Trev Warnke (00:38)
Hi guys, welcome back to another episode of the Brotherhood Beyond Business podcast. We're here with Elijah Snyder and we're gonna walk through a little bit about his life, some stuff he's got going on, talking about politics. Elijah, go ahead and introduce yourself and tell me little bit more about you.

Elijah Snyder (00:50)
Well, I, so I grew up here in the Prescott area, specifically in PV, Prescott Valley, and grew up there my whole life, driving to the town for just about everything. It was a bunch of empty dirt fields out there. And I was raised with five younger siblings, big family, very religious, very hardworking, kind of classic American dream. My dad was a construction worker, built up his skills over time, got a

Contractors license as soon as he got his hands on just a few thousand dollars He got a contractor's license launched a business and he was kind of an upwardly mobile guy as I was a kid So I kind of got both sides of things living in a two-bedroom apartment with three siblings all sharing a room and Living in a six-bedroom home that my dad built for us himself after working his ass off all growing up to make us a better life and so

Got kind of a classic American dream vision growing up, watching my dad go through all that. And it really shaped who I am. And so now I've been involved for the last few years. I manage a company called Aspen Landscaping and kind of found my niche there in terms of business management. It's something that in one of those weird ways I was trained on accident for. I spent my 20s just trying a lot of entrepreneurial stuff that sucked and I failed.

But in the process, I kind of learned how the world works and how you can actually bring value to a community and how you can actually harness people together to work together on a project. because of that, now working at Aspen, I love it. We have a great team there and that's very fulfilling for me. I'm raising my own kids now. I have three kids, been married for 11 years and going strong. so

Now going into this next season of my life, that's where I've decided to get more involved in the community, trying to use the things that I've learned in business, in church leadership, just with my family, just through life, to try to make a difference and make this place a better place to live. And that's kind of where my head's at now.

Trev Warnke (02:49)
Awesome. Let's go ahead and dive into that. one thing that, so growing up, I grew up in Iowa and then from there I moved to different places in the world realistically. Lived in Australia and lived in Wales and then moved to Chicago and now moved out to Prescott just about four years ago. This June will be four years for us. So I've seen a lot of different like political things from growing up in Iowa, very conservative kind of area, small town 600, living in Chicago and Melbourne, Australia, very like liberal.

One of the things that drew me to this area specifically is just like the somewhat conservative, I would say pretty conservative, kind of more what I grew up with value-wise, conservative, but also I just love the home feel of the Prescott Valley, Prescott area. We live in Chino, so those different kind of areas really love that kind of thing. So some stuff that you've been talking about with the political stuff you're going to talk about today is kind of continues to hold, you want to hold on to some of those things and kind of continue to grow those things in these area. So I'd love to like know where...

what's kind of brought you into this political atmosphere that you're looking at and just kind of diving into that.

Elijah Snyder (03:52)
Yeah, so the thing about politics is very often it can become this sort of national soap opera that everybody's participating in, like it's American Idol or a soap opera on TV or something. And people are obsessed with what Trump's doing, what Trump's not doing, who's being indicted or the big sort of massive things that you see in the news all the time tend to eat up all of our attention.

And for a long time that kind of burned me out because I felt like politics, why would I get involved in that? It seems like people mainly yell at their TV. One day it's the Democrats are winning, it's the Republicans are winning. And it just felt like something that I didn't really care to spend a lot of time on other than going in and voting and showing support in my own small way. I was pretty content with that. But the thing about politics is on a local level, especially in a smaller community like this,

It's not that hard to make a serious impact. And when I say not that hard, it's hard work, it takes effort, but it's not that complicated. If you want to make your local town a better place to live, the people that you need to influence and communicate with, that's not a very long list, and they're very accessible, and you can go make friends with them, sit down at lunch with them and understand what's going on better, and start contributing your talents to improving the community you live in.

And so as I was growing up in our town, Prescott Valley has always been defined by the growth of the Prescott area. Prescott has these tourists sort of charms, brings in people to do outdoorsy things. And we have a bit of that in PV as well. It brings in people for all sorts of reasons. The downtown square entertainment district is thriving and so on. But growing up, we always had to drive into town for any kind of amenities, any kind of grocery shopping.

Very often for school we'd drive into town. And things changed as I was growing up. I remember it was just big, empty yellow fields. And then before you know it, it's another grocery store. It's the high school. It's the library. And these things start to come up. And kind of just over time, you wake up one day and Prescott Valley has become its own viable community. The population's bigger than Prescott. There are, is it more of a lower median age, which means it's a little bit more diverse than Prescott.

It's not only retired folks, although we love our retired folks. It's also got lots of young families, lots of working people and people starting businesses. so Prescott Valley has become a town that has some real importance to it. It's one of the biggest population centers in our congressional district. It's one of the biggest population centers, I think it is the biggest population center in the county. And that means Prescott Valley matters in a lot of ways.

It's the workforce community or it has been for many years for the Prescott area. And what's happened is the cost of living has gone up. A lot of people have moved here, especially post COVID. And unfortunately, the politics have become very contentious and divisive and nasty. And so you put that situation we're in where you have people spreading, I'm talking about wild-eyed conspiracy theories about the local mayor.

You could go meet, he does meet and greets at the grocery store. You can go talk to the guy. But instead people are spreading conspiracy theories about his history and his past. People are attacking all sorts of, some of these town council people, you can get them for coffee, no trouble at all. They'd love to come hang out. But instead you have people who are spreading lies about them on social media. So the viciousness of politics right now is something that needs to be fixed. We don't need to be doing politics this way. We can work together to make

the town a better place. It's not that hard for us to all come together and work together because it's still a small enough town where you can do that. You don't have to persuade a million people to agree with you. You can just get the community together, the leadership together, and think about ways to collaborate and make things better. So on one hand, I want to see Prescott Valley politics change because it's become extremely toxic. On the other hand, there's that thing that I mentioned about realizing that local politics is a place where you can make a difference very rapidly.

by comparison to sort of the national soap opera. And so that's where my energy has kind of gone into. And that's what I've taken interest in is just the ability to go around town, network, get to know people and make a material impact. That's what drew me into the issue.

Trev Warnke (08:19)
That's awesome. mean, so my, my history, my history would be exact same as yours in a sense of like completely agnostic to politics for most of my life. I just didn't care. You know, growing up a Democrat and Republican were not very far apart when I was growing up. know, I'm 40 years old. So like realistically for most of my life, my parents would have been, they would have considered themselves Democrat and now they're considered as Republican. And so kind what you were talking about there is like, we have a lot of fighting, but fighting about the fact that like,

It's just become fighting for the sake of fighting not to actually move the needle anywhere. It's just like, hey, now I'm called a Republican or Democrat. I used to be called a Democrat. It's like, for most people, doesn't really matter. It's just the topics we get too divisive about. So I love that you kind of think about the conceptual side as like, hey, we need to do less fighting because fighting actually doesn't make progress. It's not actually moving the needle forward any way that we can. So I love that you're kind of taking that perspective on it because I think no matter what, if you try to get into any politics.

Most people are gonna come in in a different way. They're gonna usually come in like, I'm gonna pick one topic. I'm gonna pick one topic and this is gonna be my standing ground and I'm gonna come in and this is gonna be the thing because I can like create controversy or some type of like big thing over this. Which is in my opinion the complete wrong way to go about it. My thought process is like, hey, I wanna go into this with the ideas. Like I wanna make a difference for the sake of making a difference not to stick one side against the other side. I'm trying to build a community up, right?

Elijah Snyder (09:39)
No, and it's so unnecessary in a community like this because like I said, if you live in New York City, you cannot get Zoran Mamdani on the phone very easily. I don't imagine. Tell me if somebody watching lives in New York City and is like that, that's great. But if I imagine when you're dealing with millions and millions of people, politicians become less accessible, the amount of money involved becomes much more escalated.

And so on the national level, I vote in our national elections. And the thing is, I just questioned sometimes, okay, I spent 15 minutes voting for the president, for our senator or something like that. But how much did I personally leverage my abilities to make a positive difference? Maybe not that much. Whereas on a local level, you can just call people. You can just connect with people as a human being.

That is where I think a lot of the division comes from, is this need to persuade millions and millions of people around the country. So how do you get millions of people to vote for you? Well, you got to make it so simple and catchy that it fits on a bumper sticker and a lot of nuance and a lot of relationship gets lost there. Whereas if me and you live in the same town and we have a disagreement, there's no reason we can't sit down and kind of sort out a compromise, say, well, what do we both agree would be good for everybody and try to find a way forward.

And so I'm passionate about that. And I think that so far, since I've gotten involved, what I've found is that a lot of this nastiness is unnecessary because somebody is not willing to have that sit down conversation. And the moment you do, a lot of that nonsense kind of dissipates and people have a better capacity to connect with each other.

Trev Warnke (11:22)
No, that's awesome. It's kind of like we attach an ideology or a personality to what party that we belong to. I think about politics in the way I think about business. I only care about things that move the needle. What that means is like, if I can't really move the needle on something, voting is not wasting my time, but I just know that one vote is gonna take a very short period of my life. I'll say that I can't move the needle on anything. It's like, if I'm trying to build my business up stronger,

By me going out and spending more time marketing and doing the things I need to do is the only way to grow my business. And for political stuff in this area, the only way to move the needle politically is to get involved, create relationships, have conversations. And it sounds like you kind of started that process. So kind of tell me what you've kind of started in that process as well as like, what's your main platform that you're trying to like, in a sense, fix or move the needle in?

Elijah Snyder (12:08)
Yeah, so I'd love to get into that. Essentially, the politics in Prescott Valley specifically, but really it's a problem in the greater area, but they've become extremely contentious and divided on the topic of growth. Anybody who's lived here the last several years has watched the population skyrocket. And along with that, they've seen traffic fill up. They've seen housing prices go up.

I the median housing price in Prescott now is $500,000. In Prescott Valley, it's $415,000, $425,000. Don't quote me. I don't know the exact current median housing price, but we are talking well into the $400,000 and $500,000 now if you want to get a modest three-bedroom house in Prescott Valley. I've even seen at times, know, manufactured homes sitting on a lot that they're being charged $300,000.

And you remember when we were kids, it was like, never buy a manufactured home. They don't appreciate it. like, well, those ones did. And so it's, it's becoming really, there's a lot of pressure in terms of affordability. There's a lot of pressure in terms of, in terms of crowding. And you basically have two types of people. have people who want this town to sort of address these needs through expanded amenities, meaning parks, roads, uh, uh, you know, restaurants, shopping, and through, uh, housing.

availability to where increase the supply of housing to where it's not quite so expensive. Increase the variety of options so that if you are a young person fresh out of college or if you're a young couple with only one or two kids, that maybe you can rent a two bedroom apartment and pay a lower cost of living. And if there was more options, more availability, more amenities to support, a lot of investment into our fire and police department.

lot of investment into revitalizing our downtown. These are things that a lot of people I would benefit from. If you're raising a family in this town, it's hard. There's not a ton of things to do. And when there are things to do, they are expensive. And so by diversifying, by building out options, you know, there's been talk of bringing a YMCA to Prescott Valley, for instance. Everybody knows that that's going to be a benefit for those of us who've been driving in the town 30 minutes through dangerous traffic to get our kids to participate in YMCA sports, things like that.

And so that's one side of it. The other side of it is there are people who feel really frustrated and ignored because they moved here specifically to live in a small town. They want to live in a small town like PV that has a lot of open space. It doesn't have too much traffic. They want to be able to go down to the grocery store and kind of know people by name and have that comfortable aesthetic. They want to own horses and be able to ride them places. These are all like,

part of the charm why people move here and really valid. I don't have any problem with those desires. The problem comes when we decide because I don't want Prescott Valley to change, I'm going to stand in the way of even positive changes that might help people. And so ultimately I'm right there with you. If you're a person who says I don't want them to just turn this place into a sprawling urban parking lot with no, nobody wants that.

We all want to have open space. We all want to be able to see the Antelope still running in the field sometimes. We all want to be able to ride horses if that's what you're into, go off-roading, those sorts of things. I'm a huge fan of the small town lifestyle that we enjoy, but not to the point where I'm willing to keep our town artificially difficult to live in for anybody who maybe doesn't have an independently wealthy economic status.

There are people who they can't afford to pay off their house cash and have no mortgage, have a low cost of living here. There's people that are gonna have to pay a mortgage on a home that they're gonna own or they're gonna have to pay rent somewhere. They're raising kids and kids cost money. There's sports and school and whatnot. And so I wanna create the amenities and the lifestyle for somebody who's still upwardly mobile, still working in a career, still raising kids or even for a lot of our retired families, you have retired people who

Maybe they don't have all the money in the world. They're able to retire comfortably They're able to live but it hurts them too when there's no amenities it hurts them too when there's no options when it comes to housing and so people at every stage of life benefit When we are willing to invest in smart sustainable development, that's what we need intelligent well-planned sustainable development and so there that is sort of what I'm advocating for is let's

Let's stop protesting every single time there's a construction project. And let's think about what would be some smart things that we could do to develop the town in such a way to meet the needs of the community without losing its character. And so that's the goal.

Trev Warnke (16:59)
That's awesome. I actually want to put a story to what you just said because I actually grew up in an area that actually did exactly what you're saying. I grew up in Jefferson, Iowa, town of like, I think it's probably like 4,000 now. But when I was a kid, what they had is they had an older population there that didn't want it to grow. It was probably at that time maybe 7,000.

And so they had an opportunity for a big company to come in called Pella Windows. They had an opportunity for them to come in and Electrolux was going to come in as well to bring more jobs to the area and to be able to grow it. The mayor's, that was their goal. We got to make sure that we have an area in small town Iowa to grow because if not, this town is going to die. Older population living there just like, we don't want this to change. Right. So that happened in like, they kind of rejected those businesses in like early nineties. And so this 2025 that town is probably four thousand now.

All that's really left are retired people, because young people have nowhere to come. They would love for their grandkids to come back. There's nowhere to come back to. There's no jobs to come back to. You might have a small chiropractor. You might have small little services that can serve the older population, but that's all that's left. So we're probably, that town's probably 15 years away from being like thousand people. So it literally has happened in my lifetime. I've watched it happen. And the town was a beautiful town, a town that had like a lot of like character, a lot of things that was worth keeping.

And it did the same thing because like it wasn't the idea of like older populations wanting it just to not to grow in general. So I've actually seen that happen before. So I do love that like that's kind of on your heart a little bit because I've seen it happen in my past. I'd hate to have moved to a city now at this point in my life and moved here four years ago. I don't want it to over my lifetime be a town that falls in that same thing I've ever seen it happen once.

Elijah Snyder (18:42)
Yeah, no, yeah, me too. I spent a few years pasturing in Dayton, Ohio. And Dayton is a Rust Belt town. And the lesson we can learn from the Rust Belt, if you look at a lot of the Midwest, you have these towns that at one time were thriving metropolises that because the industry left and went overseas have become kind of drug ridden, violence ridden cities where the downtown area is empty skyscrapers.

completely hollowed out and people say, well, this area is not really manufacturing base, it's not a big city. But the truth is it's much worse for small towns. You go down to Middletown, Ohio, where I used to live 30 minutes from there, it's where J.D. Vance grew up, he wrote a book about it called Hillbilly Elegy. He talks about the poverty and the hardships that he faced growing up in that area. What that comes from is a town that does not have any industrial support to bring in ambitious, hungry people.

who are gonna come work to make the community a better place, provide those services you're talking about. And I wanna be really clear too, as far as the age demographic goes, there are a lot of elderly and retired people who recognize the need for these things. It really is, it's a loud minority of people that does not represent the population who are coming out and protesting every new project.

My frustration is that they're protesting it in a way that is completely indiscriminate and doesn't seem to factor in what exactly is being proposed. So I can totally understand if you say, look, I don't want this housing project. I don't want this development to go in. There are things that people could oppose and I would say, that's reasonable. Maybe you want something else instead, but they've opposed the YMCA going into Prescott Valley. They've opposed the sundog connector, which is a road that was supposed to go from

Prescott Lakes Parkway down to Highway 69 just outside of PV would have relieved some traffic off of Highway 69, would have potentially opened up a new corridor for other businesses to go in. That's being opposed. If there's any whisper of building a park at the base of Glassford Hill like the mayor has mentioned might be a good idea. If there's any talk of building multifamily complexes, literally anything, the attitude is

No, don't build it. because the supposition is that if you stop building, the population will stop growing. But that is not exactly how it works. Instead, what I think is happening is the population has continued to grow and all it has become is more expensive because we're not keeping pace. And so like I said, I think these people have some reasonable concerns and I'd love to work together with them, but...

They really are a loud minority. They don't represent the population. And even many of the retired population are getting sick and tired of feeling like, man, nothing is getting improved around here and looking for these amenities.

Trev Warnke (21:42)
No, that's, I mean, that's good to know from somebody that I'm not really involved in the local politics here. At I moved here a few years ago and been building business. And so, but even for me, like kind of an outside perspective of somebody, I just look at like this community in general as an awesome community is why we moved here. But the other thing I see is like just change. So what I kind of see is there's a big baby boomer population here, which is awesome.

in many ways it's awesome because they've changed the world really, changed the United States. But the issue I see is like, okay, when that population ages out of running jobs and stuff here, we've got to replace them with a younger population in general. It has to happen. And so this community is going be affected if that younger population doesn't come in. Younger is not talking like 20s, I'm talking like 30s and 40s, people growing families, right?

that are gonna lead the community for the next four years. And we've got to have that. And one of the things that you brought up was the cost of living here. like, I've had some friends that have been interested in moving out here, building business in here, buying businesses here, and just the home populations, the home prices here. So we live in Chino Valley, in a nice neighborhood in Chino Valley. Our manufactured homes in our neighborhood are minimum 480,000. Our manufactured home, three better manufactured homes.

I would have never imagined growing up in Iowa, a home could cost 480,000 in general. I grew up in a house that was a four story house, had about half an acre of land, beautiful big house, probably 3000 square feet and 86,000, right? So it's just like the idea is obviously it's different, but the idea is like when you start looking at that kind of stuff is home prices here have gotten so far out that even young people that want to move to the area to possibly grow the area, even just replacing.

the baby boomer population that will be leaving, because the people that want to be served by these populations are still here, you have a lot of 60 plus that are going to be retiring, and we need to be replacing them with competent people to be able to work those jobs. Home costs, all these costs are going up, are going to create these big crux that I see come.

Elijah Snyder (23:35)
Absolutely, absolutely and just not to mention the global population as a whole, a lot of experts are saying is going to be moving downwards that the Gen X population, the Gen Y millennial population, the Gen Z population, these are increasingly smaller in the baby boomer population. And so we have lived our entire lives in an economic environment that is about to go away.

And first there'll be a boom, first there'll be a lot of money being transferred. It'll be a beautiful thing. They call it the silver tsunami. You've heard about this. Baby boomers retiring, selling off their businesses, transferring what they've built to the next generation. And that's what intergenerational relationships should be, right? As a father, I want to give to my kids more than I had growing up. And so it can be a beautiful thing. The difficulty is when the market

shrinks when there's less consumers and less producers. Now, perhaps, I manage a landscaping company, right? There are dozens of landscaping companies in town, and there's more than enough work for all of them. We're all booked out months. What could happen is that that environment where anybody can succeed starts to go away, and it becomes more of a zero-sum game because there is a lower population of consumers and a lower customer base.

What happens at that point? Well, there will be winners and there will be losers and the economy will be, I imagine, a lot more challenging and aggressive. It will require a lot out of people to compete in that market. And so what we want to do in my mind is create the best possible place to live during that economy. And the best possible place to live during that economy is going to be a place that is welcoming employers, welcoming

businesses and industries with open arms saying yeah come here we will make it easy for you to do business here we will make it affordable for you to live here if you will come here instead of other towns other cities and we can compete in the marketplace as a community to be a place that continues to thrive and do well even as the world's going through some some changes in terms of the numbers

Trev Warnke (25:46)
Yeah, I mean, and it's also the businesses you're talking about coming in, not talking about bringing in AI farms, right? The ones that aren't going to bring in actual workers and are not going to be great for our environment. It's bringing in jobs for people, bringing in opportunities for people, giving in. I mean, I'm 40. And so I still hope I have a good 50 years on Earth, but a good 30 or 40 years where I'm really going to be enjoying a lot of the services around here, right? But conceptually, like,

I want to see this area keep progressing in certain ways and progressing is a whole, it depends on your spectrum for sure. But progressing in the idea that like, want new business is coming in to kind of get more opportunities for us to keep investing in our community, right? Adding more things to it. That doesn't always mean like huge population growth. I mean, I've lived in different populations from Melbourne, Australia, which is 4 million to Chicago, which is 7 million.

And so I've lived in really, really big places and I've lived in a town of 600 that I grew up in next to a town of 4,000. So I've seen the huge difference in populations. Every single one is a viable population. It's just who's leading those communities. so one of the things that we talked about that you were going through that path is like being in politics puts you in a leadership position. If you're going down that route, kind of talking about that. So as you go down this leadership route for this, what are some of the obstacles that you see as you're trying to like maybe change this a little bit?

What are the obstacles that you see are coming to you that you've got to overcome?

Elijah Snyder (27:08)
I'd say the biggest challenge for people who think like I do about the future of the community is that most of us are already busy raising kids, building businesses, working jobs, and we don't necessarily have time to be political activists. At least that's how people feel. Now, the reality is if there's a unity amongst a large group of people, that kind of relieves the pressure that no one person has to be knocking all the doors.

getting out there, putting up all the signs, making a big scene, that each of us can do our part. And so the way I'm addressing that challenge, hopefully, is to just go to the leaders in the business community, go to the leaders in the churches around town, go to the leaders in various forms of community in the area, and give them an opportunity to do their part while also respecting their other priorities, that they're raising a family.

They can't make it to every single town council meeting. They can't engage with every single debate. They have to be wise with their business. But if we can all get everyone sort of on the same page in terms of what our interests are, then we can, many hands make light work. And my hope is just to get many hands going on this to cause a lot of, there's a lot of people who are not politically activated right now. They're not super passionate about politics. They've never thought about it, but

they have a vested interest in seeing this town develop a stronger economy. They have a vested financial interest, their children have a vested financial interest in making sure that this is an affordable place to live. There's also, take it outside of the realm of money, there's also just the simple fact of sometimes business and industry can be a matter of life and death, and it can be a matter of quality of life. So you have, for instance, the fact that it's very difficult to get specialists

Doctors to move up into this area the reason why is because there's towns in Phoenix that are producing housing at a much higher rate and are able to offer them much more affordable housing and so you're a new doctor out of medical school and you are going to Pick where you're start your career at what practice you're gonna start at Why would you make less money and pay a higher cost of living here when you could make more money in the city?

and pay a lower cost of living while you're having to pay off your medical school debt and all of these things. And so the consequences for this is, I believe Anthony Torres from Dignity Health has publicly said that we need 150 nurses right now. We're short 150 nurses. We're short specialists. I have friends of mine, many of whom, like I mentioned, many of them are retired, but they have a medical condition that needs attention from a specialist and they're having to drive back and forth to Phoenix and it's driving them crazy and making it more difficult for them to live here.

So I really wanna get out there to people that listen, I know politics might not be something that's been on your mind all the time, but if we continue to allow this vocal minority to shut down all new construction, this hurts us in more ways than one.

Trev Warnke (30:09)
one of the things that you said is for small business owners, one of the obstacles that we run into is extremely busy, right? We're moving the needle in a lot of areas of life. So if somebody had said to me, hey, if somebody had broken down for me, here's what the voting coming up.

You know, usually when I get voting information, I need to vote for, it's like in this long pamphlet and I have no time to really dissect what's going on. If somebody could just be like, hey, a leader in the community that understood business owners and stuff, that was just like, hey, here's a simple newsletter or something like that. like this is what's going on. This is what we need to vote for. Kind of put it in our hands in a sense. I said, hey, because as a business owner, I have a schedule that's easily modifiable for the right things, right? And so it's like, hey, we need to vote, you know, Friday at 2 p.m.

cool, I can schedule that in my thing. If this is an important thing, however, I'm being pulled in so many directions, I need somebody that can do that. So I do love that somebody that's obviously business minded like you, that's attacking some of these things would be a resource for me as somebody that leads a mastermind group of other business owners. Like, hey guys, this is an important thing for us to discuss, we don't need to ignore this thing. Elijah's put together stuff that allowed us to understand this is something that's important for us to be involved in. Can we get together and make sure we get this vote going? So I love that, that's a possibility that's coming down the pipeline of what you're doing is,

somebody that I respect, where your personality is, where your heart's coming from. You're coming from a man of faith, which is already telling me that we're going, you're gonna put this in a position that's best for everybody, not just what's best for my personal politics, what's best that the Lord's, the path he's put us on. And so I love that perspective, but also as a business owner, somebody that knows, hey, these guys, the guys that can probably move the needle a lot are business owners. I need to break it down so they can understand what's going on, because they don't have time to read through all the stuff that's going on.

Elijah Snyder (31:47)
Absolutely. Yeah, and there's a lot of stuff going on right now Is it alright if we go over a few? Topics so so when it comes to the November ballot or there's first there is the July primary in the month of July There's gonna be the primary election. I believe it's July 21st put on the screen. Whatever We'll figure it out. I believe it's July 21st. You're looking at the primary election for all the offices and you're familiar with

Trev Warnke (31:51)
I would love to,

Elijah Snyder (32:12)
the idea of a primary, you have your Republican candidates and your Democrat candidates deciding who's going to represent who. But in that primary election, the first thing that leaders in the community need to be aware of is that you have certain town council members and the mayor in Presque Valley up for reelection. These town council members, as well as the mayor, have a track record. They've been serving the community for a while.

And in many ways they have fought to make Prescott Valley a better place. But they're being challenged by people who are sort of taking a different approach. They're willing to accuse people of corruption at the drop of a hat without any evidence. They're willing to spread rumors and conspiracy theories about people. They are so sort of out of control in terms of their anger towards

the mayor and some other folks that it's become a really toxic race. And so if you are a member of the business community here, you need to understand there are certain people who have your back and they are really trying their hardest to make themselves accessible to the community, to hear out your needs, your perspectives, and would be very interested in representing you, but you're going to have to plug in a little bit and see what's going on and

potentially be willing to cast a vote. so I'll say right now, Mayor Kal Palguda is an incredibly hardworking and dedicated mayor. He puts himself out there constantly to meet people. I've met with him a couple of times. know, we're not close buddies or anything. I have no business with him. But from what I've seen, he's doing his best to unify the community around a positive vision and make improvements, keep the place a nice place to live. Yeah.

Councilmember Kimberly Lopez, Councilmember Michael Greer, and then Kendall Shoemaker. These are also up for reelection and are having some really perverse and nasty things said about them online, and it's just gotten a little bit crazy. I encourage you, if you don't know these people, if you're not convinced that they're the people you should vote for, go to their Facebook, reach out, leave a message. Talk to them, look at what they stand for.

These are people who have a sense of unity with the business community. They're willing to show up to a chamber event, they're willing to show up to a networking event and get to know people and get to know businesses and their needs. They have support from the police department and other public servants in the area. so coming in July, that's the first thing to look out for is to support people who are really contributing to the community.

I've mentioned the people that I am hoping that people will get to know, will look into supporting, but at the end of the day, don't take my word for it. Like people can look into what's going on and you'll see there is people who have been working pretty hard to try to make the town a better place. And right now they're being, they're facing a lot of opposition that is just uncalled for. And so that'd be the first thing in July.

Trev Warnke (35:14)
Okay, and then you said there's one December.

Elijah Snyder (35:16)
November, November 4th. So the November general election, this is the election that everybody hears about in the national news. They have the midterms for Congress this year. And one of the most important things, there's two ballot propositions coming up. If you're a Prescott Valley resident, that will directly affect you in a big way. And these are each a little complicated. So let's take one at a time. The first one I'll talk about is Prop 404.

Prop 404, what it is, is the developers were wanting to put in a sand and gravel pit to prepare sand and gravel for the asphalt operations that allow us to build roads and highways. There's already like nine of them in the area. Most people don't know about it because they don't really make a lot of noise. They don't really cause a big scene. They're off into rural areas. And so it's a normal thing to have sand and gravel pits all around to be able to supply asphalt for road building.

Now the developers were going to build a sand and gravel pit in a rural area, way out a mile away from any kind of residential housing. They were hoping to go ahead and work together with the town. This was the town's request. The town came to them and said, Hey, I see you need to build another sand and gravel pit. Why don't we put it way out over here where it's not going to instruct anything. It's not going to bother any residents. And unfortunately the conspiracies have just gotten so crazy.

that this whole other narrative developed about why they're doing this and trying to accuse them of trying to look for elements and things. What's interesting, the developers were not even originally looking at this spot. It's called government tank. It's a parcel of land. It's very rural, very separate from the community. They weren't even looking at this spot originally, but the town representing us, this is what you want the town to do, is they represent the citizens and they come to the developers and say, hey, why don't you put it way out here where it will be less obtrusive.

But unfortunately, there are people who are so sort of aggressive in their desire to combat anything going on in the town that they got a bunch of signatures and put it on for a ballot proposition. And so if this ballot proposition fails, Prop 404, they will have to build the sand and gravel pit at a place that is already zoned appropriately and doesn't require the rezoning that the town offered to get the sand and gravel pit moved out further away, right? And so the effect of it

this petition and this ballot prop is probably going to be that they will result in having a sand and gravel pit right next to Fane Park, right next to Stone Ridge, right there off of Highway 69, much closer to town, much more of a pain in the butt for people to deal with. A lot of the residents in Stone Ridge are very upset about this. Why would we want to stop them from moving the sand and gravel pit way out into the rural area? Why do want this in our backyard?

But the irrationality is just sort of to always assume that the government is corrupt and if they're trying to do something, we need to stop it. That if they're trying to build something, we have to stand in the way. And so essentially, this ballot proposition exists to try to shut down what would actually be a good thing for the town. And people have got to go out and vote yes on this if they want to protect the town from sort of nonsense like this. If they want to maintain

a productive environment where when it's necessary to do some sand and gravel mining for the highways, we can do that in a place that's appropriate for it, well designed for it.

Trev Warnke (38:42)
Yeah, which that's the issue with a lot of the people that don't dig into a topic and realize the sand and gravel pit are going to be built regardless. They're going to be built regardless. And that's the part where it's like, hey, I feel like by voting this, they're not going to build it. Like, no, no, you're just changing where it's being built. And that's the bigger obstacles. didn't probably look, most people probably didn't even look into the fact that like, hey, I think I'm stopping this from being built. like, no, no, no, you're just putting in an area that's less convenient for people. So. Yeah.

Elijah Snyder (39:07)
Yeah,

so for the record, that's Proposition 404. We want to vote yes on Proposition 404. Please let's get this sand and gravel pit built in the location that the town advocated for and decided was the best place for. And in many ways, it supports keeping an accountable relationship between the developers and the town. The truth is, as much as there's accusations of collusion,

as much as there's accusations of corruption, these people don't always get along. There's negotiations that happen. The town sometimes is coming to the developer saying, no, I don't want you to build that there. Why don't we build it over here? No, I don't want you to build that thing. Let's build this other thing that's good for the community. And we have to allow our town council to do that. We have to allow them to advocate for our best interests, even if that means, like I said, rezoning an area to...

to accommodate the developers in doing what's best for the community and not just what works for their business.

Trev Warnke (40:01)
Yeah, and I think you did a good job of explaining that because I think for a lot of people I'm saying ones that aren't voting against people just like literally going to the ballot I'm gonna vote. Yes, look at that. They see prop 404 like This very long sentence that I don't really understand was what is explaining if I didn't really get input like you just gave me I would look at that and be like, I don't know. I'm just probably gonna vote No, because I don't really even know what this thing it's a default for Exactly, it is for a lot of people and that's why that education of what's actually happening with this stuff

Elijah Snyder (40:22)
default.

Trev Warnke (40:29)
Is there somewhere where you get this information? Is there a resource that you use locally to help you be able to dissect more of this stuff that's going on?

Elijah Snyder (40:37)
There's a lot of things I know you had on have you had on Ashley Gardikis from together strong no no okay? That was a different podcast Ashley Gardikis together strong is a nonprofit that is publishing a lot of information about these sorts of things Online they are completely grassroots zero money from big developers zero money from anybody else They are raising money and and raising volunteers just from their network of friends and family Wanting to make a difference in the community and so they're a very neutral source

and they're advocating for this online. I believe it's togetherstrong.org. Okay, cool. Very cool. I hope that's the right website. Absolutely. But her name's Ashley. You could have her on sometime. She's fantastic. Other than that, I post a lot on my Facebook. If somebody wants to follow me on Facebook, Elijah Snyder. I'm on Facebook and we have our own political action committee called Protect PV.

Trev Warnke (41:14)
If not, I'll find it and I'll put it in the show notes.

Elijah Snyder (41:32)
where I'm the co-chair with Larry Tarkowski, the old town manager. Larry's the guy who built all of the infrastructure for the town from the beginning. He was the town manager, I believe through the 90s, 2000s, all the way to 2021. And so he has a wealth of experience. And he'll tell you, if you seek out his opinion, if you come to my Facebook page and look at some of the educational information that's being posted, you can see that this is really sort of a misunderstanding.

And just one of those situations where people with good intentions, they get unexpected consequences like, know, here we're going to stop this sand and gravel pit. No, if you vote no on this thing, you're actually just going to move it closer to town and bother everybody more. yes, I'm 404. And then if you want to learn more about that, you can check out the resources I've mentioned. And then there's one last thing. So our pack protect PV is.

specifically focused on one particular thing and that's proposition 492. And so have you heard anything about Lakeshore 650 or

Trev Warnke (42:32)
I mean, most of my stuff's in Chino Valley for us, I pay that much attention to PV stuff.

Elijah Snyder (42:37)
So in Prescott Valley between Lakeshore Drive and Fain Road, you're going out towards Jerome and instead of turning left, you continue down Fain Road. There's that intersection with Lakeshore. And in between there is about 652 acres of land. Now the town council voted a long time ago to annex this land. They voted to bring it into the town control. And the reason why is because they knew the developers were likely to build there. And the thought process is

very simple that if they're going to build something there either way, it's better for the town to have control over the water resources, for the town to receive sales tax from any business that's done on that land. The town of Prescott Valley does not have a property tax. And so the only way we make money is when business is done within Prescott Valley. That's the only way money comes into the government to fund all of the things that the town is doing to try to make it a better place to live. And so this

parcel of 652 acres. This is slotted for development that would include things like a soccer complex for the kids, a police and fire substation to bring our police and fire response times down as much as possible, restaurants, shopping, amenities. It was intended to be a master plan community like they have sometimes if you've seen a master plan community in the city. It's like think with where you have housing.

but you also have a town center with a lot of things to serve that local neighborhood, whether that's restaurants, shopping, and so on, the things that I mentioned. There's also a big wildlife preservation corridor that will be cut through the middle of it to make sure that any of the wildlife in the area are able to get through. And so all of these things, these selling points, wildlife preservation, water conservation, the restaurants and shopping and so on,

All of these things were negotiated for by the town with the developers to say, you want to rezone this land, use it, why don't we bring this into the town and why don't we make sure that you make these adjustments and these allowances? In school, they tell you that the government builds all the parks and roads, right? It's not exactly true. Very often, private equity and developers and investments

pay for the roads and the parks and the public amenities that we enjoy because they are subject to the local government that's able to work with them and say, hey, if you're going to build this housing here, can we do this? Can we do that? And so really it's about taking away power from the developers and bringing them under the regulation and the oversight of the town of Prescott Valley. And so that's what Prop 492 is. Prop 492.

If you vote yes, it's saying yes, the town should annex this land. The town should take control of this process and guide this process and make sure that the community gets the benefit of all of this development. Whereas if you vote no on Proposition 492, there is still gonna be land developed. If you think about, if you own a business, you're not going to stop doing business just because one customer or one market doesn't wanna do business with you. You're gonna find another.

And so this land can be developed in the county, but the difference is there's going be less control over the water supply, probably be well water instead of having a municipal system that's metered and measured and attempting a net neutral water usage. It's not going to bring any sales tax into the town. These things will basically just be losses for PV. Same development happening, but instead of the town having control and oversight and

receiving the benefits of it, it would all go to the county. And this is once again, good intentioned people. They're saying, I don't want people to just be able to build whatever. They're concerned about very valid issues like water conservation and wildlife. What they don't realize is by bringing this into the town's control, we can advocate for those interests with the developers. Whereas if we don't, if we leave it in the county, then the town loses its voice and loses its power in that scenario. So I'd say if you're a person who's concerned about

development being smart, being sustainable, being healthy for the environment, these sorts of things, you want to vote yes on Prop 492. It's really important.

Trev Warnke (47:00)
Yeah, and I think most people that be on the opposing side or the oversight thing comes up a lot, right? Too much oversight from the government, which would be the city. it's like, there are certain ways that's definitely logical, especially where I lived in Chicago, there's definitely way too much oversight. But conceptually, especially in a small community like this, has to be a, government is kind of a tough word, but your small town is really what we're talking about. You need to have a level of control of that stuff because

Like you said, to get the benefit of the tax system to actually benefit the community, tax money actually has to come in. Otherwise they have to change tax codes to make it so the city survives. And so that's the issue people... Like you said, a developer will develop regardless. Cities will have to get their money regardless. I they have to be able to like tax to be able to make the income they need. So if we don't have situations for them to actually make money in ways that benefit others, they're going to have to just increase taxes on property taxes.

We're to create ways that you're like, man, I don't want to pay tax on this stuff. But instead, if they can get taxes from sales taxes or coming from things that actually improve the community, that's actually a value add. That's a win-win versus the other way is a lot feels like a loss win because I property tax where I didn't have to pay that before. So that money has to come from somewhere just like developers would develop regardless. But that's what people don't look at that balancing scale. That balancing scale is always happening. It's just you're paying for it in one way or the other.

Elijah Snyder (48:21)
Absolutely, and we've had the luxury of all this time of a town without any property tax in part because as the town has been growing, all of that sales tax has been able to flow in and compound. And so, yeah, I would say if you want to live a lifestyle that is more small town, that is not over-regulated or controlled, I think on some level you want the town to be able to continue to receive its revenue without levying new taxes on you.

without levying property tax. And especially you want the town to be economically productive enough that that sales tax really makes a dent. And so when you see the town council, mentioned Kimberly Lopez, Kendall Shoemaker, Michael Greer, Kel Palguda. They focused a lot on taking care of potholes. They've focused a lot on making sure that parks and splash pads and amenities for the kids are there. They focused a lot on

free public events at the library. They've subsidized the Yavva Line, which allows you to drive anywhere in Prescott Valley, and I believe it's also in Prescott now, for a dollar or two. And so these are really wonderful things. If you're an elderly person who needs a ride to go get groceries or visit doctor's appointments, if you are a person in your career and your car's broke down or something, you need to get to work every day, right?

They've already done the work to provide these supports, but they need support from us to say, yes, we do want to keep our productive members of town council in office continuing to roll out the vision that they have to try to make this town more livable. And we have to say yes on 404. We have to say yes on 492. Get the obstructionists, the people who are always sort of standing in the way of

The next thing that's going to help our community to recognize that, listen, there's two sides to this story and this vocal minority does not represent the whole community.

Trev Warnke (50:20)
Yeah, I'm going to take a step back and kind of talk about the whole area a little bit too is we're having some of the same issues in Chino Valley. We're in Chino Valley right now. They're wanting to what's the call? Embry Riddle is looking at putting a place for flying a new airport in on the other side of Chino, which more like Paldin area. But it was going to bring in new business and some extra money for the town. The town people there are rejecting it because, it's changed. now these planes could crash on our homes like

You're literally just five, you'll 15 minutes that way and they're flying right there too. It doesn't change anything. And then, but I look at it as a young homeowner in the area and it's like some of the stuff that like they want to bring into Prescott Valley. I'm like, I would love Chino Valley, like bring it to Chino Valley. Cause I want young family. I would love for the area to start expanding more and more because I would love this. I would love to see a little bit of growth. Like a little bit of growth is not nearly what people who keep on comparing this stuff to Phoenix. Phoenix, that's not nothing.

What Phoenix has and what Phoenix is doing is nothing that we could even achieve in this area, realistically. So it's like, I think they get overly comparable to some of these other big cities. We couldn't even grow that way if we wanted to. There's not enough water here to begin with.

Elijah Snyder (51:25)
When there are towns down in the Phoenix area that are growing at 5%, 6%, meanwhile, Prescott Valley is growing at 2%. So there's this sort of sense after the post-COVID boom that, my God, it's growing out of control, but the growth rate has actually slowed and stabilized. And so we're not talking about massive growth. We're talking about accommodating the growth that has already happened. The people who are already clogging up our streets with traffic, why not, you know,

be open to the idea of building the Sun Dog Connector so that they can drive on it. The people who already filling up our stores and stuff, why not be open to the idea of developing the town and building more shopping, more grocery stores? then inevitably, people need a place to live. And so it's simple supply and demand. It's not that we want infinite housing just for the sake of housing. But if you have a lot of people who are living here and they're having to...

Pay an exorbitant cost of living increasing the supply is the simplest way we can make sure When somebody moves here, and they want to buy a house they have a few options

Trev Warnke (52:29)
I mean, in general, just my experience with PV is like you guys need something to take some pressure away from that Walmart. That Walmart is crazy. Going in that place, I'm like, holy smokes, this is a whole nother world in here of how busy that thing, how busy that Walmart is. I've never been in a place like Walmart like that because you go to the one in, well, there's multiple one in Prescott, but the one that's up by the mall there, that one there is like that Walmart's normal.

And then you go to the point of PV and they're like, holy smokes, this one's busy. So that just tells you the need for some other resources there just to be able to like grow.

Elijah Snyder (52:59)
Yeah, and I feel that the town, it's making efforts in this department. The mayor, I believe, has announced or referenced some sort of grocery shopping going in on the north side of town over towards Highway 89. That's something people have been begging for forever, and it's necessary. They've talked about renovating the aquatic center, Mountain Valley splash pool. It was nice when I was a kid, but it's kind of deteriorated and they want to...

make this into a proper aquatic center. These are things that will materially benefit the town and make life easier for people who are, you're already living here, you're already working a job. Why not have this be a more comfortable place to live and also a place that when new people do come here, they're bringing their talents and their energies to contribute and not feeling like they're being turned away at the door.

Trev Warnke (53:46)
A of things that you said are, and the beginning part is you're trying to alleviate chaos, which like you're saying, hey, let's do this Sun Dot connector because we're alleviating some chaos. already here. It's here regardless. Let's just get rid of that. Adding a grocery store on the other side of town. We've already got pretty packed on this side of town. Let's spread this out a little bit to make it so it's easier for people. Those aren't even like growth models. Those are just like, let's just kind of fix some of the obstacles we currently have.

Elijah Snyder (54:09)
You mentioned the airport too, and I understand people don't want to have the sound of airplanes flying over their house forever. At the same time, you drive an hour and a half to Phoenix, right, down the I-17. You incur the safety risk of that, the inconvenience of that, some of you had to wake up at four in the morning. And when I was a kid, there was zero flights out of Prescott. Nobody was going anywhere. But now you have regular flights to major connecting airports.

And as they expand this, the truth is if you can go visit your family far away, and then when you fly back into town, it's just a 15 minute drive to your house. The benefit to your quality of life might really outweigh having to see and hear a few airplanes sometimes. And I don't want to diminish, be very careful not to diminish the concerns that these people have. The town has changed. Okay, I was here. I remember what it was like.

But at some point we have to stop looking to the past and think, okay, we're here now. We are chock full of people, thriving local economy. Are we going to support that to last for a long time or are we going to smother it where it's at? And I just really would advocate for people to think about the next generation, think about the legacy that they have. Maybe you are comfortably retired and most of this growth is just a big inconvenience to you, but think of your kids, think of your grandkids.

Think about the people that you love, who you depend on for services, your landscaper, your handyman who comes and works in your house, your insurance agent. These people being a place to live too. And I just wanna kinda pull on people to drop the toxicity, drop the negativity. You can put my phone number on the podcast, they can call me. Let's talk this out, let's figure out a way we can make Prescott Valley better for everyone.

Trev Warnke (55:56)
Yeah, I'm going kind of end with this is from just my experience here is I know people a little bit younger than me, probably five or eight years that have moved away from the area because there's just not enough jobs and stuff, or reasons to really stay. Their family lives here, but they don't have ways to say they have to move to Phoenix to be able to get jobs. I think that you had the part you were talking to at the end there was like, make it so your kids can stay here. Make it so your grandkids can stay here. That's where I grew up.

all of us had to move away because they made it so nobody could stay there. I don't want that to happen to people now. I want them to be able to come to this area and be able to stay here. You're not acting like we had this big boom from COVID. That was a big boom. I don't think that boom is, that was a very weird time in life. And I think people get overly nervous about that boom that that's just, people are just going to keep coming. That's actually proven, especially Florida is a proof that like the people that moved down there eventually moved back because their family was there. The big boom we had here, don't-

imagine it's going away, but I don't think it's going to be another big boom or it's going to be five, it's just going have this huge growth.

Elijah Snyder (56:55)
No, I don't imagine and there's no reason for that kind of growth. ultimately, Prescott Valley is a beautiful place. And if you are sharing a beautiful space with people who want to live here, we can be people who are sort of self-focused. And this is where you mentioned faith earlier to me. This is where to me, being a Christian becomes really relevant. How we talk to each other about politics is relevant to your faith.

probably more relevant to your faith than anything else you do in politics is how you treat people, right? Jesus commanded us to take care of the least of these. Jesus commanded us to forgive those who hurt us and pray for those who persecute us. And so if you feel like there's people in town who are not representing your best interests or you have a criticism for them, my suggestion is that we need to get back to prioritizing reconciliation.

and cooperation, that's what Christians do, is we get together and we overcome our differences for the greater good. And that also means looking to the future and thinking not only about what benefits me in the moment, because it would sure benefit me if traffic was lighter today. It would sure benefit me if there was less people here. Gosh darn it, they're in my way. That's a grocery store, you know. Okay, but these are human beings. These are children of God. And when we talk about population density and growth, don't let the numbers

kind of distract you from the fact that these are real people with needs. As a community, should be greeting them with open arms. Not in the sense of giving out handouts or something, but simply in the sense of saying, hey, I want the best for you, and let's figure out how we can achieve that.

Trev Warnke (58:30)
I think that's a perfect way to end the podcast is, mean, realistically for our communities is like you said, reconciliation. A lot of people that are causing some of the chaos would probably say they are Christian. They are people that, but they're not acting in that way.

Elijah Snyder (58:42)
I

don't doubt that they are Christian, by the way. Like some of these people, I don't doubt that they are Christian or if they're not Christian, I don't doubt that they're good people who have good intentions. I simply think sometimes social media, politics, it could bring the worst out of a person.

Trev Warnke (58:57)
That's kind of what I was getting at is like, feel, I see it on social media, people that I know personally that the way they act to me and talk to me is way different than they act and talk on social media. And they say they're good, strong Christian people. But then I'm like, this is still a reflection of you, just so you know. Like just because you're not talking to me this way in person, but you're talking this way on Instagram or how you're reacting to people. You would never say that to their face, but you also should, you wouldn't talk that way in general. So why do you let yourself do this on this platform?

I do think that some of the stuff that happened in politics over the last 10 years since social media has really exploded is just people aren't as genuine as they really are in person. as I said, what you're saying is like, I want to have these personal conversations. I bet if you got in a conversation with the people that are having this argument or this stuff, they by the end of it are oh, we're actually on, we're really close on the same thing. And maybe I just misunderstood that or whatever. And that's the issues most people are trying to not actually have relationships.

Elijah Snyder (59:49)
do have friends on the other side. And you know what? A lot of them would say the same thing I'm saying now. And so it really is the illusion of social media bringing the worst out of certain people. When some of these folks you talk to them, I think they're very sweet, very reasonable people. And yeah, if there is anybody who watches this podcast and disagrees with me, or maybe you feel that I am representing things in the wrong way, maybe we start with us. Let's get together and talk this out and find a way.

for the community. there's anybody who's watching who resonates with what I'm saying about the needs that Prescott Valley has. I hope you reach out and we can work together. So thank you so much for having me on.

Trev Warnke (1:00:25)
I appreciate it, Guys, thanks for joining another episode of the Brotherhood Beyond Business podcast. All of Elijah's information is going to be in the YouTube link. It'll be on our website, all that kind of stuff. Connect with him however you can. Let's go ahead and try to do our best just to move this community forward. Have a great day, guys.

Elijah Snyder (1:00:39)
Thanks, man. appreciate it.