Greetings, and welcome to ZAC Cast, your official podcast for local government nerdery of all kinds. I'm Chad, that's Pat. We have a barnstormer of a show today, so how are you doing, Pat?

I'm good. I'm good. Uh, in a moment of nerdery, a big announcement, we just hired a new nerd employee.

Got it. Now, y- you keep doing these things where I have to get, like, sound effects.

Yeah.

So I'm gonna have to get some kind of applause-

Well, we'll-

... sound effect now.

Yes, ah.

I recently bought a subscription to Envato Elements, which gives me-

Okay

... access to, like, their whole library of stuff for free.

Mm-hmm.

Well, not for free, 'cause you paid for the subscription, but... So I, I did that after the last episode, so that I would have a resource to just go find sound clips and, and sound effects for you.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So w- we've hired a, a new employee, data scientist, pretty exciting. Uh, name is Gavin, uh, for all those who have not met him yet. I'm sure we're gonna lock him in a dungeon and have him do lots of, uh, data analytics and analysis. But Doug, this morning, I was talking to Doug, and he made a good point to me. Our email addresses are just our first names @zactax.com.

Yes.

Right? So you're chad@zactax, and I'm patrick. Doug is doug, right?

Mm-hmm.

What are we gonna do... And, and, like, he- we were talking about, like, Gavin, this may be, like, the first Gavin that I've actually, like, personally known, who's not, like, a movie star Gavin, or, uh, a musician.

I don't know. Do I know any movie star Gavins?

Or a musician. Musician's a better way to go, yeah. Um, but what are we gonna do, like, when we hire a second Michael or another Maria?

We just won't-

Are we gonna be like, "No, I'm sorry, we can't hire you"?

"We can't hire you because you have the same name as someone else."

Because of your first name. Yeah. Um, or we could be like-

We'll give them a nickname.

We could be like: Hey, you know, we already have a Michael, so-

Your name is Champ

... uh, we're just gonna go with your name is George or Champ.

Yeah, Champ.

Yeah, whichever way. Or we could do, like, a Michael 2.0, something like that.

I mean, you could do, like, first name, last initial.

Oh.

First initial, last name. It's funny, for a while, you could always tell what email provider, uh, a city was using by what their email structure was.

Yeah, I always liked the retailers who tried to hide their email. There was a famous one that we used to work with, that was their last name... It was their last name, dot, first name.

It's clever.

As long as you knew that. Yeah, it was clever. Uh, but you could send emails at that point to them.

Yeah.

Um, so yeah, I mean, a new employee, employee number... What number is this?

Seven?

Seven.

Seven.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, big day. Big day, team Zac. Uh, so new employee, we've officially made the decision that we will not hire anybody with the same name of anybody who works for us.

Yes.

Is that where we're going?

Uh, yes, it's, uh, executive decision has been made.

Yes. So I'm, I'm very sorry for anybody out there named, uh, any of the current seven employees' names. So there is plenty of room, though, for Spencers, um, you know, a Jennifer.

There's so many names-

We don't have a Jennifer?

Like, like, uh-

There are so many names

... like Blakely, Asher.

Oh.

We have to wait for all these, like, Gen As and late Gen Zers to grow up, so we have a much-

Gen A?

Gen Alpha.

What is Gen A?

The, the, the newest, like, my kids are Gen A. They're not Gen Z.

Okay, interesting.

I guess it's probably, like, 2010 is maybe the cutoff, or they may be-

So both of my kids are Gen As.

They may not have determined what that cutoff is yet, 'cause they're all still so young.

So my kid had his funniest clapback that he's ever had against me yesterday. Uh, my son in the backseat said something, and, uh, then my eldest son, who's sitting next to me, Mason, repeated what he said, and I said, "But I heard that with my two ears." And he said, "You mean only one ear?"

Oh, because you can't hear out of the other ear?

I can't hear out of the other ear, yeah. I thought that was... I was like, "Man, the wittiness is coming."

It's amazing-

There it is

... how... See, this is the difference between me and you, is, like, say we go to a conference or something, everyone remembers Patrick, and no one-

Mm-hmm

... remembers me. The number- like, the amount of times I get called Zac or Jack or Jeff, it's crazy. Like, people in my family don't even remember that I can't smell. They'll always... Even my wife will be like, "Hey, smell this real quick." And I'm like, "You, you've known me for 20 years. You know I can't smell."

Yeah, yeah.

Your kids remember that you're deaf in one ear.

They do, yeah.

Like, I, I, I understand it.

Yeah, you can't smell, but doesn't that, like, make your taste buds so much better?

Uh, does it make it better? So, so if you have... If you lose your sense of smell, it can-

Mm-hmm

... severely damage your sense of taste. But because I've never been able to smell, I can taste things.

Okay.

I just don't- I have no frame of reference for whether or not my taste is degraded or not. I do know that-

Yeah, I think I knew you-

... I like to have lots of flavors-

I think I knew you for, like, a month

... so it's possible-

Right

... that that's, that's a part of it.

I think we were friends for, like, a month when you told me, "Hey, uh, if I ever stink, I need you to tell me, please."

Yes.

Yeah, so that's, that's how you know you're a close friend of Chad's.

I have, I have several people in my life who are, their job is, "Tell me if I smell bad."

There's, like, two things in the world that Chad gets really nervous about: one, smelling, and two, getting sick, because he hates being sick.

I don't like to be sick.

Yeah, so-

Although, now that I have so many kids, it is so- sometimes kind of nice, because if I get a little bit sick, man, I just take advantage of it. Like, I'm bedridden.

Mm-hmm.

I need to be waited on hand and foot.

You got, like, a bell?

Like, that's my moment of actual rest.

That's... Yeah.

Not vacations-

Yeah

... especially if we take the kids, 'cause we're running all over the place.

Do your kids even care-

They even-

... if you're sick, though, or do they just call you weak and, like, you know?

My kids aren't really old enough, and they're probably not as, like, cold-hearted as your kids-

No, yeah

... yet.

True. They'll be there.

My youngest, for sure, he's gonna give me a hard time.

It's a Gen A thing.

Yeah, yes, it's a Gen Alpha thing. Okay, well-

I didn't even know what that meant before you said it out loud.

So here we are, trying to, trying to keep this at a, uh, brisk pace-

Mm-hmm

... and not take, you know, an hour and a half.... while we just talk about generations and what our kids do when we're sick. So let's go ahead and get started. What do you say?

Yeah, let's, let's do it!

I'm curious where you want this first topic to go, so I'll just go ahead and introduce it. Um, an opinion piece in The New York Times by Ezra Klein, who is a, a noted columnist, right? So this is not, like, a news piece. Um, but he was talking about this brand-new public restroom that just opened up in San Francisco at a cost of, like, $1.7 million. Um, the piece kinda goes through the different, like, political spats. One of the things they talk about is a guy who's explay- uh, exclaiming the cost and saying, "This is ridiculous," and then another person comes in and says, "Well, actually, a lot of these costs are because of you. When you're a city council member, you put all these requirements in here for various things, and so we have to follow them-

Yeah, a little background on that.

-uh, all these regulations."

The guy was a city supervisor, right, city council member-

Mm-hmm

... in California.

Yeah.

Um, then he became a state legislator, right? And when he was a state legislator, he basically went off on this. Funny thing is, he was a proponent of this bathroom being built when he was a city supervisor, like, promoted it, right? And then, you know, a lot of the reasons why this bathroom is expensive were while he was there, things that they did while they were there. And yeah, I'm actually gonna take this a very, I think, probably different direction than you would expect, right?

Okay.

I'm gonna take this, I'm gonna take this direction of the dangers of a squeaky wheel, and when we legislate at a city level in what I would consider to be, like, a populist manner, right?

Okay.

So why did we get here? Let's talk about this. First off, kudos to this parks director who responded back with a very detailed snarky-

Talk about your clap back.

Yeah, talk about a clap back. Uh, a little bit snarky, and I, I don't like the snarkiness, I'm gonna be honest. Um, because, uh, we've t- we've talked about this here in Texas. We have to do a better job at communicating with our legislators in a way that is, uh, like a city manager would communicate with city council members, like a good city manager would communicate with city council members, where we're showing pros and cons and why things cost what they do and, and really laying out the issue. I think we've really tried to oversimplify how we handle state legislators. We try to tell them they shouldn't do something because it's bad, instead of really kind of explaining the ins and outs of an issue and then allowing them to set the policy at that point. I think we've tried to become too much of a policy maker. Um, and instead of somebody who's driving the information bus, we're trying to drive the policy bus, and I think that's gotten very dangerous in Texas, uh, and in other states as well. But in this instance, the clap back is pretty good because it kinda details exactly why this cost is 1.7 million, I think was the total cost of the bathroom.

Right, instead of potentially as low as 200,000.

Correct. Uh, and anybody who goes to trade shows or governmental trade shows, you'll see these, like, prefab, uh, bathroom companies. They're all over the place, right? Uh, and so but a lot of them are in states that can't do business in San Francisco, right?

Or California.

Or California. And you ask yourself... Uh, well, a lot of these actually were local ordinances, right? Uh, I think the-

Yeah, there were, but some, I think some of them were

... Texas prohibition is a statewide one, but some of-

Yeah

... these other states were, like, local. How many states was it exactly that they couldn't do-

30.

30. So San Francisco-

60% of the country

... could not do business with any company headquartered or located in 30 states. That's crazy. But basically, what this guy's saying or the parks director is saying in this letter back to the supervisor or back to the state legislator now is, "Hey, we have very little options here. Not only that, you guys also approved a labor agreement that stated that we couldn't use prefab on a project that had a total project cost over a million dollars," not construction cost, 'cause that kinda gets confused in here. 200,000 was, like, the construction cost. If you look at all the other standards they have in San Francisco, the environmental clearances, the engineering clearances-

Yeah

... they've gotta go through the electric company-

CEQA.

They have to go through, like, seven different city departments, including the Mayor's Office of Disability Services.

And the Arts Commission.

And the Arts Commission, yeah. Like, it has to be a pretty bathroom? I, I, I-

I mean, you'd like it to be pretty, but-

Maybe. I don't know.

I, I guarantee you it's probably not.

Yeah.

I haven't seen an actual picture of it.

So-

I've seen the inside, but not a picture of the-

So I mean-

... the outside.

So when you, when you look at this, it- you start realizing, and this is what the parks director puts in his letter. He, he basically just lists out all of these things that are costly.

Mm. I mean, it's not unattractive. It's kinda, kinda quirky.

Yeah. I mean, is it $1.7 million?

No.

No, yeah. So, um, yeah, I had a water leak in my bathroom this week, and we're currently in demo phase. Let's hope that doesn't cost $1.7 million. So all that being said, the parks director response was really good because it hit on two different areas of regulation that that council member was responsible for. Uh, one was, uh, the ability to not do business with 30 states, and the other one was a labor agreement that was also passed that says they can't use prefab structures for anything over a million dollars in total project cost, not construction cost, total project cost. I think that's really important for governmental people to understand the difference. So where I'm going with this is, why? To just make a few people happy, we've made everything more expensive. And look, I, I'm not digging into where you stand on, like, reproductive rights or LGBTQ issues or anything like that. Not digging into that.... but that's the reason why they're not doing business with 30 states. And when you don't do business with 30 states, and you remove competition from projects, you gotta imagine the folks in those other 20 states and territories, gotta throw those in there, right? They've gotta be just, like, clamoring for that. I mean, could you imagine if Texas said, "You're not allowed to do business with any other sales tax consulting firm outside the state of Texas?" I mean-

That's where my mind went first, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's just... Come on.

Guess what? Our prices are going up.

It's anti-competitive, man. And i- my, my point being, we are doing way too much legislating, and, and, and this is crazy. Like, at the federal level, it feels like we're getting nothing done, but at the state level, it feels like we're doing s- way too much, like we're just way too active. And it doesn't matter what state you're in, it's all of them are doing it right now. Um, we don't get a chance to breathe. So ironically, they have now repealed all of those rules, so they can do business with all 50 states now. Um, and the reason is 'cause they figured out it was too costly. So that's where my head went on the toilet issue. Where did yours go?

So, um, I wanted to pick out one comment, right? So this is Ezra Klein's view.

Which didn't he go somewhere else? He was at The Times for a little while, and then he like-

Is it Vox?

Yeah.

I think.

Okay.

I don't know.

Okay.

So he says, "We think of adding regulation as something liberals do, and removing regulation as something conservatives do. But what regulation often does is take power and discretion away from government employees, who could do a far better job if they were allowed to make decisions based on goals rather than process." Right, so there's a lot to unpack there.

Okay.

Um, when it comes to, uh, planning, and construction, and these kinds of projects, process is a huge problem, right? It's like our... Most of our planning apparatus is focused around process, right rather than goals.

Yes.

Right? So, like, you, you kind of set some overarching goals in your comp plan or maybe your strategic plan or whatever, and then the planner's job is just to follow the process. Like, they don't have any discretion. So I think, to some degree, like, I agree with this, that removing the process focus can help d- drive better outcomes, but I'm wondering how far you're willing to take that.

Well, do you think if there was an individual level of responsibility for each project that was done based on cost and project delivery, and those type of things, it would be better at that point? So if you told a, an individual employee... So if you went to, like, an individual employee's project management function... We did this in the city of Bryan when I was there, and I'm not sure if they're doing it anymore. I haven't asked them this question, and some other cities have done this, too. But, you know, y- we talk about pre-development processes, like where a project goes to die, right? Pre-development meetings. And by the way, anybody can come on here and debate me on this, pre-development meetings are the worst possible thing you can do in cities. Like, they're just... Not only do they increase the cost for the developer, but they substantially increase the cost for cities in the long term, uh, and they're just totally unnecessary. But when I was in Bryan, we had this approach that, uh, we had a project manager who basically was like the advocate. You know, they were the person in the middle, uh, between it, and so they would work with the developer or with whoever was, you know, pulling the permit, and then they would take it through the process. But their job was also to kind of fight the process along the way, right? The fire department said they needed fire lanes on all four sides of the building. They could come in and be like: "Hey, you really-

Lay down

... only need it on two sides," right? Uh, "Oh, you want that big turn radius? We actually only think you need a 20-foot fire lane, not a 24-foot fire lane." Right? Things like that. Um, you know, you'd go to the, you know, police department and, you know, deal with, with that side, and, and... So a- anyways, but my question is, if you're talking about an individual city project, would it be beneficial to just say to that city employee, "Hey, go do this project, and meet all of these things you have to meet, but build us this project at the most cost-efficient and effective way that you can," uh, and try to eliminate it? Like, almost, like, create a pathway... But what was the, what was the purple slip in, what we called it in Fort Worth, like, when you didn't go through the traditional process?

Yeah, when you could, you could skip through-

You would just skip through

... all of the steps-

I, by the way-

To get something on council agenda

... by the way, to my Fort Worth friends, uh, I never went the traditional process. I always used the purple slip, and it- the last time I did it, the ACM actually said to me, "I feel like you do a lot of purple slips." And I said, "I only do purple slips." So-

VIP, baby.

VIP, coming, coming, coming down a red carpet. Um, because if you didn't do a purple slip, how long did it take you to get it on an agenda for an item?

I mean-

I mean, months, right? Like, there was that old system where you would, like, create the, uh, the M&C report, the mayor and council report, and then everybody had to go in and, like, electronically approve the M&C.

That's...

And

They, they were building the electronic version when I left.

Well, we-

It was still a paper process.

It was still... But they, like... They would- you would send it, and then, like, each department would make changes and, like, send it back to you. So it just, like, created this-

It's like a pre-development meeting, a series of pre-development meetings-

For city employees

... for the council agenda.

Yeah.

Yeah.

For the council agenda. Uh, so yeah.

It's funny 'cause you see that process, and you're like, "Man, this really sucks." But then you're like, "No, it's... This is exactly what we need to get buildings and development done."

Yeah. I got really good at saying why. Every time I would take an M&C to the board, 'cause the way that the purple slip process worked is you would take the M&C, and you would go to each individual department director-

And hand walk it, yeah

... or assistant director, and they would, like, have to y- actually, with a pen, sign off on the M&C that was there, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, and if they marked through it or did anything to it, you would have to go back, reprint it, and then go back through the process again by hand. It was a hassle. Um, and I would play this game, 'cause I worked for multiple ACMs at the time, and so I would play this game, whatever ACM was nicer-... It's like, "Mom or Dad," right? Like, I would go ask Mom if I knew I was gonna be able to get it, but then if Mom was gonna say no, I'd go ask Dad. 'Cause you had to get an ACM to sign it before you could walk it through as a purple slip. It had to start there first, right? And so I got really good at asking why. So, like, when I would sit down with the department director in, in finance, and I know that was the area of the city that you were in at the time, was the worst. It was just-

To be clear, I was in budget.

Yeah, but it was under finance at the time, right?

No.

Oh, I thought-

I think- no, I think maybe towards the end-

'Cause it was before it was-

-it got merged back into it, but when I-

Okay

... started there, it was its own, its own thing.

Okay. So... And obviously they've made a ton of changes now-

Yeah

... in how that works. Um, but I went through, and I would just get really good at asking why. You know, be like, "Oh, w- we need to make this change," and I would say, "Why?" And I would just wait.

Like a child talking to parents. Why?

I would just wait. Why?

Eat your vegetables. Why?

So I will never forget, uh, it was the treasurer's office, I think, or, like, the, the CFO's office. Uh, but it was very, very nice lady who worked there forever and ever and ever, and she retired, and I went to her retirement party. And I, I apologize for the, uh, the crude language on this one. Uh, but she looked at me, which i- 'cause I wasn't there anymore, I just came to her retirement party 'cause I really liked her. And, uh, so I was at a different city. I came in, went to her retirement party, and she goes, "Gosh, I knew you were gonna be an assistant city manager or city manager somewhere, 'cause you were such a pain in the ass- ... always asking me why." So anyways, that process and these processes that we put in cities are so complicated. So why don't we just tell a city employee, "Go build. Go do this-"

So I think, I think you may-

... 'cause we don't trust people?

run into- I, well, I don't, I don't know if it's even trust. I think there's a problem, uh, with the initiative, I guess. Right? We're so used to just following the process, there's not a whole lot of incentive for the individual employee to stick their neck out. There's not only there's not incentive, but there's not, like, a culture of it.

Uh, I get it.

'Cause y- yeah, your whole job is, like, you have to follow A, B, C, D, E, and if you miss those steps, then it's no, right? Like, I don't have the discretion to make adjustments to this, and I don't have an incentive to make adjustments to this, right? Like, uh, I'm not commissioned. Like, I'm not gonna get a bonus if this project gets built. Um, and I'm not suggesting that we should do that, although it's an interesting idea.

Yeah.

Like, but anyway-

No, it's a very- it's a, it's a really interesting idea.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, commission someone based on the- on the value add or the profitability added to a project.

Or the-

Like, if you could take sort of the baseline, like, "Here's what our regulations say, and it's gonna have to require, you know, all of these extra costs, and the net effect on the city's finances-

Mm-hmm

... is gonna be, you know, this X level of profitability. But if you can get us a product that gets us to 2X, then we'll give you 10% of, of that."

There'd be a lot of bathrooms-

As a bonus.

There would be a lot of bathrooms designed by fiber engineers.

They're pretty efficient.

Oh, dude, I, I mean, look, I did, I did an entire 1,000-square foot expansion on my house, right? I paid $450 for permit plans for that. A bathroom is a lot less work, a lot less work. Uh, now granted, you have to meet ADA. There are some other things you have to do on the public sector side to make that work, but wouldn't we just get- wouldn't it create a level... Create a level. Wouldn't it create- wouldn't it cause us to be more creative in the process?

It could, but so here's the flip side of that.

Mm-hmm.

Right? In those times when the, the government employee does have discretion, a lot- especially in the development process, it's used as a power dynamic, because you can say, "Yeah, I, I know you actually wanna have a little bit more density, so I'm gonna give that to you, but you have to do all these other things for me." Right? And so it's like a trading game. Um-

Yeah, like that road that runs in the middle of this mixed-use complex, we're gonna keep that private, okay? That's a win.

Yes. Yeah, so I think where they do have discretion, it comes in the form of power, uh, broadly speaking, versus having discretion to achieve a spec- uh, to achieve a specific goal, but in a creative way, I guess. So to me, those seem like different, f- like, f- different things, that it might also still be hard to kinda work through and, and create that kinda shift in mindset.

Yeah. You-

I could be... I'm open to being wrong about that, but those kinda-

No, I, I, I think you're right

... stuff kinda seem a little different.

I mean, I'll give you a project example of that. We did a project in our Hudson Oaks days, uh, a mixed-use apartment complex project, right? Had a big public road with a roundabout that ran through the middle of it, and when the developer went to bid, he did not like the concrete spec that we had. You recall this?

Um, vaguely. I think I had already left by the time they went out to bid.

Okay. So they go to bid, and we had a, we had a pretty substantial concrete spec, you know, pretty ci- you know, pretty city road, eight-inch concrete. You know, we never wanted to replace it. It had some stamped concrete in it, some other, like, brick and, you know, crosswalk types of-

It had asphalt under it, too?

It had-

Like, were we building a highway?

No, we were not building a TxDOT highway.

Okay.

This was not overkill to the Nth degree, where we asphalt under the concrete, build the concrete, and then put asphalt on top of the concrete. Uh, that would be your TxDOT standard, right? So no, but the, the developer came back and he said, "Hey, I really wanna go to a six-inch concrete standard. Uh, you know, we can meet the sto- the soil stabilization underneath it, blah, blah, blah, blah." And I said, "Yeah, you know, um, if you're gonna go to six inches, I really don't wanna own it." The developer had no idea what that meant, right? But he saved money, and we got rid of the road, and they got the maintenance, and so that project just became significantly more profitable to the city, 'cause we didn't have to-

Yeah

... deal with the road in the middle of the project.

Yeah, even though it was only, like, what?... a tenth of a mile?

That was a little longer than that. It's like-

Like, two lanes-

Yeah, it was like, I mean, it was, it was like three-quarter or three-tenths of a mile.

Oh.

Three-tenths of a mile.

Oh, three-tenths? Okay.

Yeah.

Still, it's less than a lane mile of road, but-

So the stamped concrete was the part that I didn't wanna, you know, I didn't wanna deal with. 'Cause if you cut out stamped concrete at any point, it's just tough.

Yeah.

So all that being said, it ended up being a pretty good deal for us because we did that. So if you had an employee who was like, I don't know, thinking on their toes like that, who was constantly, like, in a dealmaker situation, um... yeah.

Yeah, that's- that right there is the fundamental shift, right?

Yeah.

'Cause we're not dealmakers in that regard. Like, once you get out of economic development, we're not trying to make deals.

But if the state comes down with new statutes on planning and development, you may wanna change the way you think about that, 'cause the state's gonna come in-

Well, you probably should-

Band-Aid

... probably should change the way you think about it, regardless of what the state does, but-

Correct. But, I mean, I think somebody- some people are gonna be forced into it, 'cause the state's basically gonna say, "Hey, you can't slow down development," even more than they already have. You know, we have the development shot clock, we have some other stuff that's there, but the reality is, is the state... There's a lot of conversation, uh, and it's happening in all states, not just Texas. It's already happened in California. Um, you're starting to see the density changes that are occurring, where they're basically coming in and mandating that you, you can't control densities and lot sizes. So it's gonna be very interesting to see where that goes. But yeah, so I mean, this whole toilet conversation to me just comes, like, to employee empowerment and removal of system, you know, removal of process. Um, I think you hit the nail on the head on that one. It's like, we just, we just work through a process 'cause it's been the process forever, and that process is actually a lot more expensive, and it's gotten more expensive over time. It's like, um, what, what do we, what do we call it on our end? Uh, feature creep.

Yeah.

Right? We get a lot of feature creep because we have people that come up with great ideas, and they just become additional features on a system.

Yeah. But here's one thing I'll, I'll say to end this, 'cause the next topic is semi-related to what you just, just hit on.

Mm-hmm.

It's funny, though, to me that we only really pay attention to this when it's the city that's building something, right? It's the city that has to pay 1.7 million for, uh, for a toilet because of all these processes that we put in place. How often are we looking at those costs on the dev- like, private development side? Right, 'cause they're not always as public, and they're not always as, uh, highlighted as the city project.

Yeah.

But man, if you're, if you're doing the equivalent of a, you know, 500% increase on a private development, then you're not gonna get a news story on that probably.

Well, not only that-

But it's the same effect

... and, and we don't equate that to rent rates. We don't equate that to affordability. Like, there are... We don't really measure the cost of our processes on private development. We don't do a good job of that.

Well, 'cause a lot, it's, it's hard, 'cause a lot of it is also just lost opportunity cost.

Some of it is-

Right

... but like we talked in our last podcast, we talked about the multifamily and just the fire code requirement on stairwell, right, which is new in the code, and how much that added... Like, we just did the math real quick, and, you know, you're talking about adding $150 to $200 a month to every rental door that's on an apartment complex because of a city regulation that's outdoor-

Yeah

... in the wind, just to protect you-

But you can't-

... against the possibility of dying in a stairway of smoke inhalation, an outdoor stairway?

But you can't always put a cost or a value on the project that doesn't happen.

Oh, yeah.

Or, or the, the downscaling of a project because you can't... You have, your parking requirements don't let you have 12 units, you can only do four.

Yeah, I forgot the definition of opportunity cost there for a little while, so thanks for the reminder.

No, no problem. That's what I'm here for. You tell me if you s- if I smell, and I tell you about various other things.

I think the issue was that I couldn't hear that in my right ear, so it just didn't process in my left. Next topic there, Chad.

Okay. Okay, so this, this topic is something that's been on our queue for a while, um, but we just haven't had a chance to talk about it yet. So the, the mayor, the- it's budget season, right? Everyone's getting knee-deep. The bigger the city you are, the earlier you start, generally. So Houston's been starting their budget process. The mayor comes out a few weeks ago and says, "Hey, guys, we're broke. We actually have, like, a $160 million deficit." It's, like, 6% of their, of their budget, uh, that we're projecting for next year, "so we gotta do something about it." Naturally, like, you've read the article, but if you hadn't, what would you guess that the solution would be?

Uh, on a 6% deficit, like, what-

Mm-hmm

... in a big city like that? Uh, capital spending.

Oh, no, e- even more, uh, like, basic, I guess.

Uh-

5% across-the-board cuts.

Oh! Okay, yeah.

Yeah.

That, that's- that is very big city.

Yeah.

Everybody-

Although except, excepting, of course, police and fire, because we can't ask police and fire to take cuts when everyone else is taking cuts. Um-

Well, o- once again, Mr. State Legislator, uh, you can't in Texas.

You can't, yeah, 'cause you'd be defunding the police.

You'd be defunding the police department.

Well, actually, not true. Y- you can cut police as long as the amount is equivalent to other departments that also get cut.

Oh-

So you can't, you couldn't-

... the fine print

... you couldn't face, like, you couldn't stare down a deficit and say, "Yeah, our police is actually a little bit bloated. You know, crime is, like, amazingly good. We don't have any problems, so we're gonna cut back on our police department but leave everything else." You can't do that.

Can't do that. First, first off-

But even if, even if you're not defunding anything to, like, a, you know, for, like, a political purpose, it's just, like, a good fiduciary decision to make.

Yep.

You can't do that unless you cut everyone else.

So fir- first off, let's, let's name this properly, okay? 'Cause y- you just said it's the start of budget season. I, I believe in budget season, there are different segments of budget season, right?... this time, like, when a mayor comes out and says what he says, and it- this happens in all cities of all sizes, right? We are currently in the "oh, crap" phase-

Oh, I was gonna say, "Oh, poop."

-of budget season.

Yeah.

Oh, poop. So which for FY25, folks, means I thought my sales tax was gonna be the same as it was in COVID, and, oh, crap, we are in bad shape. Because we spent as if that money was gonna be high, and we knew it was not gonna be high, and now it's down, and so, um, we're seeing that in multiple areas. What I found funny here in this article... Th- the reason I think most people need to read this article is the disaster of a decision that they made with their fire department, right? Um, first off, I have to say this, if you look at salaries across the state for firefighters, Houston is severely underpaid, severely. Their pension system is broke. Um, there are so many different issues with the Houston firefighter system. Uh, we get a lot of folks in North Texas that come from Houston because it's just the retirement system is so much better, uh, and the pay. But I think it's very interesting to look at, they settled a lawsuit, a longtime lawsuit, for $1.1 billion for back pay, and how did they go pay that $1.1 billion in back pay? They took out 30 years of debt. 30 years of debt. The best part, there's a, there's a, um, a companion piece from Strong Towns that talks about this news, and it is fanta- it is a great read. Good job, Strong Towns. It's a really good read. The companion piece goes into, if a child is born right now, they're still gonna be paying $40 million a year when that child is 30 years old for a cost that they should-

For back pay, yeah

... that they should've been setting aside anyways. That you knew this was gonna be a lia- lawsuit liabilities are something you typically set aside in your AFR accounts for, and you make sure that you're gonna have that there.

I'm impressed.

Why are you impressed?

I'm impressed that you used the new approved term.

Well, I'm, I'm trying. I'm trying to be that.

I still call it Twitter, uh, so I have a, I have a hard time with change.

Yes, I'm sorry. Um, but, I mean, all of those type of things that we look at there, I have to step back and say, "Where was the professional management in Houston, Texas, to start setting this money aside?" You ask yourself the question.

They're a strong city.

They're a form of government. So... And, look, I'm not saying it's just because of that, but I, I am, I am saying I think a city manager would've seen this one coming and at least had some plan in place that was not, "Oh, crap, we have a settlement. Let's go take out $1.1 billion at the highest interest rate environment on bonds that we've had in the last, like, I don't know, 25 years." It's crazy. It's nuts. So-

Yeah

... that was my takeaway. Sorry, I'm gonna let you get into the nitty-gritty stuff.

You're good. I just wanted to jump o- over to the Strong Towns, because the thing about this article, naturally, Strong Towns are gonna talk about streets, right?

Yes.

But, I mean, uh, in my opinion, like, that's the actual problem that's causing this, or even if it's not causing the specific shortfall, it's, it's part of a broader systemic issue with not just Houston, but everyone. Um, so there's one chart that I wanna call out, though, and it is about... Where are we? It's actually, it's about a quarter of the way down the page here.

Lane, lane, the lane mile resurfaced by the city chart?

Yes.

I know exactly where you're going.

Yes.

Yeah.

So th- this has spawned so many ideas in my head, and hopefully I'll get a chance to talk about them in about a month and a half. Um-

Which Houston streets are like driving I-10 in Louisiana. Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum.

Which is, if you've ever done that before-

Yep

... not good.

Yep.

Uh, okay, so 2002, the city resurfaced about 550 lane miles.

Wow.

Okay? By 2011, that was down to 120, 130, which I know what you're saying, we had a great recession, right? Everyone cut back on street spending. True.

20 years of great recession?

Well, this decline was rapid.

Yes.

Like, by 2007, right, the height, the height of the property valuation bubble, they'd already dropped almost in half in the number of lane miles. Like, you weren't getting better property valuation increases until now, like, in the 50 years before this, right? Property values, taxes are going up, and we're cutting our street maintenance in half. So it, it hits a low point of about 100 in 2014, okay? Right around this time, the public works director says, "Yeah, we're only covering about 25 to 30% of what we need to be doing in terms of resurfacing roads."

Mm-hmm.

"But don't worry, because within the next five to eight years, we'll definitely be doubling where we are today." Spoiler alert, that didn't happen, right? So now today, they're still at around 140 lane miles of road. If you think about the number of lane miles of city-owned streets in Houston, which I... Actually, I think I have their financial reports pulled up. I do. Oh, look at that. That was, that was, uh, fortuitous prep work there. 16,000 lane miles of city streets.

In Houston?

Yes.

And they're resurfacing 100-

According to, according to their 2022 unaudited, uh, capital asset statistics by function, page number is 262. That same year, they resurfaced, like, 140 lane miles of road. Okay? Just as a ballpark, back-of-the-envelope calculation-... even if you said that our roads should last 30 years, right? Which we know asphalt roads are not gonna last 30 years, especially in Houston, 'cause it's flooding all the time. Soil's probably not conducive to that long of, uh, of r- road life. So you should be replacing 533 lane miles on average every year to hit that sort of 30-year amortization.

Mm-hmm.

They're doing 120, 130, 140, right? That gap is essentially debt that you are piling up, but you're not accounting for it anywhere. It's like shadow debt.

Yeah, it's, it's ghost debt.

So-

It's gonna come and haunt you at some point.

It's ghost debt.

Yep. It's rising from the grave of dead roads.

Zombie debt.

Zombie debt, yes.

It's just-

So-

So what Strong Towns calls it is-

But if-

... is a technical default, right?

But, but this is-

But it's basically just saying, we don't... We're, we're just giving up on this. So yeah, our budget deficit is $160 million. It's 5.8% of our budget, but that's not including the fact that we are spending 70% less than we should be on just maintaining the roads that we have today.

But this is why strong mayor systems are a terrible idea, because there's no encouragement for that mayor who's elected for the next eight years and is term-limited to do anything that's gonna be sustainable to the to, to the financial forecast of the city afterwards.

Maybe, except-

Politically-

Except-

Politically, the most stable thing for him to do is, is to spend money in areas that people are gonna see directly, not the zombies in the postseason.

Which is fixing roads, right?

Well, I mean, is it?

What, what do people complain about?

But people in Houston are just accustomed to crap roads.

Maybe, but, I mean, the biggest complaints... Uh, look, I worked in the mayor's office. I took phone calls as an in- intern.

Yeah, roads are bad.

People complain about roads. People complain about speeding, and, like, those are the two of the biggest concern- complaints that you get on a daily basis.

You were really good at the implementation of speed bumps in residential neighborhoods.

I don't really... I don't know. I think you can achieve most of what you need with narrower, narrower roads than speed bumps.

Good job.

But-

Way to go. Pa- you passed my test, Chad.

The problem with speed bumps is, man, you can't play football on a road with speed bumps.

I just... Speed bumps are terrible.

If you're a kid playing in the street, you can't be running over speed bumps. You're gonna trip and fall.

True.

I think that's true.

I, I, I highly dislike the big humps. Like, the... Not, not, like, the little speed bump, but, like, the ones that they are, like, really wide, right?

Yeah.

'Cause then I can really can't go fast over them. So-

So I actually... I had this idea a long time ago about a speed bump that is made of some kind of material, where if you were driving the speed limit or lower, it would absorb, and, and it would be like you di- weren't even driving on it.

Mm-hmm.

But if you hit a speed above the speed limit, then it would act like a speed bump.

Didn't somebody create this?

And I-

Didn't you have this idea, and then somebody did it?

I... Yes, I, I have to go back and find it, but-

Okay

... I feel like I saw something like this a couple of months ago. I'm gonna have to-

It was like an air, it was like an air-compressed-

It was something like that

... speed bump, right?

But if I find it, I'll put it in the show notes.

I mean, we could build speed bumps out of like-

I should have, I should have patented it

... out of, like, bounce house material, right?

Yeah.

It's like the bounce house fan goes on-

That'd be-

... speed bump pros.

That'd definitely last.

So, uh, hashtag patent pending. Don't take my idea. Uh, but on this Houston article, I think the other thing that really is striking to me in this, uh, in this view, is there's a screenshot that Chuck throws into this article that I think is really interesting. It's, uh, Mike McG- @, @MayorMikeMcGinn. I don't, I don't know Mike McGinn. I'd have to look him up, but he posted, "Houston mayor: City is broke. We have a $160 million deficit. Texas Legislature, quote, 'We have $9.7 billion to widen the highway through Houston.'" Which, look, I, I grew up in Katy. Uh, the Katy Freeway is-

The infamous Katy Freeway

... is I, I, I believe it is the widest interstate in the world, right? Like, it's-

Uh, I don't think it's in the world, but it may be in America.

In America. It's-

But the truth is, it just needs one more lane, and everything's gonna be fine.

That's true, if they just add one more. Um, so with the Katy Freeway, I, I mean, I think this is a valid statement here, right? It is highly detrimental to Houston from a development purpose and from a revenue-per-acre or for a value-per-acre standpoint. It is highly detrimental to continue to encourage the expansion of interstates.

Yep.

So why do they do it?

I don't know.

Why did Dallas fight so long to remove all of the elevated infrastructure from downtown Dallas, which has still not been done, but Dallas has basically agreed that's gonna happen at this point, and they fought it, fought it forever.

Yeah. Well, we see a fight right now in Austin over the widening of 35 through downtown.

Oh, they ought to tear down the second story-

I agree

... and just-

They should.

Yeah.

They have I30, uh, 130-

Yes

... going around. Just tear it down.

Yeah.

You don't need I- you don't need I-35 as a double highway.

If people don't wanna sit in traffic, they can pay the toll on the other side and go around town.

No, the driving should be free. It should be free and convenient, and when we get somewhere, we should not have to pay for parking.

On the next epico- episode of ZacCast, Chad and Patrick will debate tollways and managed lanes. We're gonna disagree on this, by the way.

You don't like them?

I, I love them. I think, I think-

Why do you, why do you think I will disagree with that? I drive on the toll road every chance I get. I don't care how much it costs, 'cause I'm not gonna sit in... Like, I know there are very specific bottlenecks on the routes that I normally go.

Yeah.

And I'm not gonna... I'm gonna pay $4 versus sitting for 20 minutes in traffic.

Oh, I'm gonna pay $4-

That's just-

... to know that I can get to the airport in 37 minutes-

That's-

... rather than sitting and, and being stuck in traffic for two hours, trying to get there. That's just-

That's just... At this point in my life, that's just where I am.

Yep. So we don't disagree on that. I guess we're not gonna talk about that on a future episode of ZacCast. Uh, so, but on this one here-

Okay. Yeah, go ahead.

If they had less highway width-... and if getting between locations was more difficult, wouldn't it encourage people to live closer to their place of business, right, or work? Wouldn't it encourage people to live where the community was more holistically fulfilling to their needs, grocery stores, parks, walkability, all those type of things? And if you look at development areas in Houston that are doing well, uh, my brother lives in the Heights, for example, totally walkable. Every last bit of the grid format of the Heights is walkable. He can walk to his grocery store, he can walk to his coffee shop, his wine bars, everything. Everything is walkable. And it's-

And don't you want people walking to their wine bars instead of driving?

You, you do, yeah. Yeah. So, um, I saw a really funny video the other day, though, that was kind of funny but not funny. It was talking about, uh, you know, whatever happened to the DD now that you have Uber, right?

Mm-hmm.

Designated driver.

Yeah.

Um, and do you remember your college days, where all of a sudden you looked and you turned in the corner, and the guy who was supposed to be the designated driver had a beer in his hand? And you're like, "Dude!"

Now we can't get home.

Now we can't get home. What are you doing? So, um, I, I think when you look at this, though, if we're going to encourage some of this urbanization effort to happen and occur, we also have to start looking really hard at infrastructure. And there's this fight of suburban and urban that occurs in that argument or in that thought process that we need to look at a little closer. And I, I think that's... I know this is really- th- this is, like, a really deep topic, and we probably don't have time to talk about it today, but if cities are gonna get serious about redevelopment, and you're really packing a punch of w- what properties are worth, and valued, and densities, and things like that, you really have to start thinking about how the train station system that's built around your city from the 1950s is detrimental to your actual development plan. So that's my statement.

Yeah, and not double down.

Well, I mean, yeah. I mean, it's-

When we first started looking at neighborhood profitability, I remember, uh, like, the first thought that came into my head was, "Damn, cities shouldn't really be building any more roads." It's just, like, we have too much right now we can't maintain.

Yeah. There's just-

Why you gonna add on to it?

Well, I mean-

Like, I can't, I can't maintain my house. I can't afford to maintain my house. I got plumbing issues, electrical needs to be, you know, rewired. I got all these problems, but instead of fixing that, what I'm gonna do is build a pool house-

Yeah

... because that is gonna... You know, i- if, if my house burns down, I'll just go live there I guess is what the idea is. I don't know. That's, like, how we treat... That's how we treat our, our street networks is, you know, we can't maintain what we have. We're only doing s- 30%, maybe, of what we need to be doing in terms of keeping it functional.

Well, I-

But we're perfectly happy to just add a bunch of new roads. Now, obviously, the city is not maintaining the highways, but it induces demand for more driving, and it's gonna induce people living further out, uh, because now they have extra access, which means more roads that we can't maintain, more development patterns that aren't paying for those roads, so.

Correct. No, I, I-

It's-

... I, I agree with that. And, and to give some credit where credit's due, the council government is in, in North Texas, even though they have built, you know, taller and taller infrastructure to get from highway to highway I know that's one of Chuck's comments about when he comes to DFW. It's like, I just looked, and there's another bridge taller than the last bridge.

It's, like, 500 feet tall.

They're so big. Um-

I remember driving, uh, as a kid, uh, we would drive over the 183 flyover-

Uh-huh

... to get to 35, uh, on the way to my grandparents' house. I remember thinking, "Man, this is so tall." It-

We used to scream, "We," like the Geico pig.

Yes, yeah. Uh, and it's just dwarfed by half of the-

Yeah

... half of the interchanges here in DFW.

But one of the things they did, and, and the legislature has now taken away this authority from them, but one of the things that they did is, is they said, "On these major interstate highways, we're not actually gonna increase capacity on main lanes. We're going to put additional capacity increases on toll lanes, on managed lanes," as they're called. Um, and that has created a kind of a two-tier system in transportation, and it's also charged folks who live out in the 'burbs more money for using more infrastructure, um, which has been very interesting to watch. So-

Yeah, it's apparently-

... I, I think this is gonna be... You know, we're gonna see where it goes.

I think they should have just tolled the main lanes, but-

Well, I mean, they couldn't-

You c-

They can't politically do it.

You can't take something away that was free.

Yeah, and they can't politically do it.

As if, as if it were actually free, though.

But I, I am kind of a proponent of we should charge vehicle registration or vehicle fuel taxes or something like that based on mileage. I'm, I'm kind of a fan of that. It... And, you know, look, if I choose to live out where I live, then, you know, I should pay for that.

Do you think that's just a matter of reporting your mileage, like starting and ending odometer?

Yes.

Or do you think they should get super granular, and put a GPS on there, and track each jurisdiction that you drive in-

No, I don't-

... and then portion your revenue to those jurisdictions?

No, and I also don't allow my insurance company to put one of those- ... OBD sensors on there. No way, dude. No way. When I wanna, when I wanna hit 90 miles an hour and go fast, get on the, on the on-ramp, I don't want my insurance company being like, "Well, your insurance went up 10% this week."

Well, hopefully they don't listen to this podcast.

Exactly.

Okay, so let's, uh, before we go too long, let's hit something that is actually quite adjacent to this.

Okay.

Okay? Um, this is a report from McKinsey that came out actually a few months ago. It's also been on our topic list for a while, but there hasn't really been a hook to talk about it. Um, so I wanna open this up by-... talking about, um, you know, sometimes you get on, like, a hobby horse, and a topic or, like, the idea of something in the future kind of, uh, stimulates just a lot of neurons in your brain, and you, like, you get kind of excited about it? So I used to be that guy on d- uh, driverless cars, like automated vehicles, right? And so I used to, I used to have this in my mind that it's gonna totally upend the way that cities function, right? So if you think about, like, a fire department, who spends a lot of time responding to traffic accidents. Well, if driverless cars are really good, they're not gonna be running into each other.

Yeah.

So now what are the fire departments gonna do? What are, what are traffic or fi- yeah, traffic enforcement units gonna do when these automated vehicles are able to maneuver without speeding and still get people places on time, right? Like, you're not gonna have to speed because the traffic will flow better. So tickets, red light, uh, you know, red light running tickets, all these, like, moving violations won't be a problem anymore. DUIs, um, things like that. Municipal courts, what are they gonna do? What- They're just, like, only gonna be dealing with, uh, code compliance issues? Like, uh-

To be fair, you've already seen a change in that, right? In Texas, you've already seen a change in that because of some of the law changes that occurred within fines and fees, and so you've-

Mm-hmm

... mainly, cities just don't make revenue off it. The state takes, like, 95% of the revenue-

Yeah

... off tickets. So you've already seen, like, in a municipal court standpoint, you've seen cities come together and have, like, a five-city municipal court, 'cause that's the only way you can get the volume to afford running a municipal court, right? So you've seen some of that already. Uh, but yeah, from an autonomous vehicle standpoint, like, that's gonna be a dramatic change further than-

Yeah

... where we are now.

But you think about auto insurance, auto repair-

Mm-hmm

... like, so many industries, if it worked really well, would be totally upended. I was like, "Man, this would be really cool. I'd love this. I would love to not have to, like, focus, and I can read a book or something or take a nap," 'cause I used to be just really tired when I had to go to the office. Um, so, like, all these things to me were like, "Oh, this is gonna be heaven, like utopia, when this finally arrives." Now, uh, over time, as I've seen how these things actually function, I'm less and less, um, of a proponent of them, or at least I'm less optimistic that they're actually gonna be useful in urban areas in particular. Like, highways, I think, fine, um, 'cause it's multimodal. The flow is a lot more, uh, consistent. There's less, uh, distraction-

Mm

... in terms of turning ra- turning movements and, uh, you know, stopping activities and pedestrians and things like that. So I think I'm still high on it when it comes to things like freight or, you know, long-haul trucking or even possibly just p- passenger vehicles driving on the highways, but, uh, I'm a lot less so on, on the interior urban areas. But this piece in particular, I wanted to talk about one thing that they, that they, uh, discuss, okay? I don't know if you... Have you read through it recently?

I- it's been a while since I read the article-

Okay

... 'cause you sent it to me a while ago, and then I, like, popped it back up 'cause I would remember the conversation.

So one of the benefits that McKinsey describes... Now, McKinsey is a consulting firm, and they're just doing a white paper here-

Yep

... about various industries that could be affected and the consequences of widespread autonomous vehicles, right? So, like, they're not taking a position per se. They're just saying, like, "These are the things that could happen." So one thing they talk about is that the hours we spend driving can become more enjoyable because you can video call with a friend or watch a funny movie, right? They also suggest that worker productivity could increase because... And, and work days could be shortened because you could now work in the car. It's like you're spending an hour driving back and forth. You can only go to the office for six hours, because those other two hours, you could be working, right?

Yeah.

Which that's not gonna happen, but whatever. But the main thing it said that caught my attention is, as a positive effect, that this could attract more people to rural and suburban areas because that commute, uh, wouldn't be so onerous anymore, right? So it would induce residential populations to move even further away from city centers, you know, job centers, and things like that. This is really the thing that, over the past year or two, that has really started to concern me about auto- automated vehicles, to be, to be quite fair, uh, or to be honest. Um-

You, you-

So I just-

... agree with McKinsey's statement there?

I think that it- yes. I think that if you don't have to bear all of the frustrations and burdens of driving in traffic, it's just yet another advancement in transportation that reduces the costs, right? We already don't value our time as much as we do hard costs. So when you move 45 minutes to a house 45 minutes away from your employment because that's where you can afford the house, right?

Mm-hmm.

You're making a trade-off between the cost of the house that you're buying and the cost of the vehicle, the gas, and the time that it's going to take you to commute to work five days a week. Our biggest problem as humans is we don't value those soft costs as much as we do the hard costs, right? Like, we see a house that costs $300,000. "This is my mortgage payment. I could afford that. I'm gonna bear all these other costs," especially the mental toll that commuting takes on you-

Yeah

... which there have been many reports on, on this topic, but... Versus say, "I'm gonna, I wanna actually pay more for my housing to live closer to my employment, but maybe I don't need two cars now," right? Like, "I don't need that $13,000 a year, uh, expense in my family because we can get by with one car now that I'm working, or walking to work, or riding my bike, or taking transit." Like-... w- that calculation right now is already heavily skewed towards suburban development.

Yes.

If we further reduce the cost of traffic by making autonomous vehicles so ubiquitous that you don't really even have traffic, you could, you could go an hour and a half away from where you work, because now you can work in the car. You only have a five-day, five-hour workday in the office, and then you can pack up and leave at 3:30. You're still working until 5:00 when you get home. Like, there are benefits to that from your, from a personal standpoint, because you would have more free time. Um, you wouldn't have the frustrations of traffic. But if it induces even more sprawl, even more unpr- profitable development patterns, like, that's a huge problem with autonomous vehicles to me.

Yeah, I mean, I, I think this is a-

So it, it, and it was this kinda fits into the thing, like, with the Katy Highway-

Yeah

... and that we were just talking about, so.

Yeah, no, I, I think-

Well, but yeah.

I, I believe that there still is going to be a cost of time that's associated with that, and that's still gonna account for a significant load of people who are not gonna move out further because of that. So yes, I could work in a car, no doubt. Um, but it's still an hour and a half that I'm... or an hour or however long it is, that I'm away, especially people with family. It's not gonna-

Yeah, but if you can leave at 8:00, say, say instead of leaving at 5:30 or 6:30, you're leaving at 8:00-

Yeah, I mean, I think-

... which is when your workday starts.

Yeah.

Working in the car-

But-

... getting to the office at 9:30-

But-

... leaving at 3:30, getting home at 5:00-

But other than, like, upper-level executives-

... you're actually saving three hours of time.

Yeah, I mean, I get it. Upper-level executives, I get, right? I just, I mean-

Yeah, line employees who are customer-facing-

Line employees and hourly employees and things like that-

Retail, yeah

... it's, you're just not gonna have that opportunity. So if, if anything-

But you're also not living an hour and a half away or an hour away to go work, you know-

Correct

... as a cashier.

A- agreed.

Unless, unless something is terribly wrong with your housing market.

Which, I mean, in a lot of cities is.

Yeah.

Right? But yeah, I mean, I, I think that's-

But I think-

I don't-

... people do work while they're commuting. Did you know that Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the song Wait For It from Hamilton while he was on the train?

No, I did not know that.

Yeah, he did.

I still haven't watched Hamilton.

Probably the best, best song in that musical.

Yeah. Still have not watched Hamilton. Maybe one day, Chad, you will witness.

It's okay. I, I've given up on it.

You've given up.

But I don't know. This has been the thing that started to bother me about au- autonomous vehicles, is that does it induce demand for more horizontal growth?

Uh, you know what? I think it, it, it possibly does, and it also would create even further of a difference, uh, between income levels and middle-income folks to low-income folks, because it would separate even more. The ability to be able to afford that vehicle, the ability to be able to commute and do those things would further separate folks and further separate economies of urbanized places versus suburbanized areas. I, I think that would be a, a concern of mine as well. Um-

Now, one, one thing real quick that is a possibility, at least theoretically, is say we get to the point where the autonomous vehicle is... Like, that's what we have. We don't have drivered cars-

Yeah, yeah

... like human dri- driven cars, right? You may not any longer need a personal vehicle if you could summon it, and it would take you somewhere-

Right

... and then you could summon it back, like it's like a personal Uber. That would potentially give cities an opportunity to really re-evaluate parking requirements.

Yep.

But it still doesn't... But it's still, like, uh, the worst of, uh-

You don't need to wait on that to re-evaluate parking requirements.

No, I agree. I agree, but-

I'm sorry. Can we just get rid of parking requirements now?

Agreed.

Okay.

But imagine if you didn't even, like, have to have more than 20 spaces at a Walmart, right?

Yeah.

Because people are getting dropped off, and then the car goes to do somewhere else, and then when they're done, they're gonna call another car to pick them up and take them home, right?

Yeah.

Like, you're talking-

I think, I think my thought process-

... 10 acres worth of space-

Yeah

... in the Walmart parking lot that could be reused.

I think my thought process would be a family has a single autonomous car. That's kinda my thought process.

Take, take your kid to soccer practice.

Yeah. Basically. Yeah.

I will say, though, even though I hate the fact that I have to drive, like, 40 minutes each way to soccer practice twice a week, it is good time that I get to hang out with my son, and we talk about things and do jokes, and he likes to do math puzzles and stuff like that. So-

Yeah, I mean, if you were-

If you were just to send your kid off in an autonomous vehicle, that would not be as, as good, for me, at least.

I mean, I remember when I commuted an hour to get to work, right? I... My whole day was set around that commute, right? So, like, in the morning, I was usually on the phone with all my different staff, and I would commute, and on the way home, that was my, like, my return phone call. People were always amazed that I returned phone calls the same day, and it was because I had an hour-long commute, and that's when I returned all my phone calls, right? So I would take all those little message slips. Back then, we had those, the, like, the, the little tear-out messages. I would take them all, and I'd return all my phone calls on the way home. And so, I mean, I, I think you can be productive on your commute now, uh, but man, there was a big difference in quality of life for me when I moved five minutes away from the office versus traveling an hour each way. It was a huge quality-of-life difference.

Yeah. The first time I drove back out to Parker County, literally, I could not believe I did that for nine years.

Yeah, it's wild. Yeah, for sure.

Especially-

Especially the route you took, 'cause it was ugly.

It was.

Yeah.

But the, the, the funny thing to me about this is we're basically talking about a scenario where we have created essentially public transportation-

In a private vehicle

... using a personal-

Yeah

... vehicle that is extremely space inefficient.

Yep.

Like, it's the least space-efficient vehicle to create a de facto public transportation system with.... Right? So, like, so you kinda get the worst of both worlds, where you don't have, like, full control of when you leave, 'cause you still have to wait for a car to get there, or you have to plan ahead. You can't just get in your car in the driveway and go somewhere.

Mm-hmm.

Right? But you don't get the benefits of legitimate public transportation, which is things are closer to you anyway.

Yeah.

And you have buses or trains, or you can walk somewhere.

Well, I mean, like-

So-

Yeah. I mean, my quality of life is better just because everything is within 10 minutes of me now, right?

15 minutes? You live in a 15-minute city?

I do now. Right? School's 15 minutes, grocery store, places to eat. I don't go to a gym, but a gym. I work out at home. I mean, they're all within 15 minutes. So yeah, I mean, it's-

Wow

... a very car-centric 15 minutes, and it's, like, a seven-mile radius.

Yeah.

But yeah, it's all within that timeframe. And that has been a game-changer, that I don't have to drive 20 minutes to Fort Worth to get everything I need. So it's, it's been a big change, but yeah, it's interesting-

Uh, it's an interesting id- interesting idea that we would be creating a de facto public transportation using, using a mech- a tool that is extremely inefficient at it. Like-

Yeah.

I don't know.

So we're, we're gonna post all this, uh, in the show notes.

That's, to me, that's, like, a not, not a great trade-off, but anyway.

Yeah, correct. We're gonna post all this in the show notes, so you guys can look at all these different articles and see what we see. Uh, any announcements we wanna make on that, Chad? Do we, do we wanna-

Sure

... do we wanna foreshadow something that's coming to the platform?

Go for it.

Yeah. All right, well-

If you've stuck around with us this long, you get a little Easter egg.

Yes, you get a little Easter egg, and that Easter egg is, is we are launching a news platform, uh, specifically mind... geared towards, uh, kind of the Zach mindset. Uh, things that Chad and I read, we're gonna be posting, uh, and eventually other team members that we have in Zach will be posting as well. Uh, and you'll be able to get, uh, twice a week, um, emails with that in there, and then in the platform, we'll have a new, uh, kind of a module set up in the platform for that news, to where you can go and see all of that, uh, those different news sources and the things that we're reading throughout the week. Just an extra way for us to kind of... W- we're reading them anyways, and so our idea is, is let's get it out there so you guys can see what we see, um, and, and be a part of that community that, uh, that we've been able to build. So pretty excited to bringing, uh, Zach News, uh, and what we're able to do there. So not trying to fill your inbox with another news service. We want this to be very pointed and direct and kind of the things that we do-

Heavily curated-

Yes, very curated

... is the, uh, the marketing term.

Yes. Uh, and if you're an existing Zach client, no matter which module you're on, it's a free service. So, um, you know, this is gonna be pretty fun, and, and we're pretty excited about it, and we hope that you guys enjoy it when we get it rolled out. So, um-

Yeah, and we built it in three days, so if it's, uh, lacking-

So if it sucks

... cut us a little bit of slack. We're gonna be adding to it over time.

Yes, correct. It, it is in its, uh, MVP state, so... And, uh, we're, we're pretty excited about it, though, what we're gonna be able to do with this. So, uh, yeah.

That stands for, by the way, minimum viable product-

Which is what we build everything to

... in case you haven't watched Silicon Valley.

Yeah. Uh, but if you watch Silicon Valley, or if you-

Yeah

... were a user of Zach 1, that was an MVP, and it sucked, so...

Yeah. We should, uh, we should talk about MVPs in development or, or, like, city programs and pr- projects.

Uh, about how we should encourage a, an MVP instead of, like, a full-scale project?

Instead of, like, a... Yeah.

Yeah.

Instead of, like, having everything done all, like, finished when we're done with it.

I like that. I like that. It's a good idea. So, but, uh, until next time, my friends, we will see you on the next episode of ZacCast, two weeks away. See you.

Adios.