This episode was recorded on April 5, 2025.

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Caleb O. Brown: This is The Shelbyville Idea. I'm Caleb Brown. In this episode I speak with one of the owners of Shelbyville’s Derby Comics and Games, which opened in 2023. We discuss his background, the business of game and comic stores, how he thinks about making a business out of creating a community, and why Trump administration tariffs will disproportionately cost their customers and cause many similar stores to fail. Tony Lakas, one of the owners of Derby comics and games in Shelbyville, Kentucky. If you're not aware of where it is, you have to look it up because from the road, Mount Eden Road, it's not easy to see, but more people ought to know about it. And my family and I have been going there for a while and we were very excited when it opened because we thought, oh, great, a gathering place for nerds and geeks who are friendly and want to play games and are interested in that sort of community. So I was very excited when your store opened. Tell us about yourself.

Tony Lakas: Okay, so if we just wanna get to the store part, in about 1994 I was just finishing up some college and then I went into the workforce. I didn't like the workforce and I was playing magic the gathering at the time, along with all the nerdy stuff beforehand battle Tech, all this. And there was no stores in Anderson. And I walked into a place called Anderson Comics, and then they had folks in there around a table playing magic at the gathering in this little comic book shop. It was an 800 square foot cinder block, tar roof, gravel parking lot. Oh, scary stuff. So I said, that is awesome 'cause there was no play spaces in stores at the time. This whole thing had just started up. So event centers were not a thing. All of them were boutique stores primarily, except for in college towns.

TL: So I said, that's a cool idea. So I found out this guy was trying to sell. So I went and put a mortgage on my house with the help of my parents a little bit. So I am lucky in that regard that I did have the means to do it without taking out loans. And I bought the business for more money than was ever worth. But that was my first mistake, along with many others along the way. Even I make them now. So we started the store there and we called it The Danger Room, which is the most silly name you could ever think of, because the phone calls we would get would be the all sell guns there. And no one knew what a danger room was, other than like a very few limited, even geeks, even the magic players and stuff did not know what a danger room was.

COB: So what is the reference there?

TL: The danger room is the room in which the X-Men train for Marvel, where it's a safe place, but they can use all of their powers and things to full extent because the room is designed to withstand it. And then they also make dangers and obstacles and fire and everything else. So it's an obstacle course trading room for overpowered mutants and they could use, so it's safe and it's dangerous. So it's called the Danger Room. So that's what we named it.

“… there is this pretty strict rule at our store is that we are all geeks. Leave your religion, your politics, and your hot button issues at the door and be prepared to speak with and interact with people who are not aligned with all of your beliefs.”

COB: I see.

TL: I didn't know anything about comics, so I got some person in that knew comics. So my roommate from college and the... I've always tried to surround myself with people who know more than I do 'cause I know a little bit of everything, but not a master of any. So anyway, so we opened up the store, we ran that, I moved it when Pokemon hit to a much larger location. We expanded to several locations at that point. As I got older, I was looking at possible semi-retirement at the ripe old age of 40. So we started paring down the stores as a deed of necessity because there was a shrinking market and everyone was jumping into the market at that point. There was several stores opening.

COB: I wanna talk about that because you've talked about the different models of the way that these stores kind of run and some are better than others. And the community that I see at Derby comics and games, people playing magic, people playing, what's the Star Wars card?

TL: Star Wars Unlimited.

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COB: Star Wars Unlimited. People play Lorcana, which is the Disney Trading card game, which my wife and I unfortunately discovered pretty early on. And we deeply regret dropping many hundreds of dollars on cards and playing constantly here. Now my wife has introduced my older son to the game, which is just terrible 'cause I think he really loves strategy games and he loves being competitive and that sort of thing. But talk about the models of different stores and why some fail and some succeed.

TL: Whoa, okay. So I've mentored probably a dozen stores and probably two still exist. The biggest obstacle when you get into one of these businesses is that you get into it for a reason. I normally have a talk, I always tell everyone, if you're interested in opening up a store my first consultation is a steak dinner and a beer.

COB: That they pay for.

TL: Yeah, of course, of course. I mean, come on.

COB: I understand that.

TL: It could be a waffle and steak, steak, I mean, depending on what your budget is. But I'm more than happy. I want to talk to people about it 'cause I need to, and that first thing I have a discussion that says, wouldn't it be cool? And this is the thing, I talk to them, I go, okay, so why do you want a store? 'Cause wouldn't it be cool if, and then I have them list out what the wouldn't it be cools? It would be cool for me to have a place for my friends to hang out. It would be cool if I could play games all day. It would be cool if I could get my stuff at discount. It would be cool. Would it be cool, blah, blah. There's a whole list of reasons, there's no place here. I've never fit in just all kinds of different things.

COB: Yes, the blue sky vision, if money were not an issue.

TL: Yes. And then I have them do it “wouldn't be cool.” And then that's a lot of times they have to kind of stop and think, because they'd never even thought of the it would not be cool that I had to take a loan on my house or one of the games of the comic book industry collapses, which we might be in the middle of, but we'll get to that later. Just all types of things, that they're bad with money, their wife, there's a whole list. Again, I've done this so many times that there, if I recorded all the different answers, we'd have several pages to each.

TL: And then once we get to the wouldn't it be cool and the wouldn't it be not cool? Then I have them weigh those things. I go look at these and tell me which one, and of course most of them get through that first... And I always tell them, if you can get through this first conversation, then we'll talk about some sort of real discussion about how to open payment and things like that. So the reason why stores fail is that they get into it and they don't know. They get into it underfunded, which I started underfunded. That's a whole other story, but I got lucky. They fail because they are a one trick pony that they specialize in. And this is my belief, again, there's other stores that do this, they do it very well and they've been around for years.

TL: But to me, all that in one, like for many stores, wizards of the Coast is the owner and the creator of Dungeons and Dragons Magic the Gathering. And these two are like cornerstones of almost every game store nowadays. I mean, our game stores would not be so big without the advent of the collectible card game. There'd be a lot fewer stores out there. But if Wizard of the Coast was dry up tomorrow.

COB: What's it called again?

TL: Wizards of the Coast.

COB: Wizards of the Coast. And they own Magic The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons.

TL: Yeah. And they are a wholly owned subsidiary of Hasbro. There's a lot of interesting stuff. We can talk about that too. But if that company was to dissolve today, I would dare say that one third of the stores in the country would close within a couple months simply. And two, like I said, underfunded, which also means undercapitalized, over leveraged. They don't have enough in savings or anything. Just like a standard household budget you should keep at least six months of expenses in reserve so that if something does go wrong or someone gets sick. So another reason why stores fail is because of illness or because they have partners that they're all great friends. And then that happens. And this is the first time I've had partners and I told them from the very beginning that we're gonna kick each other in the shins. We're not gonna be very friends anymore. It's just that's how it happens. But the partners I have fill a lot of my gaps and keep me grounded in what I'm doing. So I've been very blessed about that. So, other reasons why stores fail is that they can't get the credit.

TL: They make a bad decision on product. Their business model does not allow for enough margin to be able to maintain the operations in which they want it to be. They have a vision of how the store goes, and then of course they want to be friends with everybody. So that's the other thing is what we called, what was it was called, we called them a pork chop shop. Basically, it's a term that we kind of coined amongst ourselves is how do you get the neighborhood dog to play with you and you put a pork chop around their neck. So symbolically we say that the game store for some people is basically the thing that allows them to build a community around them and allows them, so their entire outlook of who they are is intertwined in that store. And if a friend or a group of friends become disillusioned, they are crushed. And of course some stores at the small easy level, simply put like pricing. I can get a cheaper online, which that's a whole nother story. 'Cause I started before online stuff was really big too.

COB: And so when my wife and I come into the store, which is frequently, too frequently I will say, we come in, we'll buy a couple of packs of Lorcana cards. Our kids will run around in the back and look at games and maybe they'll play one or you'll demo one for them. And we have a growing library of board games for our family game nights. But what we really come for is the ability to see people that we don't see very often. We see them at the store, and the store also has a bunch of stuff that we like to have. And it's way more convenient for us to buy there. So if you don't mind, tell me about, what is the community element that makes your store function well?

TL: I guess I didn't dump into all the different types of models, but...

COB: You said competing on, well, let's go back then. Competing on price.

TL: Competing on price is a big one. And that requires a lot of efficiencies nowadays. And many stores, like I said, are close to one trick ponies where they survive off of collectible card games and single sales. And with the advent of technology and now robots that will sort them, I could buy one now for $20,000 that would sort 1000 cards in an hour, as opposed to having someone sit there and pay and get carpal tunnel in their thumb. 'Cause I have that for years of just flipping through a card. But the technology allows to have the efficiencies where they can sell and possibly run at a 20% margin. And if they're using warehouse space and not full retail space, then their costs of their retail space is a lot cheaper as well.

TL: So, efficiencies within there and the ability to sell worldwide without needing to leave your house and shipping methods have all increased. So that's how a lot of places compete on price. Our model, the model that I've always done has been the community model where everybody knows your name. It's cheers. Everybody, our friends, or at least our little groups within the game group, our friends and we sell comic books. We sell miniatures and painting stuff and cards and board games. And we also, we have space. Luckily for us, we found a space here that is relatively inexpensive. If we had to go to an actual retail, retail space we could not exist in our current model. So, everything here is really pricey. So we got very lucky finding the spot that we did.

COB: And I want to just describe the space a little bit. You have a very large room that has a lot of games in it and tables so people can sit down and play, but you also have some smaller rooms for that people can sort of reserve for some specific game with a specific group of people that want to get together. But if they need something like a D20 die or something like that, they can just walk into the store area. And it's just really interesting to see like the different like subgroups that get together at different times. And that calendar is available on your website of all the things that are going on.

TL: On the website. Yeah, on the website we also make posts, on our Instagram and Facebook pages. We normally put something out about every day or every other day now. But to touch on the how the store layout is, it's a different layout than I ever, ever dealt with. It's a former church. So the main room you're talking about is the sanctuary 'cause there's a stage where they did. And we had a sound booth up in the corner where we stow a bunch of our comic supplies. But then we have like the youth room, that's the backpack room. And then we have a small conference room. And one of the things that we can do there that many stores cannot is that we can host up to four events simultaneously. Now, where we are we have not ever really had to do that, but a couple times, but we're still growing. Hopefully we can be able to run that. And it's just constantly going. We even allow girl scout troop to come in and use the space, all kinds of different things there.

COB: I would love to see a chess club because my son, my older son is getting into chess. And if I'm not paying attention, that guy can really make it hard for me.

TL: Like I said, we have chess variants that you might be able to stay in a chance in if you've got a guy with a chess game, we have games that'll ruin their game. So, we could talk about the chess club later, but the one thing that I've had a difficulty with, with chess clubs is how, it sounds bad, but how do I monetize it? Once you buy your chess board you might get some fancy pieces every once in a while. So then these have to be like tournament entries. And then what do you give for prizes other than cash style rewards or scholarships, which again, is a cash out and I don't like skimming where you take all the take and then you keep 20% just for that. So it's an interesting thing and I've never really set up a concept on how it truly, other than a promotional factor within schools. So the chess club, I really am looking for a really good plan, but there's not many stores to even talk about that runs them because of the same thing that I just talked about.

COB: But it seems like it's a delicate balance between fostering that community and maintaining profitability.

TL: Yes.

COB: And that's the whole ball game.

TL: Yeah. And that's where a lot of the stores I said earlier fails because they wanna be friends. They think their community demands lower prices, which there's a percentage of the community that does, but it's not terrible to allow customers to find places where they fit in better. Now, for our business that I've dealt with for so many years, our danger room will be 30 years old on August 5th, and it's still out there in Anderson. Stores come and go. And if they compete on price or they're a one trick pony, generally I'm buying their inventory a few years later at pities on the dollar going, man, I'm really sorry. How much do you need to get out of debt, type of thing. There's all kinds of interesting strategies on how to help acquire stores that are failing, which, that's probably another discussion on how you acquire these assets.

COB: So a couple of things I want to get into. One is that when you guys opened, there is a special tax in Kentucky that you pay on inventory. And that strikes me as particularly problematic for new small businesses that by virtue of how they're set up, have to acquire a lot of inventory to get going.

TL: Well, our model requires a lot of inventory because we are so varied. Like I said, the one trick, I hate to call them one trick ponies because that's a business model and it is kind of derogatory to call them one trick ponies. And I apologize to all my friends out there that do these types of stores, but they can have a narrow inventory and if it's all collectible, like individual cards, the government, there's no way to solidify a value to individual single cards unless you're going to their website and taking their retail and then figuring out a percentage that which they pay. But the inventory thing you were talking about from Indiana we used to have an inventory. We had an inventory tax, and all the car dealerships would do last day liquidation sales 'cause they had to get all those cars off the lot.

COB: That's right. We gotta make room for the 26s.

TL: Well, that's what they say, but it's also the fact that they were gonna pay a percentage on every car. And can you imagine paying a sitting tax on $4, $5 million worth of cars on your lot?

COB: And like intuitively my sense is, look, the government is charging a tax for businesses that have things they want to offer to the public and that seems counterproductive to me.

TL: And the percentage tax in here after I talked to the CPA last week, it's only like a quarter of a percent. But in Indiana they eliminated the inventory tax because they seen it was sort of a burden, especially to things like car dealers or high-end farming equipment dealerships because those carry over and they'll have a slow turnover a lot of times. Now, cars could turn over quickly, so they got rid of that for so many years. So when I moved here, I had the first time the taxes come around, of course, I did not do all of my due diligence because I know everything. Like every other person who starts a business, they, I still claim I don't know. So that took me by surprise is that when we made money the first year, yes, we were profitable our very first year out the door. It was mainly an inventory growth and then we were taxed on it. And as a pass through LLC, that money goes directly to our personal tax returns. There's no corporate barrier there where the company is required to pay this. So that was an interesting thing that came up.

COB: So to our state lawmakers who may be listening eliminate the inventory tax. I'll put my soapbox away now. Go ahead.

TL: Yeah. Well also, now that I'm prepared for it, I can deal it. That was just a surprise to me. And I don't deny the fact that that is inventory. My only issue that I thought that how it should work is if I have $100000 in inventory at year end, blah, the next year, my taxes should be based upon if there's growth. Because if I take a loss on the inventory, that I should be, not only should I be taxed less, but I've already been taxed on it. That's the thing is if I have a gain that's been sitting there for a year, a lot of people would get rid of it immediately. But one of our charms and one of our things is that we have an inventory that's wide and varied. So we want to grow that inventory.

COB: Yeah. On that note I wanted to say you, because of your background in games especially, you are aware of games that a lot of stores would not never have an opportunity to carry.

TL: Or choose not to.

COB: Or choose not to. But like you get a lot of games before a lot of other people do.

TL: Yeah. And how that works is that I've always talked to people and I say, you're gonna see games on our shelves that no one else that you're not gonna see on shelves very often. Because when I go to trade shows or I go to a consumer show like Origins or the Gama Trade Show, which Origins is owned by Gama as well. I don't go to the big, I never have stepped into a wizards of the Coast Booth ever even at, other than like GenCon 1993, '94 I have never been in a Wizards of the Coast Booth because I already know. So a lot of people roll there because they're that fundraiser focused on a couple products. I go and I look for the booths that has two people at it, or the ones that could afford the back row 'cause that's where the next game is, the story is, and my story is, is that, in '93 Badge of the Gathering, if you're not familiar, it's a fantasy collectible card game, similar in the same fantasy vein as Lord of the Rings and things like that.

TL: But you buy packs of cards to produce a deck that you create and you play with. Now in '93, none of this existed. So we're going from a D&D stance where you have books and dice and any other games. So one of the things that we cracked up about is that you know the most stupid game of the world just came out. They want you to buy baseball card packs to play a role playing game. Isn't that the most stupid thing you ever heard of? There's no dice, there's no books, there's no pencils. And I left that show going, that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. And then a year later I come back from college after getting married, and suddenly no one's gonna play D&D with me. No one's playing Robotech. No one's playing Starfleet battles because they're all playing this really crazy stupid game where you buy baseball card packs to play. So that's one of the basises of where all of our game people are going right now.

COB: I said the same thing about the McGriddle when it came out. I said this is...

TL: Oh, you were insane. That is the amazing...

COB: I said it's a terrible product. I can't believe McDonald's screwed it up this bad. And I was obviously very wrong about the public's appetite for that particular product.

TL: Oh, yeah, there's always the anomalies and then again, that's the outlier that changes and does a paradigm shift in a current system, whether it be finance or an industry like our, or even cars. I mean, just the invention of like airbags or the requirement for seat belts and things like that. It changes everything and how that goes and creates industries around it. So, that's kind of how that worked out.

COB: So, something that your industry has been dealing with, and I think a lot of people have been talking about, we're recording this on April 5th, which is just a few days after president Trump's so-called Liberation Day, where he using dubious emergency powers imposed tariffs on dozens of countries, with which the United States trades and some with which the United States doesn't trade, some that are unpopulated islands that belong to Australia, where the only residents are penguins. These tariffs are punitive.

TL: Really?

COB: They're huge. Yes. I'm sorry.

TL: Islands. I'm Sorry. I'm really...

COB: Yeah, no, it's true.

TL: The penguins pay tariffs to...

COB: Well, I don't know what...

TL: Is it tourism that they have to pay on?

COB: I don't know. I don't know what Americans trade with the penguins, but these tariffs are punitive. They are exceedingly high. They are vastly more than reciprocal, which is what the president has claimed they are. And in your industry, a disproportionate amount of the products that you use, or even the raw materials used to make the products in the United States come from other countries. So paper from Canada, printing in Germany or Canada. And I just saw a story on CBS evening news from my friends at Phantom Comics in Washington, DC, hello Matt. And the prices are gonna go much, much higher in your industry. How are you thinking about that?

TL: There's like four basic strategies that has come up in the last 48 hours on all of our industry discussion boards. There's a percentage that says this is temporary little grin and bear it. And things will go back to normal because it is a, what is it? A negotiation tool. And that's one of them. And we've all heard that opinion all over the news anyway. The second is we're talking directly with our suppliers. And many suppliers have sent us emails out with what they plan to do, such as we're going to look at our fulfillment options. Is there a cheaper way for us to get it landed from wherever it's coming from? Is there cheaper methods or is there another factory or something that we could work out for another country whose tariffs are not as high? Although Vietnam was where a lot of people are gonna do card printing, and that's been kind of transferring over a little bit, but I think they just recently got tariffed as well. So you're gonna have to find these little corner countries that you know that don't have them. And then it's gonna take millions upon millions of dollars to set up a printing operation just to save yourself 25%. And who knows how long you'll be saving it? So manufacturing is not coming back to the United States in that regard, simply because it...

COB: Especially paper printing.

TL: Well, yeah, paper is one, but I mean the whole cost of production, if you have to build a brand new factory with the cost of millions or billions of dollars, and they could be gone in four years, these tariffs could be removed in four years or four weeks, you're not even gonna start making those plans because there is always hope there. And we'll go right back to a globalized economy and everything goes on. So our industry is definitely affected because 90% of the things that we carry in our store is made of paper, some form of paper or some form of ejection plastic molding. And all of that is... A large percentage of comic books are printed in Canada and brought over. So all those comic books, if they impose a tariff, that increases the cost to us at the retail level of 25% more. Which if you do the gradual, it's not quite 25% 'cause you're going from wholesale to distributor to you.

TL: So the prices just are not full retail. But again, if it comes to us and says it's gonna cost us 15 to 20% more overall landed in our store, then boutique models like ourselves try to survive off a keystone, which is basically you like to double your money off of something. So I buy something for five bucks, I like to sell it for 10. And many people think that that's really good, but I will be more than happy to talk about how the percentages of things break down in our type of model. But at the end of the year, these types of stores only make 5% of gross as far as profit for shareholders.

COB: And that's almost grocery store margins. That's a thin margin.

TL: Yeah. But they have guaranteed sales and most of that stuff is not a luxury. Everything we sell is a luxury, but simply put, a 30% increase is gonna increase our cost by double because we keystone it. So if a $10 game is now costing us 12, our markup is gonna be $24 instead of 20.

COB: How is your broader industry thinking about this?

TL: Well, yeah, I talked about the first two. The third one is they're looking at a model that is kind of like a club membership. And many, many, many industries have already done this. And if you're familiar with online stuff, there's a thing called Patreon and things like that where we would charge a monthly fee to be part of our group. But again, what do we offer that group? And generally whenever you do something like that, there's some form of monetary expense to that, whether it be a percentage off or more space or what, anything that costs, and the whole point of doing it would be to try to raise revenue. So you're basically gonna be given away a large portion of why you're doing it, and then you're gonna alienate the folks that normally come into your store that has all these services for free at this point, and they're gonna walk.

COB: Yeah. Reduces your options. It reduces your customer's options and...

TL: And will reduce the community because of a couple things. Some people only can afford a couple packs a day where other people can do a lot more. And then that type of a Patreon type of thing that would give a 5% discount means a lot more to this guy than it would to you guys, other people, not necessarily you guys. So that is one of the options. And then there's an interesting one that came up last night that I thought was amazingly funny, but it's never gonna happen the way he describes it. But what they want to do is get the manufacturer, the distribution and the retailer to take those tariffs and we divide them equally among the costs. So, whatever the tariffs are at the landed price in the retail store, we all pay a third of it.

TL: And what we do at the end is we take what our MSRP was before, like say it's a $40 game, and let's say the tariffs have raised the price of the game to $46. So we'll put a price tag on there for 40, and then we'll put a red price tag that we have printed that says tariff tax and add another six to it, and then you're gonna pay $46. So that's almost kind of political in nature, but it's also aggressively showing people that the price of eggs are going up. Yes. But how much did they go up until you, well, I guess, how much did the product go? No one knows exactly, but if I can tell you exactly, it's gonna cost you an extra 60 cents per booster pack or a dollar per booster pack, every time you buy a booster pack, it's gonna stick in your mind that...

COB: Yeah. It's always helpful when prices are transparent and we know what we're actually paying for. And I think customers appreciate knowing that it's not your fault that this is the case. Waffle house put a sticker.

TL: 50 cents per egg.

COB: 50 cents per egg. I think that was a really smart choice that Waffle House made to say, Hey, look, the price of eggs is higher now, we are adding a surcharge per egg, specifically because of the price of eggs. We're very sorry. And it's a sticker, so it looks temporary. And I think it's a really valuable and smart thing that they've done.

TL: But it was also insidious simply because they put out a new menu just recently and all those prices have gone up for their all star platter. It's a little bit more pricey now. I didn't calculate it 'cause I don't remember the exact price, but one, I think it was like 10 50 and now it's like 11 or like 12 even, and it's for the same meal. It's a brand new menu. You know it because we go there for breakfast meetings.

COB: I've seen you there.

TL: Yes. We go to breakfast meetings there before we open the store. That's another fun thing about the community that we build, is that community efforts outside of the store and just meals and breaking bread and talking with other people and then being invited to people's homes, which is kinda interesting. But their new menu is now more expensive. So the one thing that people on a nature can definitely should understand is that the prices are never going to should, my belief and my experience is the prices will never return to the pre inflationary tariff driven, industry driven, whether it's bird flu or not, whether they're going to the summer blends of gas or anything like that. It never really returns to where it once was.

COB: In Kentucky I think this has made some interesting bedfellows. And I'll say again that I really appreciate what you guys have built and I appreciate that my family has a fun place to go to meet other people and play games and just have a little mini community that we can go to and enjoy each other's company. But the strange bedfellows is amazingly... Rand Paul is a very consistent defender of free trade pretty much from the get go. Even before Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, he said, look, the tariffs are a bad idea. Tariffs are a limitation on freedom. Tariffs are taxes and I don't like high taxes. And now Mitch McConnell, who is also generally a free trader, but they are in some not great company in terms of their own party because the rest of their party, at least in the US Senate and largely in the US house, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell are aligning with Democrats on this critical freedom issue. I know you wanna avoid politics generally.

TL: Yeah, there is this pretty strict rule at our store is that we are all geeks. Leave your religion, your politics, and your hot button issues at the door and be prepared to speak with and interact with people who are not aligned with all of your beliefs. And that is something that is really important for this type of community to grow or to at least be able to sit together and have a family. Like, you have church families, you have dinner party families, you have like the Masons or fraternities and things like or sororities. That's a whole bunch of different people. So this is kind of how we're trying to put this together.

COB: But your industry, at least on this issue, as a policy issue and not a political thing, although it is inevitably political, but as a policy choice it should be very clear to people that these tariffs are actively destructive to this particular community and should be gotten rid of forthwith.

TL: Yes. I mean, for our industry in itself, regardless of any kind of positive things that may come from this, although my belief is that it's very limited, but our industry, discussions within our groups are saying that we will start seeing store closures after two months of this time, especially when the tariffs hit. Luckily is many people in our industry are very aware of these things. And you've heard it on the news too. You've heard it on the news that people have tried to buy inventory to get landed before these taxes hit. The funny thing is, is now transportation costs went up almost, I don't know what the actual percentage, but it cost more to transport it because of the demand upon the containers in which they're being shipped. So they lost even some of the advantage of trying to order old inventory before the time. And then of course, we had a dock strike, didn't we recently? And then we also had the Boston one at a limited capacity. So slowed down all of that too. So it's like an interesting little perfect storm that's going to that. And it's not just hurting us, but like we said earlier, 90% of what we sell is in fact materials printed and created in the countries where the tariffs are hitting the most.

COB: Yeah. And I think about our community specifically, Shelbyville, Martinrea is a Canadian company that does heavy stamping here in Shelbyville. They sell parts to, I believe auto manufacturers who make cars in Kentucky. And I can only imagine that of the nervousness associated with being a worker or a manager at that facility. And there's a lot of pain that is being exacted. I wanna change gears just a little bit. When you guys do tournaments, for Lorcana, which we play, lamentably come in and play Lorcana.

TL: Keep complaining, you still come in and buy.

COB: We come in, people come from pretty far away. But we have a friend, Jonathan from Cincinnati. Hello Jonathan. Who comes in from northern Kentucky to tournaments at your store. And I think that speaks a lot to the kind of community that you've built there.

TL: We are definitely unique in many forms for these types of stores. And the support of the fan base or the customer base is fairly, to lack of a better word, fanatical about how things are run, which is a very, very strong indicator that we will weather a lot of this a lot better. I've been talking to the customers about, man, if this continues, we are gonna see increased prices, kind of be prepared for that. And a lot of people are very interested in leasing. And like I said, I talk about my business to anybody 'cause I'd rather have educated competition and customers than others that do not understand where things are coming from.

COB: I like the fact that you mentioned before we started recording, that your industry is thinking about this as an industry-wide push because of so much of your business and your industry is cross border business. And I love the idea of making a full-throated push against tariffs by your industry. And I hope that that's something that's in the offing.

TL: Yeah, I think it's worth mentioning to anyone who is interested or interested in opening up a store like this or just interested in how things kind of operate. Our international organization is called Gama.org is where they're based outta Columbus, Ohio. And they've sent out emails in the last 24 hours talking about how they've told everyone to call your local politicians and start making plans now. And then of course underneath that thread, that's where I got a lot of the discussions about the four different ways that many people are working on.

COB: Well, Tony, I love your store. I'm so happy it's a part of our community. And when these tariffs go away, we're gonna have you back on to celebrate. What do you wanna tell folks about the store?

TL: Well, first thing I just wanna say one thing. When we talked about the partners, my wife Laura Karem, myself, Chris and Wendy Noack opened up this store July 8th, 2023. I did wanna make sure I mentioned the partners because not only did they help us with the initial funding, but while they're not in the store all the time, they're ever present within our discussions and groups. Although sometimes I kind of go alone and I get beat down for that. But that's part of really me in. So it's a very interesting thing and we're still growing and there's just so many different aspects of how the store works. There are books written about it. I've done many seminars about just different strategies and things like that within there. So no, I'm very glad that we're here with the community and we have the support we do. So thanks so much for letting me talk to you.

COB: Thank you to Tony Lakas for joining me. And if you're able, please do drop by Derby Comics and Games here in Shelbyville. I hope you'll share this episode of the Shelbyville idea with your friends. Subscribe to our newsletter at shelbyvilleidea.com and give us your guest suggestions, comments, criticisms, feedback, news tips, unsubstantiated rumors, and anything else you'd like us to know. Email directly at Shelbyvilleidea-at-icloud.com. I'm Caleb Brown. Thank you for listening.

Please report any errors of transcription to Shelbyvilleidea-at-icloud.com.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shelbyvilleidea.substack.com

Caleb Brown: This is The Shelbyville Idea. I'm Caleb Brown. In this episode, I speak with 7th District State Senator Republican Aaron Reed. We talk about his background, why his wife is the real farmer in the family, his time in Frankfort so far this legislative session, gun rights in the commonwealth, and why your humble host is still prevented from owning a few backyard chickens. We spoke February 15th, 2025. Aaron Reed, State Senator from the 7th Senate district in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. This is your first term as a state senator. Tell us about yourself.

Aaron Reed: Yes, sir. Thanks for inviting me over today. I'm from right here in Shelby County. I grew up in Chestnut Grove, which is north central Shelby County. My dad was a state trooper. He moved to Kentucky in '76 and graduated from the Kentucky State Police Academy. And I was born in 1977 shortly thereafter. And I grew up, running through fields and hunting and fishing all through northern Shelby County. And went to Shelby County High school, graduated in '95 and went on to Morehead State University. And I went there on a shooting scholarship actually. I was an air rifle smallbore shooter and that got me a pretty good scholarship to go to Morehead. And I studied sociology and criminology there. And in '99, I graduated and went straight into the Navy. I actually enlisted in the Navy.

COB: So you graduated but did not try to become an officer?

AR: Well, if we got time, I'll tell you a quick story on why. So.

COB: Okay, go ahead, go ahead.

AR: It's kind of interesting. I was all over campus, constantly running or swimming at the pool, working out. It had become my religion. I'd actually was signed up to be in the Marine Corps. I had an Officer Candidate pathway. I was going to Officer Candidate School. I believe it was my sophomore summer and I got a letter shortly before I was supposed to leave saying they wanted to bump me to the next summer because they had more senior guys that were ready to go. So when they did that, it kind of ticked me off. I was ready to go. And then I discovered the Navy SEALs about that time and really dug in and decided that's what I want to do. The Marine Corps is great. My dad was a Marine and there's no prouder branch of service than the Marine Corps, and I wanted to be a part of that. However, I did discover what Navy SEALs were all about. And when I found that, I was all in. So I was running and swimming.

AR: A fellow, a classmate of mine, who technically he was a year ahead of me but he had fallen back a semester and needed an extra semester to graduate. So on my, I guess it was my senior year, early on, we connected. His name was Christian Galeski. He was actually a male cheerleader at Morehead. We didn't give him any crap for that, but soon discovered that was not a bad gig that he had. But he was in pretty good shape. And his dad was an officer in the Navy. And when he found out that I wanted to be a SEAL, he had had this, a similar dream apparently, and we connected and we started working out together. And I had already had a connection, relationship with the Navy officer, selection officer.

AR: And since Christian was about six months ahead of me or a semester ahead of me in school, I went ahead and made the connection, called him up, and the OSO came out and gave us the PT test, the swim, run, push-ups, pull-ups, all that stuff. And we took it together, kind of, and both of us maxed it out, same score. And OSO said, Congratulations, Christian, you got the slot. And that's when I found out that there's only one slot per fiscal year, which the fiscal year hadn't even happened yet. He was pre-planning, and because Christian was ahead of me in school, I had just trained my competition unknowingly. And so he got the slot.

AR: And OSO told me, like, you know what? You won't be able to reapply for this for another year. And I was already kind of upset that I didn't go to SEAL training already with a friend of mine. His name was Colin Thomas. He was on the rifle team with me for a brief semester there. And I really wanted to go, but my parents talked me into graduating, and so I graduated college, and then I enlisted.

COB: All right, fair enough.

AR: I know it's a long, long way around.

I like to tell people I'm a farmer's husband. And it's fairly accurate. We do a lot of stuff together, but she's the daily grind on the farm. She's the one that's going out and pulling calves and pulling lambs and doing all that. She's really good at it, and she enjoys it.

COB: So you are now, you're in your... Before we get to legislative stuff before we started recording, you were talking about you're a farmer, but really your wife is the farmer.

AR: I like to tell people I'm a farmer's husband. And it's fairly accurate. We do a lot of stuff together, but she's the daily grind on the farm. She's the one that's going out and pulling calves and pulling lambs and doing all that. She's really good at it, and she enjoys it.

COB: When you think about the regulatory environment for cows, lambs, or other, frankly, other livestock or even grown agricultural products, what stands out to you as being especially sort of nonsensical?

AR: There's a lot of regulations. We have the...

COB: Right. But in terms of some of those might make sense.

AR: That's right.

COB: Those might be reasonable to protect adjoining properties or protect from virulent communicable diseases among livestock. But in terms of stuff that just to you doesn't make sense and ought to go away, either federal or state, what jumps out at you?

AR: Well, for being a guy who has a lot of skin in the game in defending his country, I tend to look at things through a lens of freedom and liberty. And when I get into the agricultural parts of things and realize there's so much regulation, like raw milk is always, it seems to be an issue. I mean, our grandparents and great-grandparents grew up on raw milk. Yet we all are still here. We're alive. You would think that raw milk was poison and you're going to be getting some kind of disease and dying from salmonella or whatever. I just don't believe that's the case. I think there is a way that you can sell raw milk to people who are adults who know what they're buying.

COB: So that, to me, that's key is whether or not... When you're an adult.

AR: Well, you're an American as well.

COB: And, and you can make a decision about...

AR: A decision. Imagine that.

COB: I don't necessarily have a problem with being confronted with a piece of paper that says, Hey, here are, here's what the government thinks you ought to know about raw milk or certain other agricultural products. But again, if I'm an adult, it's, I should be able to decide what goes into my body.

AR: Yeah, and you would think in Kentucky we would, it wouldn't be such a big deal. I mean, we just in January of this year, our last dairy farm closed here in Kentucky. I don't know if you knew that or not.

COB: No.

AR: Yeah, we, I think we had over 300 in Shelby County. Maybe I misspoke. In Shelby County. Did I say Kentucky?

COB: Yes.

AR: Okay. So, yeah, in January the last dairy farm in Shelby County closed. And I grew up working in tobacco for Gary and Sheila Reese over in Todd's Point and they had a dairy farm and I miss those days. I mean it was definitely a really cool perspective on how much work, hard working Americans put into their livelihood. And dairy farmers, they were legit.

COB: So do you have a sense of what role, either regulation or taxes or some other, some other government imposition has played a role in that farm going under or other farms deciding to get out of that business?

AR: I'm not sure exactly why they closed up. I think it was just so much work and pressure from maybe the big dairy, the folks that sell your milk. I think it was just kind of getting too expensive to come out just for one farm. And there might have been some pressure in that regard. When there was 300 of them here, the truck would load up and just go to all the farms and pick up the milk. I think it just, logistically, it was getting too tough.

COB: Okay, so like the industry changing then perhaps.

AR: Yeah, that's my guess is not being a professional or a subject matter expert on the topic.

COB: In the legislature... We are recording this, I guess about what, halfway through the legislative session or thereabouts?

AR: Yeah, we swore in, I'm only, I've only been a senator for a little over a month now, and three weeks of that has been in a kind of a break. We came in for a week, January 7th, to the, it was a Tuesday. We swore in and then we had that Friday and we went on break for three weeks, which I liked because I was able to kind of meet with folks the whole time and get the lay of the land, learn more about the process of, with the LRC and putting bills together, things of that nature.

COB: So what has been the priority as you have seen. And we can talk about the structure and I can specifically wag my finger at you and complain about the structure of leadership and the backbenchers in the General Assembly. But what have been the clear priorities from your caucus this session?

I'm a big Second Amendment fan and I'm one of the guys that realizes and I preach to lots of folks that hunting has nothing to do with the Second Amendment.

AR: Well, the very first thing that I got to vote on was House Bill 1, bringing the income tax, the state income tax, personal income tax down from 4 to 3.5%. And it was my first yes vote. I voted on that. But I was able to give a floor speech, my very first Senate floor speech. And I got to quote the great Ron Paul when I said that spending taxes is the symptoms, but spending is the disease. So I tried to reiterate that the goal here is to get us down to zero on income tax. However, there's some folks that wanted to go straight to zero. And I'd love to do that, but I am not so sure that we could jump straight to zero without causing some serious issues on the way because we're going to have to balance things out. And as we move to more consumption tax to replace the income tax, there's going to be some bumps along the way. If we can do half a percent a year, that's great. If we can do more than that, even better. There are some options.

COB: Well, in the currently existing statute sort of makes that process automatic over time anyway, does it not? If I understand the statute as it exists with regard to the personal income tax in Kentucky, it will go away at some point if certain revenue thresholds are met, correct?

AR: Correct. That's correct.

COB: And so the General Assembly doesn't have to do anything, right? It doesn't have to. I mean, it might want to.

AR: I believe we still have to vote each time to drop it from what I understand.

COB: Okay, but that isn't... That is sort of on autopilot.

AR: Yes. There's triggers that they have to hit. I think one of the triggers is that the general fund has to be double the amount of whatever the budget is in place just in case there's some issues.

COB: Okay. So that's sort of, I suppose, on autopilot with some small intervention required by the General Assembly on an occasional basis.

AR: I believe that's the case.

COB: So, what are some of the other priorities from the General Assembly this time out?

AR: Well, priorities from leadership and priorities from new guys like me.

COB: Well, let me ask you a different question then.

AR: Yeah.

COB: What are you excited about that is kind of on the edge of consideration?

AR: I think something that's going to be big here that might be a little risque for some folks, but yet we are in Kentucky is like gun bills. I'm a big gun guy. I'm a big Second Amendment fan and I'm one of the guys that realizes and I preach to lots of folks that hunting has nothing to do with the Second Amendment. One of the things that I... I just submitted a bill two days ago. My bill is to bring the concealed carry age for Kentucky citizens from 21 to 18 years old. And surprisingly, I don't know if it's too surprising. I think that's the way it's going now is that I had 21 senators sign on as co-sponsors for it. So, out of 38 senators total, if all my co-sponsors vote for the bill, we should be fine.

COB: So I have a related question to that, right now, you have to fill out forms to the federal government.

AR: Correct.

COB: When you secure a firearm. There are, I don't know how many, I don't know, maybe 30 million Americans who use cannabis products.

AR: I know where you're going on that one.

COB: And there's a box that you have to check. This is if you followed the Hunter Biden case at all, you know that he checked that box. And that apparently has a lot to do with the charges that were brought against him. And the issue is whether or not you are a user of unlawful drugs. Now, that term isn't defined.

AR: Well, it says unlawful user of marijuana, I believe.

COB: Well, I think...

AR: It could have been adjusted. They tweak it constantly.

COB: Okay, well, but that term isn't really clear. If you smoked pot 10 years ago, are you an unlawful user of drugs? If you take a prescription drug that your wife or husband have purchased for them, but you know what it is and you're familiar with, you use it to feel better.

AR: Well, they kind of leave that up to you, the user.

COB: It's not... Well, but that's the question. Is that... We're talking about a constitutional right.

AR: Sure.

COB: And whether or not you get to exercise that constitutional right.

AR: Hinges.

COB: Is hinges on whether a federal law enforcement agency with vague wording on a specific form, they get to decide sort of what that means.

AR: Yeah, yeah. The ATF has lots of questions on that form that are kind of interesting, like, are you a fugitive from justice? [chuckle] That's one of them. Are you an illegal alien? Things of that nature. And it's like, why would you say yes if you're trying to buy firearm?

COB: Well, but so to what extent. Kentucky just recently passed a medical cannabis program. To what extent are people who need access to that or receive some sort of relief from using cannabis for epilepsy or whatever their specific condition might be, are they disenfranchised from exercising constitutional rights in Kentucky?

AR: As it's written, legally, they are.

COB: So what can be done for those people to allow them to exercise that constitutional right?

AR: Well, that's going to be in the federal realm. I don't know that in the state we can do much, but you can advocate for it. But as far as that goes, we need to to get our US Congressmen and our senators to kind of change the rules on that.

COB: Is there any energy behind that? I mean, I think, I would imagine Rand Paul and Thomas Massie are on board.

AR: Yes.

COB: With whatever change that would be.

AR: I have not had a conversation with either one regarding this topic but it is one that we probably should have soon because it's going to be an issue. It is an issue.

COB: Right. It's like, so many states have fully legalized cannabis, and it's still a Schedule 1 drug at the federal level.

AR: Yeah. And we've been interviewed by different news agencies as well that have come over to the store and over at Ops Supply. And, my guys have, they have guys come in to buy firearms, and they reek like they just stepped out of the Cheech and Chong hot box out in their truck and walked in like they're going to buy a firearm, thinking that we're not going to smell it like, look, man.

COB: Maybe they can't smell it.

AR: We can. You are literally making everyone in the store high right now. So we cannot sell you a firearm. And they get a little miffed and walked out. But, that's not uncommon, especially in our Louisville store that we used to have.

COB: Huh. So in Shelby county, we have... I've lived in Shelby County now for about, oh, gosh, four and a half years. Wow. It's hard to believe. And I've really enjoyed my time here. I met a lot of really interesting people. Moving from Louisville to Shelby county, you come to realize that almost everyone knows someone else that you know which is not like my normal...

AR: Small enough.

COB: Not my normal environment. But there are some issues here that I think I just want to get your sense of. And I talked about this with one of our city council members a while back, and that is, at about the same time that Frankfort, Kentucky, legalized backyard chickens, Shelby County made it illegal, or Shelbyville made it illegal. And that just...

AR: The city did.

COB: Yes. And that just boggles my mind.

AR: I wonder what the problem was. Did they have roosters waking everybody up? All the people that don't work, go to work.

COB: I have only suspicions. I have only suspicions about this 'cause I haven't really dug into this seriously. But my suspicion is that probably somebody got annoyed by a rooster.

AR: Yeah.

COB: And went to the city council and said, I have been annoyed by this rooster. I would like you to ban, citywide, anyone from having backyard chickens. And that seems completely disproportionate.

AR: Not even a, hey, let's just keep it to three chickens or something. Something like that.

COB: Now I could have backyard chickens if I had a clearance of two, I think, 200 feet in every direction, so a circle surrounding the coop. I thought, well, no one who owns a piece of residential property in Shelbyville has that. Almost no one. Maybe somebody does. But if I want to have backyard chickens, and I personally would like to have two or three chickens. And in these high-price days of egg prices, I think I ought to be entitled to be able to go out and get three eggs from my backyard chickens as easily as possible.

AR: I would agree. I think that's... You kind of, you ask yourself, what are people thinking? Constantly. And this is one of them. I guess there was an issue where a rooster woke someone. You never know.

COB: I don't know what it was, but that's my suspicion is that somebody discovered some annoyance and rather than dealing with the nuisance itself, decided, well, we got to get rid of this for the whole city.

AR: Yeah. I really enjoy the memes on social media where the folks with the chickens laying eggs are wearing leopard fur coats and gold chains, walking around. If I win the lottery, I won't tell nobody, but there will be.

COB: There will be signs.

AR: Yeah.

COB: A fridge full of eggs.

AR: Yeah.

COB: But I think that speaks to a larger issue, which is there are a lot of instances where people aren't necessarily violating the rights of somebody else, but they are maybe introducing an annoyance. And I don't live in an HOA neighborhood, but it seems that the city council, in many ways, and this probably true all over the country, the city council sort of is the HOA.

AR: Yeah.

COB: And that doesn't, for a whole lot of decision-making, that doesn't seem optimal to me.

AR: Yeah.

COB: So what are you focused on in the coming years in the legislature?

AR: Well, being a new senator, it's kind of, you have these ideas and then when you get there, things kind of tweak and you adjust fire. And I've learned a lot. I've drank from the fire hose and I'm trying not to soak my office, but it's pretty wet. My feet are wet in there. And this week was great. I was able to get out there and I've got some bills lined up. I've been on the floor speaking on different things. I feel like a real senator now. And one of the things that I'm going to be filing on Tuesday, because actually, Tuesday is the deadline to get our bills filed, and I've got two in the process now.

COB: Tuesday, the 18th of February. So by the time this comes out, that deadline will have passed.

AR: Already passed. And I already have these bills hopefully going to committee. But there's two bills that I've already filed and one is the Kentucky Emergency Volunteer Corps. I'm kind of piggybacking off a good friend of mine, John Hodgson, who's over in the House and his bill is House Bill 41. And my bill is House Bill 160, sorry, Senate Bill 160 on the Senate side. So Kentucky Emergency Volunteer Corps, basically the idea is that we're going to with, we have no plans on asking for any money from the state. However, I did request a fiscal note to set people's mind at ease who may or may not vote for it. But we've got some buy-in with the Kentucky Emergency management. And the idea is that each county would have the ability to form a group of volunteers who can react to a tornado or natural disaster, flooding. And one thing that we've been talking about since we were little kids is the fault line that goes up Western Kentucky. Is that the... Is it the same...

COB: New Madrid?

AR: The New Madrid, yeah, the New Madrid fault line. There we go. I can remember, as...

COB: Oh, I remember. You and I were both in eighth grade, I think at that time.

AR: It's gonna kick off.

COB: And a bunch of school systems canceled classes in December of 1990.

AR: That sounds about right. Yeah. That's when it was a big...

COB: Because this one guy said, oh, I predict that there will be a massive earthquake on this day, the New Madrid fault line. And to be clear, like, if an earthquake does occur along that fault line, it will be massive. It could be potentially devastating for 100 miles.

AR: Yeah.

COB: Yeah, I remember that. We're about the same age, so I remember that very, very well. School systems around us canceled.

AR: Yeah, yeah, that was pretty crazy. And it's still, it's starting to... I feel like it's starting to become more of coming back around again maybe.

COB: But the idea here is volunteer groups and what would they be entitled to.

AR: You got your ham radio, folks, you've got your retired veterans, you've got guys from the Bluegrass Academy who are looking for something to be a part of. And really the idea is that the county judge would have authority of his group here. And in the event of a statewide issue, the governor would have the authority to request the county judge to mobilize his volunteers in the event of an issue where they would need force multipliers. That's what they are. They're force multipliers. Some argue that, untrained folks will just get in the way, but I've countered that with, when you have many hands to lighten the load and they're free. The only thing that they're...

COB: Well, they're free and they know things the government can't possibly know.

AR: That's right. Honestly, if there was an issue, a hurricane or a... When we had a hurricane recently come through with Helene, it hit down North Carolina and west Tennessee and a little bit eastern Kentucky, but not as bad as those guys got it. And we actually talked about this down in our Senate caucus retreat that the need may be there for us to have our own type of volunteer network that can mobilize fairly quickly, and time to do it, time to mobilize is not right after the event. It's to pre-plan and prepare. Right?

COB: What prevents that now?

AR: Well, every county or every city can do that on their own. You're right. But this would just be a, there would be a governmental kind of a conduit that would fast track to have all the names on a list of those who wish to be a part of anything that might come up. So they'd, in theory could mobilize a little bit faster. They'll have minimal... There's some training options. CPR training, search and rescue type stuff. Nothing crazy. But a lot of these guys, they bring to the table skill sets that they have just from life. And it's good to have that option if we need it. And it's not a mandatory thing. It's a may set it up, not shall. And it's pretty laid back. But I think, most of the county emergency management folks are in on are very much open to this.

COB: For any children listening to this program, I need you to cover your ears momentarily. The school choice movement in Kentucky got its ass handed to it in 2024, losing nearly two to one. Now, my assessment of that. I was very disappointed, of course, because school choice is something I think that all parents ought to have access to.

AR: 100% agree.

COB: Shelby County was one of the top 10 counties for the percentage in terms of doing well to be clear, the Amendment 2 as it was called lost in all counties.

AR: Yes.

COB: But Shelby county did better than most in terms of asserting the power of parents to make those kinds of decisions without government interference. And to be clear, the taxes you pay to your local school system is interference when it comes to being able to choose a school. But we have other... There are other options available within Kentucky for families. We currently have charter school legislation that is winding its way through courts right now to decide its legitimacy as far as the state supreme court is concerned. But we also have virtual learning in the commonwealth, and that seems like it has the potential to be, for some kids, transformative.

AR: Yes. Yes. And, there's a... Is it Kentucky Virtual Academy? There's a... Is it Grover Port? Yeah, I have to look it up. There's a school in Kentucky that does this already. And we had our education committee meeting last week, and they filled it. These folks who are currently in virtual learning with their kids, they filled the room. And I walked in thinking I was in the wrong committee room because I wasn't expecting what was coming. They kind of had this illusion that the General Assembly had decided to cut their program. And we were kind of shocked at that. We didn't know that they thought that. And what happened was the Kentucky Department of Education had somewhat, they threatened or they were putting a 10% cap on it. And I guess it got a little bit... A lot of people got into virtual learning, COVID, post-COVID. There was an effort, I guess, on the Kentucky Department of Education to kind of slow that back down. But I tell you, I'm a fan of it.

AR: Especially here in Shelby County, we have Cultivate. And one of the awesome things about Cultivate is it's like a hybrid homeschool option. You're basically part of the public school system, yet you can still participate in sports and you can do all your classes at home, and then you come once or twice a week or biweekly, I believe, to meet with your actual teacher and go over things and you go back home. But one thing I really, I think is one of the best kept secrets about Cultivate is as a high school student, you can do all your basic courses online with your teacher online. Then you can go over to ATC, the Area Technology College, and you don't have any scheduling conflicts. You can take welding, nursing, man, you name it, machine and tool, diesel, all that good stuff. So that's something that was really awesome. But, I'm writing a bill that's going to prevent any capping of these type of programs because I think there's a huge need for it. And Kentucky parents will have one more school choice option that has been denied to them.

COB: Yeah. Education is something you do. It is not a place that you go.

AR: Yeah, that makes sense.

COB: It's like work. Work is a thing you do. It's not necessarily a place that you go. And anytime we can embrace something to give parents more options, it's worth full consideration.

AR: Yeah. And there's been some brainstorming on how to get school choice in some form or fashion for parents. And, I've heard another idea that... I don't know if it's possible yet, but I was... Just keep this on the down low, but one of the ideas that we just...

COB: Oh, I'm sorry, we're recording. So I'm not gonna... There's no down low here. Sorry.

[laughter]

AR: That was a joke. [laughter] But one of the ideas that I heard was, what if we can do some type of a property tax holiday if you send your kid to a private school? And I thought that was kind of interesting way to look at it. I'm not sure if we can swing that or not, but I'm definitely interested in finding out what that means and if that's something that can be done.

COB: Aaron Reed, thank you very much for coming by. I appreciate it.

AR: Thank you. Good to be here, man.

[music]

COB: Thank you to State Senator Aaron Reed for joining us. I hope you'll share this episode of the Shelbyville Idea with your friends. Subscribe to our newsletter at shelbyvilleidea.com and give us your guest suggestions, comments, criticisms, feedback, news tips, unsubstantiated rumors, and anything else you want us to know. Email us directly at shelbyvilleidea -at - icloud.com. I'm Caleb Brown. Thank you for listening.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shelbyvilleidea.substack.com

This episode was recorded April 29, 2023. All errors in transcription are the responsibility of Caleb O. Brown. Please inform us of transcription errors at [email protected].

Caleb O. Brown: This is the Shelbyville idea. I'm Caleb O. Brown. In this episode I speak with seventh District State Senator Republican Adrienne Southworth. Given the fact that no one in Shelby County has ever voted for her, she calls herself a step senator. We talk about the 2023 and 2024 legislative session, school choice and housing policy amid big ticket economic development projects in Kentucky. You are the seventh Senate District Senator for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Thank you for coming by.

Adrienne Southworth: Well, thanks so much for having me and doing this. I think it's fantastic. I've heard a few other communities, folks other places in other parts of the state doing similar ideas, and so as soon as I heard that this was getting going, I was like, yes.

COB: So I moved to Shelbyville in 2020, in June of 2020 In fact.

AS: Well, Welcome.

COB: Yes, thank you. You know, one of the questions that I have for local people is what can Shelbyville do to be more welcoming of new Shelby-villians? Not to be confused with Shelby-villains, which is a different group of people in terms of, you know, priorities at the state and but trying to make sure that your constituents are represented well. What are the things that you hear from constituents? These are the things that must be addressed at the state level

AS: Well, we do hear a lot of things from our folks, more out in the rural areas that are still behind in basic services. There's always, you know, sewer line issues. There's a lot of new development going on that creates its own firestorm. Particularly when I have a question from a residential area that has borrowed land from like three different counties out on the county line. And that was a big kind of tangle, you know, but I think that a lot of people that are coming into Shelbyville are coming from surrounding area. There are some that are obviously coming from far away, but we have a lot of people, particularly from Louisville 'cause Louisville's gotten to be really not a great place overall, when compared to nearby locations such as Shelby County. And so a lot of my constituents in Shelby County are either long since moved from Louisville or even very fresh from Louisville, but just a lot coming that direction. Shelby County's a very growing place and I think they're looking for a place they can be safe and live a more peaceful life. 'cause Louisville's kind of crazy.

COB: I hear that a lot from people. In fact, I know several people that I've just met in the last two years who also moved to Shelby County in 2020. I wonder, so Shelby County is one of the fastest growing counties in the state. One of my issues is housing. And I have noticed that in various parts of the state Mayfield, Shelby County is an example. It it's hard to create new housing. There are a lot of hurdles and hoops that you have to jump through in order to just get, there's a lot of discretion that local officials have when it comes to allowing certain construction. Where do you come down on issues of zoning and land use and housing?

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AS: Well, I will start with the baseline of everything I start with, which is constitutional property rights. I really struggle with heavy zoning and planning property restrictions, permitting, that kind of thing. Because in the question of property rights, you're always trying to figure out how to protect this person's interest when it gets close to the fence of the other person's interest. And so, you know, trying to figure out how to make that realistic. I think this is definitely from the local perspective you just mentioned, discretion. Discretion is a very difficult subject to deal with in the law because you have to have it in so many ways. It's the only way and other times it is the problem. And so it's just a really weird thing to talk about. 'cause there's not really one principle I can just slather on and say, here's how it goes.

AS: But when we create state laws, and you know, of course what I do from the state law perspective, we give the parameters of what you can and can't do as far as you know, what you're gonna create for your local requirements and so forth. And I feel like we've set up a system that is not overly serving the people, really anybody, because there seems to be more focus on the red tape hoops rather than truly looking at the property rights of all of the people involved. So, you know, we are all familiar with zoning changes and notifying all the neighbors and so forth, but I've had cases where even all the neighbors are literally petitioning for something and they still can't get it through. You know, it's like, well now what in the world? And so I think you have to figure out always, ultimately how many rights could possibly be violated from all the parties involved. And then where is the best place to kind of be the safest, I suppose you could call it like a little sandbar in the middle of that ocean. You know, that's kind of where I focus on this kind of a high level look at it. But all these little nitty gritty issues always end up landing in that exact same spot.

COB: I hear from Andy Beshear, who's in a reelection year as a Democrat in a state that is trending red. I hear from him these massive job announcements of these large factories and other facilities to, you know, build EV batteries or various other industrial production. And I wonder where are these workers going to live in a lot of these places? Do you think there's a role for the state to sort of assert the property rights of local people to say, Hey, we're gonna build some housing here and please don't try and stop us.

AS: Well, that's a really interesting question and definitely one of the first things in my mind two summers ago when they wanted us to vote on that battery plant deal. And you've just loaded about three different issues in here. So I will talk about the housing rights, I'll talk about the governor's economic development, and then I'll talk about business in general. So the housing right. It's really interesting, particularly around that Ford battery plant. While I do live in Lawrenceburg now, my husband's originally from Frankfort. My home county in Kentucky is Larue County, which is next door to Glendale where that Ford battery plant is. And that has been a talk, I mean, ever since I was very young, that was all we talked about in that area was oh, such and such is getting ready to go into Glendale. Everybody knew there was all of these rumors about stuff that was going in Glendale and none of it ever transpired.

AS: So when I saw it come past me now in the Senate as a voting measure, I was like, oh my word, it's actually happening. But at the same time, I just felt really bad for all of my old community because I don't see how they're gonna pull something like that off. It's gonna be a disaster for the logistics, you know, traffic and so forth. Because these things aren't just growing. You know, typically businesses come in and they plop down like, you know, warehousing or a plant and then they kind of expand from there, right? This is a... We did $410 million just in state support. That's not including overall impact. And it's going to affect the community and it doesn't have all the other surrounding support around it. We put in money for like training for workers, but you're exactly right. We didn't put training or we didn't put money in for everything else that has to go around that.

AS: And granted it's a piecemeal deal, you'll end up seeing that. But for example, you know, my sister lives in a suburban area, not in this state who clearly can't plan their way out of a paper bag because you can't just put 5000 homes on a two-lane road with no new turn lanes or nothing, and expect to not have serious issues with traffic. And it's gotten so bad to where, you know, they just can't go places certain times of the day period. You know, that's just not the way we want this community to be. It's just not a good idea at all. And so that takes me to these governor's announcements on businesses you're mentioning. That really concerns me because I actually, of course used to work in an administration on the executive branch side with Lieutenant Governor Jenean Hampton. And so I was in all the weekly staff meetings with the governor's, high level staff, the cabinet and all that.

So I don't know all the details, but when you have a government literally deciding who is gonna do business here and how much money we're gonna give them to come, it really concerns me.

AS: And you saw exactly what was being done. No doubt. The governor does work on some economic development initiatives and trying to work deals out with companies trying to talk them into, Kentucky's a great place, please come here. We could really use you. That kind of thing. But the majority of the projects that I saw were not governor, had put the time and effort blood, sweat, and tears into it. It was quick, let's catch this PR while it's here so we can stick our name on something in the newspaper again this week. And they're just always looking for PR. And I struggle with that 'cause people just don't really know how it all really works. But in particular around this project, and look, this project could have easily been a project that the governor worked on for a long time, not in this administration.

AS: So I don't know all the details, but when you have a government literally deciding who is gonna do business here and how much money we're gonna give them to come, it really concerns me. because you're kind of putting a finger on the scale and creating an artificial situation where this business may not have normally come here now the community can't support it the way way you're mentioning with housing and the roads are gonna be the next issue. And that kind of stuff bothers me because I feel like the free enterprise system supports more organic growth better than these artificial big slam dunk type situations that then kind of puts us into weird spots. So I think generally in general, business would be better off if we could get back to a more free market system. And we're not paying people to be in business.

AS: 'cause I mean, at some point it's like, wait a second. How much are we actually getting out of this? And eventually, if you do the math, some of these projects, the break even point is like years even a decade away, or we're paying somebody a $100,000 per person to do workforce development. Well, why don't we just get them a job that pays and they could pay for their own way. I mean, like, there's just all kinds of solutions that we need to be looking at instead of just dumping in public funds all the time.

COB: Yeah. One of the comparisons that was probably appropriate to draw for some economic development is Foxconn in Wisconsin, which was a huge promise from then Governor Scott Walker to bring this massive company in, I don't know how many jobs, but many, many jobs. And it just, it was a huge investment that the state made and it just didn't work out. And so I question whether or not the state generally is a very good steward, when it comes to public money going for, you know, explicitly private benefit.

AS: Well, if you wanna go really deep in the weeds, you can always touch on... You missed probably most of the action on this one. You weren't around, but I don't know wherever you came from. But anyway, when I was in the administration, there was one, so-called Deal that was done. Everybody knows it as Braidy Industries. And of course they've had to change the name a couple of times because it turns out it's just a total like Ponzi scheme. And the last session we... I thought it wasn't gonna pass. And finally at the last second we were able to get it finally passed and tried... The whole bill this time was to claw back five years ago's money. They had said, Hey, we're under an NDA, we can't say what it is, but we need $15 million. And this is why I voted against the Ford Motor Plant money.

COB: That's a hell of a pitch from a private firm. I can't talk about it, but give us some money.

AS: Yeah. And so, you know, the governor said, let's go for it guys. And the whole thing started getting sketchy from the get go. But the more I got into it, the more it looked terrible. And finally, I think, and nobody's even really talking about it now, I mean, I think it's gonna probably blow up into the annals of criminal corruption, eventually, but we've at least gotten something passed to say, Hey, that 15 million, at least let's get that back. 'cause where did that go? I mean, it literally went to a lobbying firm and a CEO's bonus travel fund. I mean, it's what it was.

COB: Yeah. For listeners who are interested in learning more about, Brady Industries, I'll refer you to the reporting of Chris Otts and others at WDRB in Louisville. They provided a great deal of coverage on this. And that's where I was following a lot of the fallout from this, I don't know, boondoggle, you call it a boondoggle.

AS: It's a great word. Yeah.

COB: So on to the legislative session most recently there was some tax adjustments. Kentucky is on track to, at some point eliminate the personal income tax entirely. And by the end of the session, pretty much everybody had forgotten that that even occurred. But was... I think it was a generally positive move.

AS: It was, so let me, I guess I'll give a little history on that as well. So back in 2018, they had the first attempt to, I guess what people have been talking about tax reform since the beginning of time. But in the most modern era, they're talking about reducing the income tax and thereby they're looking at increasing the sales tax. Well, in 2018, they made a move that I totally disagreed with. And of course I wasn't a voting member at the time, but I was tracking this very carefully. They expanded the sales tax to services. A lot of things that a lot of us kind of disagree with on things that should be taxed, like car repairs. It really kind of hit in the wrong place, I felt like, and a number of people did feel like that, but nevertheless, it passed and it was all under the promise of we're gonna lower the income tax. Well, what happened at that time was that you had a gradiated income tax and they kind of flattened it out to sort of a single rate. So you had corporations that were getting a tax decrease while some very low income workers had a tax increase. And that really set some people off.

COB: Help me understand that this was an adjustment to both the personal and corporate income tax in the state.

AS: Yes. So it used to be like, and I'm gonna talk about the personal... The corporate kind of followed along, the same type of deal, but the personal income tax used to be like, you know, 6%, 5%, 4%, and we made it all five. So the 6 percenters, which you can imagine the big business people are gonna fall into that type of deal, right? I mean, so they were getting a relaxation of 1% down to 5. But people that are just your average, you know, minimum slightly over minimum wage worker with, you know, trying to pay all their regular bills that all of us pay, before they were probably paying 4%. Well now they're paying 5%. So I agree with having one percentage rate. I'm not a fan of different rates, but I thought that the right answer was 4 at that time because of that situation where we were in.

AS: And instead we made it 5 and expanded sales taxes at the same time. And they claimed we were saving everyone money and it was gonna bring $480 million into the state. Now how in the world do you save people money and bring more in like that? The math is not there. Well, last year we ended up doing this whole income tax thing that you mentioned, this plan to reduce the income tax further. Now, I am not a person who's gonna sit up here and say that we're on track, as you mentioned, we're on the path to reducing to zero. There may be a path written on paper, but if you ask anybody in this state, can you give me some specifics on exactly how that path is going and where we are on it and what the trajectory is. Nobody can give you that answer.

AS: 'Cause there really isn't a path. It's a paper path. And we had a path to 4%, which we did this year. You just mentioned that last year we had done it to 4.5. This next tax year will be 4%, but we're gonna be parked there for quite some time because, we don't have a path forward. But I do like, and I voted for the 4% this year because it really should have been in 2018. Honestly, it's come way too late. And this time, while there were some things I don't necessarily agree with, and we've actually reformed those, again, we keep tweaking on it, the list of things that are sales taxable and so forth. It's not a great list. But, you know, there's all kinds of stuff we don't like, but it was like Botox services and like stuff that you would expect people very optional type of purchases, you know.

COB: Luxury items.

AS: Yeah. If we're gonna tax things, we need to try to keep it in the zone of optionals and not things like groceries, like Tennessee taxes, groceries, 7.75%. I totally disagree with that.

COB: So Tennessee has no income tax, but they have a pretty high sales tax, is that what you're saying?

AS: High sales tax. They have nine point some seven something anyway in regular sales categories. And then they have 7.75 on groceries. I'm not sure, I can't sit here and quote you the Tennessee tax code, but it does concern me when a lot of people just say, well, look at Tennessee. They're growing. Well, I mean, they're also having traffic problems. I mean, that's what happens. I mean, you have to do something that makes sense for you. And adding 2 million people to Kentucky is not gonna make sense for our crumbling roads.

COB: In the legislative session, it should probably come as no surprise to people who know me, who may be listening, that I'm a big fan of school choice and I want to advance school choice. I was disheartened in the last couple of legislative sessions that there were these fights over CRT, that there were fights over trans issues and that sort of thing. And my thought was, look, school choice is right there. If these are, you wanna diffuse these culture war issues, school choice seems like the way forward to make people not hate each other quite as much, and give all parents the ability to send their kids to a school that comports with their values. And you know, if you are watching the legislative session closely this year, you saw a constitutional amendment that Josh Calloway, Representative Josh Calloway sponsored get two of its three required readings in the legislature and then nothing. So it was as close as a piece of legislation could get to getting out of the house and then it just didn't come up for a vote. Now, Jason Nemes, who I believe is the majority whip, is that right?

AS: Yes.

COB: In the house. And Damon Thayer in leadership in the Senate have both said this is the priority for 2024. What do you think of that? A constitutional amendment to empower the general assembly to engage in a broad range of school choice?

AS: I think that's the right move. If you look at the federal side of things it's already a constitutional right under the United States Constitution to use tax dollars for a variety of educational purposes, not restricted the same way as the Kentucky Constitution does. And I think there's a lot of smart case law that explains why that's a good idea. Because if you look back at the founding of this country, the whole reason why education is prioritized by the government and public funding in the first place is for the betterment of society. Because they believe that society is better as a whole when it's young people are educated. Why? We've done a lot of stuff around, you know children's labor, children's education, children in general. We just have a lot of space in the public for, for children. And so when you're looking at public priorities limiting children's access to education really doesn't fit in that framework.

AS: I mean, you would want to have children taken care of as best as possible, any which way you can get it. If that's really the goal, right? So the whole point of having the public school system is so that it's available and everybody can have the access and is not unequal access and all this stuff. But that's not the case. I mean, we have a one size fits all system and frankly, that's the only way it can work. If you're gonna have only one system, it just has to be a bell curve, middle of the road system, it will always leave the edges off. That's just what it, the nature of the beast. And so I think providing, and we actually do already provide private funding or public funding for private education on the far end of the bell curve for people who have special needs that are beyond the scope of what we can provide in public schools.

AS: The public funds go to private schools or child care type, whatever deals that we can come up with that will meet special needs, extreme special needs kids needs. And so I just don't see that this is much different as far as meeting that. But it is different in the sense that we're saying, well, instead of globing the middle 75% together, we're actually recognizing that there's more differences among kids than than people wanna say. And so every school's gonna have their opportunity to say, how wide of services are we offering? And if a large school can provide a wide variety of services, then that's great. But if they can't, then we need to also provide larger edges to this bell curve, I think of students and their needs. I mean, from having taught privately for 10 years, I really enjoyed seeing all the different learning styles of students.

AS: But I cannot imagine trying to manage the sizes of some of these classrooms with the discipline issues and everything else going on and really be able to get a whole lot into these kids. And honestly, as a student myself, I thought the same thing to myself. Are we learning that much? And I know that we did learn a lot of stuff, but there's a ton of extra time in the classroom that's just bogged down by the masses. And I feel like there's ways we could get creative and it's just not welcomed when there's such a strict guideline on how you can do all this. So yeah, I support the constitution freeing us up to where we can make those decisions more on a one-off basis. But also I would say as far as this year goes, I appreciate the bill that came out because I think that pushing the can down the road is never really the answer.

AS: But I also know that the ballot item, it's a ballot item and the ballot won't be until 2024. So it was kind of a question of do we wanna use the oxygen in the room this year or next year? And I can agree with the decision to make it a priority next year and not forth it this year. But I do like that Josh went ahead and got it out there so that people are talking about it. 'cause otherwise it would come last second and everyone would go, oh, what is this? Well, we're not, we don't know about it. You know, so we need to get things out there earlier.

COB: There's a realpolitik, I don't know, there are internal mechanisms within legislatures that somebody from the outside looking in would look at and say, why are they doing it this way? And of course, I looked at the school choice measure that way, and I guess I grudgingly understand the arguments for waiting instead of doing it right away. But in terms of doing things in the early part of a legislative session, it doesn't because there's a filing deadline, I believe at the end of January for people trying to run for office. It's at least my understanding that there's a reputation in Frankfort for not doing anything controversial in that 30 days. Because somebody could say, could get angry and file a run against you, and then suddenly you have a very animated opponent that you might not have otherwise had come November. And when that deadline passes at the end of January. So they, is that true first of all that the, the legislature sort of waits until filing deadline passes before they tackle things that might make people angry?

COB: That used to be true. A few years ago they changed the filing deadline to the first Friday in January so that people would think, I suppose instead of solving the problem, which is don't do stupid stuff it's, well, let's just make a cover for ourselves, right?

AS: In a sense. Now the rule is we don't have to wait as long to do stupid stuff.

COB: Exactly. That's pretty much what it is. And so, but here's the really the big disappointment for me I always felt like, and I think it's true 'cause they always would wait to the filing deadline and then get started. But in my experience, the whole time I've been in elected service, it's been under that first week January deadline. I think I was the first year or something like that. But anyway I've not experienced any kind of artificial barrier to when we're gonna actually get busy. What I have noticed is that they plan it out just like I'm gonna use an example from I was in the wedding industry. And so a wedding plan is the same as an event plan of any sort. You know, you have all these different markers, a project plan, any type of planner like that.

AS: They literally, I think they have a Gantt chart just about on when to start doing things so that they can push stuff forward and put pressure on people and layer up all this stuff at once to start pushing things through that wouldn't normally get pushed through if everyone actually had time to just breathe and actually make rational decisions. Because I mean, literally you can see an example of this. The very last day of session this year, there were four bills that the Senate passed, none of which were bills that we wanted to pass. And we all just were sitting around all day saying, are you gonna pass this or not? And I'm like, well, what else is on the agenda? Well, there wasn't anything else on the agenda.

AS: It was just a put pressure on you and make you think that you need to do something different than you were already gonna normally do. And people, some people were surprised at votes that ended up coming out. Votes got flipped that never flipped before for 10 years. I mean, that kind of stuff happens under pressure. And so I think that the pressure works in favor of the big money people that like to control all this stuff. And it does not work in favor of the regular constituents that I think are the most important priority.

COB: This is a weird question. I hope you don't take it the wrong way. No one in Shelby County's ever voted for you.

AS: Right. It is weird.

COB: And so to me, from the outside looking in without looking at the context, it looks like the legislature by virtue of the redistricting that it did following the delayed 2020 census we all remember that that was a difficult time. If you were to lay blame for the lateness of the redistricting that occurred in Kentucky. Do you say Census Bureau, it took a long time, pandemic, or did the legislature have plenty of time in your view to get this thing done and then just waited for whatever reason?

AS: No, there as far as the timing goes, that is just what it is. The census information came out in September, and so then we filed and changed everything in January. So the timeframe was correct. Sometimes you won't see you'll, there are census delays other years that just wasn't extra delayed this time. Sometimes a census supposedly is supposed to be out like June or July 1 or something like that of the year in which it is like 2020. So for example, in that case, you would've expected 2021 could have been aligned, but I was elected in 2020 and we would not have been able to draw the new lines. 'cause we're not in session in the fall, right? So I would've still been elected in the old lines even if we'd redrawn them a year earlier. So there's really no effect on the actual constituents based on whether you get to it hot out of the gate on the odd numbered year or whether and there's any delays whatsoever, and you don't get the information till six months delayed or whatever, then you can't get it together and it goes to the even year. So that's not really an issue. I think really the issue is.

COB: But they couldn't have waited and said this redistricting will be effective for the election of 2022.

AS: No because the constitutionality of redistricting is really based on the here and now. Now I personally think that this needs to be looked at because in Congress that's what they do. They have it take effect at the next election and in the state it takes effect immediately. I personally would like to see all of this, honestly, we need a constitutional amendment. 'cause believe it or not, we don't follow the Kentucky Constitution the way it reads now. The courts have said there's too many conflicting requirements in the constitution and all can't possibly be met, period. So therefore it's sort of a pick and choose. But the courts have said which ones we should pick over the others. That's the situation we're in for redistricting. So it really does need to be looked at. And I am a strong believer that it should go to the voters. Now here's the problem. I'm in a four year term, and 2022 was not an election year for me. So I was elected by my voters for a four year term. So you can't trample on the old voters by having the new voters vote someone else in. Like, this is just really convoluted. So there are always some fallouts where voters get step senators, like myself.

COB: Step senators. That's funny.

AS: My perspective is we should be, when we're redrawing the lines, there is a constitutional minimum requirement threshold like I just mentioned. But what I found in this redistricting process is you can actually go a lot deeper than that. The minimum threshold we met in the Senate barely but there were a lot of other factors we did not take into play that we could have and we could have drawn better lines by taking in, there's about eight or 10 other factors you can do. One of them is least adjustment to the current populace, least amount of intrusion on the current line. That's one map. I literally drew like 10 or 11 maps in this whole thing of if that was your criteria, here's what the map would look like. If your criteria was to have the most equal sizes of land masses.

AS: So you don't have like one giant huge one in Eastern Kentucky stuff we were struggling with. You know, there's a lot of land mass with light population on the edges of our state. You know, that was another map I drew. Another map I drew was without regard at all to any current sitting people. So they might end up living outside of their districts until their next elections. But we do have one... The one that they did do was let's keep all the senators living in their districts so that nobody's living outside of their district and therein would be ineligible for their next election. So that was like the only criteria they added on top of the constitution institution. Besides other things get added, like quick, who do we like and who do we not like? You know, that kind of.

COB: And obviously leadership has ideas about who they like and don't like. So two things. One, is there anything you want to tell to the people of Shelby County for whom you are a step senator for at least another year or so, a year and a half or so? And also, what would be your top priorities for the 2024 legislative session?

AS: Well, my top priorities in 2024 are almost playing catch up for all the other stuff that we've gotten started and haven't gotten all of the footballs past their all required downs to get them into the end zone. So typically every year I go into depth of research on a topic or two, even sometimes three. But last year I was focused on child abuse and the year before that elections and both of those have a lot still to go. Before that it was vaccine mandates. So all of that stuff there has been some little tiny, very tiny things done, but nowhere near the scale and scope that we need. Along with that, I have a number of bills that I have filed every year relating to privacy digital interaction with government. We have this whole cashless society question.

AS: And I got a lot of traction on that this year, whereas it's been sitting there for three years. All of a sudden this year people are starting to talk about it more. What I try to do is always solve problems before they happen. And a lot of people don't have that perspective. I think it's a certain I don't know what group of us brains that work ahead of time like that, but I look at problems that are coming down the pike and seek to avoid them instead of trying to clean up messes after fact. So I have a lot of bills like that that have been sitting out there for years and are now becoming talking points of more the mainstream particularly around my reconciliation for election ballots. And like I mentioned the the cashless thing people are actually starting to worry about that now.

I appreciate how welcoming Shelby County has been. I think my experience and may be a little bit different from some other senators in that I was not originally from the county in which I represent.

AS: And luckily we were able to see a little tiny bit of help there with these well, these awful driver license things. They have the popup centers and stuff. They weren't taking cash. People would get thrown at the end of the line if they had brought cash. I mean, it was just really bad stuff was going on. So all of that to say I have a lot of footballs to move down the field. I'm not focusing on any new research items this year. I'm going to go deeper into all the existing ones that I have so that we can get more of this work finished up. Because there's so much, you just think about there's 138 people and I need at least half of them to vote for everything, just sitting down with each of them for an hour and they're in Frankfort once a month. I mean, that'll kill a whole year of your schedule just working on one topic and, and we haven't even gotten much done. Right. So it's just, there's a lot that goes into putting a bill through. And so that's what I'll be focusing on, of course.

COB: And what do you want to tell the people of Shelby County for whom you will be, they will have their first opportunity potentially to vote for you next year, 2024?

AS: Well, I appreciate how welcoming Shelby County has been. I think my experience and may be a little bit different from some other senators in that I was not originally from the county in which I represent. So a lot of times people are like born and raised in an area and they're really locked into that local community. I'm married into my community that I live in now, so I have a very statewide type approach anyway. And of course, as a state decision maker we should take into consideration all of the pieces of the puzzle. And that's definitely more in the senate side of things as well, 'cause we have multiple counties have four that I currently represent. And so we look at a larger picture and how things fit in together, but we get to know our local communities and how things specifically affect them more so than maybe other areas of the state.

AS: And so I find that a lot of communities have similarities, but everyone is so different and I love the differences. I've enjoyed getting into Shelby County more. Like I said, my husband's originally from Frankfort, so it wasn't a foreign area, but it was definitely one we didn't spend as much time in. We usually ended up going the other direction, like Woodford and Lexington for whatever reason. But Louisville is the big city. That was my big city in my home county of La Rue County. So Shelby County is just that kind of middle space between my two, what I'd call my two homes in Kentucky. And it's been really fun to see how it's a mix of a lot of other cultures that I know. And then getting some of its specifics learned. It's, I had a really good friend that used to live in Shelby County years ago, so I already had a little bit of a handle on some of it, but I just like getting to know all the different people and I think a lot of our values are the same.

AS: When we don't live in the urban area, a lot of the, the more rural and particularly the growing areas, we have similar values kind of no matter where you are. And I'm a heavy fighter for a lot of these things that the, what I call the 118 counties, feel like in it's outside of Louisville and Lexington we're about half the rest of the state and Shelby County is a big piece of that. And of course coming from a Frankfort representation, it's the next door neighbor that's also a large piece kind of in a similar way, but totally different community, totally different culture. But I just really enjoy it.

AS: I look forward to seeing everybody more as we get going. One of the hardest things for me was when I was on the campaign in five counties, not all of which, I had driven every road, and you can live in a county for a long time and still never drive all the roads, but when you're campaigning, you do. And so I have not driven all the roads in Shelby County. I have driven several now, but I'm looking forward to being able to really get out at the granular level and catch up on these loose ends because it is weird being a step senator coming in, but I have really enjoyed the last two years serving here and certainly look forward to working with everybody in this next year and a half as I finish this term.

COB: Alright, Adrienne Southworth, thank you very much. Promise me that you will come back and chat with us again. I don't know, in a year. A little less than a year from now. How about that?

AS: Well, absolutely. You know, we can talk before that. There's always things going on. A lot of people don't keep up with what all's going on in Frankfort. There's always things percolating and we can talk about details as we move forward throughout the summer, even though we're not passing bills, we're hearing what's coming up next year and other things are always going on. So it'd be great to, great to have this podcast that people can keep up with local stuff. I love it.

COB: Wonderful. Thank you.

AS: Thanks.

COB: Thank you to state Senator Adrienne Southworth for joining us. I hope you'll share this episode of the Shelbyville Idea with your friends. Subscribe to our newsletter at shelbyvilleidea.com and give us your guest suggestions, comments, criticisms, feedback, news tips, unsubstantiated rumors, and anything else you want us to know. Email us directly at shelbyvilleidea-at-icloud.com. I'm Caleb Brown. Thank you for listening.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shelbyvilleidea.substack.com

This interview was conducted on April 15, 2023. If you’d like to comment, feel free to add yourself as a paid subscriber, join our Facebook group, or respond on Twitter.

The transcript below was generated electronically. Some errors may remain. Please send any corrections to ShelbyvilleIdea - at - iCloud - dot - com.

Caleb O. Brown: Kathy Fehder, you are the Principal of Corpus Christi Classical Academy, which has, as of this school year, been relocated to Shelbyville, Kentucky. So tell me about Corpus Christi.

Kathy Fehder: Okay. Well, it started out actually as Our Lady Guadalupe 23 years ago. And we were blessed to move into this location here in Shelbyville, right in the center of town, this past June. And we found that there's a vibrant community there, and so the result has been a lot more people really seeing the school. It's becoming more visible in this location, and so more people have come into the school as a result.

COB: So the registrants, the young people, there are a lot more this year than there were last year?

KF: Yes. Well, the thing is, and particularly since we didn't move in until actually July 1st, the end of June, there were people who hadn't heard about us in our other location in Simpsonville, even though it was there all those years. It was originally Our Lady Guadalupe and they had a high school called Corpus Christi. But at some point, we thought it best to merge, and so the name for the entire school is Corpus Christi and it became classical in 2015. So I've been there since 2016, this is my seventh year.

“Our emphasis begins on human virtue, what it is to make a man, a person, virtuous. And then that moves into what we hoped will become young saints, people who understand there is a higher power.”

Kath Fehder

COB: So, tell me about the... because when I described Corpus Christi... Full disclosure, to listeners, my daughter attends Corpus Christi Classical Academy. When I describe the school to people, because my family, we're not Catholic, but when we interviewed at your school, it was immediately clear to us that this was a great... Gonna be a great option for our daughter. And so, when I describe it I say, "It is a Montessori Classical Academy Catholic school." What... Take those in turn if you want, but what do all those things mean?

KF: Okay, Catholic school means that definitely we teach the Catholic faith. Our emphasis begins on human virtue, what it is to make a man, a person, virtuous. And then that moves into what we hoped will become young saints, people who understand there is a higher power. For Catholics, Christ is the pillar of truth, and so we bring all of that into the classroom. The classical tradition comes out of the church as well, we call it Catholic, and then classical because the emphasis of Catholic schools... Excuse me, of classical schools is truth, beauty, and goodness. So, like I've told you, I'm not a reporter, I'm not a public speaker, but I can recognize beauty and truth and goodness, and that's what we really want to infuse into our students who come into the school. They recognize that there is so much of that in the world even though it doesn't always seem that way. What is not, can be more dramatic, but it is to me, an invitation to know God if you understand beauty and truth and goodness.

COB: So that's the Catholic portion of the...

KF: Catholic and classical.

COB: Oh, it is classical.

KF: Classical, truth, beauty and goodness. And so...

COB: Catholic and classical?

KF: Yes. And so we do have an emphasis on... When we talk about things like beauty, we look at the literature that we study. We do not read pop culture, with... I believe that kids get plenty of that at home and in their other environments. But we read classical books, books that kind of have elevated vocabulary and that can really lead kids to understand there's a much bigger understanding, philosophy of life, than what greets the eye. And so we do have this emphasis on our supernatural destiny, but we read books, totally appropriate, developmentally, like things like Robin Hood, King Arthur. And so we do have an emphasis on our Western heritage because it was out of that that our faith sprung. So all of this is Catholic and classical. And as they develop, we also introduce things that really touch upon that beauty element, like cursive. But I want people to understand that cursive isn't just about beauty, it actually has a physiological developmental advantage that unfortunately many have abandoned. But it crosses the midline, there's so much to be said about cursive alone.

COB: I have heard that cursive improves your memory of material that you are studying.

KF: Yes, it does. Cursive enhances focus, attention to details, of course you can take quicker notes, and fluency of thought. Like I said, it crosses the midline, left brain, right brain, it is so... It's a game changer for people to understand how important cursive is to kids, it strengthens their memory. And in that vein, I would say classical also means that we study the Latin language. And Latin is not a modern language, I'm fluent in Spanish, but Latin is a classical ancient... We call it an ancient language, which is more like math, because it organizes thought and builds those... It gives us that building block, the grammar, to understand our own language. 50% of the English language comes from Latin.

COB: So I had Latin in high school.

KF: Did you?

COB: And when we... When you and I spoke initially about whether or not... About setting up an interview and visiting your school, you said, "Yeah, we teach cursive and Latin." And I was like, okay, I'm sold. [laughter] I'm in...

KF: I love it.

COB: I'm in. And...

KF: Not everyone understands that.

COB: Yeah, and so... And I noticed at at a different point when I visited the school, that the Latin textbook that you use, is the Latin textbook that I used in high school.

KF: No way, seriously?

COB: Yes. Thank you Mrs. Richter of Calloway County High School for...

KF: I love it.

COB: … teaching Latin to us. And I really appreciate it, and you were talking about not being fluent in Latin, and I thought, well, it's kind of hard to find your local Latin community...

KF: It is.

COB: … your local group of Romans, to practice your Latin with. But it is... It goes to the core of how Western Romance Languages all developed and...

KF: Totally.

COB: It is a language that is structured in such a way that you can just give a random assortment of words, and they all already have their place in the sentence.

KF: Totally. This is one thing. We study ancient Greece and Rome, and the thing is, we say Greeks with their brains because they were philosophers, they just... They were all about that level of understanding the human person. And then we say the Greeks with their brains, but the Romans with their drains. Because the Romans were engineers, we say, "All roads lead to Rome." And it was from there that so much spread out to the rest of the world. And so that engineering, that organized way of thought really builds upon everything we do in our own language, and that is why I can say that every year, not only with the National Latin Exam, but with the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, the ITBS, which is the standardized test we give to the whole school, our scores are the very minimum one year above grade level. But for example, I've had... This year, I had seventh graders testing in the college level across the board, and that's common, eighth graders, etcetera.

COB: I wanted to make a note of that too, because... And I won't name the other schools, but we toured three schools when we were deciding where to send our daughter, and yours was the first. And I can remember you handed us a folder, and the first page of that... Inside that folder, the first piece of paper was a list of grade... Relative to grade level performance of students at your school. And the other two schools that we visited, we had to ask... One, we had to ask for that information because that's relevant information to parents who are trying to make a choice about a school, and neither one could provide it.

KF: Yeah, it's very interesting. A lot of schools, I'm sorry to say, are getting away from... Well, there's not always a clear curriculum, that's one thing I do like about what we're doing, among many things. And that is, we have a fluid curriculum year after year. And I've been in other schools, I have five kids myself, they're all in their 20s now, well, one just turned 30. But essentially, you can ask for a curriculum, but from one grade to the next, oftentimes it's left up to the teacher to determine, and there isn't a fluid curriculum. For us, we try to also make it thematic. So all the classes are touching upon similar subject areas as much as possible. Specifically, we connect literature with history too, because that just builds up more knowledge of it, and I am not one to say, I'm gonna pull punches on kids. I like kids to understand expectations, so they know that this is the pattern and the standard for how we're going to present this. And it helps them to get orderly in their own understanding of such things as not just studying, but taking notes and things like that.

KF: But... So one year might be a study of Greece, next year might be the study of Rome, the next year might be the middle ages, which are largely ignored in many places, but they have so much to offer. And then "the modern world" discovering, whatever. So, this also helps kids to remember, and all that we do is to strengthen the memory. I'll say one more thing about classical schools, recitation is a program that personally I can't say enough about. It not only builds confidence in the children, the students, because they can remember long beautiful poems and things like that, but it also strengthens their memory. What I found is many people today, unfortunately many kids, they're putting their memories into their devices, and so it's very difficult to come into our school in the upper grades because our... The performance of our kids and what they've become accustomed to is normally beyond the typical grade level. And so to come into that is very, very challenging, unless you've kind of been brought up in that system. Does that makes sense?

COB: So we should make note of the fact that you are located on the property of the Catholic church, the Church of the Annunciation in Shelbyville. Which is...

KF: Yes.

“What I found is many people today, unfortunately many kids, they're putting their memories into their devices, and so it's very difficult to come into our school in the upper grades because our... The performance of our kids and what they've become accustomed to is normally beyond the typical grade level.”

Kathy Fehder

COB: Between two chunks of a state highway, which are essentially Washington and Main Streets. You're right in between those two. And it's been very interesting, especially sort of from the outside looking in, because I assume most of your families are Catholic. We are not, but your school was just the one that best met our hopes and expectations for our daughter, and we enjoy having her there and she has made a lot of friends and seems to be thriving, as best I can tell. So, I guess, you came from Simpsonville?

KF: Yeah.

COB: The school, just last school year, was in Simpsonville?

KF: Yes.

COB: Why the change?

KF: Well, what we found is, the majority of our families are from Shelby County.

COB: Okay.

KF: And a lot of them live in Shelbyville. But we had a lease in Simpsonville, and it was time to move on. I know Simpsonville had plans for the building. And so we were invited to come in here, and which is actually, for most of our families, is more convenient. We want to live and grow in Shelbyville, Shelby County. So, where we are was a great move because, again, most of our student population lives in this area, although we do get students still from Oldham County, we've had them from Henry County, Spencer County, of course we're the only Catholic school in that Tri-County area. But also, we've even had some come this way from Frankfort. So, it was a good move and a good fit for us to be here. Like I said, the more... Since we came here at the end of June, we became more visible to Shelby County where most of our kids are from. And if you talk about the population of the school, about a third of the school is Hispanic, and we do offer... And oftentimes... Here's the thing, we wanna give our families in Shelby County, we wanna give families options. And being the only Catholic and only one, to my knowledge, there may be another, but maybe only one other private school, we think it's not just an option, but it's a beautiful option because it is academically strong, very strong, and it's also a place where kids can feel safe, it's a strong community feel.

KF: We want kids, and I want kids, to love learning, and that's why the plan is you start in Montessori where it's somewhat child-directed, I guess you could say. And the kids are happy and they're moving and gravitating towards things that they wanna know about, and we continue to foster that. And all the way through classical education, from... Essentially from first on up, we want them to love learning and to be happy. It's a sad thing to me for a child to come home crying 'cause they weren't happy in school. Now, there's things that happen, but we want them to know that they are loved by God, and that they are loved by this community, and loved by their teachers, and we want it to be a joyful experience because learning is life-long. And we want these kids to be independent thinkers, to understand... I don't mean independent in the sense of separate, but I mean being able to recognize situations that are healthy or not, that kind of thing.

COB: You're the principal of the school. Now...

KF: Yeah, so I'm the principal/head of school.

COB: And that... But that term principal used to mean something different than it does today. And...

KF: Tell me what it means to you or what it meant.

COB: What it means to me today is, you're almost solely an administrator, but that's not you, that's not what you do. You're a teacher and an administrator of the school.

KF: Yes.

COB: And so you are making decisions about curriculum. And in sort of modern public schools, that's not really what a principal does.

KF: Right, no. In a perfect world, with... Well, a number of other things. I'm not even gonna say a perfect world. I think as a principal, no matter where we are, how big we are, or anything else, I still would teach a class because I do think it's important to be in the mix and to know what's going on, and to assess certain things in the curriculum, especially on the higher level. But I'm very familiar with this curriculum even before I came here. My kids went to classical schools, so I'm fully aware of it and loved every bit of it.

COB: What do you teach?

KF: I'm teaching Latin. Surprise, surprise. I'm also teaching literature right now. We just read... The seventh and eighth graders read The Iliad by Homer, epic poems, and the highschoolers read the Aeneid by Virgil which is phenomenal. And next up would be Dante, for example, the Inferno and whatever. So essentially, I am... And I'm also teaching highschool theology. I do also have a background and master's in biblical studies. So basically, I teach where I need to be teaching, but some areas are areas too that... Well, let's take Latin, it's very difficult to find Latin teachers today. But I've taught it for many years, and it's so foundational and pivotal, it's a game-changer like cursive is, if you can believe it, for kids to strengthen their memories and to have a greater fluency of thought, to acquire vocabulary that gives them very high reading levels and therefore very high writing levels.

COB: Yeah, the one thing I can say for Latin is that I, to this day, I'm able to look at an unfamiliar word and begin to piece together what it means.

KF: I can say there are people who say Latin is a dead language. Well, I can tell you, I taught language in college level for many, many years. Spanish, and also taught English. And I can say we speak Latin every single day, 50% of our language, right? And so, this for example, I had one senior, because we have a high school, but it's not a big advertising campaign, but if someone wants to continue in the classical methods, I am happy to embrace that. And so I just had a student graduate from high school. She's the first high school graduate in her family, and will be the first college graduate. And this girl got $180,000 worth of scholarship offers from several different colleges. She ended up entering the Honors College of Nursing at Bellarmine.

KF: And that Latin has been foundational, like in many of the medical fields, in helping her achieve this high level of understanding. And again, it's not just Latin, but learning things like 20-stanza poems. And there's biblical studies, memorizing psalms, long psalms in scriptures. And again, cursive, all of this fully integrates this information more strongly and more deeply into the human brain. Okay. So it's a combination of all of these things. Literature, of course, teaches a lot of things about humanity, right and wrong and things like that.

COB: What are some of the other great books that young people read? I don't expect most even adults today to have read The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid. So what are some of the other great books?

KF: Yeah. In some of these schools, they'll read like a piece of The Odyssey, but we do read the entire book because we want the kids to go deeply into the understanding, not just of that era, but of what's to be learned and gleaned from that. So in the younger grades, we start with, we do fables, we do stories of the likes of Paul Bunyan and all those guys. And then we go into the Little House on the Prairie. Well, it's Little House in the Big Woods, and then Farmer Boy. These things really do show the beauty and the power of the natural world. They show kids the beauty of God's creative world, but also we make choices in this world, but there are consequences that we can't always control. And so there's a lot to be said about that.

COB: The Little House books. We have a full set here. My cousin, Misty, was very proud to have read those books with... To and with her children. The books become … the language, becomes more complex as you go through the books.

KF: Yes, the building of vocabulary, for sure.

COB: Laura Ingalls Wilder, of course, is detailing a difficult life for pre-industrial America, and the reality, very stark hard-nosed realities of being a farmer, of having the associations that you make with people who are also trying to maximize their wellbeing of themselves and their families. The example that I go to is like using a reflector oven, which is, for most people don't even know what that is, and I wouldn't have known if I hadn't read those books. But a reflector oven essentially uses the sun to bake and generate low levels of heat to cook breads or any number of other things. And it's a complicated, difficult process. If you wanted to bake a pie 150, 200 years ago, that was a pretty complicated and difficult thing, and that was every part of your life. [Editor’s Note: Upon further research, we are reminded that reflector ovens typically make use of an adjacent fire, not the sun. We regret the error.]

KF: Right. Even taking maple syrup out of a tree and taking care of the cows in the middle of the night because there's a blizzard. There is so much to be learned in the natural world, so to speak, God's created world. And at the same time, as they move up, yes, the vocabulary becomes more sophisticated. When they get into fifth grade, they start reading King Arthur, and Robin Hood, The Door in the Wall, these are classics from the Middle Ages, which in a big sense, its kind of the height of the Christian era. And then moving into the founding fathers and coming into this country, they certainly study all about the American, like I said before, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration and that kind of thing.

COB: Yeah. And one thing I wanna make note of for the benefit of listeners is that especially, we're going back to Little House books again. Rose Wilder Lane was the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder. And she herself was a very well-regarded writer and I would say sort of political philosopher in the sense that she wrote a wonderful, wonderful book that I'll recommend to everybody called The Discovery of Freedom. And I view that as sort of a natural culmination of the Little House books, which she helped co-write some of the later books with her mother. And Rose Wilder Lane is a brilliant intellectual, and I gotta say a really, really good writer. So I will recommend that to your students as well as a potential extra credit assignment. [laughter]

KF: Right. All about that.

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COB: What does the future look like for Corpus Christi?

KF: I believe as we kind of expand our space, we will very much expand our student body. I do think there has been... Well, right now for this upcoming year, we are on a waiting list for fifth grade and up already. Pre-school's on a waiting list. So because I'm separating a couple of the grades, we had some grades together, we do have some room in those younger grades, and that's the best time to come into a school like this, because you kind of learn what to expect and in the same kind of movement up, they also get the full body of academics that builds one year upon the next.

COB: So one of the plans that I have discussed with you and with others is getting a piece of property.

KF: Yeah, we'd like to have a piece of property for sure in this area.

COB: And building a school that is separate and independent from the local church, because I'm sure that that adds a little bit of stress to the church itself, but also gives you sort of a limited range of being able to make bigger swings, bigger decisions on behalf of the school.

KF: Right. As far as space, primarily. And yes, so we have had some starter money that was donated to get us going on this, but at the same time, we're blessed to be where we are. We really are. But just to serve more people, ultimately, we would like to have more space, so a bigger... A property on its own in that way.

COB: I talked to you a while back. The the Kentucky Supreme Court last year heard a school choice case which disappointingly, they did not advance. They decided to throw out the school choice program. I fully expect that to be a reality in Kentucky within the next two to three years. And my expectation is that schools like yours that are delivering this kind of classical education could be well-positioned to welcome a lot more students into that kind of education.

KF: Definitely. We have... To me, the kids are the most precious resource we have, our children. And to really kind of not know what they're learning or to not be invited in... That's one thing about our school that I think is very important, we require a parent, because we understand, we work in partnership with parents. I would never tell a parent that you don't know your child. Of course, parents are the primary educators. We as Catholic Christians believe that parents are the primary educators, of course, in so many ways. And so we work in partnership, and that means they come into school and they're required to give us eight hours of volunteering per child.

COB: Oh, I know.

KF: Per semester.

COB: Oh, I know.

[laughter]

KF: But you know what, it's a one... As a parent, I love that. Whereas, some schools don't allow parents in the building, period. And I say, we are happy, your children are happy. We want them to be filled with joy, to love learning, and to be thinkers who can stop and reflect, but also to give back to their communities. So what we teach is not just strong academics but an understanding of our history and the beauty of the world around them. Like nature studies. Of course, we go into biology and everything else on the high school level, but foundationally, the understanding of the world around us is often missing in a different sense. So we also have strong readers and we give them... We equip them with the language to be able to express themselves. So, like I said the trivium, the traditional classical trivium is grammar, which is the vocabulary, but it's the tools to speak and to express.

COB: The Lexicon.

“We want them to be filled with joy, to love learning, and to be thinkers who can stop and reflect, but also to give back to their communities. So what we teach is not just strong academics but an understanding of our history and the beauty of the world around them.”

Kathy Fehder

KF: And then logic. Logic is organization of thought and then rhetoric, in its true sense is persuasive writing. Writing and the understanding that moves people. So all of this is a part of what we do, and it's unique, and it's beautiful. And the outcome also makes for joy-filled kids who are part of a community, like we're not little independent, little Adams floating out there. But we are part of a community that is meant to kind of renew and enrich those around us.

COB: All right. Kathy, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming by.

KF: Thank you for your time.

COB: And recording with me down the hall from my office. I think that's my youngest child howling in the background there for a moment. But thank you so much. I appreciate your time.

KF: Thank you.

COB: And for those interested, the website is...

KF: Www.corpuschristiclassical.org. Corpus, C-O-R-P-U-S, Christi, C-H-R-I-S-T-I classical.org.

0:31:01.0 COB: Thank you.

0:31:02.7 KF: Thank you.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shelbyvilleidea.substack.com

This interview was conducted on January 23, 2023. If you’d like to comment, feel free to add yourself as a paid subscriber, join our Facebook group, or respond on Twitter.

The transcript below was generated electronically. Some errors may remain. Please send any corrections to ShelbyvilleIdea - at - iCloud - dot - com.

Caleb O. Brown: Sally Pollett Zaring.

Sally Pollett Zaring: Yes.

COB: Tell me about yourself. I am relatively new to Shelbyville, Kentucky and I am just now learning about the people to know. You come highly recommended by several people who as far as I know do not know each other, and you're a new member of the City Council, so I can't ask you about terrible votes that you've made in the past because you haven't made...

SPZ: Those are coming maybe

COB: Maybe they're coming but, so tell us about your background and what... Just, what do I need to know about Shelbyville?

SPZ: Well, I'm a small town girl, so I grew up here and actually just a little bit down the road, but I went away to college and I was gonna be a geologist and decided that I couldn't talk to rocks all day. People are my jam. So I changed my major to education, and both of my parents are teachers, my... They still are teaching in some way or another, but teaching was a calling for me because I'm all about building relationships, so I studied in Charleston in College of Charleston and at Vanderbilt and got some degrees there, but I wanted to come back to my hometown to serve as an educator into the town that I love, met my husband on a blind date, who grew up a little bit down the road from me, I didn't know him 'cause he's a little bit older, but... You know, we won't disclose ages.

[laughter]

COB: Good. That's much appreciated.

SPZ: Yeah, yeah. But... So I've been at Painted Stone teaching for the last 21 years. I was there the first day the school opened and never wanna leave, so I think through COVID, a lot of us had time to sit and reflect and think about how we wanna change the world and what we want to do to make our little world better and teaching is not something that I want to change or leave, but I thought about how I could serve the public in other ways, so city council and local government is what I thought I could do to help make an impact. It's real important to me that I build relationships with the people that I work with, and so I've had several years of getting really close to families that I work with through school, and I noticed that there were some people new to town that didn't know everything Shelbyville had to offer, you know, the coolest tailor in town or the local coffee shop, the story behind those things, and so I found myself sharing my love for the town with the new families that moved in, but also I've been able to kind of get older families that have been here connected to resources that they need or get their kids involved with the library and the parks and things, so I thought this would be a good balance for me to serve outside of school and still serve the two things I'm passionate about, people and my town.

COB: Well, I have yet to adequately prepare the list of questions that I want to ask everyone in government, and you're new to government, so I will write those questions and reserve those for other people.

SPZ: [laughter] Great.

“… we want to have a healthy community where people are active and involved and connected, and also I feel like our downtown is a really ... That's the heartbeat of our town …”

Sally Pollett Zaring

COB: But, why City Council? Why not fiscal court? Why not something else? Is this a stepping stone or is this just like, this seems like a logical next step for you?

SPZ: Well, I think City Council is a little bit smaller than fiscal court. My dad served on fiscal court for 16 years, and so that's kind of his arena, and I wanted to do something a little different, but I feel like the last few months have been so inspiring and have sparked new passions within me that I didn't know. I mean, who thinks you're gonna get excited learning about code enforcement and cost of living adjustments. We don't talk about this in my kindergarten classroom, but... So there has been this fire that is burning inside of me, so I feel really blessed that I have this opportunity to serve in this manner, and I'll see where it goes, I would love to serve again in two years, we'll see, but it's just really been exciting.

COB: For those who are unfamiliar or don't live in Kentucky, don't understand how the city government works in Kentucky, what is the purview of the City Council and what is the relationship that the City Council has with the mayor?

SPZ: So in Kentucky, we have... Our county government consists of our judge executive and our magistrates, and so they make... They are divided into regions, and each magistrate represents a small region of the county, the city is represented in fiscal court through... Each magistrate has a little piece of the city that they represent, however, the smaller government is our city government and that's our city council, so we have our six council members and our mayor, and people typically explain it as... Or they usually will say, "Oh, you work for the mayor." No, we work together. And so with that...

COB: And I suspect at times you also work against the mayor.

SPZ: Well, you know, I haven't had that experience, but I'm sure that has happened in the past perhaps. So with the council, our six members are the ones that do make the ordinances and the orders, the mayor will bring suggestions and topics and has put us on committees and divided the council into different groups, you know, made us a part of different committees to be involved within the city, so that way we have a little pulse on what's going on in the city and we can respond and share information with the mayor to help make decisions collectively. So we could come up with a suggestion for an ordinance and the council members along with the city attorney would help write the language for the ordinance, and we would vote on it together. Now, since we're a six member team, there's occasion we could be split, and that's when we need the mayor to help break that tie.

COB: So the mayor is Vice President of the United States in the sense that he only gets to vote on special occasions.

SPZ: Yes, yes.

COB: Okay, great, and then... So when you run for office, as I understand it, you're a quite popular person, of the people that I've talked to who know you, they say, "Oh, I love her," and... So that's...

SPZ: Well, I just surround myself with good people, that's the...

COB: Okay. Well, there you go. But when you come in office, I can imagine someone like you could run for office and it would be, "I, Sally, I'm running for office," and they're like, "Oh well, great, I'll support you," but other people would have to run on something, which is to say they'd have to run on, "I wanna do X, Y and Z in Shelbyville." To the extent that that was the case, what did you run on?

SPZ: So my lens, I have tried to keep. So I wanna make this a town that I'm proud to have my family in and I want other people to feel that way, so there's a lot of pieces of that, public safety, we wanna have a town that has police and fire and all of our services are fully funded to the best of our capability, but also we wanna have a great park system, we want to have a healthy community where people are active and involved and connected, and also I feel like our downtown is a really... That's the heartbeat of our town, and downtown Shelbyville is what gives us that unique look and that's our special stamp on Kentucky, there's no other town like Shelbyville in downtown. So I really want to preserve the things that make us unique and make us special, but also just enhance some things and think about some tweaks that we can make to make these things better for everybody, a town you're proud to call home.

COB: So one of the questions I've been kicking around to ask essentially everyone in government, one of those questions really boils down to, what can Shelbyville do as a matter of policy to make itself more welcoming to new Shelbyvillians?

SPZ: That's a great question. I think one thing that we have done that I would like to continue is we have a committee called the Downtown Reinvestment Fund, and that is part of City Council's budget in which we are putting money aside to invest in our buildings, historic vacant buildings downtown to attract businesses, so that's a matching grant, if there's a new business that wants to come in town, they can apply for this grant, and we as a city can help get them... You know, they buy the building, they put their business there and after the project is complete, we are able to provide them with a matching grant up to a certain amount of money, of course, but...

COB: Who owns those buildings?

SPZ: Those are private owners. So any of the buildings that are vacant downtown around our Main Street and Washington and all of the cool areas around Sixth Street too... Yeah, there are a lot of vacant buildings that don't have businesses in them, so I would like to continue to see money go towards those things, helping small business owners, but also helping keep that vibe and enhance that vibe of our downtown. I think that's one thing that would be important to keep within our budget, but also ordinances that are attractive to small businesses.

COB: Okay, what about new residents?

SPZ: Ordinances for new residents?

COB: No, I mean making Shelbyville more attractive to be more welcoming. How can Shelbyville be more welcoming to new Shelbyvillians?

SPZ: I think... I would say probably one of the most important things I feel is the safety... I think a lot of us feel safe here, and as we are a growing community, I would like to see that continue, so I think safety and funding things for safety is important, but also there are some ordinances that may seem a little tedious or annoying but could be helpful. When you think of code enforcement and ordinances that can help make sure that your neighborhood is safe and things are kept up, I'm a landlord, and it's one of my side gigs, I have a lot of rental properties, so I don't want ordinances that make it hard to be a landlord, but I do think that there are things that we can put in place to keep your area safe and to keep people being good neighbors that get along well, so that's a line to kind of walk.

COB: Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but was it Shelbyville or Shelby County that prohibited backyard chickens? Was that...

SPZ: That has come up, and I believe that there is an ordinance that tells you how many chickens you can have, but I need to fact check on that, I just got a new binder.

COB: Oh, you just got your binder, okay.

SPZ: Oh mercy, it's big.

COB: I will ask for follow-up on that because in these trying economic times, people like me, every chicken egg is... They are $35 now at a store each. [Editor’s note: This is a joke. We know eggs aren’t really that expensive.]

SPZ: Exactly, right.

COB: And now is the time to legalize backyard chickens.

SPZ: Yes.

COB: I'm 100% serious about this.

SPZ: Yes.

COB: And I appreciate you coming down here. I didn't mean to put you on the spot on this particular issue, but there's a lot of people in my neighborhood who would love to have eggs from one of my backyard chickens that I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to have.

[laughter]

SPZ: That would be good. And you know, I'm not sure the answer to that, but I would need to know. Another ordinance that I think would be helpful, that would be attractive to residents and small businesses, I would like to revisit that idea of developing an entertainment district right around the heart of downtown, we could start small with Sixth Street, and that area would allow for you to be outside and be responsible with an open container or a beverage. So I don't see this as being, you know, party zone.

COB: New Orleans?

SPZ: Yeah. [laughter] We don't really need to make it like New Orleans. No, thanks. Not Bourbon Street, but maybe Sixth Street. There're some businesses that have been interested in coming to those areas and they wanna have an outdoor patio, so now restaurants like La Cocina downtown can have an outdoor patio out back and their argument is, "Hey, what if we had an outdoor patio out front?" Well, the way our ordinance is written now, they wouldn't be allowed to do that, but if they were within an entertainment district, you could have a beverage outside of your restaurant or your establishment right there, and that would take some extra planning and thinking through, like we would need... Right now, our ABC officer is Chief Gentry, our police chief, but perhaps we need to find someone outside of him to make that their specific focus and job, that could help.

COB: Well, I mean, couldn't you just get rid of the ordinance that prevents people from having outdoor seating at their restaurant?

SPZ: I think... I just finished this training last week, I think we could amend it.

COB: Okay, okay, all right.

SPZ: Right? Yeah, I think, based on my nerdy notes, I think that could be the route.

COB: Alright. If you don't wanna answer any question, you can just say, it is my first day and then...

SPZ: Yeah. [laughter] It's my first month. Okay.

COB: Fair enough. Fair enough. We will revisit this and the backyard chickens, but...

SPZ: Yes.

COB: I would love to eat outside in front of a restaurant.

SPZ: Yeah. Right.

COB: It sounds great. And one question I had that's... Maybe you haven't gotten into this, but Washington Street and Main Street in Shelbyville, they are state roads.

SPZ: They are.

COB: So to what extent do you have to then interact with Frankfort in order to do things to Main street or Washington street?

SPZ: Yes. So they are federal highways as well.

COB: Interesting.

SPZ: And so that's part of the difficulty because you can't take an alcoholic beverage across a federal highway.

[laughter]

SPZ: So you could have an event at the Stargazer and have that regulated and a safe and secure area, if there was a concert and the barrel room could sell refreshments, adult beverages, and if we had an entertainment ordinance or a district there through an ordinance, perhaps people could come from the barrel room, walk up to the concert and go back, they could not cross over to McKinley's and get a great cookie.

COB: And there's nothing the city can do about that one way or another.

SPZ: No, no. Maybe you could teleport yourself, but that wouldn't be safe. So I think that there are several of us on the council that are curious and just wanna look into what we could do to help have those experiences, and I'm a pretty old-fashioned girl in a lot of ways, so I get the argument that we want downtown to be safe and we want downtown to be family-friendly, and I think that there are other cities that have done this, that have maintained that safe feeling and have made it a good experience for even people with young children, so we just need to learn. We need to learn.

COB: Yeah, I have heard, and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, in the city of Shelbyville, the limits on how large of a lot you can buy or the minimum lot sizes for home construction, that's one thing, but if you're buying outside the city limits, the minimum is... Is it true, five acres to build a home?

SPZ: I believe so. I believe... There are areas zoned that way, that when you break up a farm... But I do feel like you have to change the zoning in that area if you are, let's say, breaking up a farm and you are gonna build different size lots, that's a zoning change.

COB: Right. Questions related to that, because I'm definitely... I'm pro-housing in a very significant way, and zoning is one of those infringements on our liberty that we accept in order to have all manner of good things we assume.

SPZ: Right.

COB: The argument that has been presented that I've heard, and again, this is... You're the first guest so you're getting a lot of my pent up questions right now, but I'll be asking them to some of your compadres soon enough, but it struck me that the argument is, we're trying to preserve farmland, and I thought anybody who's buying five acres to plop a house down in the middle of it, they're not farmers.

SPZ: Right.

COB: And it seems to me if you're trying to preserve farmland, somebody who would be just as happy with a quarter-acre lot shouldn't be compelled to buy five acres.

SPZ: Right. I feel the same way. It's really tricky because I have a family of farmers, my husband, they've had seven generations on the same farm office, Mayfield Road, and that's what my son wants to do when he grows up. He wants to farm. So I feel that because I think that Shelby County is so special and unique because we have a beautiful blend of agriculture and small businesses and some larger businesses, but they have complemented each other in the years, our horse industry and now our bourbon industry, we need farmland for these distilleries to move in, so there are... And we need the corn that they need for their bourbon as well, so that's a mix and that's a blend, and I think that a lot of five-acre lots, will put 20 people on...

COB: Absolutely.

SPZ: A 100 acre farm, which you could put... Yeah, you could put multifamily housing there to change it. So I kind of... My thought, and this is... Maybe my view is jaded because I think about the next generation of farmers that wanna farm. I have that lens with somebody in my house that wants to grow up and do it, but I think it's helpful to build from within to keep our housing kind of tight to our city and then as we annex or if we stretch out a little bit or if we don't annex and that new neighborhood comes out in the county close within the city lines, I think that is helpful for farmers because I think when you put a neighborhood next to a 200-acre farm, how is a young farmer gonna be able to afford that land? Right now we have land out in the county that is reasonable enough for a farmer, but if you put a neighborhood around it, the price of land around it skyrockets and small farmers don't have a chance.

COB: Well, I wonder about that because if you... Let's say you have a bunch of people who wanna move to Shelby County and their only option for the kind of housing they want to build, new housing, is to buy a five-acre lot, I wonder what that does to your tax base in like 20 years.

“I think that Shelby County is so special and unique because we have a beautiful blend of agriculture and small businesses and some larger businesses, but they have complemented each other in the years, our horse industry and now our bourbon industry …”

- Sally Pollett Zaring

SPZ: Right, right. And we already have worries with just the age, I think after you reach the age of 65, you become a homesteader and you don't pay the property taxes that you did before, and that's income that city and county government need. So there's a lot of pencil to paper that needs to be done to think about what this is gonna look like as our demographics change, and as we age, I don't age, but I think other people might. I don't know.

COB: I do. I do. I'll cop to it.

[laughter]

SPZ: I'm just kidding.

COB: Sally Pollett Zaring, thank you very much. And once again...

SPZ: Thank you.

COB: Thank you for being so brave and being the first guest here, I expect...

SPZ: I'm honored that you asked.

COB: I will soon have interviews with all of your fellow city council members because city council interviews are like Pokemon, you got to catch them all.

SPZ: That's right. They're good people. They're worth catching.

COB: Thank you.

SPZ: Thank you.

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