How and why The Y continues to lift our community with federal support

Our defending champion of community returns to Koco’s Pub on “A Cup of Soup or Bowl Week” as John Hoey of The Y joins Nestor to discuss community programs like Head Start affected by federal money and why community schools matter in the neighborhoods that need them the most.

John Hoey from the Y discussed the impact of federal funding on community programs, particularly Head Start, which receives a third of their revenue. Head Start, a federal program since the 1960s, supports children from families below the federal poverty line, providing preschool education and wraparound services. The Y is the largest Head Start provider in Maryland, with 30 sites. They also run 12 family centers, 30 community schools, and 6 preschools. Hoey emphasized the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and highlighted the need for a coherent strategy to improve Baltimore’s neighborhoods and attract families.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

federal funding, Head Start, community programs, preschool education, wraparound services, community schools, poverty reduction, family support, diversity inclusion, Baltimore positive, Y programs, volunteer opportunities, neighborhood investment, leadership, Orioles outlook

SPEAKERS

Nestor Aparicio, John Hoey

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Nestor Aparicio  00:00

Welcome home. We are W, m, s, t AM, 1570 towns of Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. We are positively here on day three, which is really day two. We’ll get back to that a couple Super Bowl. It’s all brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery got Raven scratch offs. Excuse me, magic eight ball scratch offs. They just look like because they’re purple. I’ve been saying Raven scratch offs for six months. These are the freshies here. We’re going to be on Thursday at State Fair in Catonsville, on Friday at Coopers north, with some gumbo for the Super Bowl and all that good stuff. We call it a cup of Super Bowl. It’s all for the Maryland food bank. And locally, I’m actually going up the street to Hamilton to donate the canned goods that come today for the Maryland Food Bank. We’re Cocos pub. We’re in beautiful laraville. You become part of the furniture over here. John Hoey is here for the Y he’s taking time out after I stood him up at Gertrude last month to come over. It’s always good to see you, man. How are you

John Hoey  00:53

good to see you? I’m doing well, it’s, you know, I’ll meet you in any good restaurant. There’s a lot of them in Baltimore. Well,

Nestor Aparicio  00:59

I saw that crab cake you devoured here, that gigantic 11 ounce softball. Well, for you and the Y on a day like this, it’s Super Bowl week. It’s cup of Super Bowl. We have new government, new federal government. I can’t have you sit down and talk about where federal funding begin. You’re the first one I’ve talked to about this since the old guy came back to be the new guy and decreeing that he’s taking the Gaza Strip in Greenland and Panama, Lord knows, whatever else. But when he starts talking about federal workers internally, it’s one thing to threaten Canada or Mexico, but on federal workers, I only think of like Social Security. You know, all the basic things you think about. And then I bring it down to, is the bridge gonna get built? That’s a whole transportation issue. But then I think about, I call you would do gooders, if that’s okay for me to say, but these quasi but, but quasi state run, federal run, funded historic 100 years or more doing things in the community with Salvation Army, any of these places that do good things that I try to spotlight at the heart. Maybe it’s not the aorta is federal, but it’s certainly, you know, part of the nervous system of every organization like yours. Yeah.

John Hoey  02:16

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I mean, federal funding helps do a lot of things. And the reality is, a lot of the federal dollar goes to local organizations, ultimately to deliver services that the government is funding. So you know, for us, the where about a third of our revenue comes either directly or indirectly from the federal government, a third, a third. Now,

Nestor Aparicio  02:45

how that doesn’t come in the same way that we would think about it comes in other names, right? Like it comes. So you see, your federal money is a program that someone went to Washington, DC, maybe in the 1950s or 60s or 70s, and continue to lobby on behalf of, hey, the whys so important that it and it’s such an institution that it needs it. We need Washington money, right? Well, yeah,

John Hoey  03:08

in our case, the largest part of that is Head Start, which we’re the largest provider of Head Start in the state of Maryland. But Head Start is being delivered throughout the entire state by many different folks and across the Head Start

Nestor Aparicio  03:24

is that 345, year old, six year is that? What that is preschool Head

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John Hoey  03:28

Start is a federal program created in the 1960s by Lyndon Johnson. That was right, Great Society Program, some of which worked well, some of them didn’t, but it’s really been one of the most successful programs to help kids of families who are at or below the federal poverty level be prepared to enter kindergarten, ready to read, ready to roll.

Nestor Aparicio  03:54

And they’ve done a good enough job of branding it that an idiot from Dundalk who has a radio show, actually knows what it is. Yeah, they’re like, literally, I knew what it was.

John Hoey  04:02

There you go, and what’s and so, yes, it focuses. There’s both Early Head Start, which works with young with mothers who haven’t even birth their child yet. So helps a young mother in is that wick, no, no. Wick. Maybe another program that, okay, receives, I’m

Nestor Aparicio  04:21

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just thinking of pregnant mother programs, because I had a pregnant mother

John Hoey  04:24

in my life at one point. Sure. Well, Early Head Start helps pregnant women who are at or below the federal poverty level, ensure that they’re ready to to have a child, and then carries them early, sort of in the first year, and then regular, the regular Head Start program will pick up at age, basically age two through five, really more through four now, because we have universal pre K in Maryland and and it really it so it provides what we would think of as traditional preschool programming, but it also provides a whole. Whole bunch of wraparound services for these families. So day care ish kind of things too. It’s not simply daycare. So we’re not just watching kids. We’re we’re educating them, we’re helping them develop so that when they enter kindergarten, they are ready to be successful. And in fact, the kids that come through Head Start are actually further ahead than the average Maryland kid who hits kindergarten.

Nestor Aparicio  05:29

So you got 60 years of data to back that up, right up so, and it’s a really, it’s better to have kids in structure earlier. It’s better to have them in professional guidance.

John Hoey  05:40

Literally, it’s better to give them all the both educational and developmental opportunities they need. It. It puts them with caring adults who are well trained. It allows them to understand some of the socialization that all all of us as little kids need to learn a lot of things don’t pull her hair,

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Nestor Aparicio  06:01

things like that share.

John Hoey  06:04

So, yeah, exactly. So, you know, head starts a really important program, and it’s delivered locally here in Central Maryland by the by the Y and other organizations, but we’re the largest of all of those in terms of the amount that we do. And so that program is really important, and I’m, look, I’m as I’m a taxpayer, you’re a taxpayer, right? So we all, we should scrutinize every dollar that is spent by our federal government. But I can tell you as a sort of lifelong business person, that that is a good that you get. We get as a community and as a country, the return on that investment is huge, huge,

Nestor Aparicio  06:46

1/3 of So, so it’s a lot of money, 30 some odd million dollars you’re getting at this here for Central Maryland and why. So let’s start the beginning. John, always here, we’re at Cocos. It’s, I call it crab cake row. It’s cup, Super Bowl when people hear the Y and, you know, I sort of jumped into it. I don’t know exactly how many centers. I know there was one in Dundalk town. Every community sort of had one at one point. I think anybody familiar with Memorial Stadium, they could watch us from last year talk about the Memorial Stadium story, and that being the why, what is the modern why for everybody out there in any neighborhood, from Essex, Middle River, Perry, Hall, belly or anywhere around here, you mentioned Carroll County, me, we were having lunch here earlier. How many centers, how many people, how many employees get? Give everybody a scope of what the why is, right?

John Hoey  07:33

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So we’re pretty large, comprehensive organization, and we don’t do just one thing. We do a lot of different things, right? So we have, I’ll try to run through some basic stats here. Okay, sure, without, you know, because elevator speech, it’s very hard to describe us in one you know, sense, but at our core, what we’re doing is helping to build healthy, connected, inclusive community around Central Maryland, right? And so to do that, what most people will know us by is our large why, Family Centers. We have 12 of those around the region. But when

Nestor Aparicio  08:13

I think, what is the why? If you somebody said, what, it’s a community center building, yeah, it’s a place that brings people together to build better community, right? And

John Hoey  08:21

so that’s at the core of it. But in surrounding all that are what I just meant, things like Head Start. So we have 30 Head Start sites around the region. We have, we’re responsible for over 30 community schools around the region, and we are providing consulting to several counties on how to implement their community school work. We have six preschools. We do 50 before and after school programs in schools around the region.

Nestor Aparicio  08:58

When you say Community School, I want to stop you on that right, define that, define what it can. Because I don’t know that everybody we try to do Schoolhouse Rock for civics. We’ll do that in our next episode. But I don’t think everybody’s familiar with the community school well,

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John Hoey  09:11

and they wouldn’t be community schools. Let me start Community Schools is really a strategy. It’s not a program so and it’s really something that is now taken off federally, but has been adopted in Maryland as part of the blueprint. So the community school strategy is really about focusing on schools that are located in communities with high concentrations of poverty. So we all know you can build a beautiful new school in a community that’s, you know that is has very significant challenges, but if the if you don’t have all the conditions that allow kids to come. School and learn. Focus on learning. It’s not going to happen, right? So what the community school strategy says that we want to provide a whole series of resources emanating from the school to help the kids and the families in that community be successful, so above

Nestor Aparicio  10:23

and beyond math and reading and writing, an actual itself,

John Hoey  10:26

the school you know, has a curriculum, the teachers are teaching, the principal is leading, but the community what we do, and the community school strategy says we put a community school coordinator in there, in the in these schools, and that person works with the school community, the parents, the faculty and the students to determine what resources do they need to help ensure that kids are showing Up to school, learning, not dropping out So,

Nestor Aparicio  11:02

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and that’s sometimes, clothing, transportation, childcare, parents, incarcerated, just on and on and all

John Hoey  11:09

those things that in, you know, the sort of prototypical suburban school like, you know, I went to a huge public school in New York, upstate New York, right? And there was definitely certain people, some people with who are dealing with poverty, but most people got on the bus every day, went to smoke, right, right? The American dream, right, right? You got on the bus, had parents when you got home, got Exactly, yeah, great teachers who busted your chops, right? And after school, you either got on the bus or you went play sports or hung out in the library or whatever you did, and you went home and you had two parents, and

Nestor Aparicio  11:49

there’s a lot of places, clearly, that’s not the case, right? That’s just not. That is not,

John Hoey  11:53

yeah, so in a community school environment, you’ve got to bring resources. So yeah, you have, you have food pantries in all these community schools that we that we work with people like the Maryland Food Bank to ensure that kids have kids and families have food you have. We have GED programs so that, you know, parents who haven’t gotten their high school diploma can get that we have. We ensure that there are after school programs, which we would typically run. Some of these things, we work with partners. Well,

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Nestor Aparicio  12:26

the interesting thing is that I think what I would say about what you’re teaching me, and I’ve had a couple community school people on say it’s a school for more than just the kids. We’re thinking about more than just the kids, getting them in and getting a grade and getting them out. You know, that’s what school has been in America, right? And then there’s after school drop in, and there’s sports in the intramurals. And you know, it’s all these

John Hoey  12:47

things that are engaging people to that really ultimately help ensure that when you the kids are in a classroom studying math or science or history, whatever they’re doing, that, they feel supported. They’re fed, you know, like again, we take for granted. When I went to school, I worked with a big family. We didn’t have a lot of money, but, you know, we had, we had breakfast before we went to school. We got there, you know, I didn’t really if I came home with a bad report card, I didn’t have anyone to blame but myself, right? But, you know, my father made sure I understood that. But you know, if you, if you’re showing up to school and you you’re not fed, you’re hungry, you’re you don’t have a change of clothes, so you’re wearing the same clothes you’ve been wearing. As

Nestor Aparicio  13:35

an example for me as a kid, I come to dock in Colgate, right? Not, not in any way, a rich place, blue collar. And I was talking to more people about this, especially as you get older. I lost a friend this week, and we’re just talking about some of the kids in the neighborhood. You go in their house and they didn’t have furniture like you did. I was a boy. I mean, I’m eight, 910, I didn’t really some kids live with their grandparents. Some kids only have one parent. You’re trying to navigate that in the 1970s but as I go back, as you even talk about this, and I think about, what would the line be? Is that I got in line for lunch in the little cafeteria of Miss Renata every day. And some kids had a little blue ticket, yeah, they had a free lunch, right? And I was like, I want a free lunch, you know, like, as a kid, yeah. How do I get that? And I think my parents had to say, no, no, no, no, no. That’s, you know, Richie’s got a, you know, different situation or whatever. And I definitely knew some kids that had the blue tickets, and I didn’t think at that time stigma. You’re eight years old, you don’t think they have less, they’re poor, they’re whatever that stigma would be, you know, think about that. But that was Community School coming to my neighborhood, just making sure these kids had a lunch that I had to pay 65 cents for, but they got for free. So

John Hoey  14:49

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it levels the playing field, sure, so the things that in other neighborhood schools are not issues are. Issues in spades in these schools. So you have the community school director coordinator who’s ensuring that these services are there, and it’s a combination of partnering with folks, identifying all different kinds of things that are needed, so that at the end of the day, the teachers are focused on teaching. They’re not trying to be the social worker. They’re not trying. They’re not trying to, like, take

Nestor Aparicio  15:26

care of problems outside the school. They’re not trying to

John Hoey  15:29

figure out how to feed a kid who’s starving when he shows up, right? All those kind of things we you know. So 30 of those you have, you said, so we’re, yeah, we’re responsible for 30 of those, which makes us, again, the largest community school provider in the region. And you know, that’s why I go back to like the what the y is really all about is building healthy, connected, inclusive communities. By the way, all the kids that are in a program, in a community school, they’re all members of the Y. The families are members. Every family that’s got a kid in Head Start are members of the y all these programs, our view is, everyone deserves access. Everyone deserves to be part of a community. So we don’t want we don’t view these services as all in silos. They all lead to being a member of the Y community and giving you access to these set big centers where you can you can be an equal. So you and I can walk in and let’s say I’m on food you know, I’m on food stamps, and you’re not. I may be paying a lot less than you or but we all have access to the same stuff, the same programs. You and I can swim in the same pool. We can be in the same you know, Youth and Government program together, et cetera, et cetera. What we’re saying is we don’t want to live in a society where our access to things that we should all have is bifurcated, that only some people get to live a full life and other people can’t. At the why our job is to figure out how to remove barriers, and that’s why we have to do so many different things, right? We have to, we have to meet parents and families where they are, and we have to provide a range of services to them. I haven’t even talked about mentoring. We do a ton of Well, you

Nestor Aparicio  17:28

said two of the three words that the President, excuse me, I’ll never say that again. The guy running the country, equity, inclusion, you didn’t mention diversity, but that’s kind of built into it. I guess at this point, these things have been vilified. You said inclusion, just often, just as a part of your heart as you are, and the heart of the organization, and most organizations in this country that I would want to be a part of include diversity and inclusion, right? So to vilify those kinds of terms at a street level. It’s, it’s offensive to me. Yeah,

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John Hoey  18:04

well, I mean, look, we’ve gotten into a world where we sort of have got, you know, we demonize certain words we you know. And some, sometimes people get performative about certain things, you know. The wise been doing this work, and a lot of great organizations have been focused on ensuring that everyone can participate, right so we can my view is, I don’t use those words because they’ve been vilified, but you’ve been using

Nestor Aparicio  18:35

them your whole life. Though they have meaning to you. They have real meaning to you. What I

John Hoey  18:40

joke is like, you know, I have a little different perspective, maybe than the most people who will run, you know, not for profits do about these kind of things. I had a great career before I did this in for profit, yeah, and a lot of it was international, so I’ve spent a lot of my time professionally in countries and places where I look different, I was the one who stuck up, stood out, where I didn’t really speak the language I had to understand how to navigate. I love that, by the way. And as a kid growing up, I never thought I’d get that. I was

Nestor Aparicio  19:18

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a white man in America, you rarely walk into a room where, right, where.

John Hoey  19:21

So I, I have grown to love the fact that the world is a complicated place, that people have different. You know, they look different, they act different, they talk different. And that, to me, is like a strength of of our country. And so I don’t, I don’t think to me. I don’t think about these things as a problem. I think about them as an opportunity, an opportunity. Like, I joke, you know, like I would be mortified if I ran into too many people who looked like me and acted like me. That would be a bad thing, right? So I. You know, diversity, to me, is just a fact. I don’t know why we would argue or diversity, like, just look behind our shoulder. We do right here, right? Every, every 10 years in our country, we do a census, right? And then the census produces a lot of rich data. So like, the data is there, I don’t even know what we’re debating, right? And the other thing is, if you’re going to be ineffective, whether you’re a bit of business trying to reach customers, or you’re an organization like ours trying to reach people in the community, I always tell our folks, it’s that old, great, old thing that I don’t know who said it first, but the way Wayne Gretzky was described he was great because he was skating to where the puck was going, right, not where it was, not where it was. And then if you’re going to be effective at what you do, you got to skate to where the puck is going. So the reason I bring that up is the community is always changing, right? So if we’re going to be effective, we’ve got to understand those changes and address the community as it becoming, not as it was.

Nestor Aparicio  21:07

So I get over with you and do a tour. I haven’t been, you know, I mean, I got to come over and see the new because I haven’t done it. I’ve been really having a full, full disclosure. I talk to you about it all the time, but I see this vision through you. You get so excited talking about, yeah, because you’ve been doing. How many years been running? Why I

John Hoey  21:23

accepted this role in 2,006/20

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Nestor Aparicio  21:28

year coming up? Well, 19th

John Hoey  21:29

year coming up, you know, you know, every

Nestor Aparicio  21:34

19 years, what? What would I have walked into your place the day I met you, and I met you right about that, because you were in my building years ago at a Christmas party, I remember meeting you in the hallway outside of my house, and what would I found then? And what would I find now that would be different, other than Wi Fi and obvious technological things that have changed. Wow.

John Hoey  21:55

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Candidly, everything’s different. I mean, we’re almost four times as large as we were then, as we were then, we do so many more things. I think the intentionality, what I’m most proud of is that there’s a real intentionality behind everything we do, and that we have a culture that is really focused on executing our strategy. I think back then, the Y did some good things, but it was kind of random. There was a lot less work going on. Most of the buildings you’d walk into were pretty crappy, to be honest.

Nestor Aparicio  22:32

Only one I was in as like, more times than not, the Dundalk y dun Duk, you know, folks would go over there and swim. My dad, I I know what it looked like. I know where it was. I’ve been in there. It had been a long time. And I don’t know if you found that 1999 or 2007 that had changed much. I don’t know.

John Hoey  22:52

Yeah, it’s funny story there that why was bought by the county years ago. Yeah, I’ve never heard of it forever. Then the county came, Jim Smith, when he was county executive, came to me and said, we have this building we own in Dundalk. By the way, it used to be the y like and it’s got a pool. Can you help us run it? So, you know, we’ve been running that portion of that building. We should. We’re if I go back, I’ll recognize it. Yeah, it’s reopening now. Okay, it glad I brought it closed around COVID and the county Canada took almost four years to make the repairs they need to make. So it’s gonna be reopening. So

Nestor Aparicio  23:39

look, I’m not gonna get mad at a Johnny O’s gone. We have all this saying we got a new elementary school in Dundalk. I got a new elementary school Colgate. I have a new high school, Dundalk. We talked to, I sang the Dundalk high alma mater here on Monday. So

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John Hoey  23:54

Dundalk, the high school. And Dundalk is quite attractive. I’ve been in there many times. We do some work in that school. Look, I mean, and look, Dundalk is different than it was. Right To me, that’s a good thing. When I look, I was, I was born in New York City. I grew up in upstate New York, but I’m, I’m still like a new york city kid at heart. One of when I was living in Manhattan in my 20s to me, it was like the and it still is the greatest place, because you over the course of the day, you would experience people from every almost every country. It was like, and it was so invigorating, right? It was invigorating that city exists because of diversity. My you know, great great grandparents came to this country from Ireland, right? Not unusual, you know, and people have been coming to New York City for 200 years. You

Nestor Aparicio  25:00

to sing some Neil Diamond for you. Far now they’ve been trapped

John Hoey  25:06

the so that idea that this is the place people come to, everywhere to really

Nestor Aparicio  25:15

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come into they do, though, I understand that, but there that’s but that’s but that’s about like it’s true. Though I’m not laughing, I’m smiling. But when

John Hoey  25:24

did that become demonized? Yeah, I don’t know.

Nestor Aparicio  25:29

The minute there were more of us Latin Venezuela than there were people look like they were from Ireland. I guess. I don’t know. But you

John Hoey  25:39

know, every Gen when the Irish started coming over, the Irish were the outcasts. Oh, no question, we were Catholic, and we weren’t really to be trusted, and we did all the crap jobs. You know, my my, my father and his family. We grew up in the ghetto part of Harlem, where African Americans in Harlem wouldn’t live that left the least of it, the little grounding Irish lived in, you know, so like we’ve been doing that to the latest arrivals forever in this country, right? Again, I love history. I’m constantly reading history. I wish more people would read history and understand, sort of where we all came from, and I think would be just be helpful for us. Look, immigration system in this country needs to be reformed. That’s been a need for 15 years. You know, there’s only one entity that can really do that. It’s called the US Congress, right? It needs to be reformed. There’s been so many so that’s, I think any thinking human being would agree with that. But the idea that we don’t want certain people, certain people from certain countries to come to this country is just not our history.

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Nestor Aparicio  27:07

It’s just not one. It doesn’t it doesn’t make up any room I’ve ever been in in a city in this country, or any organization like the Y, quite frankly, any you know, decent school, any decent business, you know diversity is strength, I think that that’s been born out over our country for 250 years. Yeah.

John Hoey  27:24

I mean, it’s not at least the last 150 let’s start complicated and over time. You know, the other thing I always like to say, we’re all kind of, we’re all kind of mutts, right? Absolutely, over time, different different races, different ethnic groups, intermarry and like. So we all have a little bit of, you know, I kind of, my Irish heritage is the biggest part of me. I know I got other things in there. You got other that’s a strength, that’s good.

Nestor Aparicio  27:54

I’m gonna DNA me 24 and Me. Me. John Hoey is here. He runs the wives Central Maryland. He runs a whole bunch of different places and things. I want to ask you, just on the why side of things, and your people here and the city, the city goes this, Baltimore positive. We sort of did this to talk about Baltimore. What do you see in Baltimore? It through Brandon Scott’s term, through COVID, through first Trump second Trump Biden money. This the bridge going down. Us trying to rebuild the city to some degree, crime. You’d say crime’s down a little bit. Certainly, murders are down in a certain way. What on a daily basis? Give me a state of the city as you see it, because you drive around the city,

John Hoey  28:35

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yeah, and I live in the city, so, you know, I’ll go back to kind of my theme. I think the city continues to evolve. I I think the city, in many parts, many parts of the city, are definitely rebounding. You know, I think Baltimore as a city has a lot of untapped potential. That’s what I see, is we’ve got, we haven’t lived up to our potential, but we could. And you know, that’s not a political statement. I think we’ve got, you know, we’ve got a lot of elected officials who are working really hard. So I’m not going to comment on the political side of it. It’s, you know, to me, if you’re willing to go out there, run for office, put yourself out there, then, you know,

Nestor Aparicio  29:26

I respect and answer questions and try hard be accountable. That’s all that’s all we can ask. Try to do what you say you’re gonna do. That’s all I ask, because it’s not easy. But to me,

John Hoey  29:37

Baltimore needs to start attracting back families. It needs to be where you have healthy neighborhoods, where people want to live, and we have some great neighborhoods like that. In Baltimore, we’re setting one right now, absolutely, but we have too many where, which I think there’s a lot of good people. Trying to live, but it’s really hard. And, you know, we at the wine we serve a lot of those, you know, neighborhoods we’re got head starts in those neighborhoods we’re in where the community school providers in those neighborhoods, and

Nestor Aparicio  30:13

that is the job generator is, you know, giving you skills to be employable, to contribute to our society, right? And my takeaway

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John Hoey  30:21

and spending time in the in those neighborhoods is you have a real you have people who really want what everyone wants. They want. They want to live a decent life, they want a job, they want their kids to be safe, they want their kids to go to school, all of that, but there’s too much going on around them, which is, which is making that really difficult. And, and Baltimore, you know, it’s look Nestor, you. And I know that there’s a lot of people in this community, and I get it who will not come into the city.

Nestor Aparicio  30:57

I’m trying to change that every day. And, you know, I go into the city of three days this week. I mean, I’m in the city every day. I lived in the city for 19 years. I didn’t leave because I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it. I wouldn’t come back. I would go to Maui. I like it better. I’m not gonna lie. But, you know, key A would be better. You know, I’m saying, but I think, you know,

John Hoey  31:17

we need a healthy city. And so I, you know, I’m an optimist by nature. I see that this kind of stuff look nothing’s ever going to be perfect, but I think we’ve got to do a better job of investing in neighborhoods and understanding that, that it’s going to take a very significant effort by a lot of different parties who have a common goal to turn some of this stuff around. It can’t just be done by, you know this, by the government. It can’t just be done by the private sector. It can’t just be done by not for profits. What we’ve lacked in the city of Baltimore is a real coherent strategy like and that’s really hard to come by, but cities that have improved a lot, they have a fundamental strategy, and they stick to it well. They

Nestor Aparicio  32:16

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also have a coalition of business people and leadership that is that moved Baltimore forward in the 70s and 80s, in whatever way. You would say it was a group of bankers, leaders, people of affluence and wealth, that didn’t want to run from the city or buy the newspaper to wreck the city. They were trying to really contribute to city. You know, yeah,

John Hoey  32:36

and I still think there’s a lot of people who want to be helpful, but I don’t think they’ve been galvanized, correct? I would agree with that. And so

Nestor Aparicio  32:46

I meet him every day. I meet all of you every day trying to Bobby John how he’s here. I want to wrap things up with you. Most important thing isn’t that fascism has come to America. Some guy from South Africa has taken over all of our information, or that the world’s best crab cakes are here in Baltimore, and I’m sitting at Cocos. Do we have enough pitching? I’m gonna take Give me Give me this. How are you feeling about the Orioles? Let’s get

John Hoey  33:05

to something really important. I think they’re gonna need more starting pitches. See, I knew that

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Nestor Aparicio  33:10

you’re gonna say that because you’re a baseball man. Baseball, baseball man.

John Hoey  33:15

But I think you know, talk about leadership. Everything starts with leadership? Well, they got new leadership, new owner, they’ve got, I think, a great general manager. So they’re a really well run team. And I think the question is, are they going to really be willing to invest baseball’s of, you know, no salary cap. And so it’s a kind of a it’s different than the NFL, where everybody ultimately can’t, the Dodgers are going to spend a little more. So the others spend a lot more. You know, my team, the Mets, we’re not we’re not afraid to spend either. I think the Orioles are going to have to figure out how to be competitive in this new land, in this landscape, but I think they got the right people in charge. So that’s what would look a little like

Nestor Aparicio  33:58

Oscar Madison, if you put that Mets hat on. I love Oscar. John always here. He’s at the Y talk about what they can do and how they can help you. Just in a general sense, there’s wise in every neighborhood,

John Hoey  34:10

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yeah. Well, I mean, we always need your support. You know, going to why maryland.org Join the Y volunteer. We have lots of opportunities to volunteer. Go on our website to look for that. And ultimately, I think at the end of the day, just do something positive for your community. I mean, that’s the most important way you can all do we can all complain. But I’m more interested in the doers than the

Nestor Aparicio  34:34

complainers. John O from the Y, he drops the mic on that. It’s all brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lobby as well as wise markets. Not the why, but wise markets. We call them wise conversations. Big appreciation. Everybody makes happen. Liberty, pure solutions as well. I’d letter Raskin on. We have these magic eight, but I love the magic because I can rub it. I have a thing I can give away now, and it’s not Raven season anymore, but I do have here. In attendance. TJ, Humphries, who was the Ravens tickets for life winner last year, who works as a specialist in in helping people get back putting their lives back together. He’s in recovery himself, and we’re going to meet. TJ in a couple minutes. I don’t have a Ravens ticket to give him away, but I do have a bunch of these at Cocos. Thursday, we will be at State Fair in Catonsville. Friday, we will be moving our show up to Cooper’s north, where I’ll have some gumbo to honor the Super Bowl. And then next Wednesday, Harford County at libs grill, we have Harford County Executive Bob Castle, who I’ve never met before. He’ll be out with Joe slipka, who I know too well, and a bunch of other folks Nick up at libs grill. And I think I have some council people that have all sorts of things going on in Harford County next week. So we’ll be there. We’re getting back down to Fayette Lee’s. I had a snafu on Tuesday. I’m not going to admit what I did until the week’s over, but it was my fault. I am Nestor back for more from Coco’s. It is the Maryland crab cake tour and a cup of soup or bowl. Highly recommend. You ever had the cream of crab

John Hoey  35:54

here? I’ve had a taste of it. Phenomenal. Good. It’s anything related to crab here. I

Nestor Aparicio  36:01

got talked into this by Damian faith Lee’s and as well, Marcella. Here at COVID, they have delicious crab soup to have cost us on Monday. My wife loves the Maryland crab at Costas. I love the cream of crab here, just as a general. So my wife said, you know, oysters, crab cakes, you’ve done this before. Why don’t you do a crab soup tour. So I’m gonna do crab soup in August of this year. I’m gonna go around the steak such a beautiful time to go to Ocean City move aranco, Western Maryland. And I’m gonna try crab soups everywhere, on recommendation. And right now, and I’ve told Marcella this right now, the cream of crab here, I need to find something that’s gonna compete with it. All right, all right, that’s how good the cream of crab is here. Good challenge, yeah, well, that in the coconut shrimp. Did you all know that I am Nestor back from where we’re Coco. Stay with us. We’re doing a cup of Super Bowl. It’s Baltimore. Positive. You.