Latest / PITSTOP With The Diers Ford/Lincoln Auto Amigos / Pitstop Episode 2: Dodge County Supervisor

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Pitstop Episode 2: Dodge County Supervisor · PITSTOP With The Diers Ford/Lincoln Auto Amigos

• Diers: here. Brandon I go, you know, you could nap in there. He wanted to. So you're not feeling good today or what? I don't think so. You got to connect that song to it. Nope, just this one. We're to use because all the audio is going to that one. I'll just mute this one. This is just so you can see Doug. Alright. Cool. Thank I'll give you the good to go. All right. And we're good. Go ahead and say something, Just one, two, one, two. You're good. You're all right. All right. And we are good. Three, two, one. Welcome to the pit stop with the Deersford Lincoln Auto Amigos. I'm Tony. This is Fernando. And we're joined by Mr. Doug Backins today, County Supervisor, Dodge County Supervisor, District 7, former Fremont firefighter. Thanks for coming on, Doug. Well, thanks for having me. Before we start, just want to mention the Carton Co. downtown Fremont across from Krasny's on Main Street. And Erica is our official drink sponsor. She always has something great. We got a little something different today. have ⁓ dark chocolate raspberry. Last week's was delicious. I expect this to be just as well. That's good. Doug, you allowed to have that? I think so. The thing I like about Erica's drinks, she can taste the coffee. You know, she did not disappoint. It just was delicious. Two thumbs up, Erica. Good job. So I want to start out, Doug, just give us a little bit about your background. I know you're the county supervisor now for District 7 for Dodge County, and then you were a Fremont firefighter for about 29 years full time. ⁓ Prior to that, I was born and raised here, been here all my life. ⁓ Married, three kids, three grandkids, my daughter has and her husband. After graduation, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I hung around here and worked at Hormel's for about five years and ⁓ worked at Biggertone Ag Products for about three years. But during that time, I had a few buddies that got on the volunteer fire department at Fremont. They had volunteers back then. And, old Dan Grubb, Tim Adams. yeah. Those guys. Yeah. Class of a 83, a member 83. Doug and I were classmates in high school. Oh, I bet Doug can tell some stories. I bet he's not going to tell any stuff. Not today. We're going to leave that part out. But, uh, so yeah, so I got on the volunteers and, um, about five years, I think it was like 88, some of them, Dan and Tim, they went down to Fremont rural or Inglewood. kind of a name change on that fire department there, but it was all volunteer. And so you got to do everything, you know, drive and pump and haul water and go into interior tax and so forth. So I guess I just kind of grew on me over time and ⁓ decided to start testing for the for the paid department. ⁓ eventually, if I got hired on, there's back in the early 90s, actually, they a lot of them were pushing the education and lot of those guys, some of the old North benders were getting hired ahead of me and stuff. So at Tony, Todd, yeah. Todd's a fire chief now. Fire chief. Yeah. Yeah. Pat's retired too. And he's also on the county board now too. So, ⁓ but yeah, back in just kind of, ⁓ so did they send you to school for that? you, I went out my own. I mean, there were some schools you could go, you know, as a volunteer and so forth, but then, ⁓ There was an 18 month program at Southeast Community College in Lincoln. You know, you could get your associate's degree or whatever. So I was actually working a bigger tone and going down there like at nights and going to Metro and taking my elective classes out here. ⁓ And also in between that actually, I was working out here back in the, in the get ready area. ⁓ yeah. Do your sport. Yeah. Washing cars and cleaning. You know, I knew there was something. other than being classmates that I liked about you. Yeah. So yeah. So I had a little time out here in between too. I mean, all my busy schedule was going on back then, but then eventually I finally got hired. And like I said, 29 years later, was fortunate enough and retired actually about six years ago or whatever. do you, do you have any memorable calls, things that really stand out to you that, and that was a That was a scary one or that was exciting. Oh, you know, there's a lot of different ones. One was actually when the airplane, you know, went down right here on Broad Street. I don't know if you remember that or not or around, but we were sitting there eating dinner one evening and they said airplane landed on Broad Street in front of Charlie Deere's or whatever. And it's like, know, how does this happen or whatever? But you know, it's not was that. How long ago was that? Oh, that was early on, probably. late nineties, maybe don't quote me for sure. Some people travel long ways to come by a car here. Yeah. But, ⁓ you know, there's a lot of, or no bigger than the fire department is in, or, know, Dodge County, we and all the Dodge County, you know, fire departments and volunteers, we, they all seem to get their share or see a lot of stuff around here over the years. So, ⁓ some things you don't want to. Some things you don't want to remember obviously or whatever, but you know, there was one time we had a young man in the middle of night. was stuck in a clothes shoot. Fernando, probably don't even know what a clothes shoot is. I don't know what that is. It may have been, may have been Fernando. Yeah. You know, you have like a cupboard door upstairs and drop your clothes in and it goes down in the basement or wherever your laundry room is and so forth. But we had a guy stuck in there one night. We had to go there and pull him out or whatever. Actually, I couldn't find that pair of socks. I don't know what they probably got dared or, you know, you know how kids are. ⁓ I wonder the some of the realities of being a fireman versus public perception. ⁓ Like you say, some of the movies you would see, don't jump around and leap from place to place in some of the bigger fires or whatever. ⁓ We're there to help the public and a lot of times you're not only a firefighter, but you're kind of like a social worker. Especially in a community like ours, moderate size, you do a lot of different things. You're not just a fireman. on the rescue squad. We were trained in confined space, know, and high angle rescue. We did a lot of everything, which made it interesting too. And, and, ⁓ and it made it exciting because you got to do a lot of different things compared to a bigger department. But. Now, how do you think being a fireman influenced your values as far as father, Dodge County supervisor, that have a big impact on you as far as. things you believe in? Well, yeah. How to answer that really? Maybe, I don't know, maybe make you closer with your family knowing. I suppose when you see a lot of accidents, you realize, you know, things can change drastically in one day. Oh for sure. You know, like I say, a lot of times you leave in the morning and some people don't come back home at night. There's times when they're there on holidays or at home and being a medium sized apartment, you know, we were on call on our days off a lot. And so if they got busy, you'd get called, called in and called back. Sometimes you'd go back for a half hour, 45 minutes or a couple hours if it was a structure fire to kind of depending the case. And, know, I think of those times like on the holidays or Christmas Eve, know, Christmas day, you're sitting on the couch with your family and your kids and then your pager goes off and. You know, do you leave your family sitting here, but yet there's a family in need out there that, you know, it's hard to, hard to not go into help because you know that, ⁓ there's limited manpower and they're them guys are doing their job. And so you want, you know, want to go help them in this situation on that family in need. ⁓ but also in turn, and two days from now when I'm working and something happens, those guys that are off, I hope that they come and help us out too, you know, as a brotherhood, you know, and looking out for each other. ⁓ far as family, mean, they were my, my, family, know, they're, spent a lot of time there versus time home with your family. So I don't know if you ever knew, but when we lived in Peru, Nebraska, which is originally where I'm from. And my dad was the volunteer fire chief there for about 20 years. And my uncle Rex was a state fire marshal, my dad's brother. And so he used to teach in grand Island at the fire school. guys would come back and say, do know Rex Allgood? And I'd say, yeah, it's my uncle. ⁓ yeah, I've met him a few times. We used go out there over the years. so when I was a kid, my dad would take us to the fire station and we'd have to help roll hose and then we'd have to wash trucks. And I hated it. But we didn't do any fun things. Well, that's all part of the job. It's interesting and exciting to go help people. fight the dragon as we say, but then in the end you got to go back and do some of the dirty work too and get ready for the next call. Fernando, in Mexico, they have a local fire department, they have a volunteer fire department, do they have a fire department? It's really different, the structure in Mexico to how it is here because I come from a small town in Mexico, probably about the size of ⁓ North Bend maybe. maybe a little bigger than that. And there is no volunteer fire department. There is no volunteer anything actually. If there's a fire, you got to get that bucket and start putting that thing out, you know. But there is no training as far as, you know, what to do in those situations. Like there usually is here, you know, you guys probably sometimes go out to the schools and do a little presentation, right? Right. We didn't have any of that. The closest fire department was maybe 20, 30 minutes away at the closest city. So yeah, it's a lot different than it is here. Somebody who's been in the, you know, serving others their whole life. And maybe this is why, but what made you decide after you retired to run for County Supervisor? Oh yeah, on the same line. Like I said, I was interested in helping people and continuing. to help people in the community. ⁓ I guess it was just, I knew a lot of people and people kind of thought I'd be a good fit. get ⁓ every now and then they still tell me I should run for mayor, but I don't think I, I don't think I need that. Now you said that you retired six years ago, but you're not actually retired. I mean, you just went from the fire department to a political or community service, right? Yeah. ⁓ Yep, I'm on the County Board of Supervisors, which ⁓ we meet every other week on Wednesday mornings. In between that, we're on several different committees. So I'm involved with like Three Rivers Health Department, Chamber of Commerce, Merit Commission for the Sheriff's Office. So I help interview and deputies for deputies and promote deputies to sergeant positions. ⁓ Security committee, IT committee. So yeah, there's a lot of other things that are involved other than just you know, some people say oh you just meet every other week, you know or whatever but and as far as the County supervisor goes what what do you guys do in that role? What is your day to day? Well, so we like to say we several of us are on different committees They oversee everything in the courthouse all the different departments in the courthouse and the Sheriff's Office, County Roads. So we have like a roads committee that's made up of like three other guys that take care of that or kind of more spend more time on that. know, everybody's kind of involved in the whole picture at the end of the day. But we have like, say, different committees for different things. And there's a Oh, that pretty much covers it, I guess the roads department, Sheriff's Office and like say all the treasures office. clerk's office. So make sure all that's operating. There's all the department heads are kind of in charge of all that and their employees, but yet we kind of oversee the the daily, not necessarily the daily functions, but the the staffing and some of the you know, the HR part of it. So what kind of challenges do you have in the County supervisor role and the issues that maybe you guys face? ⁓ there's the, you know, the continuance of, ⁓ you know, your taxes are the biggest questions and concerns people. ⁓ I'm sure you get a lot of complaints. Always asking about that, you know, and unfortunately that's, ⁓ how things go. ⁓ We try to maintain them and operate within our budget, you know, and keep things going, but it costs money. You know, basically it costs money to make money. You have to have the resources there to take care of your county roads and your bridges and same with the sheriff's office and deputies and so on and so forth. So now when you guys say you have bridges that need repair or replace, which I'm sure, you know, it's not just one. that constantly needs updates or repair. How do you decide, you know, which ones are you're going to be doing first or maybe this one I'll wait? So Scott, he's our road superintendent and he has like a one in six year plan that we go through different roads and bridges and ⁓ actually all those bridges, they have to get checked and inspected yearly. So it kind of depends on the age of them and what shape there are. and so forth and then they kind of categorizes it and puts it on a plan to get things taken care of or some of these bridges were actually changing out and going to what they call like a box culvert that's all concrete now so then it's a longer term ⁓ solution and then it alleviates some of the inspection too and stuff because obviously you know how things change everything gets more complex on All the different standards, know, not only at the state level, the federal level, there's a lot of things you gotta go by. is this, do you get any state funding or is this just all county? ⁓ there is some funds. Yep. There's the bridge fund that they applied to, which they've kind of cutting back on that too at the state and federal level compared to what it used to be. You know, obviously with everybody's budget restraints, everything's getting tighter and tighter for all organizations. So then we just have to make a plan. Like I say, it gives you that five to six year plan to put it in your budget and Here's what we have. Here's what we can afford to do. Are there grants available? Yeah, there's grants out there. You can apply for that. ⁓ And then you can do your overlaying projects with the Blacktop. Have you ever written a grant? No. ⁓ my gosh. I took a class ⁓ when I was working on my master's degree. And my brother-in-law and I took it together and we were telling the school superintendent and principal how we were taking this class that, you know, maybe we'd be able to help with some grant stuff. And then after taking that class, I decided I don't ever want to do that again. It's so much research and gathering data that it's really, I mean, that's the worst part. You know, writing the grant wasn't really that bad. But when you have to, you have to research, you have to have data to support why you... you know, why you need the grant, why you'd be a good fit. And it's a tremendous amount of work. so people who do that. Yeah, more power too. Yeah, great for them, but that wasn't me. Do you think that your experience as a fireman helped you in the county supervisor role? ⁓ yeah. mean, you know, dealing with people on a daily basis and communications. You know, at the fire department too, you have all different, I don't want to say walks of life, but all different attitudes and mentalities, I guess, or whatever. Everybody comes from different backgrounds. Yeah, everybody's different, which is great. That's what makes the world go around, right? Absolutely. Yeah, just being able to, like I say, communicate with people and get out there and help people. It was great experience. I don't miss it per se, but I miss a lot of the people or the coworkers and so forth. unfortunately, they're as busy as they are nowadays. The sirens go all the time in this town, ⁓ but they continue to provide a good service and do their jobs. Now I see a lot, Fernando, where we're at, we see a lot of, we must be on a route for the trucks because we'll see them out a lot. You'll hear the fire. fire engines and we'll see them go by. Do you think the majority are health related calls or? Yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of EMS calls. Now do they send a truck with every one of those? Most of the time. Yep. And then there's a, there's three guys on the engine now, I believe in two on the rescue squad. And then, uh, depends on the circumstances or if they need the extra staffing, that guy off that truck will, you know, jump on the rescue squad to go to the hospital. And it, uh, If not, then he's on that truck and they get a lot of double runs. You know, we used to get a lot of double calls. Seemed like you go on one and it wasn't long and you have another one. And, and back when I was there, that would initiate the, ⁓ like the callback, like I said, cause a lot of times back in the day for several years, there's only nine guys on a shift or nine, nine person shift, ⁓ seven minimum. And now they've increased the staffing to a couple more per shift just with the call volume. Cause I mean, if you look at the numbers or pay attention to any of that, it's just. Astronomical, think there were over 4000 calls last year. So do you ever want to be a fireman? You know, I thought about it. I really did. Before I joined the military, I my options were fire firefighter. But at the time when I when I looked up how to join the fire department and Council Bluffs, I had to call and make the appointment. I had lost my voice. Because I got sick so I had lost my voice so I couldn't really call and make that ⁓ appointment so I decided to go to the military instead. That was a little quick change. long were you in the military? Six years. Where was, I know at one point, where'd you say you were in Kosovo? Yeah, Kosovo. The country of Kosovo is north of Greece. Beautiful country, great people, super nice people. But I wasn't there too long. Now were euros, do you ever have a euro? Yeah. it's... Did they have those? ⁓ When you're in Europe, you use Euros. But when I went to Ireland and I had to use pounds. So it's different. So when you were a fireman, did you guys cook or did you have a cook or did you take turns cooking? Because I know if I'm a fireman, nobody's going to want to eat what I'm making. Yeah, on my shift, had what we call the Eaters Club. So yeah, we took turns eating that. At nighttime, we'd have our dinner meals and we'd just take turns cooking. What was the Doug Back in special? We put so much money in the kitty every night, you know, and try to keep it within the means or whatever. then, oh, you know, I like to make meatloaf. Spaghetti and meat sauce, obviously, is an easy one. So a lot of guys fall back on the spaghetti. A little variety. Oh, yeah, you never know. You know, tacos. And then like say we had our kitty and then every now and you'd build up your kitty and then maybe you could, you know, buy some steaks and grill out or whatever. So do you ever have a that guy you were going, God, I hope he's cooking tonight. ⁓ a couple of them. And then there's a couple of them that you wish that never were cooking or whatever, you know. One guy didn't like to cook too much and he, actually brought in like lasagna from, from an outdoor source or whatever. And I was giving them bad time about it or whatever, but actually it was pretty decent lasagna. So my two roommates, we'd, we'd alternate cooking and, uh, one guy, whenever he had to cook, was tater tot casserole, which I like, but when you have it every third night, you know, it gets old. Or he'd make breakfast. You know, he'd make scrambled eggs and sausage and which was okay. Yeah. We had a guy that make tater tot casserole, but he wouldn't put the tater tots on top till about four 30 and then we'd eat at five o'clock. So it'd be half frozen every time. But, yeah. And he would continue to do it over the years. He could never figure that out. You would figure that he'd figure it out a third time, you know? So what, would you say is your biggest goal for the the county that you hope to get done while you're a county supervisor. And do you have that one goal that you think's really important that'll move Dodge County ahead? ⁓ You know, not right off the top of my head. We've had a couple strides of some things that we've gotten done like in the last eight years or whatever. When I first got on there, like Bob Bending, was a courthouse that kind of surprised me that all the different offices had like several different of their own IT departments, you know, not one individual company or service or whatever. So we've been working on that and streamlining that. did a... He was our chairman on that committee and did a lot of work on it. you know, that kind of, that kind of surprised me. So each department head was kind of in charge of their own deal. So I think that would be, and it has become better for the operation of the courthouse and then for the taxpayers, know, that obviously we're saving money and streamlining it and the, and the protection, you know, what the, you know, all the technology and the firewalls and And some of that, is way over my head, I was on the committee, but don't get me in. I'm not a computer guy. So that would be that guy. Yeah. Fernando, he can get her done. That's not this guy. know, but I think just continue to, you know, be there to support the people of Dodge County. And like I our county road is a big, you know, a big, a big part of that being in the county. ⁓ We got over 300 bridges when you were talking about bridges and so forth, I think out there. and a lot of county roads, know, and it's a farming community. So, you know, not only that department, I mean, I'm looking out or I help to help all the departments, you know, they all have their things that they do and take care of. there's just a lot of great, a lot of great employees and people I deal a lot to, like I say, with the sheriff's office. And I kind of stay involved with that being on the Merit Commission hiring, but also being in the fire service for 40 years, you kind of had a tight bond with the police and fire over the years too. Oh, I'm sure you work hand in hand together. sure. So what would you say the most intense call you were ever on? you still a fireman when they had the flood in 19? Oh yeah, I left. I retired in June right after the flood. Yeah. That was pretty intense. Like I said, especially when we were... We weren't on duty that day. Matter of fact, Pat, Tony and I were at the fire station that night when, when the guys were out in the boats and the boats were trying to rescue those people and Rick shoot was on their boat. were capsizing. Yep. Yeah. Cause a North bend central kid. Yep. Nick Morris and Rich Osterloh. And, and so that was pretty intense. And you're sitting at the station wanting to help, yet we had our part. were running, you know, taking care of the rest of the city and, organizing things throughout. Matter of fact, I got in pickup and drove down to the union Pacific, trying to find somebody at the train depot to see if they had a truck that they could go out there on the rails, you know, with some lights or whatever, just trying to think of different options or whatever. Cause you know, when you're just sitting there listening to the radio of what's going on there, you know, and you're feeling helpless. So that was pretty intense. ⁓ know, what was the, what was the plant that exploded up? What was that last year that that happened? the bio solids. Yeah. Something like that comes in as a fireman. ⁓ Is that just everybody or do people stay in ⁓ the, you know, back at the station? No, everybody goes initially, you know, or whatever. And then you take calls from there. And then you have, like say you have your call back policy and, know, ⁓ a move up plan that we implemented over the years. ⁓ Jamie Meyer was my captain for a lot of years. And that's where we, you know, brought in like Arlington for a rescue squad and Fremont rule for engines stuff. And then you just keep bringing your outlying departments into, you know, to rely, ⁓ rely on them for some help or whatever. And, and, ⁓ you don't ever hope for, but you know, someday you're probably going to go back out and then communities and help too, you know, so you got to work hand in hand, you know, it's a, especially like I said, it's not that we're a small community, but yet when, when the shit's hitting the fan, you know, ⁓ You need your help and you need your help, you know, right away or whatever. So Gary Gurman was Gary Captain when you were there. He was ⁓ he was actually my fire chief. He got promoted to chief. ⁓ huh. Yeah. And that's yeah, that's what I was intending to say. but he came up through the ranks. Yeah, he was a firefighter and came up through the ranks, Lieutenant. You know, Gary, right? Drives for us. Yeah. And ⁓ I he started after he retired. He's been here. How long ago? He'd been gone for a while. Yeah. Good guy. Yeah. Yes. Yep. Yeah. He left for after he retired. Then I think he worked for the state fire marshal's office for a few years or whatever. And then Todd Bernt was the next chief. Yeah. And Todd Bernt's been the chief after him. Now we have a new station that's going to go up. Correct. Yeah. They're putting together a plan. I believe it's out on Johnson road and military Avenue. And then how many firemen will that house? ⁓ I'm not sure. I'm guessing maybe. Maybe four. So you have like, you know, two or two on the engine, two on the truck. It just depends on hopefully what they increase their staffing numbers to. I'm sure they'll have to add more staffing than what they got now to, to man that. Did the, now when they do that, will the, all the rescue services still go out of the current station or will they have that also at the end? They'll have it out there too. I'm sure they'll probably split up the town a little bit. Uh, you know, depending on the call volume or I'm not sure how they're responsible for this area. Yeah. That's all city stuff. as a County supervisor, I don't, don't get part of it or whatever, but now do you guys, are you involved with the rural station? Uh, not very much. I'm also, I'm also, I go to the mutual aid association meetings, all the Dodge County departments. They get together and meet every other month. And so I kind of been involved in go to those, know, to be there for a contact person and help them out. Just like I say, because I still have the interest in the fire service and, so forth. A couple of years ago, we put the big 800 megahertz radio system together. It was like a $10 million project and that's all the departments in Dodge County and so forth. So, and that was all pretty much a county money and so forth. So Fernando. questions for Doug that just interests. What do you, so Fremont is growing. So as a County supervisor, what do you foresee problems happening around town with the, you know, people coming into Fremont more and more every year? ⁓ I don't know if it's problem so much. mean, you just have to be, ⁓ You need to be aware and be alert. if we want to have and have over the years, to progress and ⁓ do different things, you have to be open-minded. ⁓ That's what we always talked about at the fire department. And it's not just about the fire department. If your talent grows, you got everything that goes along with it. You got street department, police department, water department, everything goes along with it. If you want to thrive and yeah, there's schools. mean, if you want to thrive and you want to... get bigger and do great things for the citizens. Unfortunately, it's going to cost you money and unfortunately everything is, you know, out of line on the payment part of it, you know. But you have to all work together and I don't think we'll have, I think it's a good community. I don't think we will have a lot of problems. You're going to have your daily stuff no matter where you're at, ⁓ no matter what business you're in, you know. ⁓ And like you said, I didn't really retire. I got rental property and a lawn service and some other stuff, but there's a lot of great things going on out there. I think. Do you think framework is ready for that boom? Oh, I think so. You know, it's interesting as I, as I, when I got on the county board that, you know, how many of these organizations do so many things around town that people don't understand or know that they do. until you get out and get involved in it or see some of these things or go to some of them coffees and so forth. There's a lot of nonprofit organizations that do so much in this community, but yet they all work together with all the other nonprofits and the different groups that I think it's really amazing to see. ⁓ If you've seen that Ben Sasse video, he made a couple comments on there. it really hits home and whatever. it's like, know what? Fremont is a great community. And like you say, a lot of them people, just all work together and get things done when things need to be done. So I think Ben was a good addition at Medlin and he changed a lot of things there that are still in place. Yeah. But yeah, sad situation for sure. coffee or energy drink? ⁓ coffee. I have a few coffees. ⁓ every morning or not necessarily every morning, but if you, give up the energy drinks. I used to drink coffee and energy drinks and a Pepsi. And then a couple of years ago when everything was kind of shaking and rattling and rolling, I went to the cardiologist and they said, just stay away from them. drinks and don't tell me that. So I, I went through a couple of different tests and like 11 minutes on the treadmill and passed everything and which was a good thing. You because you're wondering what might be going on or whatever. But you pretty much said it was just that caffeine and easy on the caffeine. we know fireman Doug, we know county supervisor Doug. Tell us about grandpa Doug. ⁓ well, yeah, my daughter, Riley, she's married to Charlie and then they have three kids. There are 10, seven and four. And we've been fortunate that they're close or actually right around the corner from us here in town. ⁓ So some days they can holler out their back door at me when I'm sitting on my patio, which is pretty great. ⁓ My wife watches them, fortunately, a couple days a week too. So ⁓ it's blessed to have them close like that. Some people, you know, they don't get to see their grandkids and ⁓ just a unique experience, I guess. So are you soft grandpa or are you discipline grandpa? Oh, combination. Probably pretty soft or whatever. Like I said, the oldest two are boys and the littlest one's a girl. So she probably beats me up a little bit. Have you changed an attitude from when you were just a dad to now being a grandpa? Oh, yeah. I mean. Excuse me. Things are different too, like say back when my kids were growing up, I was at the fire station, you know, and so you're there every third day. So my wife did a lot raising my kids and taking care of my kids, you know, and that's that part of it's different, you know. God bless them. Yeah. You know, and was coaching my wife, you know, I miss some things. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. And my wife was great at that and she understood, you know, but kids don't always understand, you know, they, they want to, they like looking up and seeing you. And, but, know, I think my girls kind of knew dad's a coach and an AD he's, he's got to be at these things, you know, but it also was good because sometimes I was at those things and they were involved. Yeah. So yeah, whenever you have, so how did that rotation work? You worked every three days? Every third day. Yeah, 24 hours on and 48 hours off. So every third day. it just kept going. Now did Fremont have Kelly weeks? No. We had like an hour reduction. We got one day in between like in a 28 day cycle. It's complicated to figure out. So don't try to figure it out. Even half the guys that worked there didn't have to figure it out. We had to help though. Officers had to help them. know ⁓ one of my brothers was a fireman in Lincoln and then one of my assistant coaches in Grand Island was a captain at station two. ⁓ yeah. And they both had Kelly weeks and I never really understood that. I didn't get how that worked. Yeah, there's different cycles or whatever. Like Lincoln has a different one and Omaha has a different one. Like where they work every other day for like 10 days and they get six in a row off or whatever. Ours just kept going every third day. So, um, but then if you took a day off and you got like five in a row, so that was a good thing to, could, you could use your vacation time like in the hours or use them up as the hours, know, like 12 hours or 24 hours. Biggest thing was there always had to be like, say at least seven individuals there, you know, for the minimum staffing. That's very hard to always be be available on call. You know, you were mentioning that during holidays and everything, it gets it gets hard because you don't know if you know you're going to get called. ⁓ You said there was how many calls in a year? Well, last year they had over 4,000. 4,000 calls. Now is is Fremont? Is there a lot of firefighters in Fremont or are you guys like kind of low on manpower? ⁓ They're staying pretty full right now. Like I said, they increase their staffing to 11 per shift. ⁓ And then they. You know, there's always some coming and going for, you know, whatever reasons, bigger departments, different departments. Um, there's a few that, you know, I've been here and it didn't work out or it wasn't what they thought and got into different careers too, you know, or whatever, but now you're always going to have that. I don't know, kind of cycling door or whatever. It's been that way. Unfortunately, you know, even the sheriff's department, police department and fire department. in the 40 years that I've been involved in it or whatever, but that's starting to get a little bit better or whatever. We've had a few numbers, a few better numbers on the testing at the sheriff's office lately. So how does, is Fremont involved in a union? Yeah. So they, the union negotiates their pay or? Yeah. They got union officers and then they. Now does that go by size of communities or? Yeah. They had their comparables. It used to be like Norfolk and Columbus, Beatrice. And don't quote me, I'm not sure which ones they compare with now because it has to do with like the population. Back in early years when I was on it was like Grand Island was, but then I think after Grand Island got over like 50,000 in their population. we were, Fremont was only like 24 under 25. It was like twice as much the population or whatever. That was Fremont rank for pay. Are they pretty good? ⁓ they're, I think they've kind of upped it a little bit here a while back to try to help, you know, keep some of those individuals here or whatever. ⁓ but there's, know, it's, it's a hard revolving cycle because yeah, say Fremont will negotiate and then the next year Norfolk does. you know, your numbers are always never really a hundred percent the same and, and, ⁓ change, you know, yearly, but they, they always had to try to keep us, you know, pretty much. you know, in the median. And, ⁓ and it's not all sometimes about the money too, you know, it's your working conditions, your equipment, where you live, ⁓ you know, different things like that. ⁓ I know one thing that I found interesting once you're several years ago, they put out the list of, like I say, all the, ⁓ all the benefits and all the other things that go along with it. That when you're a young guy, you don't kind of pay attention that, know, everybody wants another dollar, another dollar or whatever, but, ⁓ The older you're getting down the road, then you start looking at the retirement and, ⁓ you know, the health insurance, or if you have options for health insurance when you retire or whatever. So there's a lot of other things to consider it and, and then think about it when you're in one of those positions. how long is your term as County Supervisor? ⁓ four years. And how, how many years in are you now? This is my, ⁓ this is my eighth year. I'm actually up for election. So you obviously got elected again after the first stint every four years. Yep. So some people must like you. Apparently. Yeah. Are you going for a third? You know what? I tell everybody I'm a nice guy. Just ask me. I'll tell you. Are you going for that third one? Yeah. And actually nobody's running against me this time. So even better. Hey, congratulations. Congratulations. Vote for me on May 12th, but hopefully. ⁓ There's not too many write-ins or something, right? You know, I was going to ask you if you thought being a fireman in the community helped with that, you know, as far as getting elected, that people knew who you were, they appreciated what you did. You felt like that played a big role in that? ⁓ I think so. Like say, I know a lot of people and known a lot of people, like I say, being here all my life, you know, or whatever. ⁓ Not only that and being on the rescue squad. Yeah, exactly. You know, you're out and a lot of people recognize you or remember you or whatever. And then when they see your face on the door hangers or when you come knocking around, know, I went around initially the first time and knocked on a lot of doors and talking to people, you know, cause you know, that's what it's all about is getting out and meeting the people and talking to them and, seeing what their concerns are and so forth. So now you mentioned that people have asked you, you're going to be mayor. What are your thoughts? Are you going to run for it? No, no, no. just there's a, know, we've had a lot of great mayors. There's a lot of good people doing the work in the city. And, you know, I've got, I got enough going on right now with like say all my other little businesses and the county supervisor stuff. And I enjoy the county supervisor. Got a great, great group of guys there, you know, and we all work well together. So I know no big plans on anything like that right now. Well, you seem to be busy. We see it every chamber thing most of the time, unless you're... I try to hit some of those or whatever. Yeah. That's what people tell me too. They said, well, you must... They always see me with a cup of coffee in my hand or something. Well, if we're at the business after hours, I don't know if it's always coffee. Well, sometimes it's on the other end of it, but you got to do that every now and Yeah, we call that Coca-Cola's. Coca-Cola's. So, well, thanks for what you do, Doug. Thanks for what you've always done as a firefighter and now serving our county as a supervisor. know, you know, the one thing about those kind of things, and I've always told people, people who volunteer to serve the community, they just don't hear thanks enough, you know, that most of the time it's the other that you hear, you know, as a coach. I understand that feeling. But we want you to know how much we appreciate you. thank you for what you did. As a former classmate, I'm proud of what you've done. I think you've ⁓ done a lot of good things in your life. Hopefully you can continue to do all those good things for a while. And ⁓ we wish you the very best. We appreciate you being here today. Thank you so much for coming, Doug. ⁓ One last question. To you. Since you said that you run everywhere, you're running around everywhere doing all these boards. Are you ready for retirement or no? ⁓ I mean, yeah, really, what is retirement? That's what a lot of people say. ⁓ I'm trying to slow down a little bit and some of the yard stuff and some of the other little things. That I do my two boys do both the lawn mowing and and different things and my wife helps them one day a week but I do like kind of all the odds and ends and the you know that the HR stuff the PR stuff and the finance stuff I guess you might say but I like to stay busy But also there's There's a time come that you know, you need to you know, get out and enjoy stuff. I like I got a motorcycle We like to I like to ride my motorcycle yet And like I the grandkids and even the kids we got, we spend some time on the river and do different things. And ⁓ you got to get out and do that too. Cause you know, life's too short. We always, I always say we, play hard, we work hard, but we play hard. So that's right. I don't think I'll ever retire if that's, that's the answer you want. Probably never retired. Always have little. hear that district seven. You're good. Little something going on or, know, like say my rental properties and so forth. I liked, I liked to stay busy. Good. Well, thank you much. Did you notice that our chamber board of directors meetings, they won't ever let us sit by each other. Yeah. I you guys would talk too much. I think they know how honoree Doug is and that it would stray off. I think they know both of you and know how bad of an idea that is. Well, again, thanks, Doug. We appreciate your time. We wish you the very best and just keep at it. Well, thank you. Thanks, guys, for having me and we appreciate seeing you guys out there. I know a lot of a lot of people see you out and about. It's it's it's good to be better to be seen. Yeah, Doug, we will see you in the next coffee and we'll see you on the next pit stop with the Deers for Lincoln Auto Amigos. Have a good day.