ago jackie your lovely wife are very good personal friends of ours so i just i just want to make sure that the public knows that even though you're on one side of the aisle and i'm on the other side that we get in fact be good friends  i'm going to start giving the public a little bit about your background you've held a number of public offices as well as private but absolutely you learn from experience over the years and i guess i've had some of those  from a business standpoint really he worked thirty two years with a t n t i retired in one thousand nine hundred seven as a district manager in pittsburgh went right into home building and i had my own company for fourteen years building custom homes in the out there throughout washing county and other areas and gave up business turned that business down before i decided to run two thousand and eleven for county commissioner probably local government standpoint i've spent twelve years just school board member of the chargers used ten and then i went few years later i went into the township supervisor role and i spent sixteen years there and i had to resign that one as elect county commissioner and i'm in my seventh year now as county commissioner casey you and i sort of took a little bit i started out the council then one of the school board your whole family lives near your area i have three out of my four children live run right next to me next door on the same little road and my other daughter who is from the chartreuse township area but actually is living about twenty minutes up the road toward seventy nine at this point in time well then very fortunate i say every day we're blessed with the family and being able to enjoy the children in the grandchildren as we as we grow older i've seen your house around the holidays and i can say that you're well prepared for all of them at the same time i would say it's decorated that's for sure how a wife loves to do the decorating she does a fine job let's talk about your time now and as a commissioner ok ok what has been the things that you see that you've made a difference and now i know you're involved in many things for the washing county my wife was the president of the washington symphony and you were on the board yes but you're on not only the board of the washington symphony you're on the other boards i actually have been involved i love music at one point my time as a youngster i was going to go to college is to be a music teacher i played trumpet and i love the saying but i never did line is it's something we're if you're giving back to the community which is why i love doing my job i've had my career as a net so i've been involved so i'm on the united way board and i hauled than that also i'm working with the now called blueprints it's a community action southwest some on the board there and i'm also as one of the county commissioners i represent a county commissioners as a member of our mental health board that we have when we counsel work with our mental health department  county so i get very involved with that those are very important issues that we face and it's nice to be able to bring my business background local government what i do to be part of those those boards and to help kind of help get direction to where we go with those things what most people don't understand is being a county commissioner is not a nine to five job ok that's something lay said a lot of people see you out but they don't understand that you also have that night job but do you you're attending i've seen you at our community day i've seen you at all the other functions and you know whenever they had  your community involvement but i don't think people understand the time commitment that and you get paid the same salary it's all you get overtime it's a very interesting i've had many good jobs in my life throughout eighteen to career you know i did a lot of different things operations computer sales but this is i say the best job i've ever had it is flexible in some areas forty hours a week because sarah and sunday are still work days for the county commissioners were basically out and about and people say harlan you're always running always here and i say you know it's part of my job but bottom line it isn't the job to me it's something that i love being out with the people and so if i'm out there and off not campaigning i'm out there because i've been invited and they want the county commissioners to come and represent that organization and be there it's a it's a fun thing but yet you're still doing your job and so are not eight to five but there are many days i'm there nine to four four thirty and i'm still house from four thirty to ten eleven o'clock at night but to me when it becomes a job now then i guess basically i'm doing something wrong i love what i do and it makes it very easy it's surprising to me last spring i was here event at the high school and woman walked up to me and said why are you here on school board she says but you're always at these events and i said what's wrong with it she just don't have anything better to do like but how can they can you commit to doing your job if you don't love it and that's lazy and we're not paid you know so i mean it all my own time and my own dime so what is the problem you know and there's another thing that when you're out for a function or an event or to show up at the the opening of the new school district you know a groundbreaking is or whatever you end up talking about a lot of different issues about the county and you learn what people are thinking out there and what their needs are what their issues i never go to an event where i don't walk away someone has given me another chore to do on behalf of them and to me it's the biggest thing in their minds because that's why they brought it up and so it opens up the door to understand what the community needs what the people are looking for and i take that back and i send a lot of messages to myself i don't know if you've ever done that i do e mails as you know when i go back i send a message i look for our best to say yes make sure you follow up on this make sure you'd set up a meeting with so and so and and so it's kind of a it's a it's  very very open to the public because you're out there for one reason but in up three or four other things come out of that that you need to work on that's my job that's what i'm there to do for the people so it's very it's very nice it's it's also nice when you are a county commissioner to go out and you're not pushing you're not trying to campaign you're there because you want to be part of it i think the biggest challenge and you may understand this is that there are sometimes four or five things going on in the evening i like to go somewhere and be part of it and stay with it and you find out sometimes you're runnin back and forth between events and so i have learned how that that that's not me harlan but i've learned how to adapt to that and it's still it's not he showed up even if you're not there the whole waiting people appreciate the fact that you took time out to be with him because he invited you to something let's talk about some of the things that you've been able to accomplish while you've been on commissioners the growth  and it but it it nothing for all that those years and then all of the sun the body eight years ago nine or seven years you know things started happening it was called france folly many years ago because why would you do this why would you put that property into a development stage for businesses it's been very successful over the years and part of that what starts out is infrastructure puts is put in place over a new interchange on seventy nine made it a very excessive course which is always one of the things we look at in sixpence thing jobs by doing development putting pad ready placed locations but then you have you have to have a good strategy of what are you doing here where you bring in jobs and no one can doubt that the gas industry has been a boon to our area and has created jobs southpoint look how many gas related businesses there but that's not the only ones there so having a very open inviting atmosphere in your county which i think washington county does we want people to bring their businesses here which then creates jobs and keeps our kids here with twelve grandkids you know how i want to keep all my kids here well that's what that's kind of the way it works in and a say in government you open the door hopefully and then you get out of the way you let the private market take over we have done a lot in southwest with our development teams to keep it moving the right direction and now we're moving on where do we go next and we're always working on where do we put that next business at once that come the washing county i think that's one of the things i i thrive on because of my business background my home building doing development i think those are things i get my teeth in my hands on when it comes to that but that's what we are going right now one of the big is where do we go next what locations would be best for us to bring jobs in and we're already the county trying to do that it's funny you say that i was just on to and this morning earlier and i was talking to a couple people down there and brownsville came up sure and i don't know that i ever told you this but in the movie the silence of the lambs i was a guard you were a guard i was a guard and whenever we were sitting there one time jonathan demme he was sitting behind us talking to his staff people and said you know he enjoyed working in pittsburgh area and everything else and what he wanted to do was find a place around here that would be a time piece what you mean you found it and one day it's again we find is small the small place he said well how much is it going to cost us to put it into what we need he said about four hundred dollars so what are you talking about one streetlight  said brownsville is it hasn't changed and all those years and it's just like you said hopefully the roads heading down their roads to the airport will make them more accessible and everything else so that community can change absolutely and the small small towns in washington county throughout the nation are suffering are areas still meals are going to churn out coming back so we're looking to what can we bring in and you have down on them on bring in large jobs creator to three hundred jobs but we need to basically tried to help these small towns they're just they're they're in poor conditions we're working with our redevelopment arman with the local governments the local municipalities to try to build them up but i have a firm believer that you have to kind of put jobs in their area that then builds housing that builds restaurants as your gas stations but it all starts with i need a reason to live in that area and that's a job so we're working hard to cry to create jobs and one of the problems you have is that everybody wants to be between washington and allegheny county that's the main thorough fare seventy nine route one thousand that center but bottom line is we need to we're always trying to figure out how we handle the rest of the county that needs that same development in our small town small towns and a lot of health they have no expansion and they need all the help they can get to try to bring back some of the vitality that they once had one of repeaters played bronzeville oh my god it must mean twenty years ago easily well twenty five years ago i was told don't take your good car don't take your wallet just take the minimal amount of money you need i was scared to death to good honor myself when i went down there i had the most enjoyable in the end i had in years the people i we sat behind the band parents now the woman that i was dating at the time her son played football for peters so i'm thinking oh my god this is not going to be a good place to supply well in the middle of the game they had pizza delivered which they shared with us and then i opportunity talking to the refreshment person who in fact was so absolutely positive about that that area i actually wrote a letter saying that you know this is what i was told beforehand this is what i found it to be the case and it's a shame that the word you know they played the national anthem not one kid in the entire stadium had a hat on not one kid was talking not one kid was walking along while the anthem was being played they stopped they were reverent they held their hands over their heart and they actually were part of the americana that you always heard about that we grew up in and it was a delightful evening for the people there are really good people and they've been they've been as you said they've had a rough time with it businesses have left because they can economic lease they viable whenever there's nobody coming into town you know th you make you may know better than this than me but that area was brought up basically because i thought it was going to be a casino at one time ok that's a real what the rumor is i'm not sure the last part riverboat said yeah one time then i met ya'll and said so that was going to be the the thing that brought brownsville back it's so the life a little town and but lady said the people have had a very tough time and they you know and how do you pick people that have been down for so long pick them up and  make sure that they understand that there are positive aspects in this whole thing they're great people and you don't know that to you get out and meet with their people and i've done a lot of that west brownsville is in washington and you go right across of ever there in fayetteville and know that but i know the local government officials we've been involved a lot of meetings and talking and you know they're basically the saltier when you think about it it's easy when things are going good oh to have a smile on your face and to to feel like everything's right go into these small towns and specially the more valley especially brownsville areas and you go in there and i'd say they're hard they're harder fighters than a lot of other people because they've had to go with what  they've gone through the hard times they don't have the dollars even local government school districts they don't have the dollars to spend but they're still out there doing their best and sharing pizza with you at a ballgame and th it was for me and i've traveled literally all over the world and it was probably the most relaxing comfortable even whatever i was so geared for watching everything and it was it was an amazing opportunity to let people be people and not not a political thing and not this crap that we're hearing about today but just to let them be the good people that they are and they got you know they got beat but they weren't you know nasty about it and they good game even the football players said that was one of the best teams that they ever played because of the fact that they'd help you up you know they won they wouldn't try to push you down into the mud this cancer i mean it's just it's just sad that these small towns how they've not been forgotten no might have but it seems to them like there's other people doing a lot better we talk about local share and money going to different communities for projects the more and valleys got a good portion of the money that has been given out over the what since two thousand and eight in the last ten years and someone said well what about that you know what they have needs they the request in for money to help them get their bootstraps up so to speak and so therefore they're getting money there and that's why we try to make sure that we listen to the best projects no matter where they're at and we try to make sure that that money goes to good causes and so we're pulling for the small towns not just in the modern valley you can go out to the burgas town areas and all over the place i'm sure these small towns need help and bring in business and this kind of where we can maybe help the most new addition of the some of the restaurants and some of the housing that's there it's been it's been a success story in my opinion i'm sure cecil township sees that all the success story but better than that it brings people here you know hotels has sprung up people come in for business and so our tourism all these things work together but you know south point has been been a great success over the years it's now for we're working on projects right across the street called cool valley we don't know where that ago but there's nine hundred acres there that could be developed but i think something's coming in that's a southern about way from the airport right and to me when you have the southern about what over the next couple of years it gets completed from the airport to route seventy nine right by the national cemetery when that road is completed it's going to open up areas for developments going to open up places where jobs could be created one more time so i'm looking forward to keeping the infrastructure going we're very fortunate in washington county although sometimes we don't think that the roads are being torah there are a lot of construction going on everywhere you look the turnpike commission coming in and putting the southern beltway and i think we're getting a lot of attention and washing conny because infrastructure is the future if you have the roads you have the access you have the store water lines you're going to have growth over the years to sustain well this is that and you bring up good points because of the fact that they said southern don't we come through your access to the city as well as to the airport of the two main things you try to look for ok and in fact if you could have one laser the takes about forty five minutes now to get from here to the greater pittsburgh international airport that should take it down about twenty five to thirty minutes horton a trip yeah it'll shorten the trip but it also connect those areas so as you say that everywhere in between that will in fact be open to development and in fact bring more people into the area one house just came up on the market across from  and i was amazed to see the number of people want of course being than there being neighbor i had to go and see what they did to the house but while we were walking through mud a lot of really nice families every one of the most from a percent clear having the what they wanted to or force off it wanting to leave there to come to peter's here or the school district and low taxes yes and that's what everyone every couple that we talked to said the same thing absolutely and that's what we hear all the time both of those issues both the school district which is a big incentive for peters township arrow short and the taxes throughout the county people say i have some examples going through recess which we hated to do low short we had to do i actually came out to address people here here's township to talk about what the south means and answer questions of bottom and looking at that that has been one of the big issues that we still are the second lowest taxes in southwest pennsylvania i believe bottlers number one and we're number two and some would say well you just did reassessment or recess but still kept the county taxes the same rate we did not raise we went that revenue neutral however you and i and i especially saw an increase in taxes even though the valuation that the county did was of was right on but i still saw a tax increase but so it's individually it may have affected you different but from a county wide standpoint we stayed the same revenue generation as we had before and so we're still the second lowest taxes it's just how it's been distributed what most people don't understand to allegheny county gets reassessed every year ok and those people i mean living right next to each other in the same house one is four hundred thousand one hundred thousand and they're fighting that in the news media always carries that fight of course we had homes here in peter's that weren't as reassessed for thirty years and that they were paying very low yeah very low taxes while the new homes were being assessed at the value of the price of the new home and so the finish area that area over an outside was of curing larger burden of the taxes of not only the school district but the county and and the municipality then the other older sections and a lot of people didn't like their taxes being raised but of course i didn't like my taxes you know being raised on my new house  not raised with just you know i was more appreciative of it because my taxes were adjusted to in fact doesn't mean that they say low because the school district is always going to raise taxes because of the contracts and everything else that they have to deal with always go up so i mean i said sometimes being government is more difficult than being a citizen who complains about government because you know most people don't understand whenever a new house goes in you're getting taxes but now you may have to hire new police or you may have to get a new fire truck or put in new water line to put in you know bigger schools or whatever because of that so the cost isn't always what a benefit is sometimes of the building a new house doesn't mean that the community has a benefit from it there's another thing going along with that those outside complain and that's what the public does and we're working with that but once you get involved and i found that when i went on the school board when i we came in towns or supervisor in the county commissioner once you're in there and you see exactly what is going on you can understand that and so our job is to try to get that message out to the general public that they don't understand they're only caring about their issue at the time and that means that that's the most important thing i need to address with them but it's not there for when you're inside trying to do the things rather than outside sometimes it's easier to criticize but you know what that's our right and i never get offended by someone asking me a question i don't get the fen i just try to explain the best i can and hopefully they walk away and usually they do walk away said thank you you know whatever i grew up in peter's ok this is where i went to high school and everything else the thing that i'm starting to realize and maybe it's because of my age ok is the fact that we have quite a lot of elderly folks but we don't have elderly folks living in a nine hundred thousand dollar home necessarily what we do have is a lot of these little homes that were built and the hourly folks who really do need some assistance not just on a day to day basis you know cutting grass and things like that but we need we really do have to pay attention to them as far as the we're going to take a break here for a commercial and we will come back on the other side we want to talk about a lot of the county infrastructure and i'm talking about organizations that the county has and what they offer to the community all right we'll talk to you in a little bit  thanks hopefully you'll come some of the things that you've been involved in as a county commissioner we've talked about soft point we've talked about the mon valley in brownsville let's talk about some other things wanted to give the folks a little example some of the other things that you've been personally involved not just signing something as a county commissioner letting it happen i think one of the things that that i got involved with after i came into the county position was the issue of having a booking center for instance what is a booking setter sounds like the monday thing but it's very important to the communities where when someone is detained by our law enforcement after hours they're able to take these individuals right to the county jail and they would then take control of them at that point so that the police officers can get back out into their communities with maybe half and to be with these individuals for four or five hours during the night and so we put that process it took time we had to find places to put it i actively got involved in that to try to work with all the different entities come to a consensus about how we can make that happen we've been doing that for the last three or four years now in that same sort of work very well so this kind of saying our communities need to be safe we need to keep our law enforcement on the streets so let them bring people off hours to the jail and that was a big process that was a big change in that one area of law enforcement  will get better for the community does funny you say that because i recently applied for a nonresident carry permit for virginia we have a house down there so i applied for that and i actually had to go there to be fingerprinted because our local police don't do that anymore because they have the booking center once i went down there it was easiest thing possible you walked in everything was done in matter of fact they were very friendly very kind and got their jobs done i walked out of there within twenty minutes life is good you know so it handles more than just booking prisoners and many times you when you need a finger print chart for your occupation or your new employer or something like this you can go down there it's not just for criminals anymore you know which absolutely i put myself into and on nowadays it's so it makes things more efficient and so you can get things done besides that whole process allows us to really identify individuals that might come into the area just as part of the law enforcement that may be wanted in other areas and so we know who we're dealing with quicker there's a lot of new technical technology that's being introduced into that field that makes us safer and gets the job done faster so that's one thing that i did that i really kind of chaperon myself as part of the three commissioners we all work together on issues but each of us have sort of interest i've also worked with our planning department and i'm big on the infrastructure you've got if you have store lines or water lines then you're going to see development in areas and so basically working with the planning commission you know encourage them to get a a sort of a whole survey of all the sources tems all the senate terry sort of the treatment plans around the county so that we could look at as we move forward how do we build that infrastructure in the right way you don't put something upstream if you need something downstream first and so some of those planning things i really like to get involved with so that we kind of don't react but we start planning ahead throughout the county for the future i'll be honest with you all of us have worked with the parks and recreation you have cross creek maine go the panhandle trail and the ten mile park these parks are something that you know people come and live in an area if they're coming here just to work they want to live here because they have a quality of life and so we really have been pushing hard for putting money back into our parks usually that's the last thing you spend money on but what we have been doing with some of the gas rody monies and other things putting that in and i've been pushing that we do that  just like we put new trails in new new comfort stations all those things in the parks area i think that one of the things i'm working on currently you know we have a lot of problems right now throughout the whole county with the flooding issues now we're not north carolina we're not maybe what's happening down in florida down in the panhandle right now but we have issues here that our people are suffering and so i've been really were working with some of the communities to try to get something done to alleviate maybe flooding situations in the future and also get ahead of why the flooding occurs what can we do other than we can stop the rain what can we do in the flooding is so i have a task force i put together made up of from  cecil to south by south franklin that is your charter is watershed peters townships been involved with that and also so that we can look at what can we do with the corps of engineers and the e p to do anything we can to leave the aid some of the trouble if i look at nordstrom being the big one i look at bentley ville roberts and they're all over the areas that we're having with all the rain with all the development we're having slide so we're just looking i'm trying to do something so that we keep it alive and maybe get some things done for the future how can we alleviate you have to have a plan so we need to design down then i think that's moving forward then we can start implementing some of the fixes where you did then i think i do you did mention something about florida before i came here today i heard that that has turned into a potential category five right now it's happening and yeah and it's going to be hitting here to south to new and i just hope everybody pretty for those folks because i used to be in charge of the disaster response force for the air force to respond to things like that and it was never good i mean like you said you get them in any any storm be bad especially whenever it's numbered but whenever you get into a category five that's called the finger of god and that is just a terrible terrible terrible possibility and those people only had two days to give her parents why is everybody look down there on that if it's escalated hope everybody just keeps them in their prayers  the flooding along in the monongahela once again the place gets beat up for everything sure economically as well as physically with the rains and everything else one of the things i mean even in our school building the new ones we're building people have asked me about these you mongers craters their water retention areas they will shrink as time goes on but the e p a only requires us to allow as much water that was getting into the creek when that was a golf course so as time goes on grass will be planted and then less water will be coming down those will string significantly but we will always have some water retention there because w rosa sorry by the way putting the road through which in fact and that's part of our problem that we're doing right now we're we're replacing farmland with homes and driveways and roads and you know drives and everything else which the water can't be absorbed so then where we're finding those places that didn't flood or are now being flooded because they just have much more water the grass isn't growing because now you have pavement on top of it so there's a there's a lot of things that people have to be looking at and it's not just an overnight idea you know it's a long term solution but with some immediate fixes that can alleviate specific problems well the word out there we're in a school building here we're talking the emergency preparedness and things i know the county has been involved whenever i was chairman of the buildings or grounds i had to send our facilities booklet emerge plans and everything to the county the end of the oh he's got that wrong i don't know why and work with a twenty five years the chemicals that we have in our facility we would have to send that to the local police looking far as well as so the fire department knows the community doesn't know that all of this is happening yeah and that's a that's always interesting to see the in depth response that the community has to give to the county and to the local emergency management so we don't put them in any more harm than they have to be you know it's always a terrible situation and so we just had a full small fire here at the building last night because of one of the piece of equipment  that could have had devastating effect but luckily our system is set up to in fact handle that and it's almost taken care of at this point so i mean i you know there's a lot of things but that's just the here at our local level in our school building private boats that could go and help if either there is because they were using boats to rescue people but these plans come together at the county and then the county emergency management can also help be reactive when something happens so they're prepared they've got a lot of equipment for instance a gas industry which is new in the area you know the phone machines and things that can help put out fires and that all that is coordinated and training goes on between our local first responders and our emergency management team so we do a lot together it starts with the local groups giving some direction back and forth with the county and something we're doing now you know overtime we've had a nine one one system that has been there for some time and so we're looking to really throughout the county upgrade that system which is going to cost a little bit of money but it's basically trying to keep up with technology make sure that we have a great communication with our fire our place and our first response emerge e m s all this is  g effort but it takes everybody to be involved then and bottom line is that's very important if we run into these situations that you see and we do i mean it could be pyro beach as simple we've had a lot of power outages when the pilot goes out you have people there are respirators or on ventilation or they're on different types of equipment the hospitals the health centers all these things are dependent so power being out for a few days could cause something we don't think about but it could be really detrimental to the quality of life in certain areas so all these things are looked at and how are we ready of something happens and that's what we work on every day with our mercy management team we talked a little bit about the parks yes and as you well know last to play a couple years ago our group had a reunion down in maine go it went perfectly thank you very much the police one of the things when you're planning stuff like this i've been doing it long enough to know that as we're getting older we need some more possible medical attention they use it for playing ball or something so and the police there were more than happy to stop in every hour just to check and see if everything was ok we offered them food they didn't take it but then you know that's beside the book but you've done a lot of the parks mike my son and his wife and family run through mingle all the time they see whenever there's a problem and they tell me that the next time they run it's taken care of so somebody is doing an active part in making sure that park as well as i'm sure the other ones are are being kept up we've talked about the parks we've talked about the flooding we talked about the  talk about the other things the county has slightly said most people don't understand this stuff is there that's what's crazy about it that assistance for the elderly with our human services is a big part of what the county when i came in it's county commissioner seven years ago i was not aware of the degree of what we do in what we call human services this is be our veterans our children and youth our seniors and we do a lot in those areas that's a big part of our budget throughout  the the courts and all the other things we do but the human services side which should be mental health drug and alcohol all the things that the people that are in need that's why i guess those services are there and that's what is important so we have been working on that in fact we are working on integrating our human services for instance if someone has a mental health issues they also have a homeless issue ok they come in through different front doors for those different agencies and so we might have one family involved in three or four different situations that each one is doing separately so what i'm working on is trying to try to integrate these services so once you come in the door for any one of these issues you need were able to say look this is something that it's not only a homeless issue it's a mental health issue or drug and alcohol and or or a senior citizen that needs help so by doing that we can cut down the delays and make things more efficient to address people's needs quicker now that's an internal efficiency that i work on those things all the time in the county i don't that's not something you publicize and go outside of what i did but it's something that's part of the everyday job of the county commissioners i nvolved in making things more streamline you know we have been the last number of years we have held eleven hundred employees we recently sold the health center now we're down to eight hundred plus so we have to reduce three hundred employees over time we're not we're going but we're growing in certain areas like c y s with all the issues with children and so i've been the fish and i think i feel part of that that we're trying to be efficient and running government at the same time trying to provide the services it's a balancing people say why did you sell the health center i'm just going to speak out on that sure it was costing us three to five million dollars a year to provide that service to the to the people in our residents we found that there was a private agencies which is what's happening around the country private aides say that we're really interested in when we put it up for sale a number of people would look at what to buy the health care we can do health cent which somebody else can do which is why we went that way a private agency or we can do toad in the new two we can do mental health those are services we have to provide as a county the mental health center by going private there's only seventeen out sixty seven counties in this state that have health centers that are county run so it's just being pushed the rates are different it's not something that we need to be in that business but we felt that we still wanted to have people be cared for but that's what's happening today there's a paper primary premier washington health center is still there still handling the rest and that's that we did before the government whenever it gets involved in the health as we find on a national level  you know the so called affordable health care i had friends who say that they're there's monthly rates went from four hundred to nine hundred dollars it's not affordable but government like post office should stay out of that business they don't do it well you know but the bottom line is you've been involved whatever i had seen the tone on the our program last year he gave you a lot of credit for two programs one supporting the drug and alcohol program and the second one is the veterans court yes and those those are two things that and you know thank god i'm not involved in the drug or alcohol but of being a veteran i do know that there are issues the veterans have that non veterans don't have and that's and i know you said it and i've had some people say well why should they have their own court well you know what if you're put under that stress you act differently then people who have never been put under there and what that stress never leaves you know look at it from a broad view we have specialty courts will be drug and alcohol mental health veterans court and the issue there is a diversion from just sitting in jail for now and never getting any treatment it costs the county it costs us as taxpayers a lot of money to have people just sitting there not being treated they go out they come back it's written so that he said this is a miss this is ongoing so by having these courts and trying to put people into treatment hopefully they become productive their lives and we don't deal with them anymore because they're out on their own be and productive like i said so there's a reason for doing thing we have pretrial services where someone gets involved with  something they come in like person fast if someone does really violent crime they're going to be in jail there's no doubt we want them in jail we want to protect the citizens but there's a lot of things that happen there that really by getting into treatment not waiting six months and going into treatment putting them into treatment being monitored and cetera that's kind of what we're trying to do and i think law enforcement throughout the nation has tried to go that direction it's a cost item but it's actually a people item it's trying to get people to and a lot of people get into the drug and alcohol because of the pharmacy drugs good families get involved with these things and thereby intended to do that so there's a lot of reasons why we want to try to help the people at the same time we need to do things efficiently and do it in the right areas where you say whenever jean was on i pointed out a couple weeks before he came on i was watching a program on the b b c about drugs and the sad thing is the program that the british broadcasting network was doing was on southwest pennsylvania and that was you know you said that that was bringing it really does home that sometimes living in the world we live in on a day to day basis we don't understand that the problems that we have a very severe and that does that mean that's not just down in brownsville it's not about a minority it's your readers not you well yeah and you know they said we're i don't know anybody and i don't care what their age i don't know anybody who has been affected or had a friend to be affected by drugs at this time and it's really a shame let me address the southwest pennsylvania believe if you look at th was board chair of our state commission association is here and i was present last year we have a task force for working on the drug alcohol issues which then ties into our national association which is working on drug issues nationwide so you know when i look at that some of the reason why southwest pennsylvania my opinion was highlighted there of it because we have actively big we have been going after addressing it and so when you're out there and you're pushing and you're doing programs and units and you're trying to put out there i think people would see that and all of a sudden you become a headline and that's so that's probably so true in this area it's a problem everywhere it's a problem here but it's also something where i think we've got some accolades on how we've been trying to address some of the issues and as from a state association we're learning we're sharing and it's something that like i said it's bigger than southwest but yes we have to address it and we're also working on a prescription drugs issue i mean there are so many areas of treatment enforcement but keeping people from getting into i look at the whole drug issue as it's like a funnel and if you can stop people from coming into that funnel to need the drugs then you can  start working on treatment and law enforcement to get rid of it so the idea i have is less spend our money where it makes sense let's stop the people that are on prescription drug let's work on those let's get non addicting drugs out there do things for praying that does not put people into that final because it's going to be something that that's going to be hard it's a law it's one of those long term fixes again yeah this is one of the things about government that i found out a long time ago it took me four years just to get the lights on our flags at the schools which is a requirement by law and we're probably the only school system in the tar country that has every american flag has a flag has a light on it and it comes on at night time but it's only four years as an insider to get that done so it's never ever a fast government doesn't move fast and spending people's money should be a major concern of any government but we fact have to look at all those issues and try to prioritize as we write and have and it's tough as you know as a school it's tough as a community and it's tougher i'm sure and as as a commissioner you know you have to take one step to get to the now and if we start now it might be five years down the road to fix something but if we don't start now it's not going be five years it's going to be ten fifteen twenty so i believe in taking action even if you know the end isn't real clear taking action try to always look for the future and i think that that takes us the right direction well as they say every every trip starts with the first step and harlem it has been a wonderful opportunity sitting down with you again  and they keep throwing a thirty second sign up to me so i'm going to in fact say that we're going to be ending here real soon but there but the bottom line is it's always enjoyable talking to you please give my best to jackie and you know you said look forward to seeing you