Anne Arundel County Executive Stueart Pittman extends his Maryland Crab Cake Tour stop chat with Nestor on transportation, getting across the Chesapeake Bay and his love of horses at Pappas Restaurant in Glen Burnie.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
county, years, annapolis, orioles, baltimore, horses, maryland, talking, wife, signs, kids, live, county executive, put, paddle board, chesapeake bay, summer, week, crabs, bob
SPEAKERS
Stueart Pittman, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
What about wn St. Towson, Baltimore. And Baltimore positive we are positively in Glen Burnie we’re doing the Maryland crabcake tour. It is all presented by our friends at the Maryland lottery. 50 years of them. 25 years of us also our friends at winter nation 866 90 nation and get the hat going here feels like a Oriole, floppy hat and the summer thing here. Stuart Pittman county executive from and run the county kind enough to come up didn’t 97 and Ritchie highway, how do you come up here? We came up with two or two I see that I think I asked right. So traffic and your staff admins traffic 197. And I’m like, I don’t see that part of life below Pasadena during drive time or you know, a rush hour traffic really, I’m usually the guy cutting your county straight through to either go to ramshead for concert, which I do all the time or just getting to the Bay Bridge and getting stuck somewhere down there. You know, right around broad neck, right. So, you know, people keep talking about your county or driving through it. And I had so much fun the last couple summers with Jake de, who was the Saulsbury mayor saying, Yeah, I’ve been to Salisbury 10,000 times I’ve just never stopped to do anything to get a milkshake or be you know, just have never gotten out of the car because I’m always on the way there for your county and for people. What makes your county unique in that way for people that don’t live here. People that come here for maybe a concert you have fear if you’re going to get a couple bands going on? You got Blondie next weekend and LeAnn Rimes down at the foot of the pier. Right. So I mean, I use your county I just don’t use it for the Orioles of the Ravens because no play it anywhere in the county. Right. Yeah. Well, a lot of people think
8
Stueart Pittman 01:33
of us as Annapolis because it’s in the center of the county. It’s the capital of the state and it’s got a lot of history and it’s got but we’re also we got we got what is it 665 105 130 miles of coast a lot Chesapeake Bay. Yeah, and all the different inlets so that’s more
Nestor Aparicio 01:51
than 40 states 45 states there’s got to be more than like, right i mean it’s
Stueart Pittman 01:54
it’s it’s a ton because it because they’re all these little inlets. And so we’re we started new thing called and Roanoke county river days this year. And ultimately, I want to get one in every river on the weekends. But we had one last week in a quiet waters park near Annapolis. And we’re going to do another one at Fort Smallwood, coming up September 23. And the idea is getting people on boats on the water for free and having a little Festival at the same time with with organizations there that do water quality and history and, and it’s it’s awesome. It really was a good time on Sunday, and hopefully people will be
Nestor Aparicio 02:25
8back. I’m gonna anger one of your counterparts Johnny yo because and Brandon’s a little upset that I moved out of the city a year and a half ago. I lived in a city for 19 years I lived I from Baltimore County. We were in the process of moving around Thanksgiving, it’d be two years now. Right? Somebody came in, put an offer. Thank God thank God for you and putting an offer in our condo, which we’re trying to sell for a long time down at the harbor. And we were looking for a place to live and open minded. I went down to Howard County we almost lived by Merriweather Post down there. Damian authority. Yesterday, it got down there. Calvin Ball was disappointed that I didn’t show up there. And we wound up living uptown because it’s from a radio station is where the reservoir but my wife and I had a beat on a rental in a little cottage right off of Fort Smallwood road at the north side. But here was the hook. The hook was the tributary. I don’t know which one it was one of the little bendy little tribs my wife loves the paddle board right. And she she paddle boards and Florida manatees all this stuff, and she’s a super fit my wife and the whole idea would have been to live in your county to use the waterway to paddle board. That’s what I would have had to explain to you when you’re like oh, those two moved to Emerald County. He loves it down here. Now my wife just wanted the paddle board we got a lot of paddleboarding space you do is calm water, fishing, crabbing. Like all of that. Right you should
Stueart Pittman 03:47
see even the Fourth of July out there in Annapolis. When you got all the boats watching the fireworks, you got people on paddle boards out there in the dark watching the fireworks. I never
Nestor Aparicio 03:54
think to use Annapolis as a Baltimore, East Baltimore, living in Taos and I just, every time I go I’m like, Annapolis is awesome. It’s just an awesome place, you know,
Stueart Pittman 04:05
and we all whine about traffic and we all try to figure out transportation and we’re you know, we’re doing that, like you said 97 gets backed up. But we also have route two and route three, north south. Everybody’s trying to figure out how to go north and south without getting in traffic. So they jump from one to the other to the other. And we’re working with the state on a lot of improvements on some of those bottlenecks. But, but we also have public transportation and guess what we used to do our transportation on the water. And I think someday we’re going to have these really cool hydro foil ferries about the size of a bus that can go 3040 miles an hour on the water without creating awake going North South Baltimore Annapolis, Papa. Sure.
8Nestor Aparicio 04:43
I’ve been on those in Australia. I’ve been on those. They have one that goes from Buenos Iris to to Montevideo, in Uruguay. That’s like when you pay 75 bucks and you’re you’re going at it you know at a speed. It’s like I’ve changed one boat, right? So literally, it’s a little bit like James Bond.
Stueart Pittman 05:02
Glass, right? Yeah, yeah, well, we gotta get get the price down. So
Nestor Aparicio 05:07
transportation part of your state and of the Bay Bridge. I was with Republican delegate Carl Anderson just talking about when you live in rural Maryland, and broadband and issue mean all sorts of issues there. But everything has to come over a bridge, right to get there. And you sit at the foot of that bridge where people sit, and, you know, they look at the bridge, they want to get on the bridge. And then every time I’ve gone over the bridge this summer, I’m the white knuckle guy, and I’m the idiot tickets in the left lane, and I take on the oncoming traffic on that other side. So I’m not a guy that doesn’t think there should be a third span. Where are you on this? Is that is that a Republican issue with Democrats? That’s a purple issue.
Stueart Pittman 05:50
8It’s not a partisan issue at all getting across the wall. I mean, the Yeah, I would like to have more multimodal transportation options. And by the time they get around to building that Bay Bridge, with all the environmental studies they have to do, it’s going to be 12 years or whatever from now. And transportation might look a little different. So we just have to be very, it’s not happening soon as well. You’re telling them they got to do it. They just don’t know. They don’t happen quickly. So, you know, we’re just encouraging them to look at the whole corridor and the traffic issues before and after the bridge. And yeah, they need,
Nestor Aparicio 06:20
like a minute ago. 97 wasn’t there? Yeah. 97 is like a new road
Stueart Pittman 06:24
to me. Yeah. So no, we do have to confront it. I think some of the prep traffic projections had been high. I don’t think Eastern Shore is going to develop like some people do and turn into sprawl development. Maryland is about smart growth. I think we can do development. I mean, Baltimore City could add some places that need redevelopment. We got places that need redevelopment,
Nestor Aparicio 06:40
but come on, so you go over there, and especially if you’re up on the Delaware side, just come down with up to the beach a couple months ago, see and Tamika just, just there’s a lot that’s happened over there. And in our lifetime. Yeah, like, and it feels like more people are heading that way. Really, I I get it, but I don’t get it. It’s a little far away for me. But I also get the global warming is gonna make the beach more palatable. And let’s say May in September that maybe it was when we were 25. Yeah, it’s not underwater to get there. But yeah, well, I mean, me and so I mean, that’s one of your I went up onto your platform, I don’t believe that’s gonna go global climate change, global warming, that’s way higher up on in your heart for what you’re leaving behind. And when I talked to Martin O’Malley long out of office on this show, his whole thing was the water, the water, the bay, the bay, and I travel the whole world. Now it took me to figure this out, you spin the globe, and you see how few, or how really unique the Chesapeake Bay is to anywhere in the world look anywhere else, what we have years of very, very unique things that we sit in the crab cake place we, you know, crabs and crab cakes are from, we’re lucky to have it and having somebody like you on the front of that, that I know that that’s important to you.
8Stueart Pittman 07:53
Well, and we have, you know, we have two forces working, and one is we want to clean up the water of the Chesapeake Bay and bring it back to life. It really is about it’s about the grasses and the fish and the crabs in the oysters and all of that. I like to fish and there aren’t many out there. There aren’t many, like there aren’t as many as there used to be. And so bringing that back to life, I think is important. But now we’re understanding the scientists are telling us what, what these plants and animals and biodiversity really mean for our our future. I mean, we can’t survive if we don’t have biodiversity. And then of course, there’s climate change, manmade climate change.
Nestor Aparicio 08:26
I did an hour on the catfish two months ago with Dan if at least, you know coming in and eating all the crabs. This is troublesome. Yeah, yeah.
Stueart Pittman 08:33
So So I think the work is important. We create a resilience authority. And in Roanoke County, were the first multi jurisdictional one in the country where it’s the county in the city of Annapolis together, but we’ve we’ve mapped out the places where the public infrastructure is likely to be challenged underwater, some cases that storm surge. So it’s temporary stuff like like what happens in Annapolis right now where the streets are flooded. But it’s a it’s an interesting model, because it’s like a redevelopment authority with its separate board independent of government, but it can it can sell bonds, but it doesn’t put on taxpayer you can pay for those bonds in lots of different ways. And so we’ve got a brilliant guy, Matt Fleming’s who’s who’s the director of it in the county and it’s interesting stuff. Why I
Nestor Aparicio 09:15
8love learning about this sounds over Chestertown two summers ago when Heather was here was running, talking about, you know, people going underwater, right. And we’re talking about ocean city being eaten up and sucked up and the skinniest parts. When you look at an aerial of Ocean City, you see how how, you know, fragile, literally that it is
Stueart Pittman 09:33
and we have to make tough decisions. And sometimes there are political decisions that the public should be involved in about where to invest the money to protect infrastructure and where not to where to just turn it back into nature, because it’s too expensive to predict it. So those decisions are going to have to get made and they need to be made in advance of the storms and the storm surges.
Nestor Aparicio 09:55
County executive Steuart Pittman joining us here we are at a Papist we’re down in Glen Burnie beautify Richie. So as a kid in Dundalk, I wanted to give you a hard time about this because you’re entering a kind of Haiti coming in on the county once a year, because the only thing you do it for was the MVA. And was the only place you could go, I gotta go down to Glen Burnie, I’m gonna be there all day, got to take the day off. And so you talk about government making things better. There’s so many more things that are way more efficient in regard to how to get your drivers or any of those kinds of things that can be done digitally. Now, whether it’s even just tickets for concerts or anything is made easier, but we had everybody had to come to him or Kenny come to Glen Burnie. And sit at the DMV. Once a year.
Stueart Pittman 10:35
I remember sitting in line. Well, we had one in Annapolis, too. I’d go there. Yeah, we probably
8Nestor Aparicio 10:39
have one in Essex too. But it wasn’t full service or whatever, you know, to do your little driving test and do. But so so for you with kids back to school, because I’ve talked to a lot of folks about that. I guess we take this for granted, right? Like I and I see all the pictures, keep sharing them on social media, your kids and what day it is and what year it is, and all that stuff. I think the plague and zooming and all of the weirdness of all of that every young person I meet, I think that they’ve had a different level of, dare I say trauma or whatever was trauma for all of us three years ago, right. But getting some sense of normalcy back that maybe you have seen it normal and not normal and trying to be normal again, just as the county executive in the short time you’ve been running it.
Stueart Pittman 11:21
Yeah, I mean, there there are changes at the school system as institutions has had to go through. I mean, they shut down they went virtual they, the bringing people bringing kids back, getting sports started again. And then hiring bus drivers, for instance, labor shortage post pandemic coming out of the pandemic. We’re lucky we couple of things happen in our county when we got a great new suit school superintendent last year, Dr. Mark Patel, and people seem to want to come to Ana Rundle to work for him, because he’s got this national reputation and, and good things are happening here. But we also we delivered in this budget, and we increased teachers starting teacher pay by but we had to keep up with our neighbors, by the way, because, you know, Johnny Oh is doing a Calvin’s doing it. I gotta keep up with everybody, because we compete with each other for teachers. And so we managed to be competitive. And we started out last year, you know, close to 300 Teachers down and we’ve cut that in half. Last year, we were short about 60. Bus drivers, we got enough bus drivers to fill all the buses right now, unless somebody calls in sick, which will always happen. So they’re still hiring. But it’s been it’s been a really good start the school year, think about
Nestor Aparicio 12:26
the toughest jobs in the job of any of the county executives is police, firefighters, school teachers, you know, just and I and what they’re paid and what they’re worth, and what they’re worth. Right. Yeah,
Stueart Pittman 12:40
8the big essential institutions, the essential workers, and it doesn’t just stop there, there are other, you know, Department of Public Works and all of them. And, you know, people think well, well, you know, government is inefficient government is is you know, it’s taking my my taxpayer dollars, but government is competing with the private sector for employees every single day. And, and the private sector is faster about making changes, because they don’t have so many rules that they have to follow. Some of these are good rules their public, you know, to protect the public taxpayers, but it’s slower. We can’t, you know, we can’t just reclassify your job position, we have to go to the county council and get a vote and put it in the budget for the next year, you know, to be able to, so we were hustling to try to get, you know, retention bonuses out to staff and things to be able to compete. But yeah, we got, you know, you got to hire and you got to retain
Nestor Aparicio 13:27
well, and I guess for police and firefighters is stuff that the citizens just take for granted. Like, my place is on fire, I’m going to dial 911 And they’re going to come right. I mean, the same thing would be said for any police related matter. And that’s always the touchy subjects. Right. But But for you, police force and fire force in your county, and overview for us,
Stueart Pittman 13:46
well, you know, our county was has is the lowest tax County in Central Maryland, one of the lowest tax in the state. And historically, we have been that. And as a result of that, if you ask anybody in the fire service, or police, they’ll tell you or the school system that they were under invested in. And so we have been playing catch up in those departments in terms of staffing level in terms of equipment, in terms of facility, and in terms of pay. And, and but at the same time, I feel like we’ve got really good people. And so we’ve made major major investments, we’ve increased staffing and funding in the police department by close to a third since I came in five years ago. And they’re always want more, every department wants more. But, you know, it’s we have the same problems everywhere where, you know, a shooting happens, and everybody thinks, you know, it’s a terrible thing as it is. But but it sets us all back, you know, well, it’s
Nestor Aparicio 14:44
not indicative of the environment. In any case, it’s indicative of one situation.
8Stueart Pittman 14:48
Right? Right. And because of social media, everybody, you know, communication is fast now, and pretty universal and people hear about stuff as they should. There’s more transparency In government, so less room for error. I mean, government I think has really improved over the last couple of decades. You know, the backroom smoke filled room stuff. You can’t get away with that anymore. Thank God. Yeah. I mean, we’re all better for that. Yeah. Yeah. And so and there’s much more community engagement. I mean, when we do we do our budget process, we have seven town halls and there’s all kinds of ways to get your voice heard as a citizen online and coming to things by zoom and in person that didn’t exist before. And so there’s just a lot more accountability and that’s a good thing.
Nestor Aparicio 15:32
All right, we got I gotta get you to Orioles. Gotta get you to ravens here. Because you you had a little SWERY with your ozone that right. I mean, I’ve been through this year.
Stueart Pittman 15:40
I only been to two. Okay. But I went on Wednesday night and do the opening pitch. And it was do you practice? Did you warm up? Well, you know, it’s kind of interesting, because I had some people on my staff who kind of helped make it happen and big, big fans. And they were very, very nervous. And I never played competitive baseball. And when I was younger, I play constantly I spent all my time playing catch, right and you know, and a little bit of pickup pickup baseball, and
Nestor Aparicio 16:09
8you weren’t a real nice kid.
Stueart Pittman 16:11
You know, what were you the only games that ever went to a Washington Senators that met Oh, wow, do that. Oh, 61 I was young at the time. All right, but 70 wants to by the time you were 10 That was it. But you know my arm Joan Jett did just adopt the Orioles you know, I fell I fell off horses a lot of had three broken collarbones. And when you do that, you get the frozen shoulder and everything is you’re recuperating and my shoulders aren’t in great shape. So so somebody on my staff said Chris Trumbauer, my budget officers that he comes in to work with a couple of baseball baseball mitts and a baseball and says let’s go outside and I want to you know, I want to practice. I want you to proud of this. This was about two weeks. Okay. All right. And so, you know, we played catch for a while through some pitches to him and and then I could hardly move my shoulder right next day. So that’s why for an event you don’t do this the day before, so I didn’t know more practice. Took a couple of Advil. Right? And I survived. Did you throw it? Okay. Well, you know, so there’s this bird that catches Come on, man. And he told me he didn’t throw it. Well, I did. I did. He told me he told me just don’t throw it low because I can’t bend over too far. And we got this thing going all the birds is different people in the costume, you know, who can catch the most. And so I threw it perfectly straight. It was a little high. It was a little high. So it was not a strike here to put his you know, just got it there.
Nestor Aparicio 17:27
I got it. Yeah, mount or download you went low. Right. Well, you know what I asked special permission to get up on the Mount. I did watch video you went to the Mount, they wouldn’t let me on. They won’t let you on the mount right in front of them. So little promotion from we’re doing here because it’s our 25th anniversary, and I have these wacky signs. So number 25. I’m counting down our 25 stories of glory. We’ve had the station for 25 years since 1998. So that’s an accomplishment unto itself owning an am radio station keeping it vibrant, vibrant enough that he gets in a car from Annapolis, it comes up here. So the old side this is 1997 clobber Cleveland sign. We have the back of it, it says get defense signs and wacko for Flacco Well, the only ones we’re getting now that’s 1997. This is a Terps get nasty sign from before they won the national championship back in 2001. I believe and Steve that Steve McNair that we had there Freebirds absolutely no but free to purchase course you do. So I have all of these signs. This isn’t going to be number 25 on our list. But higher up the list was this crazy baseball tour. My wife and I it’s my wife got cancer in March of 14, had a transplant that summer to summer 15. We had always talked about going to every baseball stadium. So I did a tour we swapped and did all this stuff. Rick Vaughn, who was the PR Director of the Orioles in 9291, and 92 and 93 for the all star game. When they close the stadium, the whole field of dreams thing that was his thing. He was the PR director for the Tampa rays. So I called around all the teams to get tables. So we could swabs we can save lives to the bone marrow registry. Go to there. There goes my hero.org If you want more information about the organization we’ve worked with up in Harford County, and we’re going down to Tampa, by swabs. So, cute tips in your mouth is your DNA, right? It’s your marker. They send that off that is that is what the man who saved my wife’s life did in Germany. He was at a college swabbing. And it was an event for a kid who had died of leukemia that he knew his friend’s brother died of leukemia. And he’s like, Hey, you want to get on the bone marrow registry? What what do I have to do? Well, if you’re the perfect match, you either have to give blood peripherally or through your hip. It’s a lot less painless and less arduous than it was 20 years ago. So my wife needed a match because she had no family to match. So she had to go out on the registry and have her life saved by a stranger who’s now friends and family. He’s in Germany. We’re taking him to the game Frankfort in November, so he saved her life. So in 15 we decided to do this baseball tour. And Rick Vaughn says to me, I wanted to throw out the first pitch in town. But, and I’m like, well, there won’t be a big crowd there. So if you Okay, she won’t be too nervous, you know? And kid Rick, they’re really good then. So we went down and he got you know, I had to get her ready. My wife can play ball. My mom was pretty athletic way more than I thought for being not an athlete. I mean, she could throw a baseball no problem. So we brought her out there and she really got cocky wanting to get up on the mat. And Rick would not let her do it just wouldn’t let her do it. And but she did it from below the man she threw up pretty good striker. So she did okay. So she can do a lot of pressure. It was a ton of pressure on her. I
Stueart Pittman 20:33
had people who work for me that I was sure that if I really made made a hit the ground they were gonna resign. They couldn’t work for me anymore if I couldn’t throw pitch.
8Nestor Aparicio 20:41
So I was interviewing my wife and she’s asked her like, are you nervous? She’s like, I’m a lot more nervous. County executive Steuart Pittman, you may recognize him for throwing the ball high in a way last week at Camden Yards. We’re doing the Maryland crab cake tour. It’s all presented by the Maryland lottery in conjunction with our friends at window nation. I have Leslie SRI is going to be here my original producer Ray Bachman is going to join us down here Pappus in England Bernie’s Alright, so Orioles and ravens. I mean, this is I’m sports guy like 32 years I’ve been doing sports on the radio. The last 10 I’ve been mixing and people like you in politics is that there’s never been more rabidity, then there will be in the next six 810 12 weeks if the Orioles can win a World Series or go on that pathway. And the Ravens get off to some sort of what we think they are going to five into six in one a good healthy start. We’re looking at like a fall here where a lot of your students are going to be writing the teacher notes and those excuse you know, little Stuart he needs me because that’s what October is going to play.
Stueart Pittman 21:45
So yeah, let’s just shut down the schools and I’ll go to the ballgames right. Now I didn’t say that don’t look if you have the power to do that. Oh, I do not. You know, my kids. My my kids would love me forever. See,
Nestor Aparicio 21:56
I will give Brandon Scott a hard time at this because the city of Baltimore in Louisville when I go to the Kentucky Derby on that Friday. The whole place is shut down. It’s true. I mean, like that Friday. First Friday May is a I don’t County State. I don’t know if they’re doing Lexington two or they’re doing it everywhere. But the part is Kentucky I’ve been in. It has been like a high religious holiday. Like it is a shutdown. opening date was that when thunder Hawk when I was a kid, I mean, opening day we shut down
Stueart Pittman 22:28
8in Lexington, where they have Caitlin i It seems like the whole meet. Nobody goes to work. When all these people come in. And they’re
Nestor Aparicio 22:36
like, that looks like nobody does anything. Yeah, I’m up there. Horse Robin, and you’ve talked horse racing with you give me a little love and future the Preakness and few and like where? Yeah, I mean, it’s above my paygrade 72 years. But I worry, you know, we all should worry. And then just the sport itself, like, you know, I had Bob Baffert on year and a half ago, and Bob’s from No Bob 30 years, right? Bob wins the derby. And I text them on like, Hey, you’re gonna come on the show. Yeah, I’ll come on. But I want to come on earlier in the week. So we did a zoom on the Friday after they went through your year and a half ago. And I walked into Costas Sunday morning. And you know, he’s big horse racing guy. You know, he has horses everywhere. I walked in for crabs. And he said, Baffert, he’s been cheating. I’m like, No, I just had him on last night. We just did like a 30 minute zoom. He’s like, you’re not going to be able to run it. His horse is disqualified. Yeah. And I’m like, man, and then I talked to horse racing people. And it’s almost like, the political realm you’re in where there’s sort of like, there are Bob apologist and their Bob defenders or Barry Bob, guys, right? Yeah. And so on all of that. They got it. The industry’s got to get its act together. I mean, that’s me. That’s what everybody says. And they need a commissioner like you when you’re done by the county.
Stueart Pittman 23:53
It’s hard. I mean, you know, people think everybody in horse racing is super wealthy, and, and not, and doesn’t care about the horses, the people who work on the back stretch of the racetrack. They are so passionate, they, most of them don’t make much money. And, and it’s a hard life. It’s a hard life.
Nestor Aparicio 24:12
I remember when I first started going in the Preakness being a guy that covered hockey, and that’s not an easy life. Yeah, getting on buses and play modeling. But when I saw the stalls and saw these creatures as a young person who didn’t grow up around horses a different level of respect, yeah,
8Stueart Pittman 24:27
yeah. I mean, they’re incredible creatures. They are, you know, they’re, they’re almost like wild animals, their spirit and their desire to run. But they’re domesticated and they have this loyalty to people and they connect with people like they’re part of the herd and you fall in love with them really easily. And I was never part of the horse racing world. I was part of actually got horses off the racetrack when they were done and then train them for second career. So it was like job retraining for horse riders. Riding horses would turn them into riding horses. Yeah, you know, kids could ride them. I mean, they’re not easy. They’re not the easiest horse. They’re not
Nestor Aparicio 24:58
trying to get me on a horse for 20 Here’s she she rode horses as a kid,
Stueart Pittman 25:01
but it’s sad to see it sad to see the sport, kind of always under attack, I think some of the problems with the breakdowns have to do with the breeding of the horses, they’re there. They’re not, they’re not as tough as they used to be. And, and, and in some ways, it’s like you pamper them more and more and more they get, they get massage, they get chiropractic, they get all these these these fancy things to make them feel good. And then they don’t realize they have pain, and then they run through it, and then they hurt themselves catastrophically and, and nobody’s figured out how to you know how to put a horse in a sling so that it can heal a broken bone because the horses system, you know, it just doesn’t, it doesn’t work, they need to be able to move around and stay alive and or standing on three legs and one of their legs starts to swell up. So so they end up getting euthanized. It’s it’s sad, and it’s terrible. But horses in the field do the same thing. So you see it, you hear about it at the racetrack when it happens, but you don’t hear about it when it happens out in the field for a horse on the farm, and and it’s it’s just a storm of bad news for horse racing. And I don’t know what direction it’s gonna go. It seems like the big races are more and more popular. So there’s certainly a market for the high end racing. It seems to be the lower end racing that is that is disappearing and fewer races. And I think in Maryland, even the industry is sort of recognized we’re not gonna have to race tracks, one that does year round, and then Preakness pimlico’s, four and 525. Yeah, all that right. And so so they’re all trying to figure that out right now. And I hope we’ll come out of it with with something where we can still appreciate these magnificent creatures.
Nestor Aparicio 26:37
8See, I can talk to him about anything here. But when I get you on, I saved the best for last because that’s what you’re most passionate about. That’s where your heart is right.
Stueart Pittman 26:46
You know, as a kid, I always said I liked animals better than people. I still like people that I do care about. They voted.
Nestor Aparicio 26:51
Got a few more votes. Stuart Pittman here he Kenny, do you have any any like run to the finish line? What what happens when you get done doing this? Because there’s an end? It’s fine.
Stueart Pittman 27:02
There is an end? Yeah. So we have two terms term limit two terms. So I’ll be done with my second American term limits. I’m
8Nestor Aparicio 27:09
comfortable with it, too. I
Stueart Pittman 27:11
mean, I was wasn’t a politician before and I don’t want to be for my whole life. And this is good public service eight years for me. And I love to write I don’t know if you read my weekly letters that I put out, but it’s my favorite part of the week where I get to really write what I think and and who knows, man like on this show? We’ll do a bow Yeah, well, I do say whatever I think to which has somehow I’ve survived still,
Nestor Aparicio 27:33
here’s a really cool thing for you right now. Right? Like, if you have no, if you’re not going to run for governor, this or that, or whatever, you don’t ever need to get a vote again. This is like that is the gravy time have a second term, right? It’s sort of saying, do say what I want because you’re not gonna vote for me, again, we’re gonna do this the right way. Right? You don’t
Stueart Pittman 27:48
8have to play the same kind of politics, you do have to pay that play the politics, if you want to get something hard done, you need political support for it. So you can’t just get away with doing stuff nobody wants. And so it’s more like being a community organizer trying to get support for good policy than it is about getting Stuart Pittman elected. See, it’s
Nestor Aparicio 28:07
fun to ask you this because I would say what would you do that nobody would like to if you could get away with if you could, if you could change the world with one thing, what would you change?
Stueart Pittman 28:16
You know, the part that’s probably hard is, you know, every we need housing. We need housing for all of our workforce talk to says and it’s so hard because nobody wants development. Nobody wants growth. It’s like, you know, I’m here. It’s beautiful. I don’t want more traffic. I don’t want more kids kids in my kids school. I don’t you know, and so that’s hard and smart growth is the answer, you know, putting putting housing where people don’t have to get in a car and but we need all kinds of housing and but we don’t want to pave over the county either. We want to protect nature. So it would be nice not to have sort of opposition to every individual project, even if it’s good policy. So, but it’s st time you got to get you got to get people an opportunity to weigh in and be heard, or else the whole thing falls apart. So
Nestor Aparicio 29:07
alright, well keep running in Weld County, elbow bumping up with you. Thanks for coming by talking about your horse racing and all your initiatives and all that stuff. Middle lottery puts us on the road doing this we appreciate that John Mark will be here later on in the week talking about the 50th anniversary. They got homerun riches they got the Ravens scratch offs. I started the 50th anniversaries here. It is our 25th anniversary. Our signs are number 25 this week, this is when we can all agree on no way or say this is one of the signs I have in duct art signs here. See Joe throw Joe Flacco and wacko for Flacco so we’ve been given these way and having fun I hope everybody follows along that is brought to you by our friends a curio that’s going to be out on the front of Baltimore positive beginning September 1 Because he signs were born. The first sign I ever did was the dump Trumpy signed for Bob Trumpy pooping on Baltimore. Right in the beginning. Yeah, he really yeah he Bob Trump. He wished us cold hot dogs. empty roads warm beer. It was like that all he’s from Cincinnati is all bad wishes for Baltimore. He was a broadcaster for NBC and a tight end for the Bengals. So he was the broadcaster with Bob Costas. So that was September 1 1996. So September 1 of 2023. We’re gonna kick off our 25th anniversary with the memories of that and some pictures and all sorts of stuff. And we’re gonna be counting down the 25 stories of glory time will not dim the glory of your deeds, and helping lift us up here, Baltimore positive and wn St. I hope you get a winning lottery ticket CEE, I appreciate the staff for coming by here and you’re not running me out on all the crabcakes Your path is, but I hope to see you again soon. And thanks for being a good friend of the program. Anytime not right. Next time. I’ll get you on you’ll be former and we’ll get pet accord here and we’ll sit here and just fix horse race. There we go. Here we go. I like well, you know, Ross and I worked together to paper back in the 80s. So when he was he was ascribe. Yeah, and I was just a young intern and all that stuff. So
8Stueart Pittman 30:57
you should get Ross pet accord on here. He’s a hoot.
Nestor Aparicio 31:00
I had him on up in Reisterstown on Main Street up there. We’re talking about all the stuff he’s doing for the horses so good. I’m not often I get the horse people around. There’s still a few of them left. We’re back for more here in Pappas. Leslie Street is gonna join us we’re gonna talk about productive day Ray Bachman is going to be here our former executive producer, and I’m sure he’s going to do plenty to embarrass me that he hasn’t already done 25 years ago. 25 years account of strong back for more in Glenburnie stay with us.
