A new mayor for Charlotte and a new schools Super | Hour 2

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetcleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. So we have our five finalists for Mayor of Charlotte. Five finalists, or as I call him, the five olists. Number one Harold Cogdell coming in with six votes. He is the vote tainer, the number one vote tainer among the Charlotte City Council members. Each council member got three votes. The mayor did not get to vot, so all council members get three votes. They can throw those three votes to three individual candidates. I don't think they were allowed to do like a ranked choice deal or something, although it is. This actually is kind of a ranked choice voting mechanism, but like you can't put all three of your votes onto one applicant, so you can't, like you can't just load them. You know, you got to spread them out, so you pick your top three. And then they accumulated all of the the votes, and Harold Cogdell, the former Charlotte City Council member, he got six. He was the number one voteainer. Coming in at number two. Carrie Cook, who is not employed as a chef, nominated by four of the council members. Oh, I guess this is alphabetical. It's not numerical, okay, because Robert Harrington and James Smudgie Mitchell they each got five. Then you've got Kerrie Cook, and you've got State Senator Caleb Tedros with four apiece, and then you've got Michael Evans with two. Sebastian fecal lac. Okay, guys, I don't know who this individual is, but can we not have a Charlotte mayor feical lact just please? I mean, I know I give you guys a hard time on city council. I mean things were said, you know, mistakes were made, but please just think about how the mayor's name is going to sound when you say Charlotte mayor fill in the blank, you know, and then pulling up the rear with one vote a piece, Douglas Welton, and Jennifer Roberts. So she's hanging on. She's hanging in there, Jennifer. You're saying there's a chance Jennifer Roberts, the former mayor herself, who got beat like a drum in the Democrat primary by the current mayor Vy Lyles back in what twenty seventeen. Yeah, Jennifer Roberts. She got nominated by council member Dimple ASHMERA okay, so, but Asmira also backed Harold Cogdill, And they've got the breakdown here from the City of Charlotte's comms shop. Now what this means is that the council members will do another round of interviews with all of these candidates. They got one. Wait a minute, there's more than five. Oh yeah, they're taking the top five. So it's cogdal Cook, Harrington, Mitchell, and tedros Those are your top five. The other ones that I mentioned Jennifer Roberts, Douglas Welton, Fical Lack, whatever, Evans they they got, they got nominated, but they didn't they're not in the top five, so they're out. So yes, Jennifer Roberts, sorry, she's not hanging in there at all dashed dreams once again. But it also means that this guy running a would seem to be just a purely parody race, not as in like equality parity, but parod like satire, like he's he's he says, he's a comedian, and so he was running for mayor, and this seemed like just like a purely social media kind of driven campaign, and much like a lot of politicians, he made some outlandish promises, the most outlandish promises that this guy Zach what was his last name? Again, it doesn't matter. He didn't get he didn't make the cut. So this guy is a Zach for mayor. Uh, he's got a Facebook page and he's got a bunch of social media. He's got a bunch of videos posted up there. And his Facebook page is called why not Zach for Mayor? Which is the exact wrong question to ask, Like, if you're trying to pitch yourself as the you know, the guy to pick you, don't you don't frame it as a negative as in why not me? Because now you're asking people to answer the question of why not you? And I would submit that if you do attempt to fulfill your campaign promise you're going to be a drunk. Okay, good like, And that's just math, all right, because Zach for mayor. Well, here listen to his video. Well you can listen to it if I were to, if I were to unmute it. So maybe I should unmute it and then you and listen to it. Here we go. Hi, I'm Zach and I'm running for mayor. People always say they want a politician that they could have a beer with, and I'm here to tell you I will definitely have a beer with you, all nine hundred and sixty four thousand Charlotte teams. I am ready and prepared to drink nine hundred and sixty four thousand beers with you in my constituents. Bottoms up. Okay. Also, that's a violation. You're drinking alcoholic. Hi, I'm Zach and I'm running for mayor. People always say they want to Why not Zack. Oh my gosh, stop Zach, just stop Facebook. Okay, So if you look at this promise to drink nine hundred and sixty four thousand beers. So I went to the the calculator and I just plugged in some numbers. So I did. Okay, you got eighteen months a year and a half remaining on vy Lyle's term, So he would have to drink nine hundred and sixty four thousand beers in eighteen months. And that works out if you divide it by month by eighteen you end up with somewhere in the neighborhood of about fifty three thousand, five hundred fifty six beers per month. Got to drink fifty three thousand beers. So then I divided that by thirty days, just to see, like I mean, is that a pace that any human being could keep? And he would have to drink one thousand, seven hundred eighty five beers every single day. Could that be done? Well, let's assume he doesn't sleep and he's just gonna drink beer all day long, So twenty four hours in the day, he would have to drink seventy four beers every hour. That's a lot. I feel like he would be dead and we would have to then be doing another search for mayor, which is probably why he didn't get the votes. You know, like, if you just do the math, you're like, this guy is going to be dead within probably a day or two. You know, if he were to if he were to actually drink seventy four beers per hour, which works out to be, by the way, about a beer a minute, one beer every minute. Like that's shotgunning beers people, Like that's you know, jamming a hole in the bottom of the can, popping the top and sucking it down. That's like funneling. You would have to do like a funnel of a beer like every minute. And again not sleeping. So this is why I think he would die. You know, I don't think the body can handle that. Now, he could get around this by drinking a single beer with a very large group of people, like he could have done that instead, but he explicitly says he will drink nine hundred and sixty four thousand beers, So like it's not up for her interpretation. Like I was thinking, Okay, you could go to like Panthers stadium, drink one beer and check off like seventy thousand people. I mean, if the Panthers are good and people are coming to the stadium, you know, like you could check off a large group. But he could. He didn't. He did not promise that. He promised nine hundred and sixty four thousand beers, but then part of me is also like, well, you know, let's see what happens, you know, like I mean, at the rate we're going, I mean, this could be our claim to fame. Like, hey, Charlotte, North Carolina, remember they were the city that appointed that guy that promised to drink all the beer and then he died within three days because he just wouldn't stop drinking beers all day. And what happens if he falls behind, Like what if he sleeps? What if he drinks so many beers too quickly and he passes out and he's got to wake up, He's got to make up for all of the beers. Now you're in the hole. Now you're drinking like three beers a minute. I just don't think it's sustainable. And that's something that Charlotteans want in a mayor, sustainable ability. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Mint Hill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories, all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are, visit creativideo dot com. Uh Scotty says, if Zach is a former Appalachian State grad, he should have no problem with the beer a minute minimum. Otherwise, Yeah, that'll be pretty tough. That's well, they do offer a degree in that, don't they at app State. Mike says Pete. This is Mike, Okay, you know, doesn't have to be any alcohol involved with those beers, so he wouldn't get drunk. But I suppose he would drown. Well, that's the Yeah, even if it's a non alcoholic brew. By the way, our non alcoholic beers called beers, I feel like it shouldn't be called a beer. But then again, I feel like root beer shouldn't be called a beer either. They should have to have a different name anyway, Oscar is maybe he could drink beer if he had a full term, or maybe it is that non alcoholic crap beer. Yeah, maybe he's doing like the was it the michelob ultras or something, the stuff that's really low in alcoholic content. Kevin says, Pete, for someone who doesn't like doing the math, you sure jumped enthusiastically all over the beers per day, just saying yes, Well, I mean I worked it out this morning. It took like three hours. The Hellian says. The constituents that Zach is talking to can't do math, Pete. He would be more competent though than anybody running. Maybe they're just really small beer, says John. Ah. Yeah, like little shot glasses full of beer. But he doesn't say that. He says, I will drink a beer. Look, I'm just going with the common accepted definitions of the words that we all know. So when someone says they're going to drink nine hundreds sixty four thousand beers with every you know, with everyone in Charlotte. Like those words mean something to me. I'm taking him literally, but not seriously because again, he's a comedian, and in the very first campaign video he posted, he said literally like, people ask me, Zach, is this a joke? And the answer is yes, So it was a joke. Okay, he's a apparently he's like a local stand up comic, and so you know he was doing this for I'm assuming, you know, for the for the notoriety on a Lark Pete. This is beebop in rock thrill Pete. Back in the late nineties, early two thy, seventeen hundred beers used to just be called a Friday night. For me, that's a lot of beer. It's a lot. Mark says, no one told me there would be math today. That's true. Anyone but Roberts Dennis says, what a radical political ideological hack she is? Oh, nine to eight zero number, says I hope all these finalists for mayor or black or somebody's gonna be mad. Yeah, the Black Political Caucus or no, sorry, the NAACP president. Right. She was like how dare a white person nominate themselves for this position. We have a black female mayor, so we can only have a black mayor. I don't know why female got dropped out of that equation, but Ellen says, you need to do a recalculation. How many of these nine hundred thousand people are actually adults. He may be including minors in that number. I think he is. He just went with nine hundred and sixty four thousand residents, so he's including everybody that is not allowed to drink. So it sounds like he is guilty of contributing to the delinquency of minors, like a lot of them. They maybe one hundred two hundred thousand charges He's going to pick up and if the youth could vote, you know, if everybody under the age of eighteen could vote, this would be a winning campaign message. Right. If he got up there and was like, oh, you eighteen or seventeen or sorry, all of you under the age of twenty one, vote for me and I'll give you a beer number one, that would be illegal, okay, because you're not allowed to promise things for votes like that. That's bribery. But he would say, like, I will drink a beer with you, But that would also be then contributing to the delinquency of hundreds of thousands of minors, and so he would pick up a ton of charges, probably spend the rest of his life in jail, although the rest of his life in jail would not be very long because the alcohol poisoning. I know. There's just a lot of different there's just a lot of different unanswered questions. Here three two, three numbers. Why doesn't he have one beer with the stadium full of twenty or thirty thousand people? This is what I said. I said he could go to Panther Stadium. If the Panthers are good and they fill it up, that's like seventy seventy five thousand people something like that, and then he could have a beer with seventy five thousand people. Check it off the box, right, or check that off the out of the total. I mean, he still has like eight hundred and ninety thousand people left to drink with. But that would be a good way to do one beer for that many people. But he did not say that. He said he would drink nine hundred and sixty four thousand beers. This is what he promised. One beer for everybody in the city. Again, his promise, not mine. His promise up another piece of breaking news, which I cannot complain about because I always say, don't break anything while I'm gone, So I'm here, so this is the time to break stuff. And we had the breaking news last hour with Donald Trump's press conference on the Iran Memorandum of Understanding, which we still don't have the details on. And now just as important, maybe more so, doctor Crystal Hill. Crystal Hill, I always say like that, that's from the documentary King of the Hill. Anyway, Crystal Hill will no longer be Charlotte Mecklenberg Schools is superintendent. Don't know yet if she quit or was fired, not sure, but she's out. And our WBT News reporter Brett Jensen, Breaking Brett Jensen. You can catch a show here on WBT weekdays from six until seven pm, Breaking with Brett Jensen. Shouldn't that be breaking with Breaking Brett Jensen? Right? I feel like we missed a marketing opportunity on that he did file this report which I stole from the newsroom, actually just emailed it to everybody, and so like I got it, so I'm gonna play it before I'm going to scoop our news department by playing this. They had their chance. Okay, let's take a listen to the report. WBT is the first to learn and report that CMS superintendent doctor Crystal Hill is out. According to multiple people familiar with the situation, early belief is that Hill will retire since her youngest daughter just graduated from CMS. If she does retire, she will make an estimated two hundred and fifteen to two hundred and forty thousand dollars a year in retirement. Hill has twenty seven and a half years of service with the state, and the belief is that she has enough sick days to get her to the thirty years required for her full retirement benefits nice, But if Hill is fired without cause, she will get three hundred and forty thousand, seven hundred and seventy dollars as a severance or a year of her salary. If she's fired with cause, she basically gets nothing. Hill became superintendent of the nation's seventeenth largest school district in June of twenty twenty three. She got the job despite having no experience as a superintendent. Prior to that, she spent many years in Cambert's County BRT Jensen WBT News. There you go. Take that WBT news center. Totally scooped you on your own story, all right. So she's going to pull in somewhere in the neighborhood of almost a quarter million dollars. I guess that's annually for her retirement. This is one of the things. It's a little dirty, little secret in the superintendent world. That's why they bounce around so much. Average tenure of a superintendent for large school districts it's not long. It's like it did go up recently. But I remember for years back in the early two thousands into the twenty tens. Do you call that the twenty tens or do you call it the twenty teens? Regardless, like I remember, it was somewhere hovering around like three years or so, a little bit more than three years. That's the average tenure. And so they bounce all around. They get vested, and usually when they go to a new gig, they make sure that on the way in they negotiate for like full vestiture, like almost immediately, right, if you can make it three months without getting yourself fired, you'll be you know, vested, and then you get access to the pension right and then if you are taking gigs in multiple states, then you can draw your pension from all these different states. That's how you accrue these massive retirement benefits packages. That's why they bounce around so much, and they're sort of I used to talk about this when you know, especially when the average length of service was somewhere around three years, is that they would, you know, come in in the first year and they would do a listening tour. I want to find out what's important to the people, and I want to find out and talk with all the teacher or no, I want to listen to the teachers. I want to listen to the parents. I want to listen to the business community. I want to listen to the stakeholders. I want to listen to the tax payer. I'm just kidding. They never do that one never. I want to listen to the children. And then they spend a year by crafting the plan based on all of the listening that they did in the first year, and then they roll out all their initiatives and stuff, and then people get upset with some of the decisions that have been made over the previous two years. So the third year, they're basically in damage control mode, and then they're looking for another job, and then they just kind of repeat the same cycle at the next place they land, and the new person who comes in they will do the same thing. They'll do a listening tour right then they'll slowly roll out their their fancy plan, and then they too will begin dusting off the resume. So what she's she's been here for a couple of years, about three years. I think she made it right, like right on schedule. I think that's yeah. I think she got here. And yeah, she became the superintendent in twenty twenty three, but she was the interim superintendent in December twenty twenty two. She began her twenty eight year career as a first grade teacher in Guildford County, which totally prepared her to work with our school board. She has served in multiple instructional and executive roles in school districts throughout North Carolina, according to CMS. So that's all we know at this point. Also, neat little perk that a lot of government employees get is the rolling over of all of the sick days. Yeah, private sector people generally don't get that perk, not sure, folks in GOVC are aware of the benefits that you enjoy, so you can accrue months worth of sick days if you don't take your sick days. So they don't take sick days. They take vacation days instead, so they'll take all of their vacation days, and then they roll over all of their sick time, and then that allows them to retire a couple months early because they've accrued they've put so many sick days in the bank. We if you don't take your sick days in the in the private sector, you generally you lose them. You don't get you don't get to amass a ton of sick days over the course of you know, five ten years, if you even last that long at your gig. I know, I sound like a radio guy. Now, all right. From the text line, I will leave this name off of the text in order to protect the innocent. Pete. My daughter is an AP in CMS. I believe that means advanced placement, no assistant principal. She said, Crystal Hill has been fired. I don't know if it matters, but if your daughter is an AP at Rumor Mill High School, then I don't know if we should believe that. Far be it for me to suggest that there's a bit of rumoring and gossiping at the schoolhouse amongst the teachers and staff. But there is. There's total it's totally a thing. So don't know if she was pushed or if the superintendent of CMS was pushed, or if she jumped, or maybe it was like half and half, not sure. Stanley says, the CMS school superintendent job has become one of being a yes person for the CMS school boards education objectives and then the fall person when the failures continue. You the high salary is just to endure and be willing to be the face of those failures, all the while knowing eventually you'll get a big payday to go away and they'll find someone else to continue to scam, all while CMS students get a bad education. Right, So here's why it matters, as you heard in the report from Brett Jensen, like how she's leaving will determine whether or not the tax payers are going to get gouged yet again by the elected body. Right if they fired her without cause just because they don't like her, just because like we didn't like your budget that you gave us, we had to vote against your budget or whatever. You're firing her without cause, then she's going to get a full year's salary as a quote severance on the way out the door. And that's like over three hundred thousand large. So I mean, so we have to pay for your your bad hire, your inability to work with the person that you just re up. They just gave her a contract extension. If she was doing so poorly, why'd you give her the contract extension and a raise? Right? Like? Why do that? Because they are stupid? Let me see here, do do do do do? Jennifer says, Stanley the Texter just nailed it. Rodney says Pete State employees, twenty days of PTO equals one month of work. Well, that makes sense because they're right because you got five days in the week for weeks in the months. That's twenty days. That makes sense. And then he says, maybe she is a surprise selection for the new mayor. Oh Crystal Hill. Maybe she's yeah, maybe she could be mayor. Now she could run for mayor or ask to be well maybe not, maybe too late. Maybe she's gonna run for mayor. Danny says, it took Zach for mayor only fifteen seconds to go from a stand up comic to a lying politician regarding Zach for Mayer's promise to drink nine hundred and sixty four thousand beers over an eighteen month period in his term, if he times it by two, one for him and one for the person he's drinking with, times fifteen a beer approximate price of a beer at Bank of America, it would be approximately twenty eight million, five hundred thousand dollars going to David Tepper, Yes, if he had to. Well, that's the thing too, What about all the people who don't drink? Right? How is he going to fulfill this campaign promise with people who don't drink? With teetotaler, what are you going to do? Then? Seven oh four numbers, says Politicians promise giveaways all the time. Why do the uninformed vote for them? But right there in your question the uninformed that's why? Also, where did the state spend sixty million on the seventy seven toll lanes? Who think is scamming us? Well, they spent sixty million dollars over the last some like decade doing all of the planning, the engineering, the environmental studies like all of the stuff that has to be done in order to get a project of that size and scope to the point that it got to. That's always part of the planning. So that's why they're they're talking about. And I've got that story of just I'm not going to have time to cover it today. Maybe I will, Maybe I'll circle back. Gen Pisaki, Noah Probam, No, I'm not okay, I don't want to make any promises here. I'm not like a politician running for office. Okay, So I'm not gonna not going to promise that to you. But I will get to the I seventy seven issue tomorrow. And I can say that because like I saw the Monroe City Council, they took an interesting vote. They voted in favor of reaffirming their support for I seventy seven toll projects during a special meeting this morning. So like after the state said, you know what, we spend sixty million to plan all of this and get all of to get to this point on the toll lanes, and you guys were all on board, and now you all abandoned it and you're now opposing it. So now we're going to get that money back from you, and Monroe is out there, like we're just taking a vote here to reaffirm that we were not part of that decision. Like we want to be very clear. Don't don't be hitting us up to repay any of this. We were on board, Steve says Pete, speaking of stand up. I would pay good money to see you at a comedy club. Your humor and sarcasm is marketable, now, Steve, Why would I subject myself to the HOI POLLOI who could heckle me? When I can just keep doing this show if I need the affirmation right of the crowd, I've got, you know, I've got some drops here of applause and laughter. I've got, you know, various reactions that I can do. Okay, all right, all right, all right, that's not what I was talking about. But still like I have enough material here for three hours a day. It's all stream of consciousness basically, and reading other people's commentary and reading text messages like I don't want to get heckled, you know. Plus I can hang up on people. I can't do that in a comedy club. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to vpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.