Building boom bust and a big bug down (08-27-2024--Hour3)

[00:00:04] [SPEAKER_00]: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 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 thepetecalinarshow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] [SPEAKER_00]: All right, we're shifting gears. Newstalk 1110-993-WBT, Pete Kaliner here, 704-570-1110. Email is pete at thepetecalinarshow.com and on Twitter at Pete Kaliner.

[00:00:42] [SPEAKER_00]: The Charlotte Ledger. Highly recommend. I subscribe. It's a Substack newsletter as well. This is a piece by Tony Messia.

[00:00:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Is Charlotte's big apartment boom going bust? Is the boom less boomy? The number of apartments breaking ground in the Charlotte region is on pace to make 2024 the slowest year in a decade.

[00:01:16] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's not just new apartments. New offices, new retail. They're not getting started up either.

[00:01:26] [SPEAKER_00]: So remember, it takes a couple years for these things to be completed. So the building starts from two years ago are the ones that are coming online now.

[00:01:36] [SPEAKER_00]: So there's this lag. And so when you're looking at the data for the first half of 2024 and you've got 3,400 multifamily units where construction started on them, that's all that's going to be coming online about two years from now.

[00:01:55] [SPEAKER_00]: 3,400 units. By comparison, in 2022, 10,000 units.

[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_00]: 2023, 8,600 units. Right? So almost 1,900 units broke ground over the last two years that are now coming online.

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_00]: But this year, it's only 3,400. That is quite a drop from the high 10,000 two years ago.

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Falling rents and a higher interest rate is making new construction less appealing across most sectors of commercial real estate, he writes.

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_00]: And I know when I say falling rents, people are kind of rolling their eyes at that. Whose rent has gone down? Right?

[00:02:48] [SPEAKER_00]: But again, if you're looking at a forecast of the next two years, what do you think is going to happen? Right?

[00:02:54] [SPEAKER_00]: When you build all the apartments, that's one of the things you can always tell too is when you're, if you are a renter, and I was a renter for many, many years.

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_00]: And I've owned homes too. I've, you know, back and forth on it.

[00:03:07] [SPEAKER_00]: But you're looking at new construction going up.

[00:03:12] [SPEAKER_00]: And like Christy and I, we had an apartment in, it wasn't quite, well, I mean, technically, I guess it's Center City, but it was sort of on the outskirts of Center City.

[00:03:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Tiny little place. It was like, I want to say it was a one bedroom.

[00:03:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was $1,800 a month. And this was five years ago or something.

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. Ridiculous amount of money.

[00:03:34] [SPEAKER_00]: But it was very close to where she worked.

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_00]: So, and we were just renting.

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I was still working up in Asheville.

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_00]: So we had sold our house and we were just, you know, thinking like, well, don't know what we're going to be doing here.

[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe she's going to leave her job, come up there or vice versa, whatever.

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_00]: So we rented her an apartment up there.

[00:03:55] [SPEAKER_00]: And then another apartment starts getting built right next door or was, yeah, underway.

[00:04:00] [SPEAKER_00]: And so our apartment was very interested in keeping the rates low, keeping our rents stable because the new one was getting ready to open up.

[00:04:10] [SPEAKER_00]: And we had a couple of neighbors that moved right across the street because they got deals.

[00:04:20] [SPEAKER_00]: The number of apartments that builders have started so far this year has plummeted to the lowest level since 2015.

[00:04:27] [SPEAKER_00]: So nine years ago, there's a nine year low in apartment startups.

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_00]: He goes on to say supplies could tighten around 2026 since new complexes take about two years to build.

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_00]: He is citing statistics from a company called CoStar.

[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And according to their data, new retail and new office are at 10 year lows.

[00:04:57] [SPEAKER_00]: New office construction continues to be almost non-existent.

[00:05:03] [SPEAKER_00]: This is going to be a huge problem and not just for Charlotte, but for big cities all around the country since COVID.

[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_00]: The amount of vacant office space as people begin working from home more.

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of companies have gone to the hybrid models, which, you know, depending on the line of work and your personality, your work ethic, your technology capability, your home set up, all of that stuff, all of that factors in.

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, depending on who you are.

[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Look, I can be as productive to do my job at home as I am in studio.

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_00]: I can be just as productive, probably more productive.

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Why?

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Because I don't have to drive in.

[00:05:45] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not losing time driving in and driving home.

[00:05:50] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's an extra roughly hour that I get back every day that I will be working.

[00:05:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Now, that being said, there are tradeoffs.

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Being here in the studio, being in the office allows me to interact with people.

[00:06:04] [SPEAKER_00]: I pass in the hallway and I can say, hey, what about that, you know, event?

[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Or, hey, did you hear about this story?

[00:06:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Like just moments ago during the break, Kyle Bailey from the sister station, the sports talk station down the hall came in and we were chatting about stuff.

[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_00]: So you pick up things that you would otherwise not pick up.

[00:06:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Also, I have found it's a lot easier, particularly in radio, for you to get fired when nobody knows who you are.

[00:06:31] [SPEAKER_00]: That's true.

[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_00]: If you're working overnights, you're not seeing anybody.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_00]: And then no one like if you think somebody is going to go to bat for you, like, no, no, don't fire the 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. guy, you know, whatever.

[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_00]: But the amount of office vacancy in I'm trying to remember the data that we we have.

[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_00]: It was like last year.

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to say that we were running through some of these numbers and it's roughly a third of all of the office space in Center City, Charlotte is vacant right now.

[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_00]: A third.

[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_00]: That's not it.

[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_00]: It just it's spread out across all these different skyscrapers.

[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_00]: But you've got major problems, not just in Charlotte, but all across the country in these big urban centers.

[00:07:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And if there are no jobs there, all of the other ancillary, you know, the cottage industry, basically, that exists to service the office workers and the office says they're going to go away, too.

[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And then that creates another ripple effect through the economy.

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_00]: One bright spot.

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Industrial.

[00:07:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, hang on a second.

[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Because I did the office or sorry.

[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Office is at 10 year lows.

[00:07:54] [SPEAKER_00]: 108,000 square feet of office space started construction in the first half of this year.

[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And that is the lowest level in 10 years.

[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_00]: 108,000 square feet.

[00:08:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Each of in eight of the last 10 years, there's been about a million square feet of office space.

[00:08:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Started in the first half of each year.

[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And we're a tenth of that this year.

[00:08:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Retail.

[00:08:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Construction of new retail space also continues to be nearly nonexistent.

[00:08:29] [SPEAKER_00]: 70,000 square feet of new construction started in the first half of this year.

[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_00]: 70,000.

[00:08:36] [SPEAKER_00]: That's about the size of a single grocery store.

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_00]: That is also the lowest level in the last 10 years.

[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_00]: The average is about 10 times as much.

[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_00]: A little bit more.

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_00]: 750,000 square feet in the first six months of each year.

[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And now we're at 70,000.

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_00]: And that is the Charlotte region.

[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_00]: That's not just Center City.

[00:09:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, the bright spot.

[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Industrial.

[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_00]: After some worries about softness in the industrial sector, CoStar data shows that companies broke ground on 4.9 million square feet in the Charlotte region in the first two quarters.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_00]: And that is on par with previous years.

[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's a bright spot.

[00:09:23] [SPEAKER_00]: I did also notice the lack of data in this report on single family homes.

[00:09:30] [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know if single family homes is suffering the same fate here or circumstances as multifamily homes, apartment buildings.

[00:09:39] [SPEAKER_00]: But there you go.

[00:09:40] [SPEAKER_00]: That's again, Tony Messia in the Charlotte Ledger.

[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a Substack publication.

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_00]: You can subscribe there.

[00:09:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Also, maybe, kind of, sort of related.

[00:09:49] [SPEAKER_00]: He's got a story there about the Justice Department lawsuit targeting Charlotte apartment rents.

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll tell you what that's about in a minute.

[00:10:00] [SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[00:10:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, real quick.

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_00]: If you would like to get your product or service in front of about 10,000 people multiple times a day, send me an email at Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com and ask me about advertising.

[00:10:12] [SPEAKER_00]: It's super affordable.

[00:10:13] [SPEAKER_00]: It's baked into this podcast forever.

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And podcasts have a higher conversion rate than other social media platforms, making it the best bang for your buck.

[00:10:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Send me a message.

[00:10:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com.

[00:10:24] [SPEAKER_00]: And I can show you how it works.

[00:10:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Run the numbers with you.

[00:10:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Again, that's Pete.

[00:10:27] [SPEAKER_00]: News Talk 1110-993-WBT-704-570-1110.

[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Email is Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com.

[00:10:37] [SPEAKER_00]: And on Twitter at Pete Calendar.

[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Let us, him and tomato, go over to the phones and talk with Andrew.

[00:10:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Hello, Andrew.

[00:10:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the show.

[00:10:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, how you doing?

[00:10:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Good.

[00:10:48] [SPEAKER_01]: I just wanted to touch base on that real pages.

[00:10:51] [SPEAKER_01]: I've been in property management for about 30 years here in Charlotte.

[00:10:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Back in the day, they were doing the same thing.

[00:10:57] [SPEAKER_01]: It just wasn't technology-based, so to speak.

[00:11:01] [SPEAKER_01]: So what would happen is office staff would call, maybe give them all different prices, two-bedroom, three-bedrooms, and they would average it out and compile the going rate with those figures.

[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_01]: And obviously, they couldn't do it as frequent because it took time to make all these phone calls.

[00:11:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:11:27] [SPEAKER_00]: They had to come up with different disguises, come up with different fake names.

[00:11:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, no, they used to be up.

[00:11:34] [SPEAKER_01]: No, it was a secret between them, like a code that you shouldn't talk about it, but you introduced yourself.

[00:11:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, I'm so-and-so from whatever apartment complex.

[00:11:45] [SPEAKER_01]: And hey, what are your two bedrooms going for?

[00:11:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, really?

[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.

[00:11:49] [SPEAKER_01]: It was wide open like that.

[00:11:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And you didn't have time.

[00:11:52] [SPEAKER_01]: You didn't have an office staff to do that once a week.

[00:11:54] [SPEAKER_01]: So you did it about once every two weeks, maybe three weeks.

[00:11:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:11:58] [SPEAKER_00]: And then you would set your price comparable to the average of all of your competing complexes.

[00:12:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[00:12:06] [SPEAKER_01]: So now with technology-based, it could be done a lot more frequent, a lot more accurate, and you don't lose maybe two weeks of maybe $50 a month on rent.

[00:12:16] [SPEAKER_01]: You could stay right up there with it.

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:12:19] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's where real pages comes into play.

[00:12:21] [SPEAKER_00]: So does it work in the opposite direction?

[00:12:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Does it ever come down?

[00:12:29] [SPEAKER_01]: It does.

[00:12:29] [SPEAKER_01]: If everybody else is, you know, not charging as much and occupancy is dropping, you know, that's a telltale sign that you have to drop your rates.

[00:12:40] [SPEAKER_01]: It does work both ways.

[00:12:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:12:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, so one of the ways I saw was they would offer, you know, one month of free rent.

[00:12:47] [SPEAKER_00]: So that does, so you still have to sign on to the higher monthly rental rate, but you get one month free.

[00:12:54] [SPEAKER_00]: So if you deduct that, though, out of the annual cost, right, the rent isn't actually that much as the rate you're paying because you've gotten it at a lower amortized cost.

[00:13:08] [SPEAKER_00]: So when people are calling to their competitor and they're asking, what are you charging, are they also getting information about, yeah, we're running specials, too, where, you know, one month free rent or something like that?

[00:13:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Those pretty much are contoured to bringing up the occupancy rate.

[00:13:28] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the investors and corporate, they don't want to see it go down below 97.

[00:13:33] [SPEAKER_01]: So if you're dropping down 94 to 94, you take the ones that have been on the market the most, the longest, and you throw a special on them and get them rented.

[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, investors don't like to see more than 30 days out there.

[00:13:45] [SPEAKER_01]: So you throw a special on there, fill them up, get them rented.

[00:13:49] [SPEAKER_01]: There was one fairly large, South Charlotte apartment complex that I worked on, and they had a move-in for a dollar special.

[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Now, this is back in 99.

[00:14:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And man, you're right.

[00:14:07] [SPEAKER_01]: But guess what?

[00:14:08] [SPEAKER_01]: In 90 days, we're busy re-renting and turning those apartments because they're all evictions.

[00:14:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Wow.

[00:14:15] [SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't seem cost-effective, though.

[00:14:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, once again, they like that paperwork for the investors.

[00:14:22] [SPEAKER_01]: If you drop down so low, you know, they're just trying to put out fires, basically.

[00:14:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.

[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:14:29] [SPEAKER_00]: I would ask you what complex it is because I kind of feel like I may have rented there.

[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_00]: But no, I won't.

[00:14:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know.

[00:14:36] [SPEAKER_01]: It's not even the same owners, but it was a head of work down on Providence Road.

[00:14:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[00:14:41] [SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[00:14:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I was not there.

[00:14:43] [SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[00:14:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Andrew, I appreciate it.

[00:14:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for the insight.

[00:14:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, sir.

[00:14:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Have a great day.

[00:14:46] [SPEAKER_00]: You too.

[00:14:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Take care.

[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, Bill in Mooresville writes into Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com.

[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Based on this logic, in fairness, DOJ had better start going after grocery stores.

[00:14:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, Bill, do not give them any ideas here.

[00:15:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Gas stations, car dealers, and especially realtors, since not only are real estate market

[00:15:06] [SPEAKER_00]: values determined by comps, that's shared data, but local governments determine their slice

[00:15:12] [SPEAKER_00]: of the pie in property taxes using the same data.

[00:15:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Very good point.

[00:15:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Very good point.

[00:15:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Charlotte Observer, they had a story a couple weeks ago, and I have noticed this as well.

[00:15:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Our roads are a mess, and I'm not talking potholes.

[00:15:30] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean that too.

[00:15:30] [SPEAKER_00]: But trash.

[00:15:33] [SPEAKER_00]: But trash.

[00:15:33] [SPEAKER_00]: The garbage.

[00:15:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And I noticed it when Christy and I drove a couple weeks ago at the beginning of the month.

[00:15:40] [SPEAKER_00]: We went up to New York, and we hate flying now, so we drove it.

[00:15:44] [SPEAKER_00]: And when you get into the big city areas, the roads are a mess.

[00:15:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And Charlotte used to pride ourselves as a clean city.

[00:15:53] [SPEAKER_00]: To the point of ridicule and mockery.

[00:15:56] [SPEAKER_00]: People would make fun of Charlotte for being a little too clean.

[00:16:00] [SPEAKER_00]: North Carolina roadways now have become an impromptu dumping ground for everything from

[00:16:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Bojangles boxes and cheer wine bottles to building materials and bulky appliances.

[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Unsecured truckloads also pose a danger.

[00:16:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Beyond the obvious eyesore, this trash jeopardizes driver safety, harms the environment, and depletes

[00:16:20] [SPEAKER_00]: local resources.

[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_00]: And the problem is growing.

[00:16:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Crews collected about 1.5 million pounds of trash from Mecklenburg County roads last year.

[00:16:30] [SPEAKER_00]: That's about 50% more than five years ago.

[00:16:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And they anticipate little improvement due to a growing population, rising costs, and lingering

[00:16:43] [SPEAKER_00]: pandemic effects.

[00:16:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea what lingering pandemic effects are in this equation.

[00:16:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, we were all locked down, and so we got out.

[00:16:55] [SPEAKER_00]: We're just going to have to throw our trash on the side of the road.

[00:16:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Now, the rising costs I'm curious about, is that disposal costs?

[00:17:04] [SPEAKER_00]: When you make things so expensive to throw away that people just dump them?

[00:17:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Is that the deal?

[00:17:12] [SPEAKER_00]: NCDOT manages more than 3,000 miles of roads in Mecklenburg County.

[00:17:16] [SPEAKER_00]: It usually cleans interstates every other month and secondary roads less frequently,

[00:17:21] [SPEAKER_00]: but budget cuts reduced the frequency of scheduled cleanings.

[00:17:26] [SPEAKER_00]: So maybe that's the lingering pandemic effects.

[00:17:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Because people weren't driving, like I don't know about you, but during the pandemic, I was

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_00]: getting about, I don't know, six months to the gallon.

[00:17:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe, and so I wasn't buying a lot of gas.

[00:17:39] [SPEAKER_00]: So no gas taxes, less gas tax means less revenue to pay for roads and cleanup and DOT budgets

[00:17:46] [SPEAKER_00]: and the like.

[00:17:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's the deal.

[00:17:47] [SPEAKER_00]: As soon as we clean the roads, folks keep throwing the trash on them.

[00:17:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Charlotte keeps growing, so there's more people who do it.

[00:17:54] [SPEAKER_00]: In fiscal year 2024, the department spent over $800,000 to collect more than 1.2 million pounds

[00:18:01] [SPEAKER_00]: of litter in Mecklenburg.

[00:18:03] [SPEAKER_00]: That's up from 770,000 spent the prior year.

[00:18:08] [SPEAKER_00]: $800,000 because people cannot help themselves but throw their trash out the windows.

[00:18:16] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't understand it.

[00:18:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I do not understand there is a way you can report these litter bugs.

[00:18:22] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a SWAT, a litter bug is what it's called.

[00:18:26] [SPEAKER_00]: It's an app.

[00:18:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And if you see them doing it, you can go onto the app and report them with their license plate.

[00:18:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And they get a letter, which they probably will just throw out the car window too.

[00:18:38] [SPEAKER_00]: All right, so I got a message with a link to a piece at the Charlotte Ledger.

[00:18:45] [SPEAKER_00]: This is from the Charlotte Ledger in June.

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Talking about the single-family homes.

[00:18:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Big shift underway in the type of housing being built in Charlotte.

[00:18:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Construction of single-family homes is waning.

[00:18:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Taking their place is townhomes.

[00:19:00] [SPEAKER_00]: In 2023, for the first time, the number of building permits for townhomes surpassed the number for single-family detached homes in Mecklenburg County.

[00:19:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Since 2020, the number of permits for townhomes has nearly doubled, while single-family home permits have fallen by a third.

[00:19:18] [SPEAKER_00]: So there you go.

[00:19:19] [SPEAKER_00]: So that was – because I was wondering, like, what's the single-family data look like on the construction side?

[00:19:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Again, that's the Charlotte Ledger.

[00:19:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Talking about the trashy roads, the Charlotte Observer piece.

[00:19:33] [SPEAKER_00]: But then I got a press release here from York, the city of York in South Carolina.

[00:19:38] [SPEAKER_00]: They announced the discontinuation of curbside recycling.

[00:19:42] [SPEAKER_00]: This decision comes after careful consideration of the program's sustainability and financial viability.

[00:19:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Over the past few years, the city has received increasing challenges or faced increasing challenges in maintaining the curbside recycling program.

[00:19:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Rising processing costs have made it increasingly difficult to sustain the program paired with low participation rates.

[00:20:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[00:20:04] [SPEAKER_00]: I have said this before.

[00:20:08] [SPEAKER_00]: People who are advocating for all of the changes to combat climate change, right, all sorts of expenses and increasing regulations and costs of building and everything else.

[00:20:19] [SPEAKER_00]: How about you figure out recycling first?

[00:20:23] [SPEAKER_00]: How about that?

[00:20:23] [SPEAKER_00]: How about you figure that part out?

[00:20:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And if you can show me that you got that part solid, then maybe we could look at some other things.

[00:20:31] [SPEAKER_00]: But when you give me constantly changing lists of plastic and paper products, and I'm supposed to sort things beyond like, okay, I'll pull out like, obviously, I'm going to wash everything before I throw it in the recycling bin.

[00:20:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, right?

[00:20:47] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to put the pizza box in the bin.

[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to do that.

[00:20:50] [SPEAKER_00]: There's food on it.

[00:20:50] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not doing that.

[00:20:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[00:20:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Styrofoam.

[00:20:53] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not putting that in there, obviously.

[00:20:56] [SPEAKER_00]: But if you're giving me like a breakdown, like if the bottle is this color with this size neck and this diameter and what circumference and what, like, I'm out.

[00:21:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I can only do so much, you know?

[00:21:11] [SPEAKER_00]: And then, of course, you make one mistake.

[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_00]: You put one container in there because you misread a number or you think it's accepted and it's not.

[00:21:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And then they throw away the whole bag.

[00:21:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I have heard that from someone who runs a recycling facility.

[00:21:25] [SPEAKER_00]: They're like, yeah, we'll just say the whole bag is contaminated.

[00:21:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Bad bag and they just throw the whole thing into the trash.

[00:21:31] [SPEAKER_00]: So York County or York, the city of York in York County, Rock Hill adjacent, they are discontinuing the curbside recycling.

[00:21:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of trash, Hugo the Hornet is apparently dead and discarded on the side of the road.

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Two of them, actually.

[00:21:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Two Hugos.

[00:21:59] [SPEAKER_00]: I saw this developing on the Twitter machine a couple of days ago.

[00:22:04] [SPEAKER_00]: ncrabbithole.com had the story.

[00:22:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Jeremy Markovich runs the website.

[00:22:09] [SPEAKER_00]: He says there's a very large Hugo the Hornet just lying on its side, missing its cartoonishly gloved right hand.

[00:22:17] [SPEAKER_00]: It appears to be near a highway, which I think we have narrowed it down to Independence Boulevard at Albemarle Road.

[00:22:24] [SPEAKER_00]: So if you're leaving Center City down Independence and you look to the left where Albemarle Road exits to the left there, there's apparently like a little dump, a little garbage area that's right there.

[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's run by a billboard company.

[00:22:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And so apparently these two, you know, huge Hugo the Hornet statues or I don't know what you call them, but I guess statues, they were part of a billboard campaign.

[00:22:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.

[00:22:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And they were only up for a little while and then they threw them into this dump.

[00:23:02] [SPEAKER_00]: And then there's a second guy laying next to a dumpster.

[00:23:06] [SPEAKER_00]: It's just terrible.

[00:23:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Leftover pieces from a billboard.

[00:23:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Novant Health.

[00:23:16] [SPEAKER_00]: The statues are 19 feet tall.

[00:23:19] [SPEAKER_00]: He was hoisted into place on October 16th.

[00:23:23] [SPEAKER_00]: This would have been what year?

[00:23:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I don't know.

[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_00]: 2014.

[00:23:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Another Hornet went up on another billboard on I-277.

[00:23:32] [SPEAKER_00]: It all happened just a few months after the official name change was announced.

[00:23:36] [SPEAKER_00]: So when we got the Hornets back, we got the name back from New Orleans and they changed it from the Bobcats back to the Hornets as it always should have been.

[00:23:48] [SPEAKER_00]: The 19-foot Hugos didn't even last a full year up on the billboards.

[00:23:55] [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's where they ended up in a dump along the side of the road, just discarded like trash, which really is a metaphor for Charlotte sports.

[00:24:09] [SPEAKER_00]: You know?

[00:24:10] [SPEAKER_00]: It really is.

[00:24:12] [SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[00:24:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you tomorrow.

[00:24:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Break Winterbull is coming up next.

[00:24:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Stick around.

[00:24:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Remember to get the podcast, thepeetcalendorshow.com.

[00:24:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you tomorrow.

[00:24:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Don't break anything while I'm gone.

[00:24:22] [SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[00:24:23] [SPEAKER_00]: That'll do it for this episode.

[00:24:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for listening.

[00:24:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast.

[00:24:31] [SPEAKER_00]: So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here.

[00:24:34] [SPEAKER_00]: You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepeetcalendorshow.com.

[00:24:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.

[00:24:44] Thank you.