Citizen Stewart continues run for Baltimore County Executive with multi-faceted platform

With the Maryland Crab Cake Tour back in Baltimore County, it’s always important to discuss the issues in an election year with prospective candidates who tell Nestor what they like – and don’t like – about the direction of current leadership. Nick Stewart returns to update Nestor on his pitch and platform at Honey’s in Halethorpe as the conversation about the future of the county of our business and life is open for debate and big 2026 local ballot looms in the spring.

Nick Stewart, a candidate for Baltimore County Executive, discussed his platform and motivations with Nestor Aparicio. Stewart emphasized the need for affordable housing, revitalization, and regional collaboration. He highlighted his experience with We the People, a group fighting for housing and revitalization, and criticized the county council’s recent decisions. Stewart proposed legalizing starter homes, universal pre-K, and a new jobs department. He also stressed the importance of addressing poverty, with 74% of Baltimore County Public School students living in poverty. Stewart called for urgent action to prevent further population decline and improve the county’s infrastructure and economy.

• [ ] Nick Stewart’s “One County Vision” platform on his campaign website.
• [ ] Explore opportunities to further regional collaboration between Baltimore City and County.
• [ ] Advocate for structural reforms like an independent inspector general office in Baltimore County.

Nick Stewart’s Introduction and Background

• Nestor Aparicio introduces Nick Stewart, a candidate for Baltimore County Executive, and mentions his previous involvement with a group called We the People.
• Nick Stewart discusses his past experience running for delegate in 2014 and his decision to run for public office again due to the current inflection point in the county.
• Nestor Aparicio and Nick Stewart discuss the importance of endorsements and the support Nick has received from respected individuals.
• Nick Stewart explains the motivation behind starting We the People to fight for housing and revitalization in Baltimore County, and how the county has moved backwards due to the housing ban imposed by the county council.

Baltimore City and County Integration

• Nestor Aparicio and Nick Stewart discuss the demarcation between Baltimore City and County, emphasizing the importance of not pitting them against each other.
• Nick Stewart talks about the need for regionalism and the shared challenges between Baltimore City and County, such as crime, housing, and infrastructure.
• Nestor Aparicio shares his personal experience of driving between the city and county and the importance of being Baltimore positive.
• Nick Stewart mentions his ongoing work on an op-ed with a city council person on regionalism and the specific issues that need to be addressed together, such as tax regime, housing reform, and transit opportunities.

Nick Stewart’s Platform and Key Issues

• Nick Stewart outlines his platform, emphasizing affordability, inclusion, and modernizing Baltimore County.
• He discusses specific policies, such as legalizing starter homes, revitalizing town centers, and implementing universal pre-K and community schools.
• Nick Stewart highlights the importance of economic development and innovation districts, using UMBC as an example.
• He mentions the need for a department of human rights and equity to address institutional racism and bias, and to protect immigrant communities.

Challenges and Solutions for Baltimore County

• Nestor Aparicio and Nick Stewart discuss the challenges facing Baltimore County, such as population loss, high cost of living, and poverty.
• Nick Stewart emphasizes the urgency of addressing these issues and the need for a comprehensive plan to revitalize the county.
• He criticizes the current county council for their secretive and ineffective governance, and calls for structural reforms.
• Nick Stewart highlights the importance of government performance-based measurement and management systems to improve efficiency and accountability.

Inspector General and Government Reform

• Nestor Aparicio and Nick Stewart discuss the role of the Inspector General and the need for independent oversight in the county.
• Nick Stewart criticizes the current system of appointing the Inspector General and calls for adopting best practices from other jurisdictions.
• He emphasizes the importance of transparency and accountability in government, and the need for structural reforms to address systemic issues.
• Nick Stewart shares his vision for a more inclusive and modern Baltimore County, where government works for the people and addresses the challenges they face.

Personal Motivation and Future Vision

• Nick Stewart shares his personal motivation for running for Baltimore County Executive, emphasizing his desire to create a better future for his children and the community.
• He discusses the importance of solving the current challenges facing the county and the need for a comprehensive plan to address them.
• Nick Stewart highlights the support he has received from respected individuals and organizations, and his commitment to working for the common good.
• He concludes by emphasizing the urgency of the moment and the need for bold action to create a better Baltimore County.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Baltimore County Executive, Nick Stewart, housing crisis, revitalization, regionalism, affordability, inclusion, economic development, infrastructure, population decline, public safety, education, workforce development, government reform, community engagement.

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SPEAKERS

Nick Stewart, Nestor Aparicio

Nestor Aparicio  00:00

Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. I feel like I’m at home. I’m at home at honeys in Hale Thorpe. I once supported the lion at Hale Thorpe. John cool a hand. You kids can look that up. He ran for Baltimore County Executive unsuccessfully back in the 70s. Ted venetola’s gave me such a I beat his over here in Hale Thorpe, word honeys. They invited me here. They told me they had a crab cake and some delicious Asian food. I said, you know, it’s Maryland crab cake Tour presented by the Maryland lottery and GBMC. But I’m happy to have some Asian food. I’m happy to shoot some pool here. They have some billiards here as well, and it is a pleasure to be here. I’m looking at a Guinness blonde. They’re delivering beer here. They have a liquor store. It’s fantastic. Nick Stewart is here. He is a citizen running for Baltimore County Executive. I’ve invited Julian Jones on. I’ve invited Izzy. I’m gonna have the Republican side, have everybody, everybody that’s running is gonna have their time on. Nick is a defending champion who came on a few years ago over at State Fair to talk about land and zoning with a group called We the People. He is now thrown the hat in to no longer be a citizen. He wants to be a Baltimore County Executive. And, dude, you’ve been picking up endorsements left and I don’t know if you’re picking up cash money, this, that, but you’re on my timeline. A lot of serious people that I respect are sticking their neck out for you, dude. So that’s a big winning is getting endorsed, right? Because you never run for anything, have you?

Nick Stewart  01:24

I have ran for delegate in 2014 and was done with it. It was not going to run for public office. There are other

Nestor Aparicio  01:30

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ways, your wife or your your business partner, what do you want to do? Look, you

Nick Stewart  01:36

know, you put your neck out there, you try to serve. And there are lots of other ways to serve in life. But we are at a different moment. We’re at an inflection point. I started this group. We the people to fight for housing, to fight for revitalization in this county. And as it turns out, we didn’t just stay still as a county. We moved backwards, and that was at the hands of our county council. We imposed a housing ban last year in Baltimore County. We were moving the wrong direction. And so for me, it felt like it’s a put up or shut up moment. We got to do this as a county.

Nestor Aparicio  02:04

So I had you on as a prospective candidate last year. You joined me? Well, it was in a spring right? We were White Marsh, and it’s an ice rink right now, and it’s a Christmas scene. And the malls, the mall and I lived out there. My son went to Perry Hall now on the other side, right? So when the folks at honeys invited me, they threw me a note like, three four months ago, said, Hey, will you What would it take to do the show out here? And I’m like, electricity and a crab cake, you know? But I didn’t know if it was another way to your heart. Yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t know. I’m like, Sure, Hale Thorpe, sure. Okay. It must be in the county because it said Hale Thorpe. But when I looked it up, the city’s like, three blocks away. You know, one of the things I talked about Izzy about, and I’ll talk to anybody about Cathy, I talked to Mueller about, it’s why we found the Baltimore positive. Probably was talking to you about it when you’re doing me the people, is this demarcation, I said the max Wey should say cheap Baltimore City, like it’s Gaza, or like it’s some island that we go to. We Lebanon, we have to go in and out, like, like, it’s not that way. It’s right there. I drove through it. I tried to drive from the county into the city, back to the county to get here. I think it’s that’s the most important thing for me, being Baltimore positive, being a county business owner, resident, voter. All of that is to say I don’t want to hear from pitting this against that, because I spent too much time in the city. I was there yesterday. I’m gonna be there again next Friday. You know, from the county perspective, that’s not always popular in, let’s say Middle

Nick Stewart  03:29

River, right? Yeah, that’s right, yeah. We think we try to establish some walls and say that if only they can be high enough, then our problems won’t be so bad. That is right, not the right way of thinking about our region, about our competitiveness. Look, we share a very similar heart, right? We share the name, we share Baltimore, and if we go compete regionally across this country, which we have to do, more and more of people don’t know. They don’t know that we are one of three places across the country that separate the county from the city that’s right next to it.

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Nestor Aparicio  04:01

Well, let’s play like the golf tournament that was in Baltimore, right? I mean, you know what I mean? Like that golf tournament, let me say City County. When the horse races, the Preakness is here. They think Baltimore, it’s in Baltimore, right? The Orioles playing Baltimore, the Ravens play Raven train to Baltimore County, right? I mean, Orioles players live in Baltimore County like it’s not there. This isn’t us, against him. I had Ivan Bates that last month for connects event. I’m gonna have him on the show. But somebody in the county, a Republican, asked him, What can we do to help you? We can’t vote for you. And he said, take a chance on the city. And I’m like, chance. It sounds crazy. I’m gonna go. I’m gonna give him a fun hard time, but that, but I took a chance. Every day I drive into the city, you know, and I but I just think as one goes, the other goes, Oh, I just think it’s really important. And I know you’re here running for Baltimore County, and I’m talking about the city, but I just think it’s a part of your charm, because you know better well,

Nick Stewart  04:51

so I talk about us being one county, so we have this problem. Even in the county itself, the west side, it can’t influence what’s happens on the east side and the east side. How dare they talk about what happens in North. County or, you know, in southwest portion of Baltimore County, but more than being one county or one region, we really are. And so I’m actually Nestor preview with you. I’m writing an op ed right now with a city council person on regionalism, and just more than just platitudes, we’re trying to get to the specifics. So think about our tax regime. Think about housing reform and delivering revitalization in our inner beltway communities. Think about our transit opportunities. Think about the crime fight. Think about water and sewer. The average water pipe is 75 years old in our region, the average sewer pipe is 50 years old. We have got to solve for these things together as one region.

Nestor Aparicio  05:38

Water is a big one dude, you know, my body worked at the poop plant forever, but he was a city worker, but the poop plant was in the county. Yeah, that’s right in front of my house. Yeah. So, I mean, I got that lesson pretty early on, on a hot day over Colgate, but, but it is. It’s weird. I mean, that’s just weird, right? That’s That’s not, it’s not like that in Detroit, it’s not like that in Milwaukee, it’s not like that in Kansas City, right?

Nick Stewart  06:02

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No, that’s exactly right. So it’s only like that in St Louis and in Carson. And so we have this really interesting dynamic now that if, unless we come together and start trying to solve regionally and setting discrete goals, that we can hold ourselves accountable for, platitudes are fine, but they’re not really good enough. We’re gonna have to have a plan in place with our city partners to try to achieve those things that we know we need most as a region, and these things won’t happen we. These are indivisible lines that divide us, and so we have a real opportunity right this minute, because we are losing population, because we share similar challenges, on the crime fight, on housing that we have an opportunity and then solve for them together.

Nestor Aparicio  06:39

Are you running as pissed off resident and dressed up nicely, Clark Kent and being polite and well spoken? I mean, are you angry, frustrated? I mean, clearly you’re motivated, right? You’re here, you’re Nick Stewart’s here, by the way, he’s running for county executive. For me, I almost ran for this whole thing started. I was gonna run for mayor of Baltimore. And it was like, sort of why. And I thought it needs to be, I would say it needs to be fixed. That was gonna be my platform. I’m the one to fix it. Somebody honest needs to get in and fix it. Yeah, Baltimore County. I mean, I thought with Johnny O and I thought from where cabinets was and Jim Smith, there was a nice lineage of the land of pleasant living and like, I can give platitudes that I’m on the east side and the poor side, and Colgate got rebuilt. Dundalk got rebuilt, these schools and the things that were important to me as a county voter, a county resident now, and a county business owner, which I’ve been for three decades, like I liked all of that as the city was falling apart, and I’m losing my my shirt, living in the city like, literally, I didn’t have kids in school and all that, and I’m paying high taxes and high and all that. But for me, with the county, the notion that you’re dissatisfied, right? I was dissatisfied living in the city, and it wasn’t even about my experience. It was about look at what this is doing to ever look around what’s going on here. Can we get somebody to step up. Why did you run? Because I don’t sense anger in you when I talk to you, but I do sense like there’s a lot of things you’re you’re you think could be better. Let’s put it

Nick Stewart  08:12

to that. So I am hopeful, I think, more than anything else, and I am trying to operate and shake people out of the sense that we can do more of the same, that that’s good enough. We’ve got to move with urgency. More of the same will not cut it. I mean, Nestor, we are losing population for the first time in 100 years in Baltimore County. Why do you think that is because of housing and the cost of living? So cost of living is the big thing. It’s unaffordable to live in Baltimore County. People are trying to find more affordable opportunities, and the primary driver of that is housing. It has never been more expensive to buy a home in Baltimore county based on income, and incomes have fallen for seven years in a row. But the other issue is our schools, and that schools and jobs, they’re related, but in schools, 74% of our kids who go to Baltimore County Public Schools are living in poverty right now. Where was the alarm? I am angry.

Nestor Aparicio  09:04

74 74% that would mean that they’re getting the little tickets at lunch.

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Nick Stewart  09:10

Well, it’s right. We provide that for everyone now. Okay, so free. I did not know that. Okay, so I’m learning. So, I mean, that’s how broad based the challenge ultimately is. And look, we I saw, we saw the housing crisis coming. What this is, why I started this group, we the people four and a half years ago to talk about these issues and say there’s a way to head this off. It doesn’t have to be so bad in Baltimore County, but now it is this bad. And so if we are going to prevent ourselves from allowing these issues to harden and where they become nearly unsolvable, and we push them to the next generation, and we force our kids out of our county, then we have to do it right this minute. This is the moment to intervene. This is the moment to have a plan. We are Nestor, the only campaign that has a plan whatsoever, full stop. If you go to this website that we have, you will see it is the most comprehensive plan of any campaign in this race. It’s also. The most comprehensive plan for housing in County history. This is why we got

Nestor Aparicio  10:03

housing first, right? You that that is a, you know, public safety is there. I mean, all these taxes, all those things, but you think housing, and that’s your background, is in the key to livability and affordability and growth. But was

Nick Stewart  10:18

also, I was Vice Chair of the School Board, right? And so the those things tie together for me. You know, one of the we see that housing is a primary indicator of somebody’s a child’s ability to have academic positive outcomes. And so they’re very closely related. I also was on the Workforce Development Board for Baltimore County for eight years. I served on and still serve on the southwest Community Development Corporation. So all of these things have allowed me to build out a plan together with over now 480 individual sit down conversations with moms and dads, community leaders, government officials, to build out a plan for our county that reflects the beauty and the strength and the integrity of the people that are in Baltimore County. We’re ready for this. We’re ready for big things in Baltimore County, we need to launch on them in an intentional and urgent way.

Nestor Aparicio  11:04

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So if I go to your website, what am I gonna find? What are the top three, top five things that you’re will be first priority?

Nick Stewart  11:14

Yeah, so let me tackle this in two ways. Let me say first and foremost, what you’re gonna hear from us is we’re gonna talk about affordability, we’re going to talk about inclusion, and we’re going to talk about making this county more modern, so that it operates not like a sleepy country town, which Baltimore County has often operated as, but instead operates as a place that uses best practices, that sees and hears its people, even if they can’t make it all the way around the county and wait for five or six hours until the county council is ready to hear from them, we are going to include them in the conversation too, so we see and hear them as well. So you’re going to hear those three big, big talking points. But the plan, let’s, let’s do the highlights, right? We’re going to, we are going to legalize starter homes in Baltimore County, which we really haven’t done, which, okay, so minimum lot size needs to be smaller. What we’ve done in this county is we have a pretty large minimum lot size, which prevents more people from moving into the neighborhood or from using your schools or from using your grocery store. That’s a problem. We should be able to build smaller houses. These are 1400 square feet and smaller, and we can do this for $200,000 using prefabricated homes, pre approved housing designs, and in this county, delivering them, particularly within the inner beltway communities. This is where we’re desperate for revitalization. I had the

Nestor Aparicio  12:29

new world of row homes, as I would know it in

Nick Stewart  12:31

Dundalk, row homes, but also single family. I mean, you can build great, beautiful, integral communities using this type of home development and home technology on top of that, revitalizing all sorts of town centers across Baltimore County. Think about security Square Mall if we had the actual instead of taking eight to nine years to just get to the place we are now, which is a request for proposals that was issued and we’re desperately seeking one qualified slow right harbor everywhere. It can’t be so. Think about $200,000 starter homes and revitalize town centers. Think centers. Think about true universal pre K in Baltimore County, as well as expanding our community schools, model, which provides services to not just the kids, but also to the families, a new accountability tool that brings teachers into the conversation in Baltimore County on the data and on the policy making for our schools, a new jobs department. We don’t do economic development like any other county in Central Maryland. It’s ridiculous how far behind we are new jobs department, innovation districts. This is what Atlanta did with Georgia Tech, based out of UMBC. We can tie it together there. We can tie it together with Towson and bring new vibrancy. People don’t necessarily love college towns, but they do love this idea that there’s true innovation and and a pipeline of graduation into the economy. The UMBC thing has

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Nestor Aparicio  13:47

always been a little weird, because it was built to be an enclave, yeah, right. It wasn’t built to be a college town, sure, and it doesn’t ever really spill over into Catonsville that I feel, yeah, when I’m walking around Catonsville, feel like it’s UMBC central in the way that you walk through Towson. And you know, you realize that the university is adjacent to it, that’s

Nick Stewart  14:06

right, yeah. And then the final piece, there’s more to this. And you’ll, you’ll see this on the website, you know, having a department of human rights and equity to talk through the institutional racism and bias that it has existed in Baltimore County, to promote LGBTQ issues, to acknowledge that we are living in fearful and dangerous times in the federal government, and how do we protect protect our immigrant communities?

Nestor Aparicio  14:27

So you don’t tell me, right? You know, my elementary school, over in east sides, 75% Hispanic, and my son and I actually, I encountered a Baltimore County third grade teacher last week. Anybody follows my social media? She’s been outed already, but she sat at a table with me and talked to me about having a little girl, third grader, come up to her and say to her, miss, blah, blah, blah, I’m worried that they’re going to come and take my parents away. It’s a third grade teacher, somebody I. Known 30 years, and they’re going to be taken away because they look like me all of a sudden. It didn’t take long for, you know, this, this witch hunt that Trump started 10 years ago, to get to my people. I’m Venezuela, my family’s there, like all of that. So it’s got a lot more personal for me the second time around with this creep, right, that he that, that he serves the time under a jail that he needs to be serving, you know, on behalf of the ladies that that have been assaulted as well.

Nick Stewart  15:28

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So yes, the important question for us is one, how do we prevent this from being normalized? Because it’s not normal. This is not another president whose term we just need to survive through. This is a moment in time that defines the very character of our country and the very character of our county, what we stand for, what for? What do we stand for? Are we going to be a place people?

Nestor Aparicio  15:45

Are we? There you go. This is we celebrate the birth of Christ two weeks from now, right? What kind of people are we?

Nick Stewart  15:50

Right? That’s all. This is the conversation. So you heard me, I think, say affordability. Hear me, stay modern. But the other word there is inclusion, right? We have an opportunity to define ourselves as a place that wants new families, wants new residents, and in a way, embraces and leverages there are an incredible strength that we have in Baltimore County. We are diverse place, we are a big place. We are a diverse place, but we are one county, and there’s a real opportunity for us to see and hear people in a way that we haven’t. We have to stand up the structure to do it, because we don’t have that kind of department right now. We haven’t. We have a division buried within an office, buried within the department.

Nestor Aparicio  16:24

Are you thinking new heading up new departments? You have absolutely structural reform is huge. What kinds of things are missing in county government right now?

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Nick Stewart  16:33

So there’s, there’s quite a bit to talk about, but at a very high level, think about simply having a government performance based measurement and management system that undergirds everything that

Nestor Aparicio  16:46

we do city. Stat, you got it all right, you know it I had Matt Gallagher on the show two days ago. Fantastic. Well, you have smart people on your own stuff, you know? I mean, just do, yeah, I think I wasn’t born this smart, even though I had a good Baltimore County Education. It’s bringing people like you want, I want to hit a couple of these hot topics, Inspector General and where that is. Let’s talk about that role and what that looks like in a Stewart administration.

Nick Stewart  17:08

Okay, so we have one right? Well, and we’ll have one in the steward administration. They’ll be overseeing you as well, and they’ll be overseeing me as well, and they won’t be controlled by me either. And look, we’re going to adopt the best practices. The report that came out. The task force study had 20 recommendations. Our Council adopted a handful of them. I will encourage us, and we’ll promote the bill to advance all of the recommendations. We could have avoided this, Nestor, if we just done what Baltimore City or other jurisdictions had done, we would have had an independent commission to actually appoint inspector generals in this county. We don’t do it. We do things, you know, slap dash, lowest common denominator type, the way we’ve always done them, maybe. And then we cry foul and say, Oh, look, we need a we need a problem solver for this. Yes, but we could have fixed it at the outset. Why do we keep doing this to ourselves over and over again? And now we have inspector general who left, and the law doesn’t speak to how that person should be replaced. I know we’re in the weeds with a point. We had a hard enough

Nestor Aparicio  17:59

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time picking a county executive around here, and I didn’t like that system. I think that system stupid as a as a business owner, as a voter and as a resident. I I don’t like the outcome that we got there this council, including I like it so little that I can’t even have her on the show, because I just don’t think it’d be a serious conversation for me. That’s all fair enough. Look this council, she’s welcome to come on but and talk about anything if she’s but I have not felt that that presence in my time with her. I’ll just say that, and she’s running the county.

Nick Stewart  18:30

Yeah, this council did not ask her a single public question before appointing her as our county executive. They didn’t even allow us, the public, to say the name of the person we would ask that they consider and choose for county executive. They appointed her behind closed doors in a secretive way. Then they tried to oust the attorney general or the inspector general in a secretive behind closed doors kind of way. They drew Council manic maps behind closed doors in a secretive kind of way. They passed a 45% increase in their pensions in connection with the council maps secretly in a secretive kind of way, and then they enter into a settlement with a high ranking government official who was also behind closed doors in a secretive kind of way. This all was within the last, what, 15 months. It’s an extraordinary shortcoming for Baltimore County Government. We have so many things we need to work on, so many things to fix people who are suffering in this county, the poverty. Almost half of our households actually live in poverty outside of our schools, and yet, still, we can’t get past the very basics and blocking and tackling of government. And these guys want to run now, run county government as the county executive, that does create a passion, right? That does create urgency in this conversation. We can’t afford more of the same.

Nestor Aparicio  19:48

I was in Edgemere last night with my soon to be 85 year old middle school teacher singing Christmas carols. Mr. Statum. People came from all around the county. He was a 57 year Baltimore County edge. Gator 57 years Wild Music in Baltimore County, and born in Baltimore County. He was my guy, so I went over there, and I’m in Edgemere. Let’s see if you can see my problem. I’m in Edgemere last night on a cold ass night, doing some joy to the world the Lord has come. So I’m there, and I had tickets at Arundel Mills Mall, not in Baltimore County, to go see the cure. They had a movie. And I bought the tickets, and I’m like, yeah, just hop out right there, Edge mirror by Costas over to Key Bridge. All right. How the hell am I getting there? All right, I go out, I make a left and a right, and I get a peninsula high to the burning, to the to the Logan to the All right, well, maybe I’ll just take 695, up to North Point Boulevard, and I’ll take Eastern Avenue, which is what I did, because Colgate Elementary is there, and I got to go past my elementary school and see it. And I still, and I thought, I’m having Nick and Izzy on tomorrow, and I’m Baltimore County. And and then I had to get on 95 and go through the tunnel to get to Arundel Mills Mall, wherever anybody would stand on this I love that the New York Times wrote the piece about Western Port this week in regard to Trump screwing them after 94% of the population in Western Port voted for Trump. Baltimore County is a little different. I guess. You know, you probably got 30% of the vote. Whatever it was, anyone that sees the bridge as a partisan issue is, it is? Is a piece of manure to me. Yeah, you know, like to see anything like that that services our community, and say, I’m going to punish you because you have a black governor, a Democratic governor, you didn’t vote for me like I cannot believe, at heart, anyone in our culture could accept that as acceptable, just in a general sense. And I’m talking to you about the Key Bridge, and you’re going to say to me, Well, it depends on what daddy thinks in Washington, because that’s really what’s holding up the parade at this point to getting something done here that is fundamental.

Nick Stewart  22:10

Yes, fundamental. I think this speaks to government not being able to get things done anymore. Look, we it took, it took us, what, a year before we had to nearly double the cost of what the bridge would take and double the timeline. This is insane, and yet we tolerate this as just the cost of doing business. This is what we expect out of our government nonsense. We have got to move more quickly, and we can move in a more cost efficient way.

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Nestor Aparicio  22:38

All of us compounded interest every day when it’s not there, right? So Josh

Nick Stewart  22:41

Shapiro, right, had this overpass blow up. You know, in his state, hundreds of 1000s of cars were going over this every single day, and they passed an emergency designation to rebuild this thing. They were like, great. Won’t take several years, or take a year. He said, I want it to be quicker. They say, Pittsburgh, right? Yeah, yeah. And said, Oh, it takes six months. He’s like, No, I want to do it quicker. And he’s like, I’m going to install a camera, and we are going to do this as quick as we possibly can. Everyone’s going to see this will be the test of the administration. Can government work? And they built it in 12 days. We can do hard and big things in this county. We can figure out the way to do it, but we have to get rid of the sacred cows of the way we’ve used to do things, and that is one thing we have a really hard time. I travel a lot, Nestor and the question I always find myself

Nestor Aparicio  23:24

asked I ran into in the airport two weeks ago,

Nick Stewart  23:28

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why do we why do we do it this way? Why do we do it this way? And the answer that always comes back, whether it’s a government, you know, bureaucrat, whether it’s someone in the community, it’s because this is the way we’ve always done it that has to go. There has to be a belief that we can do things better and differently, and that’s why we’re seeing in democratic strongholds like California, Illinois, New York, My people have moved, including Maryland, have moved to Texas and to Florida because they’re they’re able to build things and they’re able to bring people in who are trying to make a working class living.

Nestor Aparicio  23:58

Well, this goes back to the federal government cutting jobs with Social Security that affected us, affecting the whole region in the state, the state shortcoming and Kerwin. And anytime I talked to my lottery partners, they were raising money for the state, and state funded all that gamble responsibly, you folks out there, and don’t stick these into the stocking stuffers of youngsters. So there’s my public service but, but the money that we’re that we’re putting in, the general funds, it’s just it feels like it’s evaporated. We’re Hogan beat on his chest and talking about how much money he’s at and all Wes Morris had to do was backpedal. I’ll get the Wes refuses to come on to the show. So that’s another story altogether. So I can’t ask him anything, although I did vote for him and support him when he was polling at 2% but for me, the notion that the state, short all of you, I mean, not just you. Stuart Pittman, I go up to Harford County, would say we just have less money right than we’ve had. That is, um. Explain that to me as a citizen, as somebody that may or may not vote for you.

Nick Stewart  25:05

Explain why we have less money Yes,

Nestor Aparicio  25:07

and explain yes and explain what, what that means for Baltimore County that we have less money. Yeah. So some of that was, how does that come out of our hide as residents here? I would say, yeah. Look, the

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Nick Stewart  25:16

knock on effect is big, and we saw the transition happen last year. We’re paying more for teacher costs. We were paying more for state fees and expenses. And so there’s a transfer of obligations that’s being passed down to the localities, which then has its own knock on effect. What does that mean for Baltimore County? It means that we’re going to have a harder time making the investments we need to make in our people to try to get out of this particular rut that we are

Nestor Aparicio  25:43

in the bond ratings and all sorts of things, right? Oh, yeah, right, yeah, it will

Nick Stewart  25:48

have, will have huge implications. But the question is not just, Hey, how do we manage decline? The question is, how do we grow? We are losing population, like I said, as a state and as a county. We are growing as a county, at point 6% GDP, we should be growing closer to 5% GDP pursuant to peer jurisdictions. We’re not doing the simple things that we need to do to be competitive. And the difference that makes in our budget, in our taxable revenue, is extraordinary.

Nestor Aparicio  26:15

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You think that just begins with the base of like, can you afford to live here? And do you want to be here? I do. I mean, right. And you want to be here because the roads are good, the schools are good, right? You know, we always say this Baltimore, we got bones. I mean, you know, we’re in a place where look at a football team. We got a baseball team, we got an airport, we got the water, we got Ocean City, we got DC there, we got New York. We have all of those things that would say, but then there’s jobs. I mean, I saw that Guinness thing go by a minute ago, and that was a dream that went away, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, and that’s, that’s unfortunate, because that would have been jobs

Nick Stewart  26:46

here, right? We have everything we need right here, right now, to solve our own challenges. We just need the plan to get there, which we don’t have. You look at our master plan, which is this document we produce once every 10 years. It covers everything in kind of government, on economic development. The first bullet point is, we don’t have a plan for economic growth. We should have one. You often don’t see that in a bureaucratic document where it sort of calls out the government, but that’s exactly what it did, and that’s how dire the situation is. And yet still, we have trade put in Atlantic, a global logistics hub that can form the basis of data science, data analytics, advanced manufacturing type of hub to help revitalize what used to be the steel towns that would support it. Dundalk Turner, right? You have an opportunity.

Nestor Aparicio  27:28

I missed that on the tree lighting. They canceled the tree lightest trade point two weeks it was too cold, wet. I was supposed to be second time I’ve gotten canceled on a trade point. I keep telling Aaron one day I’m gonna like the tree, but maybe next year, long enough get a crab cake. It cost us afterwards.

Nick Stewart  27:47

But you know, across this county, you look at Essex, we have Franklin Square. We have the highest performing high school in all the state of Maryland, at Eastern Tech. We have CDC. Now in Eastern Tech, what

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Nestor Aparicio  28:00

I know graduates are there.

Nick Stewart  28:05

It’s tremendous. What is going on is fantastic. And so

Nestor Aparicio  28:08

it’s in Essex. How good can it be?

Nick Stewart  28:12

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There’s a balance on. And so all around this county, if we walked all the way around it, you would see that we have incredible clustered economic assets and the start of something very special. And we also have one of the greatest concentrations of colleges and universities in Baltimore County in all the state of Maryland, and yet we are doing too little with them, and it’s partly because we haven’t planned and coordinated and created intentionality with our strategy.

Nestor Aparicio  28:36

Well, I’m a CCBC graduate, so I’m all education. The county next door is here. He’s running for Baltimore County Executive. You can find it. Tell me where your platform is, so people can

Nick Stewart  28:45

look so weird. We’re everywhere. But the platform, in its fullest way, is at Nick for Baltimore county.com you’ll see it there. We released something called the one county vision. Very excited for that. Take a look. But it speaks to how do we create vibrancy in Baltimore County? How to create housing, how to create renewal in our county, all across and this is why we got the support of former county executive Jim Smith and former county council chair people, Vicki almond and Tom quirk is because they know how government works. They have been a part of the revitalization effort, but they know it’s broken right now, and they know the urgency and the stakes that we are facing right this minute, so I’m very proud to have their support. I mean, Nestor, end of day, I have four kids. They’re 986, and four. We have three boys, who are the younger ones, and so everything’s chaos. It’s a mess. But I want them to have a place to grow up, in Baltimore County too, and I want them to be able to build into their community and stay in this place. I want to see my grandkids. I know this is exactly what my friends, my neighbors and our entire county wants. And now is this moment that if we solve for it, we can do it, but if we don’t, we have a real challenging path ahead.

Nestor Aparicio  29:55

See, you’re an old school politician that I can respect as a citizen in doing this because. When I was going to run for mayor, I had my wife was just she’s like, You better have a platform. You better have where’s your platform, Dude, where’s your platform? And I’m like, this, creeps running America to have a platform other than racial hatred and division, and I’m thinking to myself, you have to have a platform. You have to have a platform. It has to be in a it has to be in a pamphlet. It has to be in the you have to door. Knock all that stuff. That molar died. Ain’t knocking doors. You out of your mind. Knock on my door. Don’t knock on my thing. You’d be good. Don’t knock on my door. I’ll find you. Don’t knock on my door. I don’t like it when people knock on my door. Yeah, so and I don’t, because I’m respectful, I would knock on other you knocking doors.

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Nick Stewart  30:38

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. We have great teams are out there every single week.

Nestor Aparicio  30:42

So, but I did say to my wife, I told Mueller, I’m not knocking doors and I’m not calling rich people and asking for money. I’m not if I run for but my wife said, You got to have a platform. So I’m a writer, and this is before AI, yeah, so I have a 46 page fix Baltimore City document that I’ve never released. Oh, I wasn’t completely done with it. There were a couple pieces I needed to edit a little bit, but through all of my Baltimore positive stuff, I was ready to run. Was a part of being ready to run. My wife’s like, I need to read every page of your platform, because she’s old school. That’s a great partner. She’s a New Hampshire person. So she knows about, seriously, from the whole, you know, presidential every four years, her town got taken over by every Gary Hart and every George Bush and every, you know, every candidate there ever, ever Dukakis. You know, when she was a kid, they were all hanging out in Manchester for three months trying to get elected, right? Wow. So she was a part in the bones, so she’s like, gotta have a platform. So I know you’re proud of your platform.

Nick Stewart  31:48

So we are, but it’s more it’s not just about our platform. It’s the fact that in a race where most people are running because they have been in elected office for the last 10 years on a full time basis, which is true in this race, we’re not there because I’m not there because it’s next that’s not the reason to do this, or because I need a promotion. We’re there to solve problems and because there’s urgency in this. And if we do it right, then we get to talk about there being dignity in each community here in Baltimore County, we get to talk about empowering people to make their own difference and take responsibility for a common good. We get to get back to the values that define us as a people, and that, I think, bring us together with the city and with others. We’re not there at this moment. And so this idea that it’s just good enough to say, I I was there, you should vote for me, because I’ve been around that’s not this moment.

Nestor Aparicio  32:35

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Well, we’re talking challenges. We’re talking hope and talking the future with all the Baltimore County Executive candidates in the coming days and weeks and months, we’re celebrating the holidays. We were at honeys in Hale Thorpe. You’re a young old schooler. Did you ever know who John coolahan was? John cooligan ran for Baltimore County Executive in the 70s. He was the Lion of Hale Thorpe. That was his. That was his. He was the the attorney who got my parents custody of me. So we had a cool a hand sign on, and we, I remembered you didn’t door knock, though I didn’t door knock, but we had a sign. And my dad, we did we and Mr. Coolihan was always right here in this area. And when I was a boy, I would come over to the office, but, but when venetoul is found out you can’t pain for for cool man, I beat his ass, is what he said to me. So Ted and I, you know, Ted was a constantly area mine. If I was gonna run for mayor years ago, I gotta respond. Political career is over. People keep saying to me, my AI clone thinks I want to run for mayor, dude, telling you, don’t say that on the radio. Never run for mayor. I’m like my political days are

Nick Stewart  33:45

well, you know, I had the honor of representing this area on the school board this. This was the area health or Baltimore Highlands, Riverview, Lansdowne relay. You know, his

Nestor Aparicio  33:55

wife taught at Lansdowne for many years. I had a crush on a girl there about 40 years ago. I DJ to party there, but I haven’t driven past Lansdowne high school till today. It’s what I said, like, this is an area of Baltimore County that I have not spent a lot of time, and I’ve been through when I was a boy, like I said, but didn’t have a girlfriend here, didn’t have a sponsor here, it’s kind of county, city line. It’s inside the beltway. A lot of things Izzy Patoka talked about inside the beltway, that it’s feels more like the city than the county to some people, and but we’re in the county here, and it’s just one of those places that like, well, if I was gonna run for Baltimore County Executive, explore places that I haven’t been, yeah. And this is one of those unique places. Yeah, it

Nick Stewart  34:33

is a big County. It is. It is a great lot of people, yes, exactly. All right,

Nestor Aparicio  34:37

you’re gonna go see every one of Nick Stewart’s here. He’s got to get out the door. We’re here at honeys in halethorpe, where they said, What does it take to get you down here to do the Maryland crab cake tour? And I’m like, What do you have electricity and heat on a cold day? Yeah, I said, you got a table, yeah. And they said they got pool tables, they got food, they got beer, they got a package goods here. Come on down and visit. And they’ve been very nice to me, and at some point feel a little hungry. It’s Maryland crab cake tour. I hear they got some pot stickers and some delicious Asian food here, and they’ve whipped up some crab cakes for me today too. So you know I’m going, I’m not gonna be impolite, I’m gonna eat what they’re gonna put in front of me. So good luck to you, man. Thank you so much. All right, mix it next time I run into the arena sky, any airport couple weeks ago, he didn’t have time. I didn’t have time either. I gotta go, gotta go, gotta go. Come on the show. So I’m glad we got to talk. All right, next door. County executive. Go check out his platform. I’m going to come back. Ruff and Bell is going to be here from Koco’s state. I lost Sean Stinnett today. Had a flat tire. My former intern running for delegate. He’s feeling bad and apologizing. So now we have to run Sean out maybe next week to Gertrude at the BMA. We’ll be there on Friday the 19th, with Dan Rodricks and my cousin John shields. Yes, he is my cousin. My son married into his family. So I have a cheffy cousin. I have a foodie cousin, and he’s also very entertaining, and I love him. John shields will be your next Friday. Dan Rodricks will be at Costas in Dundalk with Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Gina. She’s headed for the holidays. I’ve already spent time with Gina, and we’re going to honor my dear friend, Eddie Lauer, who we spoke to last night. He had a heart transplant five weeks ago. He’s out of the hospital. He’s home. He’s getting better. He can’t come out. There’s got dietary restrictions. I can’t send him any of the delicious Maryland crab soup or any of the Oysters Rockefeller, but Eddie’s getting better. It was great to talk to him, so we’re gonna wish him well next week as well. And then on Monday the 22nd back in Baltimore County, we’re gonna be at Planet Fitness in tremonium eating crab cakes, and they’re gonna try to get my fat keister in shape from all the eggnog I’m drinking and all the gingerbread. I’m gonna be with John shields back for more word honeys and althorp to Maryland crab cake Tour presented by the Maryland lottery and our friends at GBMC who are keeping me healthy and happy so I can be in Hale Thorpe and eat some pot stickers coming up next. Stay with us. You.