Infrastructure and Jobs: Podcast with Neil Anderson

Reuel Sample:
Welcome to the NHC GOP podcast. I’m Reuel Sample. We are heading into the municipal elections of 2023 here in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I am happy to be joined by one of the candidates for City council. Neil Anderson. Neil. How are you tonight, sir?

Neil Anderson:
I’m great, Reuel I’m doing my first podcast. Pretty, pretty cool. Pretty excited.

Reuel Sample:
Well, we’ll be gentle with you sir. So it’s nice to have you on board. We just want to get right into it and ask you, you’re running again for council?

Neil Anderson:
Yes, sir.

Reuel Sample:
What is the top issue that you have on your heart? What are you really focusing on as you get into this election?

Neil Anderson:
Well, I think, you know, you think you have to respond to the to the citizens and the voters first. And all I hear there is – not all I hear there – but what I hear there most is infrastructure, traffic. Those every time you we put out any kind of questionnaire, poll comes back on top so that that if it’s on their mind, then it’s better be on my mind.

The Challenge of Infrastructure

Reuel Sample:
So let’s talk about infrastructure. It is is at times just difficult to get around this town, College Avenue is just a parking lot at times. Market Street is a parking lot at times. Why is it so difficult for the city council to get things done on infrastructure around here?

Neil Anderson:
Well, you know you know, I’m I’ll you know, I’ll some I’ll tell you this most folks do not don’t know and I honestly didn’t know you know I knew Oleander was Highway 74 but knew you know 17 was Market so I assumed those two were state but I didn’t realize how many are state roads so you know College, Oleander, Market, Independence, Carolina Beach. I could go on. I mean most of the roads that you drive on every day are state roads. So we’re, our hands are tied there. In terms of we, we do not maintain those roads. We can’t fix a pothole. We can’t, we can’t put a bus bench on the, on the side of the road if we wanted to. We have all that is there. Well, the bus bench, it’s our responsibility. We’ve got to get their permission. And it’s anyway, So the long, long the short of it is the state which is positive. It’s a positive and a negative. The positive is it’s gotten there the way they choose projects has gotten away from or they’ve tried to get it away from just who’s got the strongest state senator. That’s the way it was here for a long time. You can drive four lane road to the Outer Banks and fall asleep at the wheel. So I mean, they had a strong senator base night. So now it’s my data and that means it’s going to be a trailing, you know, you’ve got to have a problem to get their attention. And for the longest time, the problems, intersections, if you will, were all in Raleigh and all in Charlotte, and there are others for the most part in those areas.

Neil Anderson:
Ours is slowly bubbled to the top. I serve on the MPO, which is the NCDOT’s. MPO means Metropolitan Planning Organizations. It’s the extension of the NCDOT local representatives that are on there trying to push for projects. And we’re now you know, we have we’ve had one intersection for roughly 40 years. I mean sorry, one overpass. And we’ll get a second one here next week when when it opens out at Military and Market. And that’s super exciting. But what’s really exciting is we have seven more coming in the next ten years. You mentioned College Road being a parking lot. One of those is not just an overpass, it’s Independence Boulevard extension where we’re at right now. It it, it ends at Covel Road over here. That’ll be four lane and go right over the top of Market Street and all the way on out to Martin Luther King. So, and have an intersection there. So that gives us one of our big problems according to transportation engineers, is we only have two true vertical routes out of town. You got Carolina Beach and College and Carolina Beach is not used nearly as much. So having that third one keeps you from having that stair step – lots of left turns to get to 40. So that that’s just going to be huge. That’s going to be a lot of pain in between now and then. A lot of barrels, a lot of going to be some people might be using choice words at times.

Reuel Sample:
But at the end.

Neil Anderson:
At the end of the day, you have, you know, the intersection at Eastwood and Eastwood and Military will be a continuous flow. You won’t stop. So it’s it’s exciting, but it’s, you know, ten years or ten years. I mean, until I got in government, I didn’t know how things slow things move. But but there are there are huge projects. You know, I can see I’ve seen people build a house for, you know, a year and a half. And these are to be massive multi, you know, 30, 40 million dollar projects. So we’re. We’re on the radar. Help is coming. Won’t be here tomorrow. But the good news is, it’s. It’s a lot of times these things get planned and don’t get budgeted. These are budgeted and the money’s allotted.

Reuel Sample:
So they’re planned and in the works. Ten years. All we have to do is just and just hang in there.

Neil Anderson:
There, finish along the way. But nevertheless, there will be I’m sure there’ll be some that don’t get finished when they say they will be either.

Reuel Sample:
But it’s an it’s an interesting problem to have because more and more people are discovering our fair city here in Wilmington.

Neil Anderson:
We have been discovered. That’s a great word. I use that one often. I mean, I’ve already started it, but it’s just when it was finished, but it’s just gotten more and more. I will touch back on infrastructure. I’m not shirking the idea that the city does not have infrastructure to look after. We do. Stormwater, our collector streets, our neighborhood streets, all those we had in 2018, we we had that massive hurricane that I think we had 120 inches of rain that year or something like that. So if you can imagine, you know, all the older infrastructure and pipes we have, they got really taxed. Then we had all those trucks. We have we have all these hurricanes when we’ve had hurricanes, all those big trucks riding around on neighborhood streets haul and, you know, you know, tens of tons of lumber in and out of their, you know, trees really wears out the streets. So we’ve we’ve got we know we have work to do there. We’re paving 20 to 25 miles – lane miles, which is half the that’s one side of a street a year, the last five years. So we’re working hard on that. We’ve got several big stormwater projects. Clear Run Branch is the biggest one we’ve ever done. We just finished that. We’re in the final stages of that. That’s a area over to I guess over near you over in the College Acres kind of area. And so that’s, that’s exciting. And the flooding that people some people are familiar with near the college behind Best Buy, that’s I mean, there’s a lot of flooding in there. That’s just one that’s a spot where New Center Drive where people know about it. And so we’re working on infrastructure all the time. I think of one thing that I’m just I’m not a I’m disappointed in is we have not finished our we have a a transportation bond that we that was passed by the citizens. I believe it was 2015. I might miss the year. But right around there and we are.

Reuel Sample:
What was that about?

Neil Anderson:
We’re still working on that. Well that was. It was true. There was a lot of trails. There were some sidewalks, intersections, primarily like roundabouts, intersections and each of them and we finished a lot of them. But there’s some, you know, COVID came along. Pandemic was kind of a problem. And our biggest problem, though, has been, you know, our our economy’s been so booming we’ve put out bids and nobody didn’t bid on it. I mean, the contractors were like, that’s too complicated. I like this job over here and make more money is easier. And then we’d have to put it back out and we’d have to take three little projects and put them together to make it important enough for somebody to bid on it. So we still have it’s I’m on a committee with the mayor and Councilman Rivenbark, and we’re basically just got a whip out. I mean, all we do is meet every quarter trying to what can we do to get this thing going. And it also like there’s a we’re doing a a trail that runs from from College there at College Road at Holly Tree runs up all the way around Greenville Loop and all the way up to Market, not Market Oleander sorry and I mean you got the issue there is every single lot we go across usually needs an easement, even if it’s not an easement for permanent, just easement for construction. So I don’t know how many houses or property owners is, but it is it’s been a tall task. I think in the end, we just we bit off more. It was a 50 some million dollar bond at the time and a lot of those projects have run over with the, you know, with the inflation we’ve had. But if we do it again, if I’m around, I promise you we’re going to we’re going to take a smaller bite that we can manage.

Reuel Sample:
It’s always tough balancing property rights with the needs of the community and and everything else. And I think you folks are doing it really well. But to go to to sort of wrap all this stuff up is that you folks are just as upset with the infrastructure. I mean, it’s not like you folks get get special treatment on the roads. They don’t close the roads when you go down to to your work or your city council, you’re sitting there in traffic.

Neil Anderson:
I sometimes I mean, I. I cuss a pothole, too. I mean, it’s and sometimes I scratch my head. But I do know we’ve also had a trouble with that. I mean, we we added, we we were so tired of it. We added a whole another asphalt crew to our staff. But manning it. You know, we’re a 3% unemployment rate. So finding people to to work in those kind of jobs has been very difficult. And then as soon as you get them, they find out, oh, I you know, the the unemployment situation is such that, oh, I don’t feel like coming today to get fired. They go get a job somewhere else immediately. It’s it’s an unheard of situation. Normally people value their job and it’s just been kind of interesting to see we tree crews any kind of the other day my recycle didn’t get picked up and have the the you know the I can call the guy in charge of it. You know, most people have to call the switchboard. I said, what’s going on. And, and I already knew the answer. I told him, I said, did you not have enough. It’s either a truck down or a crew down. You know, we picked up. And so that’s that’s been a challenge because we have the equipment and watching it sit idle drives me crazy when I’m driving through some of these potholes and streets in our neighborhoods.

Fostering An Environment To Create Jobs

Reuel Sample:
Well, let’s talk about jobs a little bit more. As we were talking about things before the podcast, you were saying that one of the focuses that you’re going to have, it’s not necessarily a glamorous thing, but it’s an essential thing is middle class jobs and and getting and keeping those middle class jobs here in Wilmington. First off, what do you define as middle class jobs?

Neil Anderson:
Well, I’m probably antiquated on that because, you know, the number of, you know, what a true middle class income is. I probably could not define. But but I think of, you know, somewhere in that what we have tried to target is over $50,000, under $100,000 a year. And I might, you know, from a census standpoint, that may not match up. But that’s kind of. I think more than anything, it’s a well above minimum wage job, well above above, you know, well above $20 an hour, 20, you know, $20 an hour for someone who doesn’t have necessarily doesn’t have any college, you know, and may not even necessarily have a high school diploma. But yet they’re they’re hard workers and. They’re dependable, etc. I mean, just people trying to to make a living for their family, because I think it really becomes the root of a lot of the issues that if we stayed on here for a while, we would talk about, which would be, you know, crime, which would talk, you know, if you if you don’t have a if your future’s not if you don’t have are excited about your future or don’t see you have a bright future, what are you going to do? You turn to crime becomes, you know, something that your mother’s told you to, you know, don’t do this, son. Don’t do this. Don’t. But eventually, you know, you know, this guy’s got a new, new whatever.

Neil Anderson:
I want one, you know, it just slowly but surely so and there so that’s a that that’s a root of the drug, the gang all a lot of stuff we could homelessness you know a lot of the things we could talk about it wouldn’t I’m not saying we’re not going to solve all that but here in Wilmington. But if we just had more of those jobs, I think that would would go a long way to helping. And also, you know, I think we’re better set now than we’ve been in a long time to to attract that kind of employer because we’ve started. CFC’s a great provides a great, you know, funnel to that kind of thing because we started not we say we the school system started a program with the junior and senior year when my daughter graduated from Hanover, when she started at Hanover they didn’t it was everything. College track, basically. Maybe there was higher you know, there was honors. But still at the base level, they were teaching just math and science and stuff like people going to college. And most of those folks were not. And now with the CTE education out of the out at the out at the community college, you got linesmen, you got truck drivers, huge shortage in both cases nationwide.

Neil Anderson:
But culinary school, they’ve got, you know, all kinds of Hvac and stuff that there’s a shortage of and make a great living. Build start your own business fairly easily – not huge capital in some of those cases and and really grow it. I got off on a tangent on on the trades but going back to the middle class jobs we have training programs we’ve had people come in and the community college can set up training. We now have over in the Highway 421 corridor across the river. I was on the utility authority CFPUA back in 2011, 2013, and we embarked on a kind of a pipe dream at the time and no pun intended, but running water and sewer under the Cape Fear River over there because there was no water and sewer. That was a roadblock to to getting that kind of getting industry, manufacturing, that kind of thing over there. And about that time, fortunately, they closed the coal plant and they’ve started natural gas and they have natural gas, water and sewer. And we’re starting to see the results over there. Just two weeks ago I was at a groundbreaking for I think it’s Casa bomber or Casa bomber? They do know, when you pull out all your little like your trash can, all those little funky things that hold it like systems and then they also do display systems for like CVS and people like that.

Neil Anderson:
But I was kind of bummed. I’m sitting there looking at this giant building and it’s a they’re only going to end up employing 15, 30 people because it’s a distribution center. You know, it’s the stuff’s come in over. It’s it’s a assembly and distribution and warehousing. It’s not manufacturing. So now they’re great paying jobs are 15 we didn’t have but it’s you’re sitting there going, God, I thought he was going to say this is going to be a, you know, a big employer. It didn’t work out that way. The best one that’s happened most recently was when National Gypsum reopened. They closed in 2007. And, you know, we had a little fight with some of the our new citizens down at the Riverlights area. I wouldn’t call it a fight. They were just they got some misinformation about formaldehyde and so forth. And I think we were able to to quell that figure that all out and make them feel comfortable with it. But that that was I can’t recall, I want to say 75, 90 jobs in that $60,000 average range. We can attract more of those. I just think it will help solve a lot of ills.

Reuel Sample:
Well, this kind of dovetails into infrastructure issues and other issues is that it’s it’s the trades that are going to help fix that. It’s it’s my favorite one of my favorite quotes is from Mike Rowe. You probably know who Mike Rowe is. I just did a.

Neil Anderson:
Dirty jobs or whatever.

Reuel Sample:
He did dirty jobs. I just did a podcast with the Board of Education because they are focusing on trades. And Mike Rowe said, you cannot digitize water. You know, you will always need those trades that end up in the middle class getting those things done. Plumbers, electricians, construction workers, those are the heart of our communities. And that’s what you’re trying to get back into Wilmington.

Neil Anderson:
Well, I think it’s it’s become clear to me. I mean, we first moved here. Somebody said, here’s here’s an electrician, give me an electrician. I ask a neighbor and here’s one. And watching now, 22 years later, he’s got a booming business. I’m not sure he’s middle class anymore. I mean, it’s it’s just a I think, um, I don’t think that has a I think there was a stigma at some point, frankly, that if you didn’t go to college or this and that, and I just think there’s just two paths and we were we were wasting a lot of minds by, by not, um, giving them everybody’s not going to be able to one they’re not the desire to go to college they can’t a lot of cases afford it or they don’t want to borrow money. So why not be teaching them something that, you know, they where they can come out of school and make a living, you know, so.

Reuel Sample:
Wrapped up in all of this. We’re talking we’re talking government. And so government in order to get things done with the government. Is finances that that have to come from someplace. And that’s usually through taxes or one way or another. But one of the heart of your platforms is a financial conservativism. What does that mean to you? Why? Why do you call yourself a financial conservative?

Neil Anderson:
I mean, I’ll get to that. I would want to just hearing you kind of summarize some of what we talked about. I don’t want viewers, listeners to think that I believe that government creates jobs. I don’t know. That’s I’m just I don’t even think that’s not a Republican thought process for me. I mean, what we do or what I try to do in everything I’ve done on council is try to create an environment that is, you know, good for business, certainly, and to, you know, help anything that will help our local businesses grow – small, big, medium, large, whatever, whether we can attract small businesses, you know, entrepreneurial type businesses that are just getting started. All of all of the above. How do we, you know, not have some, you know, regulate our way out of out of those getting those jobs? And when I say that, I’m not saying that I don’t value clean water and clean air. I’m. But there are we can get off the rails there, too. I mean, I gave you a quick example. I got started getting calls from all these dock builders. We’re talking about trades. And they were going, What have you all done? And I’m like, What do we do? And the we, the the CAMO, which is the state organization which monitors our waters and our waterways, has regulations for docks.

Neil Anderson:
Someone at planning or decided we should go out and layer in another layer of regulations on top of it. And we’re not even we didn’t have experts. I had dock builders calling. It says here I can only build this floating dock can only be 4×4. He said, Have you ever seen a like a 70 year old person trying to stand on a 4×4 floating? I’m like, you know, So these kind of things, I mean, it’s just it’s a it’s just a very visual example of where we just let the state regulate it. And it’s not our water, it’s the state’s water. I mean, it is all our water. But my point is it’s the state’s to regulate. We don’t need to get out of our lane and go layer in another. Think of that. That made it so much harder on some of it’s just nonsensical. But so I’ll get back to your to your question.

Reuel Sample:
About let me just let me just point out that that’s an example of me being a trained podcast host to bring out the best in my guests to correct the trained podcast host when they bring up a non Republican idea. So, so that that’s good. Thank you.

Neil Anderson:
I didn’t want it to come across as I was taking responsibility for creating one job. Exactly. So because that’s I don’t, it’s the entrepreneurs, it’s the risk takers out there. I mean, I’m a small business person, but my jobs, I’m not it’s not local.

The Financial Conservativism of Neil Anderson

Reuel Sample:
So let’s talk about financial conservative.

Neil Anderson:
When I first started, it’s small now. I don’t even think anybody’s noticed it. But when I first joined council each, you know, you’d have a line item on the on the agenda each week and, and it wouldn’t you know, a lot of people are not going to if they even look at the agenda they’re not going to dive any deeper. So I wanted back then you may recall 2011 was, um, oh gosh, what was it called? Um, it was a time of very high focus on finances and on spending. And, and I was right there with them. And we would not it wouldn’t have the dollar amount and it wouldn’t tell where it came from. So I saw that when I was on CFPUA they had it on there and I was like, why aren’t we doing that? So that’s something that they adopted because I wanted, you know, we’d have people call me and said, Y’all are spending $2 million on that. And I said, Well, that’s s federal money. It’s coming from the federal government. It’s still your money, but it gets disseminated to cities. It’s a flow through, It’s a pass through. It’s not your you’re not I’m not there’s no property taxes. My point was, I want people to know how much is being spent. I want it to be top line, not in the weeds. I don’t want to know where it’s come from because it’s one thing if we’re having to buy a new fire truck or a new trash truck just out of cash, but if you’re being responsible and you’re setting aside money in a you know, in a over time, then that’s the way and you’re being very responsible. And, you know, just because you’re spending money doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. You know, we need the fire trucks, 20 years old. We need a new one. But if we didn’t start planning for that ten years ago, then we’re being dumb, you know.

Reuel Sample:
Just like our own checkbooks if you’re going to make a purchase, you open up the checkbook, check the balance, And and if the balance isn’t there, you either can’t purchase it or you start planning to make that purchase. That’s right. That’s what you’re pushing for. Yeah.

Neil Anderson:
That and, and just questioning, um, you know, when you look at something questioning the necessity, I mean just last week it was tiny thing but you know, it was a bill about maybe cyber. I think it was just some kind of cyber protection kind of deal. We were signing a three year contract for and I’m sitting there reading the thing and the invoice is $54,000, which is it was three years, the whole city. But. On the on the letter and on our resolution ordinance. Whatever it was, it was 74. And I’m just going, well, which is it? What’s the number? And and then sure enough, Tuesday night they pulled it. So we need to go back and see what’s going on there. And that’s a in the scheme of the city, that’s a tiny bit of money. But I just I just want the answer, the answers. They usually give me a good answer. So it’s not something that happens all the time. But I just like to take a hard look at it. You can you can also get corrected. I told this at the meeting last Thursday night, but when I first got on council or when I was first running for council, met with chief, our police chief at the time, Ralph Evangelist. And I was kind of looking, I knew like we to start when we were talking beforehand about police, we were shorthanded a little bit in police. We always are down a few, but we were shorthanded and I was trying to where do we find more money? And I was looking, looking through these folks that we help support. And there was $30,000 for Brigade Boys Club and 30,000 rough numbers for the Community Boys Club. And I said, hey, there’s you know, we cobble that together. We got two rookie police officers. And and he goes. No, I’ll need ten. He goes, he goes. No, that is money well spent. You’re keeping kids active in the afternoon. Help them with their homework in school. I mean, help them with their school, keeping them active. He said that’s. Don’t touch that money.

Reuel Sample:
That’s police officer training.

Neil Anderson:
It works both ways. I mean, sometimes there’s waste and sometimes there’s smart use. And we’ve chosen them instead of trying to run like a lot of after school programs, like a lot of cities do, to to just give a little peace to people that already do that and or have a passion for it and are usually in nonprofits and have facilities, etcetera. That’s just that was the way before I got here. But we have tried to fine tune that process to make sure we’re not giving them, you know, we like to see that we’re not a large percentage of their budget, you know, you know how you know, we have we like to see their financials, etcetera. There’s a whole scorecard, if you will, that determines how many people do they impact, what’s their effectiveness rate. And all that’s kind of come about since I’ve been on council. I’m not going to take credit for that, but I’ll take credit as one of the people making sure we’re doing that right.

Reuel Sample:
That’s what we’re sending you to counsel for. So for you to to take a hard dive into those numbers, to take a hard dive into the policies.

Neil Anderson:
And I would say, you know, to all my fellow candidates, regardless of party – this is not a party. You better be ready to commit your time. Energy. You want people on council, they’re going to be committed, dedicated to it, that are competent enough to mean that it’s not all about one issue or there’s no one issue. If you’re a one issue candidate, then you’re going to you’re going to hate being on council because there’s an array of issues that come at you. Some of them, frankly, don’t interest me as much as others. But I have to I have to drill down and get get into the weeds with those two. And and it’s a four year term. So this is not something where you’re going to jump in there and be done. Okay. I don’t like it. It’s a commitment. And so you better have the time, energy, dedication to it and be willing to I don’t know. It’s just kind of looking. I just try to think of put myself in the shoes of all these other citizens and try to think the way they’re thinking. I mean, it’s impossible to be in everybody’s shoes, but I try to put myself in their shoes any anytime they write me, call me. And because I think sometimes, you know, you think you don’t you don’t put a whole lot of, you know, so much more than they do about what’s going on that you just talk to them at too high a level and they’re kind of like, you even hear anything I had to say. So I just try to take a step back and go, Hey, let’s let’s put myself in their shoes and try to start from a level where, you know, like I did when I first started surfing, I was learning, you know, a lot of stuff along the way.

Neil Anderson:
I mean, I knew a fair amount, but I’ll have people call me and complain about parking downtown and charging and I’m going, Well, that is, you know, that’s an account on its own. We don’t use any taxpayer dollars for that. So it’s paid by the ratepayers. I mean, if you use it a lot, you pay a lot. If you use it very little, you use it very little. So that way, you know, people that don’t use it aren’t paying for something. So it’s we have and we have several like that. We have, you know, the golf course. People say, I don’t want to pay for the golf. We we use the golf funds to pay for it. They run like little silos, little businesses. So, you know, I didn’t know that, you know, when I first started until I started diving into it. Who were they? You know, and I still get complaints about stuff like that. Trash, you know, that’s paid for, again, through your through users. So and I love that, you know, personally, I think that’s another way that’s Republican thinking. Again, you know, I don’t think you just it’s a it’s more use based instead of just, you know, divide it all up and just, you know, come up with the number.

Early Voting Starts October 19th – Send Republicans To The City Council

Reuel Sample:
Neil Anderson is a Republican and he is running along with two other Republicans, John Lennon and Kathryn Brunner. Early voting starts October 19th. That’s not that far away.

Neil Anderson:
No, we’re about to be in the thick of it. We’re I’m in the middle of you know, we’re planning all kinds of things with the help of the party. I think I’ve told you we don’t repeat it. But just the organization, the party right now, the professionalism is just awesome. Stephanie’s volunteers, Rick Wilkins side of it. I mean this I’ve never dreamed I’d be doing this with the party if you just come a long way. We have great candidates this time. I think I told people this Thursday night, and I don’t mean to insult anyone that’s ever I mean, just throwing yourself out there and running is a is a big leap. And it’s it takes a lot of gumption to do. But this this field of candidates, the three the the two that are joining me is as strong as I’ve seen top to bottom. And they offer some variety. I don’t think we’ve ever had a female Republican run that I can recall for city council that since I’ve been in the city. So it’s so it’s exciting. And I hope the whole I hope we’ll turn out, you know, that that’s what we need.

Reuel Sample:
That’s what we need, isn’t it?

Neil Anderson:
It’s going to boil down to turnout and it always does. And it four years ago, it rained all day long and it was a little bit chilly and it was just terrible turnout. And that’s why, again, I keep going back to Thursday night, but I’m going to preach here on Preach to the Preacher, I guess. But, um, go vote early. I know it’s a Republican tradition. I’m the same way, to be honest. I kind of like voting on Election Day, but you just never know what’s going to come up in your life on that day. If you, you know, car breaks down, child sick, you’re sick. Something at work you can’t get. Way and then you ended up not voting. So it’s you know, it’s provided for us. Why not take advantage of it? I’m tired of looking when the results come in for the early voting. You know, when they come up, they just all download and I’m in last place because all the Republicans and have to watch all night to try to, you know pass. So you know.

Reuel Sample:
That’s what happened with our school board last time around is that they everything downloaded and all four of our BOD folks were in last place. They weren’t there. And by the end of the night, we had had sent four conservative BOE. And that’s what we’re trying to do this time around. We want to send three conservative Republicans to the city council and and implement those Republican ideas here in Wilmington. So at the end, we would have a Wilmington City Council, a BOE Board of Education and a city council and a and a county government that is run by Republicans. And you will see fantastic things happen here in New Hanover County and fantastic things see here in in Wilmington. The website is VoteNeilAnderson.com. You’re going to be out there door knocking and talking to people for the next oh you’ve got two months of hard hard work ahead of you. What’s the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Neil Anderson:
My email is NeilAnderson@ec.rr.com. If you want to shoot me an email, if you’d be if you’re interested in contributing to the campaign there’s you can there’s a way on my website there’s an icon to go through Anidot which is a software company that makes sure that your financials are safe and you can do that well and you can also send a check. It takes money in a city our size. It used to maybe 20 years, didn’t take a whole lot of money. You knew a lot of enough people and a few yard signs would get it done. But to win now, you’ve got to raise some money. And I welcome that. But most importantly, you know, do what you know, talk about the election to people, try to educate them a little bit on who’s running, why they should vote for the Republican candidates, learn, know enough about them to talk educated about it and and get that vote out early and and late all the way through and I think we can have some really appealing results at the end at this time if we do that.

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