industry partners, Exxon was part of it, Shaneer was part of it, Steel Dynamics part of it. And we get into this, and I'm getting, you know, I'm I'm trying to illustrate how we built this institute and this program. And I'm giving a presentation to about 200 people, including five community colleges and a bunch of industry folks, and I'm like, you know, and I've got a slide up behind me, and I'm talking about the Mill Wright Technology Program, and I said, you know, these kids are coming out and making 80 grand a year at this when they've got an associate's degree in process technology. I see a hand, and I've got to correct you, I gotta correct you. And I'm like, you know, I've got lights in my eyes, and I'm not entirely sure. Like I couldn't tell who it was. And you know, in front of 200 people, you love to be correct. Yeah. I've got that sick feeling in my stomach. And he goes, he stands up and I still can't quite tell who it is. And he goes, I'm Dennis Black, I'm the new general manager of the steel plant, steel damage. I gotta correct you. I'm like, oh God, what's gonna happen? He goes, We I hire about 40 in memory my memory is like 40 something of these kids a year. I'm not paying them 80 grand a year. And I'm like, oh God. Because I pay them by the time all of a sudden done 140,000. Every one of those community college places.

SPEAKER_04 48:36

The brain drain is already a problem right here.

SPEAKER_02 48:39

Well, everyone's a sending you know, every one of those community college prisons' heads went, we're gonna talk to that guy. He got swamped at the end of that. But you think about it, we have that here. If I was gonna, you know, I've got a daughter doing engineering and stuff out, and she, you know, she's she's working for a company out in California, Terracon, big engineering outfit. Uh but if I if I had a son and he's like, you know, let's say he was like, hey, I don't want to go through this four-year-old millright technology, welding, things like that, you know, pipe fitting.

SPEAKER_03 49:12

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, it's interesting that you say that because uh uh one of the higher-ups at ADI was speaking at uh Rotary this week and said that he was asked, what's the most challenging job for you guys to fill out there? And he was like, we we we're having a hard time getting mill rights. Trevor Burrus, Uh you know what?

SPEAKER_02 49:29

Think about that all the way through, you know. That's uh just proved my point. I didn't know he said that. That's interesting. But it it's consistent. You know, if you can if you can turn out you know, the other thing I learned is I heard that if if if you can read a micrometer, you know, accurately and do in have whatever the certification is on the measuring thing, they'll give you a job. You know, now I'm I'm I'm gonna tell you that I bet it's not easy. I don't know if I could do it.

SPEAKER_03 49:58

Right.

SPEAKER_02 49:59

Yeah.

Industry Slowdowns And Oil Price Risk

SPEAKER_03 49:59

But last thing I have for you, uh just we talked about the political differences or the difference in the politics and the places you've been. Golden Triangle, uh the different counties and the in the leadership, they view things different ways as well. So I get have you have you met with those guys? What are kind of your impressions of of what you're what you're plugged into, what you're up against here politically in the three re in the three K.

SPEAKER_02 50:28

I think every everybody I've spoken to is supportive of economic development.

unknown 50:34

Right.

SPEAKER_02 50:34

They want to do they look at it. I mean, they slightly that's that's fine. Everybody looks at things a slightly different way. One might be more interested in office financial services, another one might be more heavy industry. But that's okay. That's the, you know, every if you tried to fit every deal into every community, it's like fitting, you know, square peg in a roundhouse. Sure. Done you're fighting a battle there. But go play to where your strengths are. Go back to Moneyball Economic Development, play to where you are gonna have your high win percentages. And that's not gonna be a one-size-fits-all for an entire region. You know, you're gonna have certain sites that work better for I don't know what you know, historically. Let let's let's talk about this. Historically, since 1995, I track every deal, every major deal across the country and I read up on everything. Historically, the South has really outperformed every other region of the country in finance, aviation, and automotive. And those we are killing it compared to everybody else. And and by the way, related fields like steel dynamics makes stuff that goes into the the products that go into every into the, say, automotive. The last year has been like the brakes got hit by a lot of major industries in those four sectors. In those three sectors. You know, that they they really said, you know what, they pump the brakes, because there are there's a lot of uncertainty. International trade, tariffs, you name it. But the one I'm really watching right now is oil costs. Because when you you're paying north of$5 a gallon for diesel when you're paying four north of$4 for regular gas, that will have a knock-on effect to every one of your distribution and logistics deals. Every one of those, every one of those. So you have to be thinking about where you're gonna, you know, is there gonna be pent-up demand? How do we use this, you know, this kind of not hiatus, because that's the wrong word, this delay. And and when companies see uncertainty, they default to uh let's not do anything until we know how it's gonna shake out. Because you're not making a you're not making a billion-dollar investment decision based on what it's gonna be like the next year. You need to be thinking about the 10, 20 years, is it gonna be a profitable decision for the next 20 years? So I think that's one of the things we need to be all watching. And I'm gonna tell you when West Texas Intermediate is sitting at ninety-six to ninety-eight, and maybe a hundred dollars a barrel for an extended period, when you've got Brent Crude at 110 for an extended period, that's gonna have a real people are gonna start to feel that. When you fill your car every, you know, every week, or when you're a major company that you're filling your truck fleet and you and all of a sudden your you know costs have gone up, you know, multiples of X. You know, we're gonna have to be watching that. And that hurts retail and everything. Everything. You know, so we're we're gonna have to be very cognizant. You know, I I come back to I'm one of those free trade guys that you know there's a uh coming out of Texas, there's a sweet spot of of of oil prices. And you know it used to there's a saying that that they have there and in the oil-producing areas and it goes across the you know, Tuscalotion marine shale producers and things like that. You know, high prices, high oil prices are good for the oil-producing states, but bad for everybody else, and low oil prices are bad for it are good for America, bad for there's not there's a sweet spot. And I'm gonna say it's somewhere between 70 and 85 bucks a barrel. You know, high enough that people are still producing, bringing new wells on, you know, they're they're they're they're spending a lot of money on fracking and things like that. But it's not too high that everybody's starting to stay at home or really rethink how their truck and fleet's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_04 54:28

Aaron Powell, you're gonna have a hard time explaining to me about gas prices being too low, though.

SPEAKER_02 54:32

I mean, I like my cheap gas. Trevor Burrus, Jr. That's the thing, though. But when you get when it goes too low, now bear in mind it wasn't that long ago during COVID, oil hit negative 37 bucks a barrel. It was because it was coming out of the ground and there wasn't enough storage for it. So if you don't have a place to put it, you have to shut down your well. Now, if you're shutting down a well, you don't just open it up next week when the market's done. You don't. You have to redrill. You have to start things start closing up. So the cost of shutting down a well and reopening it might be five million dollars. And you multiply that by 10,000 wells across the producing oil fields, all of a sudden, you know, shutting down a well because, you know, because you got nowhere to put it or the oil prices don't make sense. You know, the Saudis, in Saudi, their break-even costs about$14 a barrel. You know, in the I think the most affordable one is the scoop stack in uh Permian Basin. And they were about$25 to 28. I can't remember the exact number. I'm I'm trying to reach it in my head and I can't get it. But it's in that re that region. So, you know, that's the most affordable, most cost effective. But when you get oil at$40 a barrel, there's a lot of areas, the Alpine Highlands of the Permian, you really rethink whether you're gonna drill new wells at that number. So you think about it. So again, there's that sweet spot. You don't want so low that you're not gonna drill additional wells and it's not profitable and you're below cost, because it costs it costs a lot of money to drill and frack and operate and transport and all the rest of it and store. And then you don't want it too high. So I'm gonna say right about 80 bucks. 80 to 85 bucks is probably a really good sweet spot.

SPEAKER_03 56:14

Well, uh anything you want to add? I'm just a nerd.

SPEAKER_02 56:17

And in case you haven't figured that out, I'm fascinated by this.

SPEAKER_04 56:20

Aaron Powell Really?

SPEAKER_02 56:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 56:22

They can store it in my backyard.

Settling In And Community Kindness

SPEAKER_02 56:24

You know, I had a friend who was running a port. He's one of the sharpest shipping guys there is named Sean Strawberry. This guy's a super sharp. Now he rubs some people the wrong way, but when oil was when they were struggling to get to get storage places, he was in the business of trying to line up, you know, this old oil tankers parked in Norway in the fjords, you know. And he was trying to figure out can we get our hands on some of those? I mean, just as in temporary, you know, because they'll have hundreds of thousands of barrels in a in a tanker, you know. Probably frozen in place. Aaron Ross Powell They put them up there because it's you know relatively affordable. The the cold doesn't, you know, the cold water has less, I don't know, rusting effect. I don't know. Something like I'm not an expert on that, but you like you know, he is, and that's what he told me. Well anything else? I'm I'm gonna just tell you that people have been so very kind and receptive here.

SPEAKER_04 57:18

We are kind.

SPEAKER_02 57:20

Friendly city. Trevor Burrus, Jr. You know, and and I uh you know Shelly's never lived in the second north, Marion to her law clients, Shelly to her friends and family. She's never lived in the South. And you know, so it's you know, I'm if somebody says bless your heart, I have to go, yeah, that's not a great thing. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well it's now look.

SPEAKER_04 57:40

Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is.

SPEAKER_02 57:43

Yeah, you have to read between the lines on a couple of things. It's on the tone. Yeah. You know, but one of the things you know we're really you know, I'm looking forward to and I'm really trying to work on is get to meet people, understand what their issues are, understand what the hot buttons are, hopefully I can provide some value and contribute on where I can. And my my goal in in anything you do in life is to treat people as you'd want to be treated. And you know, and people have been so kind and professional, and I'm I'm gonna tell you I'm very appreciative of that.

SPEAKER_04 58:16

All right. Ian Vasey, y'all. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 58:18

Welcome to the Golden Triangle.

Three Local Headlines To Know

SPEAKER_04 58:20

Absolutely, the new Link CEO. And um I think we're in good hands. I want to know what you guys out there think. Tips at Cdispatch.com and put some stuff in the comments. What are your thoughts? What are your concerns, and where do you think we're headed in the way of economic development? We want to hear from you and thank you again, sir, for coming on the program. Thank you so much here today. Since 1935, Lowndes Farm Supply has supported the Greater Columbus trade area with products and knowledge for the farm, ranch, and garden markets, along with lawn, hunting supplies, outdoor clothing, and boots. Go check them out at 69 Co op Road in Columbus.

SPEAKER_03 59:01

Three things I need to know. All right. Well, other than the Bassmaster Elite Tournament, three other things to know. Of course, surely you've heard number one by now, but Columbus has hired a new fire chief, Charles Yarborough, the former Storville Fire Chief, is coming out of retirement to lead Columbus Fire and Rescue after Dwayne Hughes retires April sixteenth. Best of luck to both the outgoing and incoming chiefs.

SPEAKER_04 59:24

For sure. I hear that was a little bit of a spicy meeting you got.

SPEAKER_03 59:27

It was indeed. Yes. Other farmers are also claiming thousands in damages, and they're trying to figure out what to do with them. Of course, I've got a pretty good idea of what they could do. What kind of dogs are these? Just random feral dogs, man.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:02

Like domesticated, no longer domesticated.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:05

That's what it looks like.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:07

Gee.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:08

Number three, the last T-1J hawk left Columbus Air Force Base this week, one of the primary training aircraft at the base since 1996. They will be replaced with the more modern T7A Red Hawk.

Listener Tips And Final Sign Off

SPEAKER_04 1:00:22

Well, we thank you for joining us today. Find that one friend of yours that needs to know what's happening here locally so they can listen in and together we can make our hometown a better place. Reach out to us tips at cdispatch.com. You can also follow me on Facebook or ex at d Chisholm Double Zero and leave a public comment. Keeping it real here in Catfish Alley Studio and Historic Downtown Columbus, your host has been Zach Player, and I am David Chisholm. Y'all stay friendly out there.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:50

I'm just a simple old country boy, but um I think that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:54

I've stepped out and I've said what I had to say.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:57

You've been listening to Between the Headlines with Zach and David. That's what old people do.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:05

That is.