So it's made by a Chinese company, and they do, Oh, that's a podcast topic.
They pull that out with a little bit for people who just have a like
164 screen addiction or something.
Oh, I'll say it a few times that.
I'll even give you one of these.
If you want me to put 164 in here, I'll give you one at some point.
So 64.
That's the podcast number.
So I know what.
Oh, he's 131.
Okay, great.
I know.
All right. Ready? Zero.
Okay.
All right, all right.
Feeny talks with friends. Episode 164.
We're here at Maximum Beverage with some good friends.
What's up? Jason?
Who, me? Oh, hi.
What's up? Gail?
Okay, John, you went ahead.
I did look directly at you.
And this is John.
I know John, he's a past podcast guest. 131.
Go back and check it out. 131.
We're here to meet Jason and Gail.
I've never really interacted with you. I'm so happy to hear you.
Have you on? How are you guys doing?
During the weather?
Yeah.
Both doctors,
different fields
converged into the same field.
Oh, interesting. All right.
We'll table that for topic.
My name is Eric Feeney, founder and president, friends of Feeney.
Our mission is to help children and families that need assistance
after heartbreak or tragedy. And I use this podcast.
Feeney talks with friends, and I talk to wonderful
people in the community that are doing great things.
Are you guys doing great things?
Are you doing great things?
Tonight at 730?
We're nice.
Nice. I'm looking forward to it.
Yeah, we we will.
We look ahead to the budget.
Yeah. The great is in large.
The size of this one will be receiving.
Yes. Tonight the budget.
So. So you're new to the Republican, town council.
Why? Join NY West Hartford, please.
You can start.
Why West Hartford?
Because this is, where we have made our lives.
This is where the town that we choose to raise our family and live here forever.
Want to make the town a better place?
That's why.
How long have you been here?
Four years now. Nice.
Why? Republican?
I mean, that's, you know, it's a big question.
I think, because, you know, a gradually
trended more conservative as I've raised my family and,
seen, you know, moved around
the country, lived in more conservative places, like, I grew up in Missouri.
So, you know, I'm not scared of that label.
You know, nice for a lot of people who are conservative backgrounds.
I think
there's certain values that I want to protect.
Also fiscal responsibility.
Very concerned about the sustainability of our town,
the sustainability of our property tax burden.
Those are those are some words.
Okay.
Also, you know, I work in the addiction field, and I think the addiction field
is a lot about, you know, human thriving.
And a lot of that doesn't come down to government programs.
We have excellent government programs that do help.
But a lot of that really, if you look at what, helps people
when they're really struggling with substance use, it's community, work,
family, parenthood,
things that
are by and large values that I really believe in.
And, you know, for example, building, stable classes
to the middle class building,
housing markets where people could actually buy a home and
achieve that American dream.
You know, these are all things that,
I believe in a lot.
And that's kind of why I've tried it towards the conservative side.
All right. Nice.
Thank you for sharing.
Gail, do you want to take the same question?
So I've probably I've always
been like the conservative side
and have considered myself Republican for most of my.
I really had nothing to do with politics for six years.
And I just. Don't.
But I started to get really concerned about six years ago when schools.
Shifted
to Michigan, like academics,
political.
Doesn't
really bother me.
And so I began to come to
some of the committee meetings and, and
I was there.
I would say that I'm really concerned about schools, and I.
And then when there was a process,
they asked me to do
kind of hemmed and hawed because I wasn't really, like I said, a political person.
But I felt like maybe I could sort of start to push back on
some of those schools
and talk to those. So.
I did like four years.
I really enjoyed the board of that.
I kind of learned a lot.
And I feel like, you know, we did make some
changes and beneficial to schools.
Nice. Yep.
I would see you there from September to January. Right?
My daughter Bridget's on the, she's the high school rep, so, she's enjoying it.
She asks questions, and, she presents, what Connor is doing.
So thank you for that.
And why the shift from board of Ed to town council, or how was that shift?
Can you compare and contrast, both parties in both.
I mean, it's really different.
I mean, I think that on the board of Ed, the issues are often
more contentious.
Back and forth between different members
and the way they see the, you know, school system going forward.
I don't feel that as much on me.
On the town council, I have been there that long, but from what
I've seen, it's it's more, you know, issues that I think,
you know, people can sort of rally around the.
Division.
So, yeah, it's different.
I didn't exactly plan to go on the town council
without sort of this guy over here
telling me to do.
So, I didn't I'm not,
you know, not to have to do it for a long, long time.
Nice.
And how long have you been in West Hartford?
Oh, I, I grew up here.
I went to public schools.
I mean, I moved here when I was about six kids, so four kids.
So you know,
raised here, some of them.
But, you know, what type of public school support the private schools?
Yeah. I think
very nice.
All right.
John, so
what made you push Galen to this position?
Question one you and Jason real me in if you think I'm out of line.
But, I, I did a lot of recruiting.
I had a very successful corporate career, and one of my hard and fast rules.
I was just telling somebody this yesterday. One of my heart.
Hard and fast rules was always, always try to hire people around you.
They're smarter than you.
And they have different skill sets.
And and, I've been I've been enamored with our work for years.
We talked about it, I kid her, I call her,
I think, on her a little bit, and we laugh about it.
And Jason has just kind of blown me away from the moment I met him.
Seeing him testify before council, seeing him talk about the issues.
There's nobody in town, a lay person.
There's no lay person.
Town has done more for for pedestrian and bicycle safety than and road safety.
And Jason, I mean, he's just been a trailblazer on this topic.
So when I found out I was not going to receive the nomination
from the Democratic Party and I made the,
you know,
I call it
the second most difficult decision of your time,
I'll tell you about the most difficult decision I made in my life.
It was a bad one.
It was a good decision, but a terrible decision I had to make.
But this was the second most difficult decision of my life.
I made the decision to change
parties, and two days later, I met with Jason for coffee, and I said,
come on, we got to do it, okay yourself, and I'm very happy.
And then, Gail, I had to work on, Gail took a few weeks to convince her, but,
I just
I think it's so important we have really bright, really
creative, really diverse people on council, and that's. I'm.
I can't get over in this caucus.
How happy every time I have a chance to brag about this caucus, I do.
And it's so much fun working with these guys.
We're getting so much done.
The good news is we're we're making inroads with downtown staff.
We're making inroads with, the Democrat side of the aisle and,
you know, really starting to make some progress on being able to,
even though we're the minority, be able to guide policy and God's decisions.
So we're we're I'm having a ball and I'll speak for these guys for mine.
Having so much fun.
Yeah.
How is it I think of it right away.
It's 6 to 3. Yeah.
So how do you guys get things passed or how does that work?
The numbers are working against you.
There cannot ever be 5 to 4.
And by charter.
It's is, a political party can have a maximum of six
nominated and, you know, endorsed.
You know, our representatives
and the Democrats have had a six, three majority
for probably close to a quarter of a century now,
quarter of a century.
So this place has been democratic for so long.
Well, yeah, we'd like to do a great job for the town
and, you know, show people what we can do, what we can offer.
I think a lot of people
have some frustrations with the town and with the taxes with with other issues.
And, you know, so we'd like to kind of show a positive
alternative and, you know, maybe we build up those vote counts over time.
That's that.
I think that's a great point.
I think the ultimate judge, and I think I've said this to you guys
at least once recently, the ultimate judgment of how we're doing
is assuming we all run again in two years,
and we'll see if the vote counts, too, even if they don't come up thousands.
But even if they come up 10%, if we see the vote counts come up,
we're doing something right.
That's the ultimate great.
That's the ultimate ultimate, you know, parade of our performance, I think, okay.
Because there are towns have shifted.
I think East Granby shifted.
Farmington shifted to Bristol, maybe, I don't know, but there are a couple towns
that do see it ever shifting.
I, I, I look, I think, you know,
we're not here to talk about the national climate,
but I think the national climate is tough right now.
It's very, very challenging right now.
And there are a lot of people who really take ownership of the National.
The analogy I use when we were running is everybody wants to play
big league ball, got all levels of baseball important.
And this this may not be big league ball, but it's a really, really important
level of government.
But people want to feel like they're playing the big leagues.
So it's really tough to get people to say, hey, let's look at the candidate
and move away from the R line or move away from the D line.
We saw that when,
Dennis and
the other ones helped me out here who ran for the Connecticut party
when we had, yeah, Lee Gold and Rick Bush.
Oh, yeah. When they ran for.
And Ronnie Waterman when they ran, a Connecticut party line.
Every now, Ronnie and I were doing the show
at that time, we were doing election coverage and, and we had three
correspondents who were going to be at each location, D.R.
and ACP.
They were all fighting to be at ACP because everybody thought ACP
was going to have a massive like they didn't pick up a single seat.
So people are really entrenched.
So the only thing, you know, the guys have given these guys
and the guns, they've reminded me
when I've started to do something stupid is focus on the local people.
That's why I'm here.
I have no interest in any anything beyond West Hartford.
Just it's not you know, I'm passionate about West Hartford.
Serve West Hartford and just keep it
cool.
What are some top issues?
Can you share some issues that you going to talk about tonight?
I saw one, tonight's the budget. Yeah.
I mean, that's that's what we're gonna talk about.
And really we're just going to receive it and then digest it.
So that's I mean, this is Rick led with give that budget.
Yeah. We haven't seen it. Yeah.
Oh so this is a big unveiling.
Like it's going to be a surprise for everyone.
Yeah.
We did see parts of the school culture.
The teachers getting raises.
Can we make sure that happens every year?
I don't know, you were on board. Yeah.
You voted for this contract?
Yeah, but that was, you know, maybe six months ago.
Yeah, well. Thank you.
We can use some more.
I teach third grade. Right.
Thank you for doing that.
Oh, no.
It's a big one.
We're going to be discussing, slight change to an ordinance,
in terms of 830 g developments, which are low income,
housing and subsidized housing developments.
So we're gonna make a little tweak to that, which is to give town council
a little bit more, because town council, one of our sponsors,
is one of the alternate zoning profiles on the authority.
So we're making a little tweak to that.
So that town council now will see every application that crosses
the desk of managers and or something.
We should put them on so someone sign them up.
You got some people in 65. So, but,
so that's,
that's one of the things, that's like, that's one of the things we did.
So was that like the byline and the Camelot?
Is that or something else, like Camelot reached a threshold?
Yeah. Not the. But yeah. That's right.
But we didn't get the byline.
It's not a byline.
Yep. That's Lewis Brown. Yes.
Future podcast guest. Oh, great.
I bumped into him in a Google the other night.
Yeah, I have his number email, so I was so thrilled and so happy to run into him.
I'm like, commander,
do you have extra office space for friends of any that you're not using?
Come on, we only need it like to do a podcast every other.
Speaking of another lifetime West Hartford resident Lewis Brown.
Yeah. Good guy. Really?
Did you guys take tours of the byline or the Camelot?
No, that was more for our time. Oh, you.
Because I served on zoning at the time.
I think when I talked to you a year ago, I was on. So.
So. Yeah, I, I have a question for him, but they also said that
44 high end residents
or 48 one, the two bedroom units.
Do you like that?
I don't know if I understand the question.
So the byline, which one's a nice one?
The byline. Yeah.
They're they're calling them residences.
The byline.
And the other one, they're calling units one.
They just all the apartments. Semantics.
I think it's just that might be semantics.
Okay. Because I just saw an article.
I thought that was interesting, though.
Yeah.
They can just call on both units or both residents.
That's just me just thrown out there.
An observation situation.
I like them both.
Potatoes and potatoes.
But no, they're they're the issue.
That's going to be for us is specifically you can 830 G developments
be approved by administrative approval, meaning, less red tape but less review.
I mean, a lot of review from staff, but less public review.
You know, meaning, can affordable developments come through the town staff
without coming to council
or do all either g applications have to come through council?
When you go through council that costs more money.
You gotta you need to pay for a lawyer's time.
You need to pay for potentially more,
an engineer's time, things like that.
And so we don't want to drive up the cost of building housing.
But we also do
want to deliver transparency and a chance for citizens to provide their input.
So it's a tricky issue.
Yeah, but the question we're considering is,
can you have site plan approval for affordable housing developments,
or do all affordable housing developments have to come through council,
which by definition makes them slightly less affordable.
So it's a significant question.
Jeez, this guy's good.
He's let me let me tell you that was well put.
So I'll tell you I'm going to get in trouble.
Jason put on the story, but we were doing a, a meet and greet at the gate
on market, and Jason's mother was there.
Lovely woman.
And we were chatting for a little while.
We were kind of off to the side, and Jason
and the other candidates were doing their thing,
and I looked it up and I said, I looked at her and said,
some faceless photographic memory.
And she just so not bragging, just so matter of fact.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. We both.
And she was not bragging.
She was not into this guy, let me tell you.
Like he you give him something.
Once he he was elected, he wasn't elected a week.
And he had read
ordinance after ordinance after ordinance.
He'd read the town charter, he'd read, I mean, just looked, you know, everything.
And it's just, it's wonderful.
Like I said, it was like the chief people who were smarter than I am.
And it's been really, I don't know about smarter, but I like to read the.
Yeah, I read the whole town code.
Read the whole school budget.
Yeah.
We're going to read whatever Rick gives us tonight.
I read every page of the site plans.
You know, where the sewers are for developments.
You know everything.
Yeah. So.
So I read everything that pretty much second.
Reading is fundamental as a third grade teacher.
Yeah. That's right.
Read for 20 minutes every night. Kids,
you must read a little more than 20 minutes.
That's great.
Oh, so Why would residents want more housing
and more apartments are we getting our tax cut for these?
They'll contribute somewhat to the tax base,
whether there's a tax cut really depends on a lot of factors.
I mean, it's a huge budget.
So yeah, I mean, if you if a building delivers,
you know, a couple million dollars a year in, tax revenue, that helps
will that directly translates into a tax cut for, you know, I mean, maybe not.
It depends on what the rest of the town's doing, but it does help.
But there's, you know, different factors.
You know, for example, if you if I talk to a firefighter,
you know, a couple months back who said, well,
with some of these bigger buildings, we have to do a lot more training
because you got to haul a big freaking hose through these long hallways
as opposed to being traditionally outfitted
to serve more single family homes.
So it's a really complex question.
I mean, it's it may not directly lower your tax burden.
There is money coming through through property taxes.
We'll see tonight from Rick, whether you know how much of an effect
these property, these these units coming online are going to have on our
overall tax structure,
but unlikely that we can build our way out of, out of our spending.
No, I mean, we did the calculation once.
You have to be putting up like $1 billion a year of housing or something to get us
to a zero based budget, specifically just by expanding the grand list.
So it helps.
It's not really going to, significantly impact your wallet.
I mean, that, you know, concerns me with with all this housing
and how it's going to affect, revenues that, you know, I don't know, you
guys, we're here, but we can't move that square.
You know, we're all
going to reduce taxes on the things that are going
to the citizens of the county that never came through.
And, you know, I think like building
a building, we're also, like, changing
the environment.
So I grew up, I think.
A little town, and now it's becoming a city.
And, you know, question is the people in this town.
Tell them.
Is it going to really help with the tax burden?
And I really have serious concerns
because I think the spending,
you know, outpacing spending.
I agree with that.
I think, money does come through with these properties,
but it doesn't address our underlying issue with, with spending.
It's a really complex issue.
I mean, you really we can go on ours for this.
You know, we only have 50 minutes with Feeney.
Yeah, there's. Oh, there's, you know, there's questions of property rights.
You know, how much can one person say that somebody can do to their property?
You know, there's questions about the character of the town.
There's questions of traffic and road safety.
There's questions of how do we serve the next generation.
You know, many people who may be listening.
They may have children who maybe, you know, high school age
or you have a high school age child, you know, do we want to, build places
where young people can live and perhaps, you know, get a foothold in our town?
And, and we do know that building, you know, increasing supply does reduce costs.
We're seeing some landlords, providing incentives already,
as a lot of suppliers come on onto the market
and they have to compete against each other.
So you do control costs, in your housing by building more.
But, it's a it's a it's a very complicated conversation.
I mean, it's not something that, you know, one sound bite or, you know, one,
you know, one.
It's hard to capture in a short amount of time, but.
So we want to respect the character of our town.
We want to, you know, not over overburden our, infrastructure,
not overburden our existing citizens.
We don't want to make outsized promises of,
you know, that this is going to financially,
that we're going to build our way out of, financial problems.
Exactly, exactly.
But, you know, the town has changed.
You know, we used to be a little farming town not that long ago.
And, the town will continue to change.
If we don't change, if we don't build.
The other issue is, as we see in places like Massachusetts and California,
the town still changes.
Its the makeup of the people that change because our housing costs
start to skyrocket. They start to really go through the roof.
And that changes the type of people who can afford to live in our town.
So, if you if you don't
build at all physically, the town looks the same,
but the type of people who can afford to live in your town, as we see in places
like California or Massachusetts, change dramatically, dramatically.
So, it's a very multifaceted issue that we try to
we're trying to thread a needle, you know, another another piece.
And Jason, both of these guys just nailed it.
But another piece is we are at the mercy, as
is everybody at the mercy of, for example, construction cost.
So let's talk pluses.
So let's talk about you because you've got properties.
So many people
wanted to build single family residences
because that would be 14 acres on one side.
You forget how many were on the other side.
But and the dream is split up to build
a single family, single family homes, starter homes, that sort of thing.
But when you look at what a third of an acre of land
possible was after day 225 to $275,000 with dirt.
And then we got the construction cost of the average house,
275 to 3 and a quarter per square foot,
that 1000ft², you're at $600,000, 1000ft².
It's really tiny. And that's a lot of money.
So there's so so you have to go and you have to find
the most efficient solution, the most efficient solution.
Right now for developers, they're not going to
they can't make money on them.
They're going to build what we're seeing.
You know, the larger
developments with the small shopping areas and that sort of thing.
So it's yeah, to Jason's point, we could spend
two hours just on this issue. It is so many.
There's so many dimensions to it. It is so complicated.
And we're at the mercy of economic conditions.
And, you know, the builders aren't going to build
contrary to economic conditions when economic conditions permit.
Well, they lose money.
When you refer to
Yukon, is that the one on trout Brook right here with the construction.
Yeah.
So yeah, there's a lot going on on there.
It'll be online at some point this year as parts of it will be 1800.
It's going to take a little bit longer
you know. Yeah.
I would add on to that one thing, which is I'm
as I'm gradually learning as well as time goes on.
But there are
there are ways for government to deregulate and shift that cost calculus
to make it more likely that small single family homes can get built.
So there is there are material costs, but there are also a lot of regulatory costs.
And so when we have excessive regulatory costs to build,
to build housing, you know, those are fixed costs, you know,
hiring a lawyer, hiring a PR firm, hiring engineers, those are fixed costs.
So you can't build, like six small units if you just spent $700,000 on your,
you know, on on regulatory costs before you, you broke ground.
So there are ways to shift that cost calculus
so that it's more likely that more and more economically
favorable for a developer to build single family homes,
because it feels impossible that we wouldn't see it in places like,
you know, Texas or, you know, other places in the country.
So because their material costs are not that different, us
there's a market difference and regulatory costs, land costs is significant,
but, I don't think it's prohibitive to build starter homes.
But we, the government, make it pretty hard to build starter homes.
Yeah.
This is this is deep.
I asked that quick question. Yeah.
Like you, you weren't kidding.
When you go on forever, you want us to.
We can go back to talking about soda if you want to.
Yeah, I, I mean, it's it's
the affordable housing crisis is a nationwide problem.
And it is so common that there's no easy answers.
Yeah, there's no easy answer.
Right?
Well, I'm all for affordability.
I want some more work.
We need students.
I need will I stay in business?
Well, there's. Will students be in the schools?
Well, I mean, as housing costs go up, family sizes go down.
Eric, you know this, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, well, families are down, but people have fewer kids.
When?
Yeah, when your housing cost is insane, you know? So,
getting our housing costs
under control will keep you in business. Yes,
I like it, Eric.
It's your fault, I like it, I like it.
Talk about soda.
It's not a fox and park.
So tonight you have a meeting with, Mayor Cantor,
right?
So, Harris Lyons, McGinnis.
Walters, Winograd pool in Lazarus
and Wayne Wang, you you must have been absent February 10th.
Were you there?
Oh, I was trapped in California.
Yeah, the
housing hellscape.
Sherry Kanter,
wonderful podcast guest number 35, Lazarus and pool.
And 152 together.
Barry Walters 56.
Go back and check them out.
Lou Brown, we talked about the byline.
We talked about honeycomb.
Real estate.
Oh, yeah.
So let's see what else we have here.
Oh, a lot of people moved over to the Human Rights Commission.
Carol Blank's good friend. She has twins.
I have twins Michael Bloom, great golfer, terrible basketball player, good friend.
Andrew, just moved here.
Great. He's on the human rights.
So I was interested to see some familiar names.
We do. And it's around this time of year.
December, January, February where all the you know, we're several through there's
there's several commissions and boards in town.
There's, only 30 of them.
And the first thing we had to do when we stepped into our role is to start,
you know, people who were expiring or who were expired,
like, we had a we had, I think, three instances,
3 or 4 instances where people were still serving,
but it expired a year or 2 or 3 years ago, just somehow, you know, just got this.
And so we had to do a lot of that.
But it's really, it's really interesting because all this commission supports
zoning, really have a big input on policy, the direction the town takes.
So they're all on board.
And speaking of zoning, this big Y in the, West Farms parking lot,
that should be huge.
Yeah, that's
I'm not sure why, because it's on the it's on the kind of the southwest side.
So like ten parking spaces there in West.
Can you.
So who's going to vote for it?
Are you a yay or nay on the big Y?
Can you say yay or nay?
I don't think we can say.
Can we give an exclusive right now for the for any Talks with Friends podcast?
It's literally a sliver of land in West.
It's not that it's not a big scoop we had.
I'll swipe I'll give you a quick funny story.
So you know, the you know, the Wendy's across the street.
Yep. Okay.
So I was half West Hartford, half of half Farmington.
So they brought they wanted to really want to renovate the restaurant,
which desperately needs renovation.
And they want to drive through it.
And, you know, West Hartford is slow to accept drive thrus.
But they came they put a phenomenal presentation forward.
We approved a renovation drive through great
waiting for the construction and stuff going on from to it down.
So it's so complicated Jason.
Kids about, you know, approving ten spots.
But literally we could tank the whole deal
if and I'm not saying I certainly wouldn't want to take the deal,
but you know, but for just ten, ten spots, it could take an entire.
So is that Wendy's open or not?
Is closed really?
Wait.
It's not going to yeah I know yeah.
It's good.
What about. Yeah.
Because I've been here for 17 years and I was like,
I don't want to move to West Hartford. They don't have drive through.
I was huge, but now they've shifted
a lot of Chipotle Lane, which is a quasi drive,
which is Starbucks.
Yeah.
They got the Starbucks drive through,
again.
So we got there. That's funny.
Drive thrus.
Key to I'm going to pick on Kevin Allen who is a dear friend.
He is the chair of zoning.
And I've got nothing but respect to the right kind of Kevin.
Come a couple of drives a couple drivers.
We should get him,
chairs on
traffic generator, make big traffic generator.
Yeah. That's true.
People get worked up about housing units.
But then you see how much traffic I know.
You see how much traffic at a Chick-Fil-A.
Maybe I forgot what town I was in, but the drive thru
was going into the main road.
I forgot where I was.
I like Florida, yeah, but I, I went to the,
The Raising Cane's when Enfield opened.
It was insane.
They had like the whole police force out there directing traffic
around the drive thru, you know, it's it was crazy.
And then, February 24th, snow day.
That was a fun meeting.
I enjoyed the 24 dimensionally as a teacher, I enjoyed.
We had three snow days.
We had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off and a two hour delay.
Right.
And you have to our belief that we got it was a crazy I don't know.
So you got to justify your snow.
Yeah we'll see.
Well we don't have any free ones.
No one using me.
Yeah. Right now it's Thursday, June 18th.
Yeah, I know it was supposed to be the 11th or something.
Yeah, it's usually between the ninth and the 11th,
so. But
really because you, you were absent that day to.
Come on man, that's two days. And you know I don't know if that's right.
I was definitely there in the 10th. I don't know why.
It's as I was absent. I'm not one of them.
Know this this 10th.
Yeah. Were you in Cali? No, I wasn't in California.
Oh, I was there.
Oh, okay. Snow day.
I forgot to tell me.
It's like trouble.
I don't know what's going to I didn't I didn't miss two meetings.
I only missed one. Maybe going to miss the one.
And it was really only missed one meeting where I was trapped in California.
And it's in the legislative chambers.
Room 314 starts at 730.
Huge shout out to the West Hartford Community Interactive on YouTube
because their live streamed Jen Evans is an amazing person.
She's a great friend, so keep up the good work. Jen.
It's very we watched the board of Ed online
thanks to them sporting events, thanks to them and now the town council.
Thanks to it, I was able to review last year's budget meeting.
Budget budget presentation meetings and budget approval meeting
so I can get a feel for how it works.
Yeah, budgets change over there.
So they they archive everything.
John Adams is an absolute.
Just a gift.
Absolutely. Every word.
I watched the first 20 minutes to see my daughter's presentation.
She's more interactive with the information.
Yeah.
There are a couple teachers I know in the crowd, and, like, she's good.
Most don't ask questions
because as a high schooler, you're sitting is scared, but she's not afraid.
So I like that about her and very proud of her.
Yes, she engages and asks clarification questions
at some point, like late in the night, to where people might be zoned out.
She's on it, so I'm super proud of her.
Yeah. Wait, what year in school?
She's a senior. Oh, great. Great.
She know what she's doing next year?
Possibly. PA program at Quinnipiac.
Oh, great.
Any advice?
It's a great career path. Yeah. We love our.
They're awesome.
You can do a direct. No, I have to go to college.
It's three and three.
Oh, great.
I'm that's a smart way to go.
You know we are such a huge deal.
There's such a huge help.
Yeah, yeah, it probably probably undersells the to say they're a huge help.
They're they're really a huge, huge, huge contributor to our health care system.
So yeah it's a great kid. Tell her that. Yeah.
What minute are we.
34, 34.
We got a Bridget 34.
We're going to get some good advice
from when you give them maximum beverage of luck.
They gave us give me work.
So yes, maximum beverage is the place to be.
I can't thank them enough.
Friends of Feeney has been the beneficiary of their
whiskey event for six years in a row.
There's a check for $7,000 over there.
See that?
Jason Lee? Check.
I'm want to throw it in the back car.
Back of your car like Happy Gilmore? No.
Never see Happy Gilmore.
No, no, but,
no, I don't really want to take your check.
That's a nice check.
You want.
I'm not sure where you're going with this.
You want me to take your time? I'll take it, take it, take it.
No. It's a good looking jacket.
Very nice, isn't it? Very nice.
Yeah. Oh, big, big news tonight. Big news. All right.
What are we voting yay or nay on this?
We can't tell you.
I'm willing to listen.
I'm teasing. What do we got?
Signage?
Yeah, the signage on Farmington Ave.
It is a data payroll services.
That's. Todd is the guy.
John, town planner.
Yeah.
It is, these these are fairly routine.
What I can tell you is typically, if zoning is comfortable,
they typically tend to,
not reveal how we're going to keep that a big secret.
That's why I keep asking.
I know you can't answer.
That's why I keep asking.
We tipped them off before you got it, so I'll be tuning in.
Sometimes we vote on things where I just, you know, it's like,
why does the government have to tell people
what they can do with their own property for certain issues?
Are so are these
some of the issues are so small that, you know, it's like,
why do we have to tell people, you know, yes, you may do this to your own property,
you know, or the old parking RVs in the in their driveway.
Right.
So I give these this is where again, I give these guys, these two guys
give it to folks so much credit because we had an RV ordinance.
It's kind of a fascinating situation because it was an ordinance.
I was it was written and authored by the citizen.
And that it's only happened once, I think
twice this century, twice since 2000.
So it was a really fascinating study to see somebody do that.
And it was a very well written ordinance, but it didn't consider a lot of factors
like back to factors like that and things like that.
So we voted it down.
But like in my remarks I said a I think there's something here.
I really hope as a citizen, I hope you stick with it.
Keep keep going, keep working with town staff.
Let's get this right so we can all vote. Yes.
And and I'm sorry, I don't remember which one of you following up.
We didn't all vote the same way.
Yeah. Yeah, I voted that people should.
Yeah, they're going against RVs when people have the RVs.
The other thing is that the town is taxing people on their RV,
but not allowing them to keep it on their property.
Yeah, I pay taxes on it.
I can't put this away.
I thought that was a great point.
We we we should all situation.
We tax them to own it.
Then we find them because they own it.
And then to change the ordinance,
we charge them to submit an ordinance which we then turned down.
Kind of it's Sisyphean.
Maybe it's, Yeah.
It's so, no, we, I, we voted in in storage
to get it there. Yeah.
The property, my zoning experience kind of fooled my thinking.
Nothing else. District, in my experience on zoning.
Because I know what some of this affects our various areas, and,
but it was very funny, and I just found it very funny because the mayor,
she doesn't usually do this because this was such an unusual.
And you can you can watch the video.
It's public, but because of the type in the way this ordinance was put forward,
she said, okay, this is an unofficial but I want to put through a straw vote
and just where people fall.
And we had discussed it.
And normally we like to discuss things.
We like to be on the same page with things,
even if we disagree to how we get the police.
And we'd like to get to the same conclusion.
We try the hardest. So
it's like, you know, everyone voting for it
and you know, then to have one.
I'm sorry everyone voted for it.
Two hands were enough and I was like, you know,
none of us expected it because we hadn't had a chance to discuss it.
But again, I, I viewed it through my zoning lens.
But I really think I think there's something there.
And I think I really encourage it for
the gentleman who put this forward
is watching this continue to work it.
There's a you're on to something and there's a way to make this work.
All right.
So our motto is be a good friend.
Here at Friends of Heaney I have one of those on my fridge.
You know, pick up trash is not yours.
Hold the door for people, give compliments and be charitable.
Do you have a nonprofit in West Hartford that you support or enjoy?
Volunteering or supporting
the campaign, like West Hartford?
Yeah, like West Hartford.
That's a big one.
And then we I do not want to run the typical campaign.
So we did food drives throughout the campaign.
And in fact, now that the weather's breaking,
we're going to start doing food drives for that care.
Well we did we did one for count, 1 or 2 for Brown.
We did one for Crown Charm.
We've donated all the food to
future podcast guests.
The Crown will be going over there. It's going to be great.
Looking forward to it.
Well, you have a magnet already, so I want to give you a magnet
and give you a magnet.
And then you got to go around and tell why someone's a good friend,
someone at the table.
It makes them a good friend.
Oh I see well, you're wonderful.
There you go.
You're lovely.
A lovely person.
And you two election.
All kidding aside, you fantastic son.
Yes or no? Well, we've known each other for many years, right?
No, no, I, I unknowingly knew, Gayle, son, for many, many years now, I've met.
Yeah. Met and love hanging out with you.
I it's very hard to pick between these.
Yeah. I like you, too.
Thank you. Jason,
you can go.
You can do both. I could do both.
So I'll start with John.
I, you know, John was like, I met John, and I was on the board of
I had I been down
to the meetings and I was, you know,
I knew he was very involved in Democratic politics on my.
To the right to degree.
He would always, like,
say nice things to me after the meeting and I thought, oh, this is so
important.
Democratic politics don't.
It was great that you said that doing a great job.
And I just found that, like, so refreshing, particularly in today's
climate where everything is so partizan and nobody's allowed
to, like, ever say anything nice about somebody on the other side.
And that's kind of how we developed this friendship that, you know,
we speak with very openly and, and say, we got.
To appreciate it.
I, you know, love Jason.
He's like an awesome doctor.
He's, I got to work with him because I am an elite unit, and
but I also did a year of addiction medicine, and I kind of.
That's how I met Jason.
He's like, you know,
obviously a brilliant guy.
And he's so caring about his patients.
I mean, he really is invested
his patients like, you know, the few doctors
and see them and just seems like.
The community is very lucky.
Thanks, Gail.
Do you also do so
drug addiction, alcohol addiction, cell phone addiction.
What else? You. Yeah, that's a real issue.
Yeah.
So, process addictions, social media addiction
is not in the DSM five, but, you know, gambling disorder or gambling.
No gambling disorder.
The years over into social media and cell phone addiction.
Now like with this,
you know, like all the betting that people can do on their phones.
So I sometimes I try to help people with that.
So primarily
drug and alcohol addiction, but sometimes veering into behavioral addictions.
Know I'll make a plug use,
we want to fight stigma.
We want to, treat people with humanity.
And we want to recognize that addiction is, it's it's a chronic disease.
We treat it.
We treat it
like any other chronic disease model, which means it's highly treatable.
And people do really, really well, if they're given a chance.
So I feel that I love to feel that happy to work with Galen
in your recovery together.
Connecticut.
Oh, that's my private practice.
But, my primary job is at Hartford Hospital.
And, Yeah.
So I have a primarily work Hartford hospital.
I have a small private practice.
And then I also work in, as the president
of the Connecticut Society of Addiction Medicine, where, like, several hats.
But, yeah, so we've covered together Connecticut's one had I wear nice.
What's kratom?
You know,
kratom is it's an over-the-counter drug that people are getting addicted to.
Yeah. I just heard this for the first time.
Never knew anything about it.
Can you elaborate? A we'll get to know a little bit about it.
It's basically it's an opioid, like it's a plant with opioid like effects.
And people can get addicted to it in a very similar way to opioids.
And you can get it like at the gas station in a convenience store.
What does it do?
It's got opioid like effects.
So no, but what why would I by great to have a cold
I know to to feel good to get a buzz. Yeah.
So they sell it solely to sell to people drug addicts and that sort of thing.
Yeah. I mean you can basically you can get addicted to the stuff.
It's an herbal product. It's a, it's a plant.
And it's, it's been legal for a long time.
My understanding is the state just switched it to schedule one.
I don't know if that's finalized yet, but it may be illegal as of right now.
I'm sorry. I don't know that as a fact, but I'm pretty sure it's.
It's illegal as of, like, a week or two ago.
But, some people use it to try to get themselves into recovery from opiates.
So, for example, somebody who's addicted to, oxycodone or Percocet,
some people do try to use kratom as a way to kind of wean themselves off.
So there's there's positive things about it too.
But, a large proportion of people
who use create them end up becoming addicted to it.
And then there a, derivative of kratom called 708,
which is basically, a highly concentrated form of the active ingredient of kratom.
And that's, far more addictive.
That's a big it's a big, big problem.
It's a big problem in, for for younger people.
Luckily, it's highly treatable again, you know, very highly treatable.
We treat it just like any other opioid addiction, except it's easier to treat.
We tend to use lower doses of the typical medications we use.
But it's good to know about because,
you know, high schoolers could be getting into it.
College students could be getting into it.
And, it's good to just kind of be educated about it.
Yeah.
Just because it's made illegal doesn't mean it's gonna disappear.
So weird that something's sold at a convenience store.
It's scary.
Well, we're we're in a good point.
Which is, by the way, it's just.
That's a sponsor. Easy. They're easy for Jason.
They're sponsor. There's no. I'm kidding. Kidding. Tokyo.
But now I. I agree with that. We are currently.
You're making a good point. Crazy. That's something addictive with kids.
So how dare they.
Well, at least you got to be 21 like they don't.
Is there an age limit on this thing?
You know, that's a great question. I'm not sure.
Like, so, Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's a problem to treat some people for it and,
you know, for people generally super successful in treatment.
But, it's it's definitely causing some problems.
Jeez.
Well, thank you for sharing that
because I, I heard that and I was like, I saw your guy's background.
I was like, I it's it's a good time to ask that question.
Wow. And that's recovery together.
Talked.
Do you do a private practice to
where practice is private practice?
I spent most of my career in private practice. I.
Was two years.
So have you ever heard the child and how many
these 2000.
2000.
There's the headline Doctor Gail Harris's
Birth to 2000 children. So.
Oh, yeah, that's a silly question.
Silly.
Well, me personally.
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
We're going to delete that.
Maybe we'll fix that one to. Yeah.
Birth 2000. Yeah. Oops.
Way to put it. It's very strange. Very strange.
I take that back I take that completely back to God I just, I, I'm hopeful.
I've already said a lot of nice things, but I just, you know, that
we're saying nice things about you.
And I do want to reiterate how much respect for these guys, how grateful I am,
first of all, for their trust in me and letting me sell them.
On the concept of running with some of the work that they put in.
We have, you know, I think, you know, this is an incredibly strong caucus.
And, when we vote on things, it's going to be with the intent behind us,
with the statistics behind us, with a true
understanding of the issues and not well, I think I'll just vote,
which we've seen that in the past
is it's important that we make data driven, educated and heartfelt decisions.
And that's that's something I'll go on for a second here.
I love serving on town council because I think it allows
for some creativity like, like for of to me, they always want to be
they always want to be around the board.
But they're asking every cyclically one way what
didn't excite me.
It's kind of like, you know, you're kind of steering a ship through a tight canal.
It's like just steady as she goes
working on council, I think allows for some really creativity
and really, you know, some vulnerability and that's I, that's what I love about,
you know, being able to serve these guys. So
I think, you know, we're in our first budget season.
So I will say when I realized that the board of Ed holds a lot of power
is, you know, yeah, in terms of the budget,
the board of Ed budget is the town budget, pretty large part.
All right.
We got lightning round and we got upcoming events.
Ready.
So West Hartford wait.
Oh yeah. West Hartford center or Blue back square.
Which one are you picking?
I like it all.
Favorite restaurant?
Favorite restaurant in West Hartford? I'll let you guys.
Oh, you know, behind me, you asked him to go back to episode 135.
Oh, and yes, everyone go back to episode 131 to find out. My.
And we were there the other night.
We were there twice last week. I said, this is a big deal.
Is that a rule?
When you saw Lou Brown?
Well, you mentioned it. You mentioned it again.
Do you have a
favorite restaurant in all of town or anywhere in the world?
Oh, in all town probably.
I mean, that's also a really hard question.
I think being your favorite child, we have great Chinese food in this town.
You know, we're
I don't know if people know how lucky we are
to have such good Chinese food in West Hartford.
So where's your spot for me to pick one?
But usually we go to either Chef Jiang or Shu.
Likes to try.
Ali is awesome. Incredible.
And song is incredible.
So we're actually really lucky to have, like, more than our fair
share of of fantastic, authentic Chinese restaurants.
If I haven't shouted at one, I'm sorry.
Because there are so many of you guys, black bamboo sunny.
Yeah, yeah. Sunny's awesome.
Sunny's future podcast guests. Come on sunny.
They move.
Yeah. Really nice spot.
We're going to podcast in the new place. So
best place to grab coffee.
I have to tell you, I like I like Nero.
Some people are complaining about the 17% no 35 sun I went up.
There is indeed a 35%.
Oh, I knew there was, but it went off the charts lower than that
a year ago for using cards, for using a card,
dining in, for dining in at Nero or everywhere.
Yeah, I was a little bit perturbed by this fact.
So just tolerance about oh, it's so.
Favorite season in West and West Hartford.
Fall, winter spring or summer?
Autumn I like yeah, I like spring.
I cannot wait for spring and summer this winter's
the endless winter.
Yeah, yeah.
Favor local event.
You got to celebrate West Hartford holiday stroll,
Memorial parade, some sort of maybe 100% no bike.
West Hartford puts on an amazing event every year.
Are you on there? Bored to.
No, I was, I was
I left the board when I became a town councilor because
that's a huge conflict of interest.
But better streets is, is that when they go down the sale
with all the kids, that's when they close down the whole block.
Yeah. And they. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Huge, huge community building fun event.
Do you know the date on that?
Told me sometime in August.
No, I, I don't know yet.
All right. Cool.
Beautiful day.
Day pretty.
Nice.
What are you walking for?
You're going to walk it this year, too?
Oh, yeah.
I didn't know that. Yeah. Okay. All right.
Yeah. Look at.
And it's all very well.
It's it's fantastic. Yeah yeah yeah.
Great. Great event.
We have a float.
The be a Good friend float will be at the Memorial Day.
We get to honor a veterans. So we're happy to be there.
Very grateful we can work on our range.
Are you an early bird or night owl?
No, no, I'm not an early bird.
I know I am.
Today I was up at 558.
Morning
coffee or tea?
Coffee?
I gave up coffee two weeks ago because I was getting headaches.
Thankfully, they had subsided,
but I probably did have a coffee tonight because presentation.
So I'm getting to that hours or so.
But usually when you get a headache and you're not having enough coffee, no,
I overdo it.
I get headaches since we're on the opposite. So I just stopped.
Yeah, I tried cream soda.
Heard that's good for headaches.
Book or podcast?
I like both.
Yeah. Me too.
I don't read as much as I wish.
I wish I could read more, but enjoy reading.
Jason always has great suggestions for books to read to try to stay ahead of it.
Yeah, I, I love to read.
It is probably one of my favorite things to do. So over.
Speaking of podcasts, here's the Feeny Talks of Friends sticker.
Please subscribe, like and share
that all our listeners out there, we're trying to get to 500.
We're getting close.
If you have a Saturday morning free in town, what are you doing?
First?
Into a running club.
Oh, no. Okay. Yeah. Try not to miss it
I like that. Yeah.
It's great. Great place to talk by the way.
So you know where it hurts to find me.
Best way to find me for, like, two hours.
You know, every Saturday they have to run alongside you to talk to.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, we always gather afterwards, too.
We always gather afterwards. Do we always sit down for coffee or something?
I'll probably be at religious services.
Breakfast or Sally's involved.
Yes. Their sponsor.
Helen and Cesar.
Podcast guest sponsor.
We have podcast there.
They have a big check.
Yeah. They do. They do checks.
Not that big, though. As long as they clear.
You have a friend coming to visit you?
First time ever in West Hartford.
Where are you going to take them?
I love bringing people to the center.
I always love, you know, bragging on the center because it's so beautiful.
So whenever you people come from out of town,
we always been there to the center of the town.
I also take them to the center.
My addition to that is that our.
I'm always touting the walkability of our community because that is such.
The center is beautiful.
But what really makes the center is the walkability, the fact that, you know. So.
So actually when friends visit there, a lot of time is kind of blown away by how
what we have is really special, like really, really special of West
Hartford, that you can have a nice four bedroom house
and you can walk to not one, not two,
but like five coffee shops, the library that, you know.
Yeah, the movie theater, I mean, it's so special.
So yeah, it's the center, but it's but it's
what really blows people away is that, hey, we can walk over there and,
you know, you could have choose from like, like 500 restaurants.
Yeah.
Agreed to talk about.
Yeah, yeah. Nice.
I sat for an honorable game changer.
Yeah yeah yeah.
Do you think there's a what's the best hidden gem
in West Hartford?
We talking about restaurants?
Are we talking about.
It's the gem.
Wabi sabi.
Oh Abby. Sabi. Yeah it's funny.
My daughter loves one.
Oh yeah. Yeah. You ever got to know me.
Oh no. Me too. Is. Oh no, that's not easy. Yeah.
That's why I said there's so many Asian restaurant.
Yeah there's so many.
Yeah. But no one you have.
I had the name. I lost it,
the one by next Ada where the, Chinese puts her.
Well, that's. You taught you? Yeah. I want to say something.
I know songs.
Yeah. Those, Yeah.
Shu is another hidden gem that we just love. Yeah, that's.
That's my wife.
There she is.
Nice.
One word to describe West Hartford.
Absolutely.
Okay.
That's true. It's really screwed up
home.
I don't know,
finish the sentence.
A good community leader always blink,
listens.
I read that you can't think of anything.
Better get them, at least. Yeah, yeah.
All right. Cool.
I got some, future advance we got.
I want to shout out the Lions Club pancake breakfast
club is having a pancake breakfast.
Oh, yeah.
April 25th.
All right. These are phenomenal pancakes.
We got a golf tournament.
Our fifth annual golf tournament.
September 12th.
Giannis jog, May 22nd.
Awesome.
Their past podcast guests and then friends of Phoenix
going to the Hartford Athletic game July 11th.
Yard Goats, August 15th.
Please join us.
Any closing remarks?
Recommendations? Recommendation. Oh, let's.
All right.
Chair of the Board of.
So, chair of the board of Ed.
Yep. She's a newly installed chair of the board of that.
So always try to think of people you know.
And then you got Todd.
What about Todd.
Yeah. And who was the other one?
Shannon Merriman I got a question for you, Eric.
Yeah. Please.
Do you think about tech in schools?
I teach third grade.
Oh, tech as in technology?
Yeah. Oh, I thought you'd like a tech school. No.
Like, iPads, smartphones, schools.
What's your thoughts?
There's a lot of it, and I. I'm old school.
I've been teaching for 22 years, and I like the paper and pencil like this.
Okay.
We're teaching cursive again, which is amazing.
It's a it's a lost art.
It helps. It's good for the brain.
It's good from left to right.
It's good for memory and, hand-eye coordination.
There's so much good studies on cursive.
And there's so much screen time at home.
So I tried to not do so much in school, but with limited resources.
Sometimes for books like we, it's tough to have 20
copies of every book, so the student
would have to read on the Chromebook.
I prefer I, I feel like the screen makes me dizzy
or whatever, like the blue light, so I like printing out papers to read.
That's personally my take and I like the old hold the book, turn the page feel.
So that's my take.
Personally, I'm not speaking on behalf of the West Hartford Public Schools
or teachers around, but that's just my take.
I think it helps with learning, I really do. Yeah.
I mean, the physical media helps with learning.
I'm just curious because I've had some conversations
with Shannon about tech in schools.
It's certainly a big concern, a big issue.
Yeah. Yeah, it's something that we're going to be tackling.
It's a budget issue too as well. Cool.
Thanks for the question a little bit to where we're going with this question.
But there
are also plus sides of the Google read and right.
And the Google Speaks speech to text.
If a if a the child has struggles typing or spelling, they can talk it in.
So there's pros to it too.
Yeah think depends on the definitely help kids with learning differences.
Yeah.
Saint Patrick's Day parade.
Yeah.
Our float one third place.
We had color in shirts, so students got there.
Our kids got there early and colored in the shirt.
So it's very cool.
One thing, some sponsors,
we'll we'll show you the sponsors or can't shout them all out.
Cold call Bergen Financial Group, Daybreak
Financial, West Hartford, LA Sullivan.
Sorry about that.
Atlantic, but no something tech company.
I guess you you shouldn't be an ad reader.
You can't be with those guys.
You know, consult your doctors to help this guy.
Lux born and green French cleaners attorney Pat Cooney.
Sorrell. Brother's Aiden's donor.
He wait till that our drone footage comes out.
It's really nice. The JCC.
If you guys aren't members of the JCC, I highly suggest you guys join us.
Amazing sauna, steam workout, Lake George Steamboat
Company and Blue Trail Range in Wallingford and West Hartford.
Lock.
I usually ask you to.
Now they're going to West Hartford Lock.
What are three keys that make you great at your job?
But I didn't get a chance to do that this time.
You guys come back, you guys get both.
Welcome to get your own solo episode.
Don't feel like you have to bring your good friend John Lyons.
He had his own episode on 131, but it was wonderful meeting you, Jason.
Wonderful chatting with you again, Gail.
I've seen you in action at the board of Ed,
so it was wonderful to finally talk with you.
Again, check out Feeny Talks with Friends.
Please check out, our upcoming events
and on three will say be a good friend.
1 to 3 be a good friend.
Want to go again?
Never. Sure.
Just Jason this time.
Ready?
One. Two. Three.
Be a good friend.
friends.
A free
day. Hey!