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Welcome back to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds that tackles a range of pressing topics. Our first guest, Arizona Representative Matt Gress, candidly shares his concerns about the homeless hotel conversion in Scottsdale. Join us as we dissect the intricacies of this issue and its potential implications. Representative Gress also provides insights into President Biden's recent visit to Arizona and his pivotal role in the ADE's School Safety Taskforce. Shifting gears, we sit down with Tim Chapman, Senior Advisor of Advancing American Freedom. Tune in to gain a comprehensive understanding of conservative trends and the impactful initiatives spearheaded by AAF. Concluding our episode, we engage in a thought-provoking dialogue with Dr. Owen Anderson, a distinguished professor at ASU specializing in philosophy, religious studies, and theology. Building on our ongoing exploration, Dr. Anderson provides fresh insights into the nuanced landscape of free speech on ASU's campus. _ Connect with us: www.breakingbattlegrounds.vote Twitter: www.twitter.com/Breaking_Battle Facebook: www.facebook.com/breakingbattlegrounds Instagram: www.instagram.com/breakingbattlegrounds LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/breakingbattlegrounds - Representative Matt Gress Matt Gress represents Arizona's 4th Legislative District. Matt Gress is a former public school teacher, school board member and an active member of the local community. He is passionate about public service and solving problems. As our state representative, Matt will work with both sides – Republicans and Democrats – to find solutions to issues such as reducing the cost of living, increasing teacher pay, reducing crime and addressing Arizona's water crisis. Matt is endorsed by some of our community's most respected organizations: Arizona State Troopers, the Arizona Police Association, the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police, the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, the Professional Firefighters of Arizona, the Arizona Nurses Association, the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona. Like many, Matt came here from somewhere else — small town Oklahoma. The youngest of four, he was raised by a single mom in a single-wide trailer. Growing up, Matt's family didn't have much, but that never stopped them from dreaming big. Matt learned the value of hard work, to respect his elders and to count his blessings. Matt worked his way through college driving school buses, and became the first in his family to earn a degree. While attending the University of Oklahoma, Matt was selected for the distinguished Harry S. Truman Scholarship — awarded to only one college student in each state who possesses leadership potential and a call to public service. After graduating, Matt was accepted to join Teach for America, a national teaching corps focused on serving in high-need, high-poverty schools. Matt taught high school English. From 2017 to 2021, Matt served as a Governing Board Member in the Madison Elementary School District. While on the board, Matt fought to keep schools open during COVID-19, supported increased school choice and advocated for parents and taxpayers to have a seat at the table in curriculum, hiring decisions and budgeting, including expensive procurement contracts. Matt is a budget hawk. He holds a Masters in Public Administration, with a focus on state and local government finance and public management, from Syracuse University. Here in Arizona, Matt has served as a faculty associate at Arizona State University and as a budget analyst at the Arizona State Capitol, learning exactly where our tax dollars go. Currently, he serves as the state's top budget chief in the Arizona Governor's Office of Strategic Planning and Budgeting. There, he has authored budgets directing billions of new dollars towards K-12 education and teachers. Matt also has experience in energy, water and technology policy, previously serving as an advisor at the Arizona Corporation Commission, where he worked on issues related to expanding broadband, lowering energy rates, reducing regulations on small businesses, and enhancing the stability of our power grid. Matt, along with his partner Daniel, is proud to call Arizona and District 4 his home. He's an avid volunteer in the community, and plans to focus in the Legislature on solutions that can bring both sides together. Matt is a proud Rotarian and past president of the Phoenix-Arcadia Rotary Club, a Flinn-Brown Civic Leadership Academy Fellow, a former board member of the Madison Education Foundation, and previously served as a commissioner on the Maricopa County Planning and Zoning Commission. Tim ChapmanTim Chapman is a Senior Advisor at Advancing American Freedom (AAF), a public policy advocacy organization founded by Vice President Mike Pence. He is also a Principal at P2 Public Affairs where he works with clients to build national campaigns to influence public policy. Chapman has served as the Executive Director of Heritage Action, Chief of Staff at the Heritage Foundation, and as an adviser and staff to Senators DeMint, Nickles and Hutchinson.Chapman's experience in conservative policy advocacy is extensive as he was a co-founder of Heritage Action - the advocacy arm of The Heritage Foundation – and a former Executive Director at Stand for America, an advocacy organization founded by Ambassador Nikki Haley. Tim has built and maintained policy coalitions on the right that have helped shape the consensus within the GOP and he has helped craft messaging/activist campaigns that have resulted in policy victories. Dr. Owen AndersonDr. Owen Anderson is a professor of philosophy, religious studies, and theology at ASU and he writes about the radical ideologies of class, race, and gender used by some to coerce students and prevent free speech. He is also a pastor at Historic Christian Church of Phoenix. Recently, he has been working on the problem of DEIB, antiracism, decolonizing the curriculum, secular universities, and the loss of academic freedom. The philosophy behind these movements is presented in our universities as "the fact of the matter." Why is that? And are we still allowed to think critically and discuss alternative ways of understanding the world and our history? Rousseau, Marx, and Freud dominate the mind of the current secular university professor. We can do much better. Substack: - Transcription Sam Stone: Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Our first guest up today. He just won the legislator of the Year for the Republican caucus in the state of Arizona. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Big, big news. He didn't he didn't even highlight it for this show. He's so humble. He wouldn't even put that on there. The Legislator of the Year, Matt Gress, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the program. Matt Gress: It's great to be on with the illustrious two of you for sure. So when you got this award for Legislator of the Year, is it just like a big gold medallion that you wear around your neck now? Maybe a target on my back, I think, hey, you were just appointed and join the school safety task force in Arizona. Tell our listeners a little bit about that and why that's important not only for Arizona, but other states should be considering this superintendent of public instruction, Tom Horn, has convened a number of different stakeholders across the state teachers, social workers, school counselors, school resource officers, sheriffs legislators. It ranges the gamut. And I think he is trying to be responsive to what we've all been hearing across the state and really across the country. It's one of the issues that I hear about in my legislative district quite a bit, which is how can parents know that when they send their kids to school, they will be safe and they will come home. And and there's a variety of ways of addressing this situation. And thank God, you know, Arizona has not witnessed one of these mass school shootings that we've seen in in other states. But that shouldn't dissuade us from acting to, you know, take clear, measurable steps to secure our school facilities. There's a balance for sure. You know, we we don't want schools becoming prisons, but but we do want them to be safe places that parents, staff and students themselves feel is a safe place for learning. So, you know. Chuck Warren: Just I mean, you're going to dig more into this. So when we go and join these type of task force, we get more information than we currently have. Okay. So my question is, what is your gut reaction tell you that needs to be done on this right now before getting more details from the task force? What is your gut reaction tell you that it needs to be done to make schools more secure so parents and kids feel confident when they go to school, they're going to be safe. Matt Gress: I think there are two two key measures. One involves personnel and one involves physical infrastructure. So on the personnel front, a few years ago when I served as the budget director, we worked on some changes to the school safety grant program, where we allowed school counselors and social workers to be part of a school safety apparatus. So you had your SROs, the so-called cops on campus, right? And then we added to that on the mental and social health side of this, because mental health is a major factor when you look at these shootings. So we recognize that. And we also increased funding. You know, the program started out at $13 million, I believe, back in, let's say, 2018 or 2019. We boosted that to now it's over $82 million that we're spending on the school safety grant program. And there still is excess demand versus supply. So I'm on the funding and grants subcommittee of this task force, and we're going to take a hard look at where we can free up resources. And I believe that there are plenty. So personnel is a side of it. And in particular, in addition to, you know, not just the social workers and school counselors, SROs have been something I've heard from from parents and and a number of different stakeholders about having an SRO in every campus. And the challenge with that is SROs are sworn peace officers from police departments. Matt Gress: Correct. We have huge vacancies when it comes to filling our police departments as it stands right now. So we're exploring ways where we can tap into talent of perhaps retired sworn peace officers or, you know, staff that meet all of the criteria. But have not gotten the full, what we call a post certification. Maybe there is an alternate form that we can provide that opens up talented, capable people who care about keeping kids safe, that can be there to respond when a crisis occurs. So the personnel side is one element and then the physical infrastructure. You know, when I served on the school board in central Phoenix, we did a safety threat assessment of every building. We looked at the physical premises, fencing the doorways. How do you get in and out? Who lets people in and out, Cameras, locks, all of the above. And I think that if a school in Arizona is going to go out for a bond or a capital override, the first thing that they need to prioritize is the safety of their facilities. And if they don't have a safety assessment done, they are flying blind and I don't think they should be asking voters for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars if they don't know what they need to do to improve the security of their physical infrastructure. Sam Stone: Matt that's a really good point because one of the things that's underrated, frankly, are the secured entry and exit points at schools. There was an incident, it barely got covered. I think it was the end of last month, July 31st. I had to actually go to duck, duck, go, because you can't find this link on on Google for an attempted school shooting in Memphis, Tennessee, at a Jewish school. The shooter could not get in. They opened fire outside the building and then were taken down by police and court. So no one was hurt. You know, nothing happened. Obviously, something happened. But it wasn't a traumatic incident in the way these others have been. And that was just a matter of simple physical security like you're talking about. It's not that hard to implement these, especially when the legislature is putting the kind of money you're talking about into it, right? Matt Gress: Absolutely. And take, for instance, the study on Uvaldi, another case in point where the door was propped open. It was a, you know, lock and key type of door. You know, in this day and age, they need to be electronic locks, you know, the magnetic locks where you need a badge to swipe in and out. There needs to be alarms on these external doors when they're left open. I mean, you can go to a gym and you go out the wrong exit and within 15 seconds, you know, the the alarms are sounding. And if we can do it at some of these other places that that aren't as sensitive of spaces as schools, we can definitely prioritize that at at our school campuses. And that was something we included in this year's budget. Speaking of private or parochial schools, that. Department of Homeland Security is established a grant program that that these places of worship and and the parochial schools can access to help bolster their security. We had we heard from a rabbi that talked about the increase in anti-Semitic behavior and how they're taking great pains to ensure that these sacred spaces are kept safe for parishioners. Sam Stone: Yeah, absolutely. Anything else on that before we move on? Because I do want to get on to this city of Scottsdale. Plan to house homeless in a hotel there. You have raised some concerns with that, as have others. Matt Gress: Yes, let's let's chat about that one. That one's been a hot topic. Sam Stone: Start by telling because we're on in markets across the country, literally coast to coast. Now, folks, if you're listening to Breaking Battlegrounds, you can be doing it in San Diego. You can be doing it in Miami. You can be here in Phoenix. You can be almost anywhere in the country and hear this program. You can be anywhere online and download and subscribe to our podcast and get all of our content. But folks probably don't know if they're not here in Phoenix, and even if they are, they probably don't know what's going on here. So can you give us a little background? What what is this situation? Matt Gress: Well, here in Phoenix and in the Valley, just like everywhere else in the country, homelessness has really gripped communities. It has created such misery and tragedy for the people experiencing homelessness, as well as the surrounding communities that are affected by people living outside and this year at the legislature, we put in $60 million, $60 million to invest in homelessness programs. Um, that that can get people off the streets and into the treatment that they need. And that was the intent all along, is that we need to approach this from a treatment first modality versus a housing first modality, which I think a lot of cities and public policy has advocated for years. And I think it's failed. Sam Stone: It has totally failed. And it's just warehousing. The problem is what they're doing. Matt Gress: Absolutely. You're absolutely right there. And that's exactly what has happened in a quasi sort of way with an initiative. The Department of Housing has executed with a number of cities, not just Scottsdale, but the city of Phoenix, Mesa, Flagstaff and others. And what they're doing essentially is conve…
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