[00:00:00] Speaker A: On this episode of the Local Click, we welcome the mayor of Wilson county to the program, Mr. Randall Hutto. We'll also have Jonathan Puckett, the outside plant technician with dtc. And Justin will be here with lots of entertaining things as well. You don't want to miss it. Learn more about fun local events and interesting people throughout the heart of Middle Tennessee.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: With a dash of everyday tech talk
[00:00:22] Speaker A: thrown in for good measure, the Local Clique starts now.
Welcome to the Local Clique. The Local Click is the technology based podcast brought to you by DTC Communications each and every month where we talk all things technology and local people. And back with me again this month, Mr. Justin Malden. Hello, Justin. How are you doing today?
[00:00:47] Speaker C: Just today in particular.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Just today.
[00:00:49] Speaker C: Just today.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: I don't want to know about tomorrow or yesterday.
I want to narrow it down.
[00:00:55] Speaker C: You're really limited me on how I can.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: I know that's, that's how I keep this segment at the right time.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: Either way, it wouldn't matter if it was yesterday, today or tomorrow. I'm doing great.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Oh, good. That's good. That's good.
[00:01:05] Speaker C: How are you doing?
[00:01:06] Speaker A: I'm doing great. I'm doing great.
I want to ask you about what your life has been about in the month of March. Are you a basketball fan?
[00:01:15] Speaker C: I am a basketball fan.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: It's a good thing.
[00:01:17] Speaker C: I mean, it is a good thing. You know that. Unfortunately, we've got the conclusion of local high school basketball that's right around still some March Madness though collegiate basketball still funnels over into April. But I'm gonna tell you what I've really been into.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Okay, let me have it.
[00:01:36] Speaker C: It's not just sports.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: What's that?
[00:01:39] Speaker C: So you know, I like to play around in my yard and do quite a bit of stuff.
Recently I have decided I'm going to really, really, really overseed and reseed my yard.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:50] Speaker C: You can buy £250 of seed and put a lot of seed on your yard. Throwing that out there. Appreciate local farmers co ops for being able to help out with that.
It's a lot of seed. I'm just telling you it's a lot. I don't know if it's taken yet completely or not. We're gonna see.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: Are you gonna need a tractor to cut this yard of yours? What? It finally sprouts up.
[00:02:14] Speaker C: I just want it to be grass and not weeds. Yeah, that's my, that's my goal. It's green, it's green, but I want it to be the right kind of green.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: Now are you.
I'VE gotta ask you this. Are you using technology in any way, shape or form to help with this project?
[00:02:28] Speaker C: I mean, other than measuring a little bit? Not. Honestly, not a towing.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: Sometimes it's good to know that you can, you can still go old school in life.
[00:02:36] Speaker C: It's, it is an old. I'm using. Listen, I, I've got my measurements. This is how much seed I need for the area.
Set my spreader to it and just, just roll with and listen, I, I'm not towing a spreader. Listen, I got my little hand spreader that I've had for about five or six years.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: I've got one of those.
[00:02:52] Speaker C: There's no telling how much seed I put in my yard over, over the years.
The next thing, if this doesn't take this time. A buddy of mine has a hydro seating tank and mechanism that he's built and he's offered to help me with it.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Now that's technology right there. Like if you get bored, there's a, there's a place down the road a guy I know could use some help.
[00:03:15] Speaker C: I haven't thrown any nitrogen or anything though. You're talking about like grow wind and that's what some of my neighbors said. Like you're going to become like I haven't fertilized it completely yet. Yeah, I said that's when I don't want to mow my grass every three days.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: It is that time of year though. That's. It is the time of year where we try to get all those outdoor events and projects started. You know, grass mowing, you know, maybe pressure washing the house, just different things.
[00:03:39] Speaker C: Spring cleaning.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: Spring cleaning.
[00:03:41] Speaker C: Spring cleaning down.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: That is true.
[00:03:43] Speaker C: Inside and out of the house.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: That's true. We continue our interview process of some of the DTC employees that make everything possible at DTC because, you know, we are celebrating 75 years this year and we're going to have Mr. Jonathan Puckett. He is the outside plant technician, one of several here at TTC and real good guy. I think you'll enjoy getting to know him a little bit more and some of you probably already do because he's probably already been to your house or business to help you either complete an install or maybe do a repair. So Jonathan will be with us in just a little bit. But first before we do that, we were very lucky to carve out a little bit of time with a very important person to join us on the local click this month, the mayor of Wilson County, Mr. Randall Hutto. And he will be joining us next.
Mr. Hutto, I just want to thank you for your time. I know you're a very busy man, and we just appreciate you joining us today.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Well, thank you for having me on, and I really appreciate this opportunity, as we were talking earlier before the air, that this is my second opportunity to do a podcast. So this is new for me, but I'm excited and hopefully I won't mess it up too bad.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Oh, I'm sure you'll do great. I don't worry about you a bit. Before we kind of get into some of the more current events, let's get to know you a little bit better. For those that may not know you, can you tell us your ties to Wilson county and what led you kind of to a life really, of public service?
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Well, you know, really starts back in my days growing up in Watertown, Tennessee.
My family ran a store there called the Valley Discount Store.
My grandfather and my uncle ran it, and I worked for them. Started out pumping gas.
When people would pull up and back, back in that day, you'd go out and, you know, and fill their car up with gas. They may ask you to put some air in their tires. They might want you to clean their windshield. And of course, that's all gone today. But I was telling somebody this morning that when I was on the radio for the Coleman show here that we used to have gas wars and we sold gas for 29 cents a gallon. And when the gas war would start, yeah, they'd go down to 25 cents a gallon. So, you know, those were. Those were a long time ago, of course. But so my ties out there, I started pumping gas and then I kind of worked my way into running the cash register and sacking groceries and then ended up being a butcher before I left there. But that was probably my first real experience as customer service, where the customer is always right or trying to meet the public and trying to help the public. But I left there, went to school at Middletown City State University, got a degree in teaching.
Taught and coached at Lebanon high school for 18 years. Head boys basketball assistant football there.
Enjoyed my days there really well.
Left there and went to Lebanon Special School District. I kind of got to the point after 18 years of thinking nobody really appreciates me, but they really did, looking back. But probably was the Lord moving me out and moving me on to a different place and went over there for Lebanon Special Assistant director of schools there for about eight years. Learned a lot about education, budgeting. You know, I was leading kids at one time or athletes and youth and teaching. And then I went to working with adults and at the Lebanon Special School District. So all of that really kind of helped me get work to do what I do today.
When you think about it, I was there, really missed coaching for quite a bit and then had some people say, why don't you run for mayor? I didn't know where that was coming from, but because I really don't know anything about politics. Republican, Democrat. And you really don't have to at this level. For sure, we don't deal with a lot of those type of issues, but so I thought, well, maybe there must be something in this deal, maybe I'm supposed to be doing that. And so I kind of threw my name out there and sure enough, it happened. And I've been here ever since. But I take the coaching experience because we have 25 county commissioners, you know, and the goal really for them is to educate them. That's my background. And give them the best information possible so that they can make the best decision and then get as many of them on the same page as possible, because it takes 13 of them or better to vote in one direction to get anything passed. So I take the coaching part there. That helps me with that. And then the other piece was the educational piece. The largest portion of my budget, 60 something percent, is education. And I did the budget for the Lyminton Special School District. So it helped me understand the background, the mechanics of education. So really both of those really helped me do what I do today, and I'm very thankful for that.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: As far as some of the current events around Middle Tennessee that are still fresh in everyone's mind, one of the big ones really is the recent winter storm fern that that came through and all the ice and other issues that came with that. What is the current state of cleanup efforts in that?
[00:08:41] Speaker B: So as you well know, that that ice storm was pretty tough and it was predicted for quite some time. You know, there was definitely some power outages here with Middle Tennessee Electric and then the National Eastern Service. Of course, NES is also in part of our western portion county. So we had a lot of people that were affected there. To my knowledge, those people are all back up and running and going. Well, the issue comes, of course, just like when we had the tornado here in 2020.
The cities, they have public works, Mount Judith, Lebanon, Watertown, they have public works departments that can go out and if you've got limbs, you can bring them to the road and the cities get theirs taken care of. Counties don't have public works. In general, we don't have anybody that can go out and do that. The best thing I have is a road commission that could. If a TR tree fell in a road, they would go out and get that tree out of the road and then come back later on and pick that up. But their crew is small and really their, their job really is to repave, re stripe, cut the debris off roads, clean up the trash on the sides and really that's all they do that's big enough job for them. We have 1700 miles of county road here in Wilson county. So that's a lot to take care of. So when a disaster like this happens, and it was really more towards the Mount GE and Hermitage area than it was in the Lebanon area, but these trees just exploded.
And so there are a lot of trees down. Well for us to be able to get to pick those up, we have to be declared what's known as a disaster area.
The state got declared, which, that's great. But then your county has to be declared. And there's a couple of phases to that. The first phase is a lot of times when you're declared a disaster in what's known as a level A declaration, they will pay. FEMA will give you reimbursement money on all the money you spend during the disaster here, in this case the ice storm with your WEMA people, the emergency management people that are going out your road, people that are going out and taking care of and your law enforcement. So they'll pay you 80, 80 cents on the dollar back. You just got to keep up with all that now to get to get the debris picked up. Because all the students will call and say, are you going to come get my limbs? You're going to come get my. My trees, you know, that are out here. We don't have money to do that.
So we had to work for. And Melissa over at Wemma really worked hard at making this happen to make to be declared what's called an A through G declaration. So she had to go around and find out all the money that was being spent throughout the county to get to a certain level of dollar. Then we got that declaration declared. Once we got that declared, then we hired and contracted a company called Custom Tree Care Service. And they are the bunch that's going out and picking up anything that's in the right of way of the road. Citizens can bring the limbs and trees out to the road and they can pick it up there. They can't get in somebody's yard, but they can do that. Probably the biggest misnomer right now Is that they also go by and they have to have a monitoring group that monitors to make sure they don't pick up more than they're supposed to or cut down more than they're supposed to because they get paid by the job. So the more they cut, the more they make.
So that's our goal. But female makes them have a monitoring group which is a separate company and they go out and they make sure that they're picking up what they're supposed to be picking up and not nothing else. The other piece of this is that they also look for any leaner, in other words, a tree that been affected and is leaning, maybe fixing the die that's leaning down in the right of way or limbs that are hanging but haven't fallen yet. So they go take pictures of those. If they qualify, they turn the custom tree company aloof to cut that tree down and cut those limbs down. Now here's the issue that's prob be controversial out there with some of my people. They'll come by, so they'll send that tree group by first, the monitoring group to make sure that that's a legal tree to cut down or a limb to cut down. Then they cut that. Then they come back later on and do that whole road on the pickup side. Well, there'll be people that will call and say, well, I had a tree down in my yard which they can't touch, and they come out here in the front and cut a tree down. It will look perfectly fine to me, you know, and so we have to go back and say, well, but it was dead and it was falling and we're just helping you right now.
In about a month it'd be on the ground and you'd be wanting somebody to come take care of it.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: We're taking care of you ahead of time. But that, but for them it's kind of controversial because they're thinking that's like a perfectly good tree. You didn't pick the one up my yard. And we would have to say, well, the one in your yard we can't get off the right of way. You got to bring that to the road. That's on you. But we will get it. You don't have to pay somebody to come get it. We will get it. And then, you know, if we have to, we can show you the pictures of the tree before we cut it. Because every one of them has to be justified. So there is out there just cutting down trees here and there to make money, you know, on their Own. So it's a pretty big process, but it's an extensive process. They're out there working. And I think right now Everybody has until March 29th to get their stuff to the road. After March 29th, then these crews will make their last passes on these roads and they'll be all over the county to pick them up. What we have people do right now. And we'll say this on your broadcast. You know, you can call our office at 615-444-1383-615544-41383 and give us your address and we'll get that to the monitoring group. They're going to cover the county good. Like I said, they don't want to be in too big a hurry because the more they pick up, the more they make. So they're not. So people get worried they're going to miss me, you know, they don't want to miss you. They want to get you because that's how they make money.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: There's a lot of rules and processes, I guess you might say, to doing it correctly.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: No question. And FEMA's really a stickler about making sure that they don more than they deserve. And, and I'll. I'll tell you another part of the story. So that custom tree care group that picks it up right now, they're from another state, I think, but they have to qualify on a contract bid to get that position. So they did that for us. Then they got to find a place to store this stuff. Okay. Then they go back and grind it up and then they carry the millings and got to find somewhere to dispose of that. Sometimes we have people, farmers out there that would love to have the shavings. So, you know, if you. If there's any farmers out there that were looking for some of these wood chips, please give us a call and we'll be sure and see. Let the guy know he can bring those to you. Otherwise they have to pay to have those destroyed or put away.
So they had to find a couple of staging areas to do that. The cities of Lebanon about. You had kind of helped us with that as well.
So, yeah, it's a full, extensive process, but it's a good piece that happened with Melissa Sizemore there at wema. Had she not worked hard to get this declaration, these people would have had to pay for. For that on their own, and that's a big expense.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Communicating what's going on around Wilson County. I know recently you had a state of the county in Mount Juliet, and I think you have another one coming up soon in Lebanon, is that correct?
[00:15:52] Speaker B: We do. We have the One here in Mount Juliet, of course, was on March 18th at Rutland Place. The city of Mount Judah allows me to come down, you know, once a year to kind of do that. Mark Hendley is the chamber president. He really helps us with that to make sure all that goes well. So we'll do the state of the county there, and then we'll also do one on on April 30th at Lebanon. That one would be with the Lebanon Chamber of Commerce. Melanie Mentor kind of hosts that one for us. And so we appreciate both of them working to make that happen for us to where we can make those presentations, you know, to give the people as much as we can on information that's going on in the county that maybe they may not hear on the radio or a podcast like this or, you know, read in a newspaper.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Another thing that you guys are kind of working on recently that I heard about was this panel discussion that you've kind of started and kind of talking about one of the biggest topics probably for everyone in Wilson county, and that's growth. Can you tell us more about that?
[00:16:51] Speaker B: I can. You know, this. This kind of happened two years ago.
We were getting a lot of conversations from different folks about, you know, the county's not doing anything. We got all these people moving here. We were the fastest growing county from 2020 to 2024 in the state of Tennessee, as put out by the comptroller. And they say, you know, well, there's nobody doing nothing. You know, we're just.
This growth is just out of control.
And so we knew, though, that there were a lot of things that were happening, that there were a lot of infrastructures that were being built by the developers, some by the city, some by the county. So what we did is we started a series of what we call Looking into the Future series so we could get the word out there that, hey, there are things that are being done. You may not realize it, but they are. So the first series we did, that first year, we brought the mayors together from the three cities in the county, and we just talked about, hey, what are you doing? What's going on, what's been done, and what are you fixing to do? So that was that first series. The next one we did there, we talked with law enforcement a little bit about what they were doing to kind of up their game. We did the same thing with wima, the emergency management agency. We brought the school systems in and talked about theirs. In the second year and then we brought our planners in from all three cities in the county to talk about their process of the growth and how they were doing that. And then the last with joint economic development people to talk about, you know, what companies have come here, what's coming in the future. So that was our first six series of events. Three was the first year, three the second year. And so we have three planned for this year. And you're right, the topics we felt like was probably really relevant is that reappraisal is about to happen. And everybody gets nervous when they hear reappraisal because they think, well, they're going to raise my taxes. Which is really not true. That's what this series is about because. Because what happens really when you think about reappraisal is that you go to bed one night and let's say my house is worth $180,000 and I wake up the next morning and it's worth 220.
So it appreciated $40,000 overnight. And I didn't do anything. And it did that because of the people moving here.
The supply gets low, the demand is high, therefore the price raises. And so those houses around me, the price of those houses went up. So that raised the price of my house and from 180 to 240. Okay, so now you say, well, that's going to hurt my taxes. No, what happens there is the comptroller makes the cities once you. Or the counties once you do a certified tax rate. Do a certified tax rate after the reappraisal. Meaning, like right now my tax rate is $1.91. What it was before. The last time we did a reappraisal five years ago was 251. So it went from 251 to 191. Which really means that normally the person writing that check for his property tax is going to be about the same. Now everybody won't be the same. Some places appreciate a little bit more, so they may pay a little bit more, but their appraisal value really went up in their area a whole lot more than maybe some other people. Some people's may be a little bit lower, but you won't hear from those people, but their value went up. So it kind of spreads out even across. But normally the check you write is going to be almost the same. So we feel like probably our tax rate this time will go from 191 probably to 150.
So reappraisal is. So reappraisal is not a bad thing. You go to bed one night, wake up the next, your house is worth $40,000 more dollars probably than it was before. And you didn't do anything to earn that outside of just where you live at. So we're going to talk about that a little bit and have some people from CTAs here that kind of explain that. We're also going to talk about the land use plan. That's something that's been worked on now for about a year, year and a half, headed up by Beth Bowman, one of our commissioners.
And that is where you take the map of the county and you kind of look out into the future and say, you know, where do you want the commercial area to be? Where do you want the residential area to be? Where do you want to keep agriculture? And you make that plan. It is exactly what it said. It's just a plan. They can change it and move it anyway. It's not zoning, you know, which you have to kind of go by, you know, a one zone, residential zone, commercial zone. But it's a land use. It's what we predict, that land use. We're going to talk a little bit about that and we'll talk a little bit about growth. As I said, we're the fastest growing county in the state from 2020 to 2024. The new numbers haven't come out yet, but I think what people also need to realize too is that 85% of that growth for the last seven years has been inside of a city. It's not been in the county. We've only had 15%. We get blamed for a lot of the traffic and stuff, but it's really. That's located in the city. Now, we're not mad at the cities because they just created a place that's welcoming, that people want to move to. That's a good thing.
So, but that growth is there. But when you look at our county part, the part that we're in charge of, we're still 69% open space.
So we have a lot of open air. We have the least populated county around Davidson per person per square mile. Like at 239 per person per square mile, as opposed to, let's say, Rutherford County, 551, Williamson, 445. So we still have that. A lot of room to grow, or what we want to say is the best of both worlds. We've got a place where you can come in and be populated within the cities or you can live out in the county and enjoy some peace and quiet. Still another thing that we lay claim to here when it talks about growth, we have more Century Farms in Wilson county than any other county in the state of Tennessee. I think it's at 114 right now is a number, and I may be wrong on that because I may not have my last year's number added to it, maybe 121. But we have more Century Farms than anybody else. So that also shows that we still, you know, maintain that good balance of growth. But that's what this first series is going to be about. And it's going to be on April 14th. It'll be at the Made in Tennessee building at the AgCenter. You come in at 7:30, got a free breakfast. Panel discussion will start at 8:00 o', clock, go to 9:00', clock, we'll get people out of there. It won't cost you a dime to come. And one good thing is just like what you do here of getting the word out to people, we're going to televise it with Wilson County Television and push that out. So if you didn't get to come, you at least get to see it. And hopefully we'll spread some good news.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: There's a. A big event coming up soon as we celebrate our 250th anniversary as a nation. And I understand you guys have a special exhibit that will heighten that for everybody.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, there's a lot of conversation about the 250th anniversary of our nation, of course. And Brooke Driver, which I know you've had a chance to meet in her office, really spearheaded all of this.
Our American Story, Voices from Tennessee, is the exhibit. It will be on display here between March 24th and April 20th.
Free, of course. We invite visitors to come by that will reflect on questions of how do you make history?
It highlights Tennesseans whose courage and leadership kind of shaped our nation. So you'll learn a lot there. The State of Tennessee Museum is the one that brought this to us and allowed us to have this alone. The exhibit is free, as I said, to the public. And the courthouse is open to every day, Monday through Friday, 8 to 4. So you can just come in, go up on the third floor, visit it, bring your kids wherever you'd like to. We'd love for you to come by and do that. You know, if you have questions, call Brooke Cummings in our office here. She's 615-444-1383. And she'll help you answer any of those questions or maybe set up any event that you'd like to bring to us. And Then if you get a chance to come, I will add this to it. Right beside us, you know, we have the Veterans Museum and Park. So there's a museum over there for veterans. Really a neat exhibit for people to go by and see. It's open to the public every day as well. It's got a helicopter on the inside of it, so you can get inside the helicopter and set. So really a good thing. Hopefully maybe people could come by and see that as well.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Just make a day out of it, right?
[00:25:01] Speaker B: That's right. Yes, sir.
[00:25:03] Speaker A: You know, one of the things we talk about on this podcast a lot is technology and how the Internet has honestly changed the way that everyone does business. And I'm sure in the mayor's office, that's probably no different from everywhere else, too. How has your embrace of technology and Internet availability and access really changed the way you do your job there for the citizens of Wilson County?
[00:25:25] Speaker B: Our commission thought it was important a few years ago to make sure that we broadcast our commission meetings. And so we started doing that so people didn't have to get out and come on a Monday night up here to watch the commission meeting, meeting and see what was going on. They then expanded that with Wilson County TV to do the committee meeting. So the commission meetings and the committee meetings are done. And then Wilson County TV also goes out and looks at different things that are happening across our county to get that out for public to see that. So that's one way there. Brooke Cummings, as I talked to you about, she heads up our social media. There's so many things that are happening, and people today don't wait for the newspaper. You know, it comes out one time a week here in Wilson County. Right now we have two, and they only all both come out on Wednesdays. And so, you know, from one Wednesday to the next, there's a lot of information that goes on. So Brooke makes sure that we have, of course, we have our web pages and stuff for each department that here in the county, you know, if you want to get your tags online, pay your taxes online, record your property, you know, all that stuff, you can pretty much do right now online. So that's one way to make that easier for us. The next thing I think that's there is the social media aspect of it. So, in other words, if I want to be able to go to Facebook, Brooke puts stuff there almost every day, if not every day on Facebook, also on Instagram, you know, that's a different age group of people that watches that, of course. And then she does Twitter. We do some YouTube broadcasts where we're trying to promote something, maybe dog adoption or something of that nature. So she'll probably put those out as well, as well as Wilson county tv. So all of that really kind of helps. All of our minutes and transactions are on the website for people to go back and read. So she has a newsletter that goes out once a month as well that highlights us. So all of that really has been to where we just want to be as transparent as possible, let people know everything we know as often as we can.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: Well, Mayor Hutto, I really appreciate your time. I know how busy that you are. What does it mean to you personally to be mayor of a county like Wilson county, and how has it changed your life, really?
[00:27:39] Speaker B: You know, it's been a great opportunity. As I told you early in the story, I had no idea of ever being this at all. And I really just find myself as kind of as a helper to help as many people as possible get what they need. You know, for me, I get a paycheck each month, no question about that.
But the real pay probably becomes, for me is when somebody walks in the door, they got a problem, and we're able to direct them and help them solve that problem. That's the wins, you know, and then just getting everybody on the same page. Making life better here, no question. Education is the number one reason people move to our county, because of the school system here, but working with those people to put out the best product possible. We want people to feel safe. We continue to work at public safety, you know, but really we want people to have fun here in the county and never have to leave. They don't want to. So providing that quality of life is important. So working in all three of those areas really is important to me to provide those. So I'm really just kind of a helper, a gopher, to get these things done and to connect people with the right spot. So for me, I just do every day, you know, I say a prayer every day. You know, I let me help somebody somewhere. The small things are fine for me. I'm good with that.
And most every day I pray that prayer. I get that opportunity to help somebody.
And to me, that's the best part of being mayor, really. You get to do some fun things, and then you get fussed out for some things, too, that are not fun. But like we talked about a while ago, the curse of Facebook.
It's good to get information out, but it's also good because they can top behind there pretty easy. And they can wear you out pretty quick.
But really, the best, the best part of the job is just being able to help people to have a better life. And that's what I think this job is really about.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: Thank you for always having the back of everyone in Wilson county, and we appreciate your time being with us today. Also.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: Thanks for having me today. I really enjoyed it.
[00:29:35] Speaker A: Everybody. That's Mayor Randall Hutto with Wilson County. And we will have more of the program coming up in just a moment.
[00:29:43] Speaker B: Ooh, I'll get it. Grandpa. Grandpa, want to play my new game with you? Well, sure, I'd love to play your new game.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: Gotcha.
I'm gonna catch you. I'm gonna catch you this time.
Sharing memories while staying connected.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: DTC Internet makes it.
Back at the local click. It's time now to take a step back in time to a simpler time. Before the WI Fi.
[00:30:25] Speaker C: Years ago, people would gather around a specific device that they would listen to things on, and that was called the radio.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:30:35] Speaker C: And that's not what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about a device that came after.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[00:30:39] Speaker C: But still another device that was a glowing box this time, which was when it was initially introduced. People thought, oh, it's got moving picture with radio attached to it. And I thought it was interesting as I was looking into it. That's how it was described. It wasn't described as video with audio. It was moving pictures with the radio is how television was initially described by some people. So listen, before the WI fi, we had real actual television and not the modern conveniences of streaming, which we'll talk a little bit more about later on in this show. Television years ago when it was introduced, you think about it, if you wanted to watch something on television, you had to basically put that in your calendar, so to speak, or make an appointment to be in front of that television at the exact moment that what you wanted to watch was coming on. Because if you didn't, there was no dvr. And listen, we could talk about before the WI fi sometime, we could talk about VCR using vcr.
[00:31:46] Speaker A: Now we're talking my era technology. That's right.
[00:31:49] Speaker C: So there was no recording these programs. You, if you, if you missed it, you missed it. Unless there did happen to be a rerun of it later on down the road. But again, you would have to catch the rerun. You would still have to be there.
So listen, before instantaneous at my fingertips, I can watch whatever I want to.
I can skip the intro you know, that's amazes me. The skip intro comes up when you watch stuff. Now you don't have to watch that, that introductory sequence.
And television didn't follow you wherever you went, from screen to screen, from device to device.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: Not to mention you probably only had a few channels. Unlike today when you have thousands of choices.
[00:32:34] Speaker C: You know, that was one of the things that I wanted to talk about actually is kind of how things happen.
Television was first introduced in the United States in 1928. And when it was introduced it was black and white television. And it was not the 4K high definition picture that we see today. It was a very grainy image, looked like it was skipping.
And again, as I said, it was described as moving picture with radio coming
[00:33:05] Speaker A: out of it, which is pretty accurate.
[00:33:07] Speaker C: Yes. And so it was actually broadcast by station out of Washington D.C. and so this was even before you had the big broadcasters that we have today.
And in the 1930s, RCA starts demonstrating with full television stations and full television sets and what, what can happen. And after World War II, the television revolution exploded. You know, post World War II, you know, television start becoming, you know, they go from a luxury to they start becoming a little bit more of a commodity. Right. It's something that's in everybody's homes. It's an everyday, it's an everyday use.
But families huddled around the television as a form of entertainment. That, that's what you did, you know, you came together most time, you know, in what we would probably call the living room to watch this box that was sitting there. And again, not the flat screen TVs of today that we have, but these big monstrosities that were usually were decorated with things. It was not just a television to watch. It could be used as a decorative piece too.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: Oh yeah, it was a piece of furniture. Just happened to have a picture to it.
[00:34:21] Speaker C: It could be like my grandmother who still used her old television to put her new television on top of when she updates to a more modern tv.
[00:34:29] Speaker A: That's pretty smart. I like the way she, she thought that.
[00:34:32] Speaker C: Yeah, Television today though, we fast forward, you know, color television got introduced and you know, there was partial color television and then there was full color television. And then we went from analog days to now everything is required to be digital to now television isn't even television anymore. You know, when we say, oh, I'm going to watch the tv, we're not talking about traditional broadcast television that, that we were used to. When I was at my grandmother's when I was a boy, we only watched over the air broadcast television. So if you couldn't pick it up with those rabbit ear antennas, then you weren't. We weren't watching it.
And then I do remember when she got the big antenna out back.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: Lots of stations.
[00:35:19] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:35:20] Speaker A: That was kind of.
[00:35:20] Speaker C: Well, we went from three to four.
[00:35:22] Speaker A: Hey, that's a big percentage increase.
[00:35:24] Speaker C: They did. There was that much effort put in to gain one, but that's, yeah, 25%.
And so we had your local ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox. They're out of Birmingham, Alabama.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:35:36] Speaker C: Those are the four. Before the wifi streaming didn't exist. That was not in the vernacular and nobody knew what it meant. And now it's not television anymore.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: And for this segment of the Local Click, we continue our visit of DTC employees to celebrate 75 years of service. And we are very lucky to have Mr. Jonathan Puckett with us today. Hello, Jonathan. How are you?
[00:36:00] Speaker D: Fine. How are you?
[00:36:01] Speaker A: I'm doing great. And make sure I get this correct. You are the outside plant technician, Is that.
[00:36:06] Speaker D: Yes, I'm an outside plant technician.
[00:36:08] Speaker A: That's right. Okay, we'll kind of get into that a little more as we get through the interview.
But before we do that, I always like to get to know the person behind the uniform, so to speak. So tell us some more background about yourself and your family.
[00:36:22] Speaker D: So, of course. My name is Jonathan Puckett, married to my wife for 14 years. This year we have three children.
10, seven and four.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: So not a lot of free time.
[00:36:34] Speaker D: Not a lot of free time. Don't have any more hobbies.
[00:36:37] Speaker A: You really don't need any, right?
[00:36:38] Speaker D: No.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: But you probably wouldn't change a thing, would you?
[00:36:40] Speaker D: No, no, it's one wonderful.
[00:36:41] Speaker A: That's awesome. That's awesome. And so are you. You live in DeKalb County.
[00:36:46] Speaker D: I've lived in Smithville for all my life. Really?
[00:36:49] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:36:49] Speaker D: 37 years old. Lived there all my life.
[00:36:51] Speaker A: And you graduated from DeKalb County.
[00:36:52] Speaker D: Graduated from DeKalb County High School.
[00:36:54] Speaker A: Okay, so you're, you're, you're a local guy. I'm a local guy through and through. So. So when did your journey with DTC begin and kind of describe your role?
[00:37:02] Speaker D: Before I come here, I was working in Murfreesboro in telecom.
I really wanted to come back home.
Took me an hour to drive there every morning hour.
[00:37:10] Speaker C: Home.
[00:37:11] Speaker D: I'm a small town kind of guy and I just really wanted to come back home. So there was an opportunity that come available. I applied and got the opportunity to come be an employee at dtc.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: So I bet that Was a blessing, wasn't it, to be able to be closer to home. And that way if you need to take a few hours off to go to a kid's event or doctor's appointment or whatever, at least you feel like you can be more involved with things, right?
[00:37:34] Speaker D: Well, not. I have the opportunity now. I take my kids school every morning. Gives us just a little bit of time. Even though it's, you know, 15 or 20 minutes, it's time that I get to spend with them in the mornings.
[00:37:43] Speaker A: Yeah, that's time that you wouldn't have.
[00:37:45] Speaker D: That's right. I didn't have it.
[00:37:46] Speaker A: Yeah. That's awesome. Tell us about all the different areas that you get to travel to each week. Because you're tech, you're an outside plant technician and the key word in that is outside. Right, so, so tell us about where do you all do you get to go?
[00:37:59] Speaker D: I go all over our service area.
I dispatch out of Smithfield, I go to Lebanon, I'll go to Carthage, I come here to Woodbury, of course, Smithville. I just. Wherever they need me, that's where I go.
[00:38:14] Speaker A: So really when you wake up in the morning, you honestly don't know exactly where you may end up?
[00:38:18] Speaker D: That's exactly right.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: Do you like that?
[00:38:20] Speaker D: I do like that actually.
[00:38:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:22] Speaker D: I like traveling the country especially as the, you know, the, the seasons are changing. You get to, to travel around and see the different colors on the trees changing or during springtime. It's one of my favorite times of year. We'll get to see everything blooming out and I enjoy it.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: How does it make you feel knowing that you get to be so hands on and help customers every day? Because with what you're doing, a lot of times you're either installing a service for a customer or if there's an issue, you're going to solve a problem for a customer. How does that make you feel knowing that you're kind of doing your part to help help their lives?
[00:38:59] Speaker D: Well, I'm a problem solver.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: Are you?
[00:39:01] Speaker D: I am. I like solving problems and it's very fulfilling to be able to go when someone has an issue and to be able to help them work through that.
It's nice whenever people move in from out of town and you'll go and you hook up fiber Internet for them and they're like, man, I can't believe I'm way out here in the country and I can get a gig service.
And it's pretty gratifying.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: Not really that many years ago you wouldn't be Able to say, oh no, we've come a long way, haven't we?
[00:39:29] Speaker D: Have come a very long way.
[00:39:30] Speaker A: In a quick amount, in the short
[00:39:31] Speaker D: time I've been here.
[00:39:32] Speaker A: What have you seen, you know, as far as Internet technology, how has that impacted people's lives and what have you seen? The difference in how they use our service?
[00:39:42] Speaker D: I guess there's just more. It seems like the more bandwidth, the more people get, the more they use up.
Whenever I first started it was copper. A lot of our area was still copper in Smithville and Cannon County.
And as people got swapped over to fiber, they started hooking up things like thermostats and light switches and light plugs
[00:40:08] Speaker A: and things you would have never imagined a few short years ago that you don't even need to hook up.
[00:40:13] Speaker D: I mean, I've hooked up grills to WI fi and just all kinds. Yes, all kinds of things. So the more they get it seems like the more they use it and I don't expect that it's going to change much.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: Yeah. If anything, it's going to keep going that direction.
[00:40:26] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: So has the way that we switched over basically to being a fully fiber optic network changed the way you do your job and the type of task you have to do from an installation standpoint?
[00:40:38] Speaker D: The install is somewhat the same, but the equipment is more, much more advanced for the fiber.
[00:40:43] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:40:44] Speaker D: There's a protocol difference between the older devices and newer devices.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: You must be the kind of person that likes to learn new things though, because there's always constant change in technology based products that like what we provide as a company.
Would that summarize you pretty well? Do you like to learn new things?
[00:41:02] Speaker D: I do like to learn and I like to understand the why it's working.
[00:41:06] Speaker A: Are you one of those guys? The why guys? Yeah, I'm the Y guy.
[00:41:09] Speaker D: I like to understand why it's working and how it's working.
[00:41:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, this is your kind of job then. It is, yeah.
[00:41:14] Speaker D: And the technology is. Since we've just been a full fiber optic network, it is still progressing so fast and you have to stay caught up on it. So you know how to use that equipment and how to help it, how to use it to help someone else.
[00:41:32] Speaker A: Do you have a story or two without mentioning any customer names or anything? Like do you have a story or two where you've kind of, you felt like you've kind of went above and beyond to try to help a customer and they're just really grateful after you left for you being able to play a small part in making their lives
[00:41:48] Speaker D: a lot better for a lot of our business customers. I put in a lot of VoIP phone systems and the spam calls drive people crazy. Sure they do. And being able to show them how to kind of circumvent some of those is very gratifying because, you know, they think you just hung the moon. If you can prevent some spam calls from coming into.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you know that it makes their life a lot better.
[00:42:14] Speaker D: Absolutely.
[00:42:15] Speaker A: You know that waste a lot of time, doesn't it? Every day there.
[00:42:18] Speaker C: It works.
[00:42:18] Speaker D: I've heard people say they'll get 20 a day. You know, we can introduce an IVR into their phone system and that circumvents about 95% of them.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:42:28] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: So if there are any business customers there that are having that issue, they might need to give us a call. It might be something we can help us.
[00:42:35] Speaker D: A call.
[00:42:35] Speaker A: That's right. That's. See, that's good to know. What would you say is the most challenging part?
[00:42:39] Speaker D: Keeping up with all the constant changes. You know, there's always challenges with like weather or, you know, something like that.
But there is a constant learning curve to everything that we do.
Today's brand new equipment, you give it a year and we've done moved on to something bigger and better. And not just because of us, but the technology behind it all is changing so fast. Like WI fi. Whenever I first started, I only had to worry about two different frequencies. Well, now it's three or four different frequencies and. Right.
You just gotta have a basic understanding of it so you can know how to work with it.
[00:43:21] Speaker A: Because it's day in and day out. That's what you're a part of.
[00:43:24] Speaker D: That's right.
[00:43:25] Speaker A: What would you say is your favorite thing about being an outsider plant technician?
[00:43:30] Speaker D: My favorite thing?
[00:43:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:32] Speaker D: Being outside.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: That really is. You really like that?
[00:43:35] Speaker D: I do.
[00:43:36] Speaker A: I. I can understand that.
[00:43:38] Speaker D: In my spare time, I'm an outdoorsman. I love being outside.
Even though sometimes it's real cold or sometimes it's real hot. You know, I kind of try to take. Take it all into consideration because I enjoy being outside.
I enjoy meeting different people too.
Going into their homes sometimes, you know, people just. I might be the only person they see all day long. You know, if it's maybe a shut in or something and just take 10 or 15 minutes, you know, sit and talk with them and cut up. And I enjoy that.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: You never know the kind of impact you have on somebody sometimes just from a simple visit like that. So where do you see the future going for DTC because we have upgraded
[00:44:17] Speaker D: our plant to a fiber plant.
The possibilities really are endless because that fiber will carry as much bandwidth as we can push through it.
[00:44:28] Speaker A: How does it make you feel to be a part of Team dtc? Because we really are a team. We try to help each other. How does it make you feel personally to be a part of that team?
[00:44:38] Speaker D: More of a team. It's more of like family. Yeah. And it really is. You get to know the people that you work alongside.
A lot of the guys that I work with each and every day. We talk on Saturday and Sundays, just cutting up and teasing each other a little bit. And DTC has made a difference in my family just because I'm able to be home, spend that time with my kids in the morning, you know, it's been a blessing in my life.
[00:45:05] Speaker A: We won't keep you any longer. I'm sure you probably got a call right after this to go help somebody with. But, but that. Jonathan, we really appreciate everything that you do for. Thank you, Nancy. We're lucky to have you in our, in our team, so.
[00:45:16] Speaker D: Yes, sir.
[00:45:17] Speaker A: Everybody stay tuned. We got more of the program coming up in just a moment.
[00:45:23] Speaker E: Great communities attract talented people to live, work and raise their families.
We've deployed a high speed network that helps the best and the brightest enjoy better lives in our smart rural communities.
Great small businesses provide jobs that help workers earn a good living and provide for their families while strengthening local economies.
We deploy fiber Internet that helps those businesses succeed.
Great doctor and patient relationships create bonds that lead to healthier lives.
We deliver secure connections so every home and virtual rural healthcare provider can connect to the best health care options.
Great schools help knowledge hungry students learn, think creatively and follow their passions.
We've built a network that helps their dreams take off.
Great farmers provide the food that sustains and nourishes our nation and the world.
We keep those farmers connected to the technology that ensures their crops can thrive.
We've planned, engineered and constructed a cutting edge communications network.
We're committed to delivering future proof broadband so our friends, families and neighbors can live rich lives in smart rural communities across America.
Your community is our community.
We're your rural broadband partners.
You do great things.
We make great things possible.
[00:47:06] Speaker C: Do you know what room the router's in? I can't get onto my zoom meeting.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: Try it in our spacious new family room.
[00:47:13] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:47:15] Speaker C: Still not working.
[00:47:18] Speaker A: Try it in our beautiful backyard.
[00:47:22] Speaker C: Still nothing.
[00:47:23] Speaker B: Your new home. Checked everything off your list except for Internet from DTC.
[00:47:29] Speaker C: Oh, come on.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: Sign
[email protected] for fast and reliable Internet.
[00:47:40] Speaker A: Technology speaks lots of languages. And today we're translating it into yours with our segment called the Tech Translator.
[00:47:52] Speaker C: We talked during the before the WI Fi segment about televisions and what television means.
And I mentioned in that that television doesn't mean the same thing today as it did back even 75 years ago.
[00:48:08] Speaker A: True.
[00:48:09] Speaker C: We have redefined what television is and what most people think that is television. It's not that fixed time to gather around as a family to that one TV that is in the home.
Now, streaming is something that is not just local, not just statewide or national, but is a global phenomenon where anybody can have access to television shows or movies. Movies or podcast or whatever you can think of at the touch of a button. And it travels with you wherever you want to go. And so streaming is a wonderful technology, but to simplify it down into really what it is, what am I streaming?
[00:48:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:57] Speaker C: Well, at the end of the day, in tech terms for streaming, that means that we are sending data, audio and visual data, video data, through, you know, electronic communication and electronic forms. So it's a continuous stream of data. And so we talked about the cloud a month or two ago, and in that, we talked about what the cloud really is. Well, streaming is a part of the cloud.
It's another aspect of the cloud. You don't actually have to have this data stored on your device.
You click to watch that YouTube video, or you click to watch that Netflix video or that Disney plus video, and the data starts streaming to your device, and you can start watching it in real time. You don't have to have the. Even the entire file on your device. You just get the bits and pieces that you need in real time, and it streams it for you to your device. And then it. You know what else it does? It doesn't retain. It tosses it to the side, okay? So it doesn't take up any storage space for you. It tosses it to the side and you can go through and you can watch an entire movie that is an hour and a half long.
And depending upon what kind of format you're watching it in, it may be anywhere from 5 to 20 gigabytes worth of data. But then once it's all said and done, you don't have five or 20 gigabytes worth of data on your device, but you have just streamed that entire file and that entire movie.
And most people don't even really realize how it works. Now, what's great about our fiber optic network that we have now, and being completely fiber optic is, listen, we got the speeds, no matter how fast it needs to be, whatever your streaming service is, I guarantee you we will meet the spec guidelines to help you stream at the fastest and best that you need it to be done.
[00:50:45] Speaker A: And one reason that's really important too is the faster your Internet speed when you're streaming, the higher the quality sometimes of that show that they send down to you. You know, if you have a very slow download speed or you have too many devices running, you don't have the bandwidth for it, you might not get that 4K stream of that great blockbuster movie that just came out, so.
[00:51:09] Speaker C: Correct. Yeah. You need as much bandwidth as possible. You know, Jonathan, in his interview earlier, he hit on. You know, it's amazing. You see that people use whatever bandwidth they have. You know, the more they get, the more they use.
[00:51:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:21] Speaker C: And you can see that with streaming, I would venture to guess the majority of our usage and bandwidth usage, if we had it graphed, would be dedicated strictly to streaming.
[00:51:32] Speaker A: I think you would probably be safe to bet that for sure.
[00:51:35] Speaker C: So I think it would.
[00:51:37] Speaker A: Well, let's change gears a little bit. I'm sure there's been a lot going on in technology land since last month. So, Justin, take it away again for our segment, Tech News Roundup.
[00:51:47] Speaker C: Yeah, so the first one is we're. We're talking about streaming. So this first one is a pretty massive one. And I hit on this a little bit because there was some back and forth over the past few months. But it is official now.
Paramount is going to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery. And if you remember, when I first brought this up, there was kind of a bid war between what was going on because Netflix was involved and Netflix had put in a bid with Warner Brothers Discovery, and that's actually who was going to acquire. And it was actually announced by both parties, this is going to happen. Then Paramount said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we want in on this. And so basically, after some back and forth, they've made a deal and Netflix has said, you know what, we're pulling out. We can't match that. It's not in our best interest anymore.
So now you've got two behemoths in the entertainment industry, in the streaming industry that are going to going to come together.
And if you have a streaming subscription with Paramount, plus, from my understanding, they're gonna, once this all finalizes, you still got to go through the regulatory red shape. You know, they're gonna merge together and have one larger streaming platform.
And so this is huge because it is at $110 billion deal. So it's, it's pretty massive and it's pretty valuable.
[00:53:06] Speaker A: Significant.
[00:53:07] Speaker C: And that tells you how big the entertainment space still is.
[00:53:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:10] Speaker D: Too.
[00:53:11] Speaker C: And how much value that there is there. So a lot of money. So if you are a streaming customer of some sort or you're into streaming, this is, it's going to reshape some of your choices and maybe how you address it the next thing. Again, I'm hitting pretty heavy if you can tell on streaming because we talked about it. YouTube TV recently announced they're doing something that some other streaming providers have done and that is they're breaking up and offering smaller packages. So you don't just have to have the one main YouTube TV now they're offering smaller packages. So if you just want sports, you can get a sports package. You just want a kid's programming package, you can get that kids programming package. You want an entertainment package, you can get that as well. Because I think as the cost of streaming has increased, I don't necessarily think it's 100% to streamers, but the cost of entertainment in general is up significantly. And I think they see this as okay. We want to make sure, even though streaming is the massive behemoth, and I mentioned this earlier, that streaming has exceeded traditional television customers. And specifically there are 80.7 million households that stream versus 54 million that just do traditional television.
[00:54:27] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:54:28] Speaker C: So again, it is larger by far now in the United States that people are going to streaming. So obviously you're going to see these pop up options and people are always looking for value. The last thing is the former AI chief of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has left and has ventured out to do his own thing. And he has recently done an investment round of funding for his own AI that he's trying to do. So he is in Europe and he has raised a little over $1, $1 billion in funding, which is the largest ever seed funding for an investment in Europe specifically. It's pretty common in the US the way that we do seed funding, not as common in other places of the world. But he is looking at, he is trying to build what he is calling world models within artificial intelligence. So we're used to LLMs. Okay. Basically most 99% of AI is what's called an LLM, a large language model of artificial intelligence.
So just about any, any of the mainstream ones that you know of, they're all, they're all based off of that same thing. But what he is Doing is he is introducing systems that don't just learn from words and sentences, but learn from physical environments.
And so it's a different way of learning for the AI to learn and, and to adapt versus here we're just going to feed it all this data that is this constructed data that we have and I don't know how it's going to shape up.
I know that Nvidia, we just talked about them, has invested in it. I believe Jeff Bezos or one of his companies has invested in it. So there's people who see a future in it. Sure, if they're dropping that, that kind of money. But again it's just, it's another way to be able to build better AI and a different learning model that could be, that could be beneficial. Again the landscape is going to continue to just get absolutely hammered with, with not only investments but also with people who are going to continue to, to research it and do everything that they can to, to absolutely grow it. Now the thing with this is, what I'm really curious about is, is you know, we're not talking a chat GPT type model here. We're talking about a model that has more real world uses so manufacturing and robotics and those kind of things. Right. That these real world applications of this language model is going to be designed for those kind of things and how to, to shift into industrial AI.
[00:57:09] Speaker A: Right.
[00:57:09] Speaker C: More than consumer AI.
So that's, that's a few things that, that have come up for this past month. And listen, technology is, is ever changing, is ever growing. I didn't talk about space but I will mention this. Hopefully the next time that we're together we can talk about launching another rocket to Mars. Oh, the Artemis 2 mission got delayed again so I wasn't able to talk about it this time.
[00:57:38] Speaker A: I forward to that.
[00:57:39] Speaker C: You know, I like to talk about space. I really want to get that in there, but we'll have to wait another month for it.
[00:57:45] Speaker A: I look forward to that. By the way everyone, if you're wondering where DTC will be during the month of April, we do have one event that we will be at and that is the Careers on Wheels at Smithville elementary school on April 10. So open the eyes of some kids that were wondering about careers in the telecom field. So we hope that if you know anyone that could be there during that event, make sure they stop by our booth and say hello. And on that note, I think that's going to wrap us up for the month of April. Justin, thank you so much for joining us. Like you Always do. Lots of great information. Appreciate you being here.
[00:58:16] Speaker C: Listen, I was glad to be here, and I'm glad that Mayor Hutto joined us and Jonathan Puckett joined us. I gotta. I gotta say one thing about Jonathan, if you don't care, real quick as we go out here. He got brought up in a conversation that the other day with somebody from outside of DTC who had worked with him, and they said, yeah, Jonathan did this specific thing. He said. And I don't know why he did it, he said, but I do know this. If Jonathan did it, there was a reason that he did it, and it needed to be done that way, to be done right.
[00:58:47] Speaker A: That speaks volumes about the kind of person he is.
[00:58:49] Speaker C: Yes. And so, yeah, and so I thought about that. I'm like, man, they had that much trust in him that they didn't really, you know, he was doing something for a specific reason, but they knew that he was going to do the right thing in it. And so Jonathan is one of the many wonderful people that we have working here for DPC.
[00:59:08] Speaker A: So does he owe you $20 now?
[00:59:10] Speaker C: He does not. He did not know that that was coming.
[00:59:12] Speaker A: I can't say that. There you go.
We do appreciate Jonathan being here, though, and Mayor Hutto as well, and you as well, Justin. And we appreciate everybody listening and watching it also. So make sure you join us next month for the next episode, but until then, we say so long for the month of April. Learn more about the show by visiting us online at the Local click dot com. Also, be sure to subscribe to us on your favorite podcast or video platform so you won't miss our next episode of the Local Click. See you next month.
