Our Maryland Crab Cake Tour of summer civic and community visits started us at The Y Swim Center in Randallstown for Juneteenth with John Hoey and Barry Williams educating Nestor about the modern world of community activities, fun and great health with The Y in Central Maryland all over the region. And the importance of partnerships with government and the local citizens that keep folks in every neighborhood moving and contributing to a better life in the land of pleasant living.
Nestor Aparicio hosts a special episode of his show at the YMCA in Randallstown, highlighting the community’s efforts to provide essential services. John Hoey and Barry Williams discuss the Y’s role in community engagement, particularly in providing swimming lessons and community health services. They emphasize the importance of federal funding, especially for Head Start programs, which support families with young children. Despite challenges, the Y continues to serve as a vital community resource, offering programs from early childhood education to senior activities. The conversation also touches on the historical significance of the Y and its impact on local communities.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
YMCA, Randallstown, community center, pool safety, childhood cancer, Maryland lottery, federal funding, Head Start, early childhood development, community health, inclusion, diversity equity, Baltimore County, nonprofit, community engagement.
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Barry Williams, John Hoey, Speaker 1
8
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T. Am 15 70,000 Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. We are positively doing something that we have not done in a long time. We’ve taken the show out on the road to some place that’s not a crab cake place, not a sponsor, not a restaurant, not even a political convention. Although I know there’s some politics at work here, because there always are. We are doing the Maryland crab cake tour at the pool at the Y in Randallstown, right across the street from Akbar palace, where I’ve eaten 1000 times at brenbrook and Reisterstown. Or, excuse me, liberty, I should say I do have friends coming from the other side of Owings Mills. We are gonna have a crab cake here today, clean cuisine. And my pal Jerry she sleeping, is going to be coming by. He’s also got a great, great promotion he’s doing to raise funds for childhood cancer and cancer awareness with Justin Burke, formerly of WMAR, just my weather in order to be 100 degrees by the time people hear this, it’s a little humid here at the pool at the y it is all brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery. I have the Back to the Future scratches. Anybody of the legal age will be here. I’ve seen some folks a little older than me, little folks a little younger than me. Everybody enjoys the pool. John Hoey is here from the Y. I have threatened to come out here and stake my my flag into the turf at the Y. Barry Williams is here. He sits on the board of the Y because, of course he does, because I thought, I’m gonna do my barrier, because he used to like run Randallstown as the principal out here’s a number of years ago. When I think of Randallstown, I think of you because that’s more my era of your education. Before you were the assistant superintendent and all the stuff you did in parks and recs, this is the sort of the gem of what a community can bring and John, how are you? You come out. You sneak onto my show once or twice a year to talk about all sorts of good things. We become sort of a friendly on and off the air. This is what it’s all about to be here in the middle of a weekday, in the middle of summer, even though you’re in a suit at the pool. I should have brought my trunks like or like Governor Schaefer, maybe my little rubber ducky or something. Yeah. How are you? Thank you for having me and hosting
John Hoey 02:02
this. I’m great. I’m thrilled you’re out here. I’m it’s great to have Barry as why board member and Barry, in his role at the county, was sort of my partner in crime, but actually, partner in good things here. That’s great. And you know, you’re right. There’s an interesting story behind this. You know, should I start there, or do you want to
Nestor Aparicio 02:26
Well, I mean, let’s, let me start with how I wound up here. I mean, you and I get together, I’ve talked about doing things with the Y and your community work, my community work, and Memorial Stadium and Brooks Robinson and Cal Ripken and all of those things from all that, but I started to talk about ways I could get involved with the Y and of course, I wound up at a Pearl Jam concert in Atlanta, walking past a y school was letting out. It was attached to an academy. I saw all this cool stuff happened about a month ago, and I had a meeting about ways we could do this. And I went up onto your website month ago, and I saw Juneteenth Celebration, y pool swim, Randallstown. And I saw this, literally. I just saw where the image that if anybody’s watching this, I said, I want to do the show right here, and I want to show this off. And I know you just open it this week, I did some swimming awareness about pool safety with kids and whatnot. So that’s how I guess. You know, I hit both of you last couple weeks, and I want to do the show over here. So that’s my story about how this happened. But this looks like a little mini miracle over here, right? It’s a beautiful facility.
John Hoey 03:34
8It’s a great facility. It’s owned by the county many moons ago. That’s my way of saying. I don’t remember exactly the date, but you guys known each other, yeah, many moons ago, when Barry was at the county and Jim Smith was a county executive, right? We were talking about, they were talking about the Randalls building a rec center in Randallstown, and they wanted a pool here. And Jim Smith, the then county executive, said to me, he said, John, we don’t run pools in the county, you know. And with the Y, be interested in getting involved. And I said, Well, you know, we’re not a third party pool operator, but we love the Randallstown community, and we want to, you know, we want to be involved. And so we do operate the pool as part of the overall rec center, but we really have created a great community here. So obviously, the pool is the center of that, and Barry was along.
Nestor Aparicio 04:37
The courts were the center of that. I walked in the wrong door? No, I walked in the door closer. I’m like, hey, it’s a gym. Where’s the pool? Everybody started pointing in this direction, like,
John Hoey 04:47
I drive far enough. So technically, you know, we’re not operating the rec center part of this, I mean, the non pool part of this building that’s operated by the county. Exactly, but we’re partners.
Nestor Aparicio 05:01
I brought maybe the right guy, or at least the old right guy, right? You
8John Hoey 05:04
know, there is, he knows. I have some
Nestor Aparicio 05:07
knowledge. Did you see the bricks come up here? Absolutely. So this building looks newish, and we’re right literally at brenbrook. We’re right into behind the plaza. It has a little access through the backside of a Home Depot, and there’s a smallish sign. Need a bigger sign out on Bremer. But, I mean, with Google Maps and whatnot, you find it. But I walked in and I’m like, I wonder how long this has been. Here’s the first thing I wonder. Because, you know,
Speaker 1 05:31
18 years, I’m
Nestor Aparicio 05:32
8gonna guess this century
John Hoey 05:34
very much, 15 years, yeah, around 15 years ago. So if I had to guess about 2010, ish, yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 05:44
so Jim Smith says we don’t run pools. So from a political standpoint, you almost became county executive. Recently, I’ve been reading up on you. What does that mean from that seat 20 years ago?
Barry Williams 05:56
Well, it was a realistic estimation of what the county could do and do well, and what it does not. And certainly, running a pool requires a lot of expertise, certainly requires a certain amount of insurance that the county really just did not have any real understanding or real vision for. And plus, the county, nor the county schools, ever ran pools, so we were kind of like in the lurch of you know, who’s going to do this and do it well? Because the thought was, if we’re going to run a pool, or have a pool in Randallstown, it has to be run well, who does the best the why?
8Nestor Aparicio 06:29
I couldn’t keep my pool water from turning green and Dundalk back in the day, let alone all of the safety issues. And, you know, I invited Jessica long now today, she couldn’t come. If you all know Jessica, there’s Baltimore County, you know, finest in the pool and out of the pool. And I, you know, I had Katie pump free by accident on the show three days ago. It’s running this week. She’s the open water swimmer. Oh no. And I just think about the first byline I ever had in 1984 at the Baltimore news American was about Teresa Andrews. I was in the newsroom. I’m 15 years old, and they’re like, Kid put a story together, Baltimore, north, north Baltimore aquatic swim club before we thought of Michael Phelps. Any of that there’s such an incredible tradition of water and pools and swimming and athletes in this area, you know, but I always think about the city pools and it being controversial. And look, I grew up around Patterson Park. I was literally in Paterson park for a little rally that happened over the weekend. Well, of course, I’m a good citizen, amongst many, many other I’m Venezuelan of descent so but I marched through Patterson Park, and I see the pool there, and I think about pools in that way of what can go wrong. A lot, a lot can go wrong right, but then what can go right? Michael Phelps, right? Jessica long I mean, I just gave you three miracles. What was the vision for this pool? Barry, many years ago, and since you were in on the beginning of this thing,
Barry Williams 08:03
well, it was a bigger vision of a community center, because there was no there, there in Randallstown, no gathering place. And so the thinking, and at the time, it was Ken Oliver, who was the councilman, he had really pushed for a long time to have some kind of a rec center, but the vision that he had and what the community really wanted kind of grew, and it’s good thing that it did grow, because originally people thought about a 9000 square foot kind of a rec center. This is much larger. I think this is 53,000 square foot, and people wanted to have a pool. Now, one of the things, and you’ve talked about the pools in the city. But one of the things that’s always been a concern of mine and a lot of other folks that for African American kids, have not had the opportunity to learn how to swim. They didn’t in schools, certainly in Baltimore County and this community, which is predominantly African American, before this place, did not have a place to go to learn how to swim. So everything
Nestor Aparicio 09:01
begins at full safety. Absolutely.
John Hoey 09:04
8The number one cause of death for African American children is drowning,
Barry Williams 09:08
absolutely so. And as someone who learned how to swim at the wide Druid Hill Park, why 100 years ago? You know, I saw the value in that and, you know, and I certainly made sure that my children learned how to swim at a very young age. So fast forward when we were doing all the planning, and we had our charrettes, and we kind of convinced Jim Smith that we need to spend more money than what was been had been
Nestor Aparicio 09:33
allocated. Jim didn’t want to hear that. Well,
Barry Williams 09:37
he understood, but he was looking at it very fiscally, but it came around. Unfortunately, we have what we have here now. Now, if I had my way about it, we would have had a full size why here? And John and I had talked about that many times in the past.
8Nestor Aparicio 09:51
Well, John, size wise, the uniqueness of this, why? I mean, hopefully I’m going to come to a couple wise and bring some crab cakes other places. No. Not nearly as good as Jerry’s is going to be a little later on. But they all are unique, right? I mean, and that is the beauty of the why. I mean, my dear friend Chris Pike is lives downtown and says, I my wife and I use the why and catons voice, it’s easy to get to from where he is. That’s the one he and he’s more of a West Side mount St Joe kind of guy that, anyway, but, but, like, people, and so many people, I said to my wife today, my wife’s like, you know, I was a y member, you know, when I was young, and, and everybody’s touched the
John Hoey 10:29
Y, yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s that old phrase, you’ve seen one, why you’ve sent one, why the, you know, this is a, it’s very normal and typical for a y to be in collaboration with a county government in this case, or some other partners. So much as I agree with get Barry this was could have been a why the entirety of the building, we love the fact that we’re not just operating this pool, and we are and we’re providing all the things that Barry talked about swim lessons, opportunities for for family, swim for community. But we’re we’re building, we have a community here. I mean, the relatively small amount of space we have, if you were out in the lobby, these folks don’t just come swim and leave. Some people do. But a lot of these folks, they come here, they swim, they congregate, they support each other. We have events for them.
Nestor Aparicio 11:29
Why is you setting up here for an hour before you came and I got hungry and I ran down the road before you came in, and what I found when I came in was a bunch of people walking around the track. There was great sort of 70. I wore my Earth, Wind and Fire belt buckle today, but, you know, it was all disco. I mean, I heard Michael Jackson. I heard best of my love little silver. I, you know, I I heard almost every song from the disco era, from this side to this side, setting up. And I’m looking around at the crowd, thinking, yeah, these people getting down, like me, about my age. Man, you know, I haven’t seen a lot of children or younger people here. I’ve seen people, I don’t wanna say senior, put on 50 drinks and the music was appropriate. Everybody sort of it looks like they’ve all been here before. Oh yeah, they all look like they know their way around.
John Hoey 12:12
8This is a community, and it’s a community within this community, you don’t see any kids just yet, because Baltimore County Schools are kind of on their half week this week, and they’ll be not
Nestor Aparicio 12:24
learning anything. Are they bearing really? This week? County graduate and found Mr. Two bells autograph on my 40th anniversary during
John Hoey 12:33
their state mandated stuff, right? Yeah, but this is the last My point is, summer really kicks off at Baltimore County next week, right? School will be completely shut. Uh, we’ll look different here we from today. So you’re going to see if we were here this time next week, lots of kids. And, you know, it’s just, so that’s why you’re you’re not seeing as many. But I would tell you, right in front of here is a senior center, right? So it does skew during the day to seniors. That is great, and that is very typical
Nestor Aparicio 13:12
of a wise one. It’s going to be one soon.
8John Hoey 13:16
And this is a place that we like to say for healthy community, you know, and health and all of its meaning. So, you know, we’re not just operating the pool here. We’re encouraging communities why we have a big celebration of Juneteenth. We celebrate the things that the community wants to celebrate. I’m sure everyone who’s a regular here’s birthday is properly celebrated, absolutely. There’s a lot of food brought in and all kinds of stuff.
Nestor Aparicio 13:48
I felt bad about bringing my lunch, and I’m wondering, Am I loud or not? I’m like, course, I’m allowed. I just think, can I wash my sure I can wash my hands. Is it bad? There’s everything I need. Yeah, no, I’ll start to sing the old song by the village people, if you want to, I got everything you need, right?
John Hoey 14:04
Yeah, that’s right. I could do so it’s a we love being here. We would, you know, we always love to do more here, because it’s funny, people come in and they look like, where’s the rest of the Y, yeah, we get asked that all the time, and while, yeah, there’s a lot of good space next door, and it’s run by the county at the end of the day. It doesn’t matter who it’s run by, it well, it’s well run. It’s long as it’s well run. But, you know, we can’t do everything we want to do here, and that’s fine. That’s fine. I am, you know, at the end of the day, we are offering something that people, as Barry mentioned, wanted, they need. We know they they want it. We I think we may have talked about this last time when you look at our membership levels pre and post COVID. I. Uh, the whys this? Why membership is higher than it was pre COVID. Our why at Druid Hill, which Barry mentioned, higher than it was pre COVID, any it’s some of our Suburban wise that are probably a little bit under pre COVID. Now, there’s a lot of reasons for that, but at the end of the day, I believe that where people came to get the and receive the greatest sense of community is where the why was essential in their life. And so they want it. They want more of it. They bring their friends and so, you know, we’re, we’re bursting at the seams here again. It’s quiet right now, but good
Nestor Aparicio 15:46
8I can probably I was worried to get splashed. I was thinking there’s going to be all sorts of trouble to pay to be here
Barry Williams 15:52
today. So if you were here at 530 in the morning, you see a big community of folks, mostly seniors, that are here religiously. They would be here taking classes people do on laps. When I was working, I used to come here every morning at 530 and do my laps and then go to work after that. So that same I can tell, yeah, just not being paid outside of that, right?
Nestor Aparicio 16:15
You know, I went on your LinkedIn. I mean, he’s on every board. Barry Williams is here, not the one from The Brady Bunch, the one from county government and parks and recreation. John Hoey is my eternal guest here from the Y. We have finally made it to the Y. It is the Maryland crab cake tour brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery. Conjunction with curio wellness and liberty, pure solutions. We’re out on the road. We’re doing 17 crab cake tour stops. Some of them will be a little more unconventional. I’m a little like moist and sweet it is. It’s balmy in here. You know, I wasn’t thinking like I should have worn my swimsuit here. But Barry, back to you and the board and how long you’ve been involved, not just in this project, but how Parks and Recreation and how government meets where John Hoey and meets where the Y is, and then even private. I mean, I told you, I walked past the Y down in Atlanta. And I literally was walking from downtown Atlanta to get pizza, no doubt, through the Georgia Tech campus. And I walked past and I saw it was like a school’s like an academy. It was a lot of children, the eighth, ninth, 10th, 11th grade, whatever they were coming out. There were school busses. And I looked down, I looked down. I was gonna take a picture and send it to all you and goof around a little bit. Arthur Blank’s name was on, and I’m thinking, Are you government? Are you not government? Are you funded? Are you, you know, probably yes, yeah. Is Donald Trump involved? Is Wes Moore involved? Is who’s involved? And I just want to start with government, with you, Barry, and saying you were a big part of all of that big part of this community and a principal here, something like this getting done is just not an easy thing to do, right? The fact that it’s yours, it’s a little miracle or whatever. But different county executive, different priorities, different budgeting, this doesn’t happen here. This never happens here, right? A lot of communities like to make this happen. To make this
Barry Williams 18:03
happen, right? That’s correct. So in this community, there are a lot of very strong willed folks who are about around in the community, very professional. And so you have some strong willed folks sitting down in a room together. Everyone has their own opinion, and they want to be very vocal about their own opinion. I’m familiar. So, yes, I’m sure you are. But you know, fortunately, you know, people had one shared vision of a place where people could come together and then enjoy the community, enjoy themselves, enjoy just the whole notion of, you know, developing community so, and that’s what happened. There were, it was, it was build it, and they’ll call the building, yeah, yeah. I mean, the county was real good about leading the charrettes. That had to happen with different communities where we had different focus groups, you know, talking about, we like this. We’d like that. I mean, there was a whole hodgepodge of, you know, like, 100,000 different kind of things that people wanted to narrow that all down to what we could afford and what would make the most amount of sense for everybody. That was real key, and that happened here. Okay,
8Nestor Aparicio 19:09
so, John, you’ve mentioned a couple times this isn’t like a normal. Why? What’s a normal? Why? What’s a perfect? Why, what would make this? Why your perfect? Why? In regard to this kind of a community where there really is a density of population at 30 years ago, you’re principal out here. You can tell me to how a community can change and how, when you do elect to build things, and I’ve seen these things, Memorial Stadium was Memorial Stadium now. It’s a why. So anybody drives by that, anybody in my audience is familiar
John Hoey 19:40
with that, every single one of our wise Okay, so well, how
Nestor Aparicio 19:44
many is that? 12, right? Now, I can do that. I thought you were gonna say 39 or something, 12
John Hoey 19:52
8to all of our locations. That’d be about 120
Nestor Aparicio 19:56
but a lot of those. All right, all right. So I’m doing 27 Seven of my favorite foods for my 27th anniversary in August. If I can’t figure out 12 wise in the next couple Can you name all 12? Because every time I mention my classic five golf, I have to mention all five. And I always like, forget what you give me 12. Go ahead. All
John Hoey 20:18
right. About way, go ahead. Harford County is the ward. Y in Abington, okay, Carroll County is the hill. Y in Westminster. We’ll go to Howard County next, that’s the dance Hill. Y in Ellicott City,
Nestor Aparicio 20:29
all places I’ve been in the last two weeks, but counties Anne
8John Hoey 20:33
Arundel County Next, we have the greater Annapolis y and Arnold, and we have the Pasadena y and Pasadena, obviously. So that’s, that’s the outer counties, and we gonna come to Baltimore County. We’ll start here the Randall style swim started Dundalk. We’re gonna get there all right, but we’re going around the belt best for last is what he’s going around the beltway. Then we have the or cow y and Towson, and we have the Parkville y, and then we have the Dundalk swim center. Dundalk y swim center, I
Nestor Aparicio 21:05
haven’t, I told you my why was the Dundalk one? Yeah, yeah. Dan in the old was where,
John Hoey 21:10
and that’s in a now county owned building that was a former why. So it’s, you know,
Nestor Aparicio 21:16
8I remember going there in high school. I can tell you what the what it look like? What the locker rooms look like with the stairs? I remember everything about it, and I haven’t walked in there in 40 years, or whatever I want
John Hoey 21:27
to walk that’s been closed for a while. We’re going to be reopening that soon, so we’ll get you there. I know that’s your that’s your home turf, so we’ll get you
Nestor Aparicio 21:36
they say that. I mean, Costas moved out to timonia, but I’m not holding it against them. They’re keeping their Dundalk location. So
John Hoey 21:41
I’m not finished, though, by the way, I’m on that board as well. So then we gotta go into Baltimore City. Here we go. We got the historic y in Druid Hill, which is one of the oldest, historically African American wise in the United States. We’re very proud of that one. And then the Weinberg y in Waverly, which is the old Memorial Stadium site. So I did them all Catonsville. Why? Oh, the canesville wide failed to come around the beltway. All the way around the beltway.
8Nestor Aparicio 22:07
That’s for molar. We saved the best for last. There you go. We did that for put your chairs out for the parade. Hurry up. It’s out there already. I know they’re out there already. John Hoey is here from the Y Barry Williams is here from lots and lots of places, Parkinson wrecks, Randall, stand in this community specifically and give everyone your background, if they don’t know about you, if they weren’t RAM. I went through this with Leonard Raskin, who grew up 50 feet from here, turns out, literally, on this back piece of land to brenbrook, and many in the 70s and was a RAM. And we started talking Antoine Harris and football players and my ex girlfriend. And my ex girlfriend Robin. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of Randallstown going on. I will try to wear a little black and gold, but I
Barry Williams 22:49
make some Yeah. So I was principal during 95 to 98 at Randallstown. Some of my best memory and best experiences was at Randallstown. It was a great community. It was tough because I followed someone who had been fired, and so, you know, I came in, I had a chance to zero base the staff, and I did, got rid of most of the staff and brought in all brand new people, and we had a ball. One of my years I was there that I brought in Colin Powell as the keynote speaker from graduation. That was like, yeah, it was. It was 97
John Hoey 23:23
to power, right there. Absolutely after, especially that
Barry Williams 23:27
8era after that, I went into in Baltimore City and had a good experience there. Then I after five years in the city, then I came back out in the county government, and first in workforce development, I spent a lot of time overall in the community. And then my last nine years in Rec and Parks, which I really love. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 23:44
I mean, you talk about education, education, you look like you might have been a really tough teacher. What did you teach originally? What’s your original?
Barry Williams 23:49
It was English and social studies. Yeah, socialist. Can we
Nestor Aparicio 23:53
go back and teach people seventh grade civics? Can we have a lesson on the Constitution? Yes, I did my thing over the weekend at Patterson Park. But for you, being in education, and in real education, social studies, English, you know, the reading, writing, arithmetic, to move to the part where we all move and we get, you know, like, and, you know, I think it to some degree in education, people think the arts or fitness, or any that’s that’s outside the realm of what traditional academia and all of that, and then you find yourself in parks and recs, it’s just a whole different level of what you’re trying to educate people on, right? You’re an
8Barry Williams 24:32
educator, yeah, yeah. But it’s a, it’s a wonderful opportunity to reinvent yourself going through different experiences. You know, I’m a lifelong learner, and so I welcome every opportunity to learn something new and to pick up a new skill set. And essentially, that’s what I’ve done throughout my whole career. Well, how do Parks and
Nestor Aparicio 24:50
Recs work together in this sort of way? John, I mean, and I ask you, I didn’t give a chance to answer, what makes a perfect why? I mean, we both said, Well, we’ve gotten together before, and we. Tried to do this and tried to do that. If you could do a perfect thing, what is a perfect why?
John Hoey 25:05
Well, there we have a lot of perfect wise. So
Nestor Aparicio 25:10
8let me put say the one that serves the community, the best is a perfect.
John Hoey 25:13
Yeah, no. I mean a, why is there to serve the community? So, I mean, I think I’ll say more the typical are more typical. Why is a why that the we either own or we lease the building, and we can provide the full range of programming to people at every age and stage right, from birth to
Nestor Aparicio 25:32
well, then you are defining the perfect. Why the perfect? Why would it be every resource you need, encompassing
John Hoey 25:38
all the why for all all the program areas, all the spaces we would have, which includes a, you know, all the, all the exercise related thing, all the kid programming related thing, stuff that we need. So again, I mean every to me, we’re at our best when we can bring our full range of services, and we do that in most of our locations, but none of the none of the buildings look exactly alike. So that’s not to say this isn’t a great WHY. It just has, it has a piece of what a full Why would have, right? But that’s okay. What’s interesting is a lot of people, generally, you join, when you join one of our wise you’re joining them all. But with the swim center, since they have a particular use, you have the option of either just joining the swim center, or just or joining the y. So we have a lot of folks here who join the full y. So they come here, most often, probably to swim. But they may go to the Catonsville y. They may go to the Parkville. Why? They may go to the Y to drive around the beltway to stop it. Yeah. Okay, so they choose. Do I want access to all the wise where I just want access to this one? So I would say a lot of our, the folks here, I don’t know what percentage, off the top my head, it would be probably less than half. But still, a healthy percentage are experiencing a broader set of why activities, but they’re just doing it at a different location. So, you know, we’re always, you know, and Barry, working with Barry was like, I hate to embarrass he would be like, the perfect partner at a county government, because he’s his whole ethos is the same thing. We’re in the same wavelength. Let’s serve the community right? Who care? No one’s looking to get credit like we’re looking to deliver something that the community wants. We’re looking to do it in a cost effective way so that we can keep our prices down. We can include as many people as possible. And it’s not a, you know, nobody’s we’re not getting caught up in sort of this, you know, who controls what? So when you work with a partner, you’ve got to figure it out. We have a good, great relationship with Baltimore County, and we work through it now, you know, we have, since we don’t control or own this building, there’s capital improvements that, you know, we’ve got to work through. We’ve got to figure out. I mean, I don’t sound like the
8Nestor Aparicio 28:18
Orioles of the Ravens. They just come and give you 600 million to fix up and work that way. Okay, I’m just making
John Hoey 28:23
sure they making sure the state has my number. By the way, if they special,
Nestor Aparicio 28:28
their deal is, yeah, the Y doesn’t get that deal. The
John Hoey 28:33
8county, we don’t get that deal. And, you know, so you work, you know, it’s like anything in life. You work through it. I, you know, I, I’m we work with lots of partners. We work with most every county that we talk about. We work with Baltimore city, the city government. We work with the state. So, you know, if you’re going to do, if you’re going to bring the Y to a community, you’ve got to use all the tools in your toolbox. Yeah, you can’t just be single minded, communities, different. Yes, this is our only I always tell people, you know, it’s not like we have the box. The Chick fil A has a box, and Chick fil A is a great company, you know, so I’m not criticizing, but they’re like, this is what our box looks like. This is what has to look like. Here’s the, you know, here’s, here’s, the menu is exactly the same everywhere. That’s a good way of doing business for them. But that’s not what we do. Every situation is unique. So and in cases like here, where you have partners, it’s you’re going to take a little different approach. In cases where we own and operate the entirety of the building, then that’s different. But we’re still bringing in partners in that case, like we’ll partner with the with the local hospital, and they’ll bring in things like vaccinations and, you know, during COVID, COVID shots and things that they want to get closer to the community, yeah, or the. They’ll come in and new falls prevention with seniors, we’ll partner with, you know? Well, we just, we partner with a whole range of folks. So whether we own and operate the building or not, there is no situation where a y is an island, right? Right?
Barry Williams 30:20
About seven years. My analogy is like this. Think of a pie. So any flavor that you want but a pie, so you have the whole pie that is optimal for the why? However, if we can’t get a whole pie, taking a slice out of that pie is still going to be good, right? And that’s what we try to get. Try to get as much of the pie as possible. And depending on the community, the neighborhood may be a different flavor, cherry, apple or sweet potato, but you still are going to benefit by getting at least a slice. And that’s what happens here. Yeah, well,
Nestor Aparicio 30:55
you mentioned 12 places, but you had a much bigger number than that. You said that you affect,
John Hoey 30:59
yeah, we’re operating out of over, well over 100 locations.
8Nestor Aparicio 31:03
What does that mean in those other 80 locations?
John Hoey 31:06
Most of those, not all. Most of those, are in schools. Okay, some of them are in, you know, preschools. Some of them are Head Start sites that we run
Nestor Aparicio 31:18
designed to feed into the community, to a place like Randallstown, in a school, in other words, somewhere in this radius, or all many cases,
John Hoey 31:26
8yeah, all in Central Maryland, all focused on specific programmatic things. Some of them are camps that we operate. So the you know, there’s an outreach above and beyond, outreach beyond these coming to these bricks, yeah, okay, fair enough. And you know, for a lot of kids, they’ll say, I go to the Y every afternoon. And what they really mean is, they walk down the hall in their school, they go to a big activity room, and they have the y after school program, okay? And in their mind, they go to the Y. By the way, all those families get memberships. So, you know, if that’s happening in, you know, Kingsville Elementary School, well, all those families are members of the Y. They got, they go right to the y. So
Nestor Aparicio 32:13
that weirdly feels like it might have been something that I had in Colgate Elementary in the 70s in some way. Well, maybe you did, I don’t know. Well, the Y came to me in some way, and then what I couldn’t walk down the street to what, right? I mean literally. So yeah, I mean, I imagine that’s and it’s a resource. Maybe my family didn’t even know was there, yeah, to some degree,
John Hoey 32:31
right, right, right. So that’s why we’re
Nestor Aparicio 32:33
here to educate people about, like, if you’re out there stopping in, seeing what’s in your community, and saying, Hey, this is, uh, this, this seems like a place I’d want to jump in the pool today if I brought the right
8John Hoey 32:43
soup, you know, so we could find some, you know, swim truck.
Nestor Aparicio 32:47
Barry. Get out of here. I do want to talk to you politically. You’ve made a couple of the county executive thing and your retirement, you know thing, and all of that, just trying to make the world better. And your educational piece of that, I want to get you out. We’ll get a crab cake one day. We’re not just focusing on why. I love to do that and hear your mind. But these are troubling times. And last time I got together with you, John Trump had just taken over the country, and there’s funding problems in federal this doesn’t happen without government, right? No good. Lots of lots of good things the internet, the things I’m broadcasting from my radio station there. You know, government has been so vilified in such a horrible way. And then I come in here and see what government can do, not just in here, everywhere I go, I see government, I do so
Barry Williams 33:37
your question, Oh, see, he’s easy.
Nestor Aparicio 33:40
8He’s a former politician in these troubled times, finding funding for important things and having people like the 1000s that march in Patterson Park understand it and others who might not understand it.
Barry Williams 33:52
So funding is always going to be challenging, and it’s a matter of priorities. So what’s more important? Do we feed more of the homeless? We look at housing, we look at roads, you know, the whole infrastructural kind of thing. You know, where do we put our money? And you’re right, because this administration, this federal administration, that the money is scant, and we live in a blue state, which I’m very proud of, by the way, but it also means that we’re going to take some knocks, because they’re going to look at and we’ve been told by this President that all the blue states he’s going to try to cut back as much as possible. And so that’s what we have to do with deal
Nestor Aparicio 34:30
with what does that mean for the why, John? We not know yet.
John Hoey 34:34
I always say the why is Switzerland. So we you know, but we do rely on federal funding. We get over $30 million of federal funds. Most of that goes to support our Head Start program, where the why is the largest Head Start provider in the state of Maryland. Head Start. Tell everybody what Head Start is a federal program that was started in the 60s by Lyndon Johnson, which is focused on families with children under the age. Of under school age who are at or below the federal poverty level. So it provides an enriching early childhood development experience and a range of Family and Child Services essential, right? I mean education, things like dental care and other things, as well as family support services, helping refer families to services that they may not be available. So it’s a comprehensive program for families with very young children that provides both what you would think of as traditional preschool, but a whole set of services wrapped around that. It’s hard enough for anyone to have young kids, but it’s particularly hard for people who are struggling financially because and it’s only gotten harder. So Head Start has, you know, it’s a that federal program has been around for about 60 years now it is, you know, he’s tried and true, right? Tried and true. It works, right? It’s like anything else. It’s not perfect. But, you know the there’s a lot of controls in place. And if you’re going to be a provider, you, you know, you are held to account. So, I mean, it’s not like they just throw you the money and then come back in five years when the grants over. So we’ve been doing it for well over 30 years. We are the sole Head Start provider in Baltimore County, Anne Arundel County, and we do
8Nestor Aparicio 36:30
the soul, and we only want to do if you don’t do it, nobody does
John Hoey 36:33
it. And then we do okay portion of Baltimore City. So, so there was a time there in April where all grants had been temporarily suspended, and we actually had a board meeting. And, you know, for 24 hours was not clear where this was all going, there was a judge intervened. So the, you know, the that was resolved, at least for now, you know, there’s a obviously, the federal government’s working through a budget process right now. So as far as we can see, the current version of the budget on the House side contains head start. What’s interesting about Head Start? People may assume, I don’t know. May wrongly assume that it’s particularly popular with one party versus the other. But the reality is, it’s a very bipartisan thing. A lot of Head Start is in rural, conservative states. And if it wasn’t, you know, it’s the only early childhood program in a lot of towns in a lot of towns. So it is, it has generally been well regarded across the aisle. We also do a lot of community health work, and that gets a lot of federal funding, and some of truthfully, a lot of the funding that we get from the state for our out of school, time programming, community schools, a lot of that emanates initially from the federal government, comes down to the state. So how this all plays out? You know, I think it’s we’re in the sort of to be, to be determined mode, where, you know, we’re continuing to run these programs. They’re continuing to be successful. But one, you know, one doesn’t know. I mean, most of the stuff that we’ve been doing historically hasn’t been controversial. You know, from one year to the next, if we’re in a recession, maybe things get slightly trimmed. But the idea of whether some of this stuff should occur, things as crazy as dot. You know, diabetes prevention programs, my wife’s diabetic, yeah, prevent, all the preventative health stuff that organizations like the Y and others do to ensure that people don’t get to that point where they are in. You know, that’s
Nestor Aparicio 39:00
comes in people moving and exercise,
John Hoey 39:03
8right? So healthy society, they don’t get to the point where they really are in the most expensive corner of the healthcare environment. And we’re seeing, you know, a lot of that stuff is on the chopping block. So look, we will figure it out, but it does. I mean,
Barry Williams 39:24
these are very interesting times. So the why values inclusion being the why for all we’ve learned over the past few months that inclusion is not a word that we can use for any kind of funding that we’re looking for. So anything that has Diversity Equity and Inclusion can’t put that in there, because it’ll be a flag and the funding will be cut for that. So we have to figure out that it’s not just what they stand right? Yeah, yeah, you will hear me not say the name. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 39:56
I was in hearing you, John, sort of pulpit on. A value of federal funds. If I were to call you down the Congress and say, All right, you know, what do you do with all that? What does the Y do? I want to let you drop the mic with this. We’ll bring Towanda over and Elijah over and let Barry let him rest until the next crab cake comes along. But the next political event in this case, or anything. But if you were to say in front of in the way Mister Rogers went many, many years ago and said public television, you remember that speech right? Like you have to make that speech to save the why. What? Why is the why important?
John Hoey 40:34
Well, the why is, is really the foundation of local communities. It’s really the, it’s really the one of the most singular resources in communities around the country that keeps communities engaged with one another, physically active and able to function. And I had an opportunity about was it four years ago, the Y during COVID, we did not get PPP money in the first round, and we could have gone out of business. And I was given the opportunity to testify in the Senate, at a Senate hearing as to why large nonprofits like the Y deserve PPP money.
8Nestor Aparicio 41:21
Your doors open at that point with masks and whatnot, like literally were.
John Hoey 41:25
We had been reopened, but we were our membership had dropped in half, sure and financially, you know, you see all this gray hair, yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 41:34
you let the Y go out. Is this in the middle of the plane? So I did
John Hoey 41:37
8get the chance to make the case and in the Senate and a Senate hearing, and I was very forceful that you know, if you if, if you don’t recognize the value the Y provides to the community, you know the the federal government is going to have to step up in much bigger ways in the future, if you don’t, If you don’t help us. Now, I did find that both Republican and Democratic senators got that. We were fortunate. You know, there was one senator in particular who I will not name, bipartisan, soft, tough, tough, tough, right? There’s one senator who I will not name, did not seem to believe a word of it, but I will say there was bipartisan support for what I was saying. So we had, so I have had the chance to make that case, and I don’t think it was that I was so compelling. I think it’s because the 175 year history of the Y is so compelling and has touched over 70% of all Americans, so
Nestor Aparicio 42:44
including me, even though I haven’t been to the local Dundalk, why in a while, but I’m here now. I’m at the swim, the swim center in in Randallstown. Barry Williams of Randallstown, good Randalls town. Ian here, and I think of Randallstown high I think you and I thought Randallstown. I saw the pool. I said, I’m going to come out. John Hoey is here. It’s all brought to you by friends at the Maryland lottery. I have the Back to the Future scratch offs to give away out here to some, hopefully some lucky folks win some cash as well. We’re going to be doing the Maryland crab cake tour, readers crab house up in Reisterstown in a couple of weeks. Julian Jones is going to be here a little later on, talking about this district and running for county executive as well. We’re going to come back and talk more about pool issues, Juneteenth, all that good stuff. And I’m going to bid Barry thank you for coming out. I appreciate Thank you very much for having me. Oh, your crab cake. You came a little early for the clean cuisine crab cake. I’ll get Jerry out here. Get your gift card. John Hoey is here. I’m Nestor. We’re back for more from the pool at the Y in the swim center. We’re here in Baltimore County, beautiful Randallstown. Stay with us. You.
