April 8, 2025 • 19 mins
LEARN THE RIGHT WAY TO ENGAGE WITH GOVERNMENT In a class on how to be more involved taught by my friend Kathleen Chandler from the Independence Institute. From the website:
The Citizen’s Guide to Civic Involvement workshop will help you see where and how you can make a difference in your community. This practical class will give you ideas and point you in a productive direction. Stop complaining and take back your country by taking back your community.
If you are tired of feeling powerless and ready to take action, sign up for the class here. Kathleen joins me at 1pm to talk about it.
The Citizen’s Guide to Civic Involvement workshop will help you see where and how you can make a difference in your community. This practical class will give you ideas and point you in a productive direction. Stop complaining and take back your country by taking back your community.
If you are tired of feeling powerless and ready to take action, sign up for the class here. Kathleen joins me at 1pm to talk about it.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know, a lot of people recognize when things are
not going well in their community, their city, their county,
their state, their country, but so many of us are
kind of stuck on ready set right. We're ready set
to do something, but we have no idea how to
do anything because we are so out of the civic
(00:21):
engagement that used to be a.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Common part of our society.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
And the Independence Institute's Kathleen Chandler is not going to
stand by and let that happen.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
She's going to have a class about it.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
And she's got one coming up this week called The
Citizen's Guide to Civic Involvement, and it's going to help
you understand how you can make a difference in your community.
And she doesn't just give you grandiose talking points. She
gives you actionable points. And now she is joining me
to talk about it. Hello Kathleen Chandler, Well.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Hello Mandy.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
First of all, I have to get that song, your
theme song. I actually have woken up to your theme
song playing in my head, so you're living there rent free.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Yeah, yeah, your theme song is quite quite great.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
But the whole purpose of this opportunity is for me
to tell you about my upcoming class. So oftentimes people
are like yelling and screaming and yelling and screaming, and
I call it the you know, the old man yelling
at cloud syndrome. There's nothing worse than just sitting around complaining,
and then when you ask them to do something, they
(01:32):
either don't know what to do, they don't know how
to do it, and they don't feel empowered to do it.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
So my whole goal is to help people to answer
all those questions.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I will tell you how to kind of do step one,
step two, three, four is all on your own. I
can coach you along the way, but you need to
take the initiative after you understand how. So this is
a practical how to class. Why shouldn't I get involved?
How can I get involve? What do I need to
do in order to get involved? And realize that you
(02:04):
truly are the solution to the overreach of government. If
we don't get involved, government is just going to continue
to take and take and take. It's just its natural state,
and we need to stop complaining and take back that power.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And Kathleen doesn't just talk the talk, she also walks
the walk. She's now a member of the RTD board.
So other classes that she has are specifically geared towards
helping people run for local boards and other things.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
How is this class different? What do you focus on?
Let's talk about some of the actionable things that you're
going to be talking about.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Well, first of all, I want people to see that
there are a myriad of ways of getting involved, not
just getting you running for office, not just getting on
a board or a commission. You could be a watchdog
in your community, which means maybe going to your city
council meetings every once in a while, following an agenda,
seeing what topics they're talking about, so that you can,
(03:00):
you know, get excited about something that is or isn't
happening in your community. You can be a single issue person,
maybe follow stuff at the state legislature that's going through
a specific committee. So there are a myriad of ways
that you can get involved, not just running for office,
boards and commissions.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Really is the place that I like.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
To focus on because it is the most power, so
to speak. Because once you get on a board or
a commission, and you're appointed by a community or a
city council member or county commissioner, that position will give
you a lot of insight and power within that government
without having to run for office. There's no daily time commitment,
(03:43):
there's no raising of funds. There's actually no putting yourself
out there either, like you don't have to be on
some social media stuff. And this gives you that power
to kind of influence your government. So boards and commissions
really are it. So I will give you practical help
on where do I look for this stuff because it's
not easy to find. Government makes itself difficult for a reason, right,
(04:09):
it doesn't really want citizen engagement. So I will help
you to figure out where to go, what to look for,
and then help you maybe understand the application process, because
there is an application and many of us don't understand that.
We either you know, go in there with guns of
blazon like I'm going to take over the world right
and fix it all, and they don't understand that there
(04:29):
is decorm And really, truly, nobody wants to work with
a jerk, So stop that. You know, I don't want
to work with somebody I don't, you know, at least
get along with that. We might disagree, and that's different
than being you.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
Know, offensive. I tell people, you know that there's a difference.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Between you know, being objection objection, being objectionable, right, we
got to know those those kind of those lines and
just really helping them go through that. Then what I'll
do is I'll give you all my information so you
can find me. And then once you will fly and
you get on a board, which I fully expect you
to do, I can coach you along the way. And
(05:08):
I have a wonderful woman. Her name is Tasha Carr.
She lives up in northern Colorado. She got on the
Environmental and Sustainability Board.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Of course you want to talk.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
About a bunch of crap and really, frankly, and she's
on there because she's got a science background and she's
challenging them like, really that is what you guys think.
And she's not, you know, upsetting the apple carte too badly,
but she's making them think right. And that's all we
need to ask is for is that you get on
(05:38):
there and help others to understand the breadth of the
issue and that there is other opportunities, other solutions that
can come their way.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
How many boards or commissions are there in Colorado?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Have you added it all up?
Speaker 1 (05:52):
When you start talking about the various levels of government
that all have boards and commissions.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Yeah, well we stopped at about four thousand, and that
was just in the metro area.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
We got to Lake and that wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Every single layer if you think about it, there's library boards,
there's metro districts, there's fire boards, there's school districts.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
But there's also, of course your county and your city.
Most of those.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
The county and the city have about thirty to thirty
five ish commissions. Denver has a gazillion of them because
every single neighborhood is actually considered its own commission. So,
you know, after about four thousand, we just kind of
gave up. And the problem is is that government is
always adding them. They never take them back. So every
(06:41):
time there's a problem within a city or a community,
they go, oh, let's just create a commission for that.
And it really gives political cover to the cities, to
the county commissioners, or to whoever created that commission, because
if they have a situation where they don't exactly agree,
they can push that agenda through and then blame the
(07:03):
results on that commission. So it gives a lot of
political cover and they're always creating more. As I said,
there's sustainability. Environmental boards are popping up everywhere, of course,
because that's a huge hot button issue. They're even ones
like oil and gas commissions that are starting to pop
up in local communities, which I find interesting. They had
(07:25):
one about five years ago now here in Aurora because
they were starting to look at the annexation of more
and more land out east and they wanted to get
ahead of the environmental and oil and gas and we
were able to help kind of steer the creation of
that by getting a representative of the oil and gas
(07:47):
industry on that board, and that really has helping them
shape some of their policies, because otherwise it's a bunch
of nannies that are out there telling you what you
can and can't do with your private property.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
And to your point about finding out about these boards
and commissions and how hard it is to find, isn't
that sort of how the cake is baked, right, It's
like baked in when they we're going to create a
board that's going to oversee environmental decisions, but we're not
going to tell anybody who might be in oil and
gas about the board. So that's kind of where you
(08:18):
guys come in to poke the bear find out where
the boards are. Can you help people find boards and
commissions in their area or at least direct them to
where they could find that out.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
The best way, and at least it's the most effective
I found, is to actually go and look at your
tax bill, like your property tax bill, and see how many.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
Things there are listed on there.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
So you might have a metro board, a fire district,
a school district, a library district, a recreation district. All
of those are listed because you're paying taxes for them.
Then I would do is go and search underneath that
in you know, the the interweb, the Google find out
who has what kind of boards and commissions are in
that taxing agency. So I know that's kind of a
(09:08):
weird thing, but that's really the best way. I wish
that the Secretary of State's office, which yeah, right, would
have a repository of all of these where you could
go to your tax bill, push a button and it
was the list.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
And it would have a URL to all of those agencies. Wow,
wouldn't that be revolutionary?
Speaker 1 (09:29):
So wait a minute, you're telling me that on each
of those lines that is representing who's getting my money.
There could be multiple boards and commissions on each of
those lines, so you could feasibly, let's say you have
twenty lines on your property tax bill, and I'm just
throwing that number out there, it has no basis in reality,
and then there could be like six or four or
five boards under each of those, So that's like eighty
(09:50):
one hundred boards right there.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yes, absolutely, I mean, if you think about it, go
to your school district, okay, which is generally your largest
taxing authority in your on your property. Okay, it's generally
even larger than your county. So you go to your
school district, and underneath there, if you go to the
school district's website, there's generally all kinds of boards and
commissions that are underneath that in that school district, everything
(10:15):
from parent teacher advisory commissions to sports advisory commissions to
I mean, there's usually a myriad of them and you
can go, hey, I could serve on that. In fact,
I had a father, and this was back in twenty
eighteen or before COVID for sure. He was saying, I'm
really getting concerned about what's going on in my daughter's
(10:36):
school with sports ah H, because she was on a
volleyball team. And I said, well, go to your school district,
look at the sports advisory committee and get on that
committee and you could start speaking truth about all the sports.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
That are going on in that district. And he did.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Now that you know that was well before, you know,
boys and girls sports and all of that stuff. But
you know, if we knew those kinds of things that
in minutia right there, that little itty bitty connection by
getting on a sports advisory board for your school district
could actually change the policy that the school district is
doing because you would be the first level of defense,
(11:17):
so that it would then bubble up or even bubble
down to that commission to bounce those ideas off of
what's going on in that school district.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
What do you say to someone who says, gosh, Kathleen,
I'd love to get involved, but my skill set doesn't
overlap with anything that I'm aware of.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
I say two things. One is your school set does
not have to overlap.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Here's the deal.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
You're a citizen, you are a taxpayer, and you can
actually have a conversation and ask good questions, believe it
or not. Years ago, Governor Polis called up the Independence
Institute and said, hey, I need somebody to be on
the automobile dealer's board because he calls up and wants
a conservative. So I said, well, hey, Governor, how about me?
(12:03):
So he actually appointed me to the motor vehicle Dealer's board.
Now I'm not a dealer in motor vehicles. I don't
know anything about licensing. But the only requirement was I
had to be a citizen and I had to own
a car.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
I said, good.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Now I went to that board fully unaware of what
I knew. I didn't know, right, I know, I didn't
know anything, and I asked questions. And that was the
best thing I could do. Why it not only helped
me understand the issues, but it made them think about
what they were asking, what they were thinking about doing.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
And I just kept asking questions, and pretty soon I
figured it out and I.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Knew what they were trying to do, which just really
frankly restrict people's licenses to get into the motor vehicle
dealer board. And it was this protectionist mentality, right, But
I don't know that, and so I just asked questions.
So my advice is, if you don't know anything about it,
you can ask good questions.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
And you will figure it out.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
And if you do know a lot about it, let's
say you're an accountant, well why not get on your
citizen advisory board for the budget because you have expertise,
you know how to spreadsheet. So there's a myriad of
ways of looking at you as the solution.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
So Kathleen Chandler from the Independence Institute is my guest
and she is having a free class.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
What wait, is it free? I just made it free.
I shouldn't have made it free.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Well, and it's not free. But because if something's free,
it's of no value. No, I'm very valuable. So it's
a ten dollars fee.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Wow, ten dollars valuable, Kathleen, Wow, I know it's.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Very I'm very expensive. Ten bucks.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
But it will give you an opportunity to spend an
hour and a half. It's from six thirty or actually
two hours six thirty to eight thirty, with questions at
the end, learning about this process, learning about how to
get on a border commission.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
It's on Thursday night.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
It's available by Zoom, which is a really great format
for this type of issue. Because the opportunity here, we
want it for the whole entire state.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Of Colorado. We forget Colorado is all.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Four corners, all sixty four counties, all a myriad of municipalities.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Et cetera.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
And the more people we can have that realize that
it's just not the front range, Like we need to
know what's going down in Laplatta County and Yuma and.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
All over the state. All four corners are important.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
So, Kathleen, what if people and I'm one of these people,
I'm like, gosh, Kathleen, I'm so busy. This just sounds
incredibly time consuming. What are we looking at? What is
the realistic time commitment? How much time in your weekly
life did you spend working on the Automobile Dealers Association
board that you sat.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
On a maximum of ten hours a month, And that
was because I would get a packet usually the day before.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
I would come through the packet.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Read through it, and then the meeting itself, and the
meeting itself went anywhere, and it was always on zoom.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
By the way, many of these still meet in.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Zoom, especially if they're a state wide board like the
Motor Vehicle Dealers was. But if you have a community board,
it may or may not be. But you're talking, you know,
ten hours a month. And I always tell people, is
your liberty and your children's liberty worth ten hours of
a month. I mean, we had, you know, our founding
fathers trudged across the ruited plane and risk their lives,
(15:28):
their fortunes, and their sacred honor to bring us what
we have today.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
I can afford ten hours a month.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Kathleen Chandler, I love these classes.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
I think these are like the coolest thing and another
great thing that the Independence Institute is doing. You know
what I'm going to do, though, I'm going to go
find out just for my own edification. I live in
Douglas County. I'm going to find out how many boards
and commissions are in Douglas County. Now, it might take
me until the weekend because I got a busy week,
but I'm going to look into this, and then I
am going to try and figure out how I can
(15:58):
serve on a border commission.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Because that would be awesome.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Well, okay, I go ahead.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Many many of the county's county parties generally have a list,
so you might want to check their first, whether it's
the Democrat Party of the Republican. The Independence Institute is
not party oriented. We are freedom oriented, but sometimes a
lot of those because now that I've been doing this
(16:23):
for so many years, a lot of people are catching
on right and so theyselves are starting to create these lists.
So you might want to check there because sometimes that
work is already done for you. And I do have
some lists, so if you if you'd email me and
you can do that, just go on to the website.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
My emails available on the website.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
But I generally have a list of some of the
larger communities and their commissions, not the small ones, not
like your water district or your library district. But I
do have some of the larger ones.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
I am going to go ahead and do this myself
so I can come back and.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Report how long it took them.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
It's the difficult It was no, because I think it's important,
Like if IM back and say, look, it took me
a couple hours, but I got the whole list, and
I'm pretty happy with this list. I think that kind
of gives other people an idea of what we're actually
looking at because we're all busy. I mean, everybody's got
their lives and their kids and their grandkids and their
job and this and that and everything else. But the
(17:17):
reality is if we don't engage at a higher level.
To your point, we've I mean, you look what happens
to Colorado so far. And part of the reason that
Democrats have been so successful in taking over Colorado is
because they started by building the infrastructure of putting people
on boards and commissions, so that then went on to
become candidates, right, I mean, because boards and commissions are
(17:39):
often a stepping stone for people who decide, you know what,
I'm gonna dip my toe in here, find out what
this is all about.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
They get involved, they like it, they're.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Good at it, and they say, you know what, I'm
going to run for office now. So this is like
a it can be a baby step, it can just
be an end step, right Like you may serve on
a border commission and that's where it stops, and that's
perfectly fine. But we've got to have rational people making
rational points on all of these boards and commissions. To
Kathleen's point, to just make people think about what they're
(18:10):
doing before they do it. You know, I always say, Kathleen,
before I'm about to do something stupid, I make myself
say it out loud, because when you say it out loud.
Sometimes you hear your voice and you go, well, that's
the dumbest thing I could possibly do here. I'm not
going to do that same thing. We've got to have
people speaking these principles out loud to whoever wants to
hear them. So, Kathleen Chandler, thank you so much for
(18:30):
doing this. It is again April tenth, this Thursday, so
you've got a couple days. It's from six thirty pm
to eight thirty pm. It is a whopping ten dollars cost. Okay,
you can sign up at the link that I put
on the blog today at mandy'sblog dot com, and or
you can go to I to I dot organ It's
on the events page there. So, Kathleen, thanks so much
(18:51):
for making time, and more importantly, thanks for your commitment
and the Independence Institute's commitment to raising the civic engagement
for like minded people like us.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
I really appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Well, thank you Mandy for the opportunity, and I hope
that more and more people will stop complaining and get
involved in their community and take back their government.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Amen to that, Kathleen. We'll talk to you again soon.
You know, a lot of people recognize when things are
not going well in their community, their city, their county,
their state, their country, but so many of us are
kind of stuck on ready set right. We're ready set
to do something, but we have no idea how to
do anything because we are so out of the civic
(00:21):
engagement that used to be a.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Common part of our society.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
And the Independence Institute's Kathleen Chandler is not going to
stand by and let that happen.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
She's going to have a class about it.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
And she's got one coming up this week called The
Citizen's Guide to Civic Involvement, and it's going to help
you understand how you can make a difference in your community.
And she doesn't just give you grandiose talking points. She
gives you actionable points. And now she is joining me
to talk about it. Hello Kathleen Chandler, Well.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Hello Mandy.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
First of all, I have to get that song, your
theme song. I actually have woken up to your theme
song playing in my head, so you're living there rent free.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Yeah, yeah, your theme song is quite quite great.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
But the whole purpose of this opportunity is for me
to tell you about my upcoming class. So oftentimes people
are like yelling and screaming and yelling and screaming, and
I call it the you know, the old man yelling
at cloud syndrome. There's nothing worse than just sitting around complaining,
and then when you ask them to do something, they
(01:32):
either don't know what to do, they don't know how
to do it, and they don't feel empowered to do it.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
So my whole goal is to help people to answer
all those questions.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I will tell you how to kind of do step one,
step two, three, four is all on your own. I
can coach you along the way, but you need to
take the initiative after you understand how. So this is
a practical how to class. Why shouldn't I get involved?
How can I get involve? What do I need to
do in order to get involved? And realize that you
(02:04):
truly are the solution to the overreach of government. If
we don't get involved, government is just going to continue
to take and take and take. It's just its natural state,
and we need to stop complaining and take back that power.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And Kathleen doesn't just talk the talk, she also walks
the walk. She's now a member of the RTD board.
So other classes that she has are specifically geared towards
helping people run for local boards and other things.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
How is this class different? What do you focus on?
Let's talk about some of the actionable things that you're
going to be talking about.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Well, first of all, I want people to see that
there are a myriad of ways of getting involved, not
just getting you running for office, not just getting on
a board or a commission. You could be a watchdog
in your community, which means maybe going to your city
council meetings every once in a while, following an agenda,
seeing what topics they're talking about, so that you can,
(03:00):
you know, get excited about something that is or isn't
happening in your community. You can be a single issue person,
maybe follow stuff at the state legislature that's going through
a specific committee. So there are a myriad of ways
that you can get involved, not just running for office,
boards and commissions.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Really is the place that I like.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
To focus on because it is the most power, so
to speak. Because once you get on a board or
a commission, and you're appointed by a community or a
city council member or county commissioner, that position will give
you a lot of insight and power within that government
without having to run for office. There's no daily time commitment,
(03:43):
there's no raising of funds. There's actually no putting yourself
out there either, like you don't have to be on
some social media stuff. And this gives you that power
to kind of influence your government. So boards and commissions
really are it. So I will give you practical help
on where do I look for this stuff because it's
not easy to find. Government makes itself difficult for a reason, right,
(04:09):
it doesn't really want citizen engagement. So I will help
you to figure out where to go, what to look for,
and then help you maybe understand the application process, because
there is an application and many of us don't understand that.
We either you know, go in there with guns of
blazon like I'm going to take over the world right
and fix it all, and they don't understand that there
(04:29):
is decorm And really, truly, nobody wants to work with
a jerk, So stop that. You know, I don't want
to work with somebody I don't, you know, at least
get along with that. We might disagree, and that's different
than being you.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
Know, offensive. I tell people, you know that there's a difference.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Between you know, being objection objection, being objectionable, right, we
got to know those those kind of those lines and
just really helping them go through that. Then what I'll
do is I'll give you all my information so you
can find me. And then once you will fly and
you get on a board, which I fully expect you
to do, I can coach you along the way. And
(05:08):
I have a wonderful woman. Her name is Tasha Carr.
She lives up in northern Colorado. She got on the
Environmental and Sustainability Board.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Of course you want to talk.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
About a bunch of crap and really, frankly, and she's
on there because she's got a science background and she's
challenging them like, really that is what you guys think.
And she's not, you know, upsetting the apple carte too badly,
but she's making them think right. And that's all we
need to ask is for is that you get on
(05:38):
there and help others to understand the breadth of the
issue and that there is other opportunities, other solutions that
can come their way.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
How many boards or commissions are there in Colorado?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Have you added it all up?
Speaker 1 (05:52):
When you start talking about the various levels of government
that all have boards and commissions.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Yeah, well we stopped at about four thousand, and that
was just in the metro area.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
We got to Lake and that wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Every single layer if you think about it, there's library boards,
there's metro districts, there's fire boards, there's school districts.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
But there's also, of course your county and your city.
Most of those.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
The county and the city have about thirty to thirty
five ish commissions. Denver has a gazillion of them because
every single neighborhood is actually considered its own commission. So,
you know, after about four thousand, we just kind of
gave up. And the problem is is that government is
always adding them. They never take them back. So every
(06:41):
time there's a problem within a city or a community,
they go, oh, let's just create a commission for that.
And it really gives political cover to the cities, to
the county commissioners, or to whoever created that commission, because
if they have a situation where they don't exactly agree,
they can push that agenda through and then blame the
(07:03):
results on that commission. So it gives a lot of
political cover and they're always creating more. As I said,
there's sustainability. Environmental boards are popping up everywhere, of course,
because that's a huge hot button issue. They're even ones
like oil and gas commissions that are starting to pop
up in local communities, which I find interesting. They had
(07:25):
one about five years ago now here in Aurora because
they were starting to look at the annexation of more
and more land out east and they wanted to get
ahead of the environmental and oil and gas and we
were able to help kind of steer the creation of
that by getting a representative of the oil and gas
(07:47):
industry on that board, and that really has helping them
shape some of their policies, because otherwise it's a bunch
of nannies that are out there telling you what you
can and can't do with your private property.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
And to your point about finding out about these boards
and commissions and how hard it is to find, isn't
that sort of how the cake is baked, right, It's
like baked in when they we're going to create a
board that's going to oversee environmental decisions, but we're not
going to tell anybody who might be in oil and
gas about the board. So that's kind of where you
(08:18):
guys come in to poke the bear find out where
the boards are. Can you help people find boards and
commissions in their area or at least direct them to
where they could find that out.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
The best way, and at least it's the most effective
I found, is to actually go and look at your
tax bill, like your property tax bill, and see how many.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
Things there are listed on there.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
So you might have a metro board, a fire district,
a school district, a library district, a recreation district. All
of those are listed because you're paying taxes for them.
Then I would do is go and search underneath that
in you know, the the interweb, the Google find out
who has what kind of boards and commissions are in
that taxing agency. So I know that's kind of a
(09:08):
weird thing, but that's really the best way. I wish
that the Secretary of State's office, which yeah, right, would
have a repository of all of these where you could
go to your tax bill, push a button and it
was the list.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
And it would have a URL to all of those agencies. Wow,
wouldn't that be revolutionary?
Speaker 1 (09:29):
So wait a minute, you're telling me that on each
of those lines that is representing who's getting my money.
There could be multiple boards and commissions on each of
those lines, so you could feasibly, let's say you have
twenty lines on your property tax bill, and I'm just
throwing that number out there, it has no basis in reality,
and then there could be like six or four or
five boards under each of those, So that's like eighty
(09:50):
one hundred boards right there.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yes, absolutely, I mean, if you think about it, go
to your school district, okay, which is generally your largest
taxing authority in your on your property. Okay, it's generally
even larger than your county. So you go to your
school district, and underneath there, if you go to the
school district's website, there's generally all kinds of boards and
commissions that are underneath that in that school district, everything
(10:15):
from parent teacher advisory commissions to sports advisory commissions to
I mean, there's usually a myriad of them and you
can go, hey, I could serve on that. In fact,
I had a father, and this was back in twenty
eighteen or before COVID for sure. He was saying, I'm
really getting concerned about what's going on in my daughter's
(10:36):
school with sports ah H, because she was on a
volleyball team. And I said, well, go to your school district,
look at the sports advisory committee and get on that
committee and you could start speaking truth about all the sports.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
That are going on in that district. And he did.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Now that you know that was well before, you know,
boys and girls sports and all of that stuff. But
you know, if we knew those kinds of things that
in minutia right there, that little itty bitty connection by
getting on a sports advisory board for your school district
could actually change the policy that the school district is
doing because you would be the first level of defense,
(11:17):
so that it would then bubble up or even bubble
down to that commission to bounce those ideas off of
what's going on in that school district.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
What do you say to someone who says, gosh, Kathleen,
I'd love to get involved, but my skill set doesn't
overlap with anything that I'm aware of.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
I say two things. One is your school set does
not have to overlap.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Here's the deal.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
You're a citizen, you are a taxpayer, and you can
actually have a conversation and ask good questions, believe it
or not. Years ago, Governor Polis called up the Independence
Institute and said, hey, I need somebody to be on
the automobile dealer's board because he calls up and wants
a conservative. So I said, well, hey, Governor, how about me?
(12:03):
So he actually appointed me to the motor vehicle Dealer's board.
Now I'm not a dealer in motor vehicles. I don't
know anything about licensing. But the only requirement was I
had to be a citizen and I had to own
a car.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
I said, good.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Now I went to that board fully unaware of what
I knew. I didn't know, right, I know, I didn't
know anything, and I asked questions. And that was the
best thing I could do. Why it not only helped
me understand the issues, but it made them think about
what they were asking, what they were thinking about doing.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
And I just kept asking questions, and pretty soon I
figured it out and I.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Knew what they were trying to do, which just really
frankly restrict people's licenses to get into the motor vehicle
dealer board. And it was this protectionist mentality, right, But
I don't know that, and so I just asked questions.
So my advice is, if you don't know anything about it,
you can ask good questions.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
And you will figure it out.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
And if you do know a lot about it, let's
say you're an accountant, well why not get on your
citizen advisory board for the budget because you have expertise,
you know how to spreadsheet. So there's a myriad of
ways of looking at you as the solution.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
So Kathleen Chandler from the Independence Institute is my guest
and she is having a free class.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
What wait, is it free? I just made it free.
I shouldn't have made it free.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Well, and it's not free. But because if something's free,
it's of no value. No, I'm very valuable. So it's
a ten dollars fee.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Wow, ten dollars valuable, Kathleen, Wow, I know it's.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Very I'm very expensive. Ten bucks.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
But it will give you an opportunity to spend an
hour and a half. It's from six thirty or actually
two hours six thirty to eight thirty, with questions at
the end, learning about this process, learning about how to
get on a border commission.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
It's on Thursday night.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
It's available by Zoom, which is a really great format
for this type of issue. Because the opportunity here, we
want it for the whole entire state.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Of Colorado. We forget Colorado is all.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Four corners, all sixty four counties, all a myriad of municipalities.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Et cetera.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
And the more people we can have that realize that
it's just not the front range, Like we need to
know what's going down in Laplatta County and Yuma and.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
All over the state. All four corners are important.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
So, Kathleen, what if people and I'm one of these people,
I'm like, gosh, Kathleen, I'm so busy. This just sounds
incredibly time consuming. What are we looking at? What is
the realistic time commitment? How much time in your weekly
life did you spend working on the Automobile Dealers Association
board that you sat.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
On a maximum of ten hours a month, And that
was because I would get a packet usually the day before.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
I would come through the packet.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Read through it, and then the meeting itself, and the
meeting itself went anywhere, and it was always on zoom.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
By the way, many of these still meet in.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Zoom, especially if they're a state wide board like the
Motor Vehicle Dealers was. But if you have a community board,
it may or may not be. But you're talking, you know,
ten hours a month. And I always tell people, is
your liberty and your children's liberty worth ten hours of
a month. I mean, we had, you know, our founding
fathers trudged across the ruited plane and risk their lives,
(15:28):
their fortunes, and their sacred honor to bring us what
we have today.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
I can afford ten hours a month.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Kathleen Chandler, I love these classes.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
I think these are like the coolest thing and another
great thing that the Independence Institute is doing. You know
what I'm going to do, though, I'm going to go
find out just for my own edification. I live in
Douglas County. I'm going to find out how many boards
and commissions are in Douglas County. Now, it might take
me until the weekend because I got a busy week,
but I'm going to look into this, and then I
am going to try and figure out how I can
(15:58):
serve on a border commission.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Because that would be awesome.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Well, okay, I go ahead.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Many many of the county's county parties generally have a list,
so you might want to check their first, whether it's
the Democrat Party of the Republican. The Independence Institute is
not party oriented. We are freedom oriented, but sometimes a
lot of those because now that I've been doing this
(16:23):
for so many years, a lot of people are catching
on right and so theyselves are starting to create these lists.
So you might want to check there because sometimes that
work is already done for you. And I do have
some lists, so if you if you'd email me and
you can do that, just go on to the website.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
My emails available on the website.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
But I generally have a list of some of the
larger communities and their commissions, not the small ones, not
like your water district or your library district. But I
do have some of the larger ones.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
I am going to go ahead and do this myself
so I can come back and.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Report how long it took them.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
It's the difficult It was no, because I think it's important,
Like if IM back and say, look, it took me
a couple hours, but I got the whole list, and
I'm pretty happy with this list. I think that kind
of gives other people an idea of what we're actually
looking at because we're all busy. I mean, everybody's got
their lives and their kids and their grandkids and their
job and this and that and everything else. But the
(17:17):
reality is if we don't engage at a higher level.
To your point, we've I mean, you look what happens
to Colorado so far. And part of the reason that
Democrats have been so successful in taking over Colorado is
because they started by building the infrastructure of putting people
on boards and commissions, so that then went on to
become candidates, right, I mean, because boards and commissions are
(17:39):
often a stepping stone for people who decide, you know what,
I'm gonna dip my toe in here, find out what
this is all about.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
They get involved, they like it, they're.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Good at it, and they say, you know what, I'm
going to run for office now. So this is like
a it can be a baby step, it can just
be an end step, right Like you may serve on
a border commission and that's where it stops, and that's
perfectly fine. But we've got to have rational people making
rational points on all of these boards and commissions. To
Kathleen's point, to just make people think about what they're
(18:10):
doing before they do it. You know, I always say, Kathleen,
before I'm about to do something stupid, I make myself
say it out loud, because when you say it out loud.
Sometimes you hear your voice and you go, well, that's
the dumbest thing I could possibly do here. I'm not
going to do that same thing. We've got to have
people speaking these principles out loud to whoever wants to
hear them. So, Kathleen Chandler, thank you so much for
(18:30):
doing this. It is again April tenth, this Thursday, so
you've got a couple days. It's from six thirty pm
to eight thirty pm. It is a whopping ten dollars cost. Okay,
you can sign up at the link that I put
on the blog today at mandy'sblog dot com, and or
you can go to I to I dot organ It's
on the events page there. So, Kathleen, thanks so much
(18:51):
for making time, and more importantly, thanks for your commitment
and the Independence Institute's commitment to raising the civic engagement
for like minded people like us.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
I really appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Well, thank you Mandy for the opportunity, and I hope
that more and more people will stop complaining and get
involved in their community and take back their government.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Amen to that, Kathleen. We'll talk to you again soon.
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