10/31/25 HALLOWEEN Special with CAPK + The Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra

The Moneywise Radio Show and Podcast Friday, October 31st BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Guys" podcast call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www. MoneywiseGuys.com facebook: Moneywise_Wealth_Management LinkedIn: Moneywise_Wealth_Management Guests: Nick Gonzalez, Executive Director for the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra & Stillian Kirov - Music Conductor of the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra website: www.bsonow.org/ Guest: Kelly Lowery, Program Administrator – Food Bank at CAPK website: https://www.capk.org/ https://www.capk.org/shutdown/

• 0:00Speaker 00

  From the second floor of the historic Woolworths Building in downtown Bakersfield, here is Money Wise. Call or text into the show 661-396-1000.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. Hey, hey. Well, I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. Hey, hey. Said I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. And if I share with you my story, would you share your dollar with me?

• 0:30Speaker 02

  Securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA, SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through LPL Financial. LPL Financial and Money Wise Wealth Management are independently owned and operated.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  Here is Money Wise.

• 0:41Speaker 03

  Welcome to the Friday edition of the Money Wise Show. Steven's already laughing. Brought to you by The Dude.

• 0:51Speaker 04

  The Dude.

• 0:53Speaker 03

  The Dude.

• 0:54Speaker 04

  Big Lebowski.

• 0:56Speaker 03

  I'm still, I'm still a little upset about the rug. It really tied the room together. Somebody's gotta, like, they gotta pay restitution, man. I need my rug back. So...

• 1:08Speaker 04

  Hey, at least the office rug is, is still good.

• 1:11Speaker 03

  The office rug is still good, but...

• 1:13Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:14Speaker 03

  The rug at home needs to be... This aggression will not stand, man.

• 1:18Speaker 04

  Mm-mm.

• 1:19Speaker 00

  This aggression will not stand, man.

• 1:22Speaker 03

  That's right, man. So, happy Halloween to all you folks out there. Taking you into the weekend. We're gonna do a great show today. We're gonna have a lot of fun. And it's gonna be a little serious. There's gonna be a couple of things we're gonna talk about today. So, uh, yeah, don't, don't, uh, don't leave us anytime soon because we've got Nick Gonzalez, who's the new executive director of the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra, will be joining us very, very soon, probably what, the next 10 minutes, with Stillian Kirov, who is the conductor, maestro, uh, for the, uh, for the Symphony Orchestra. Uh, they got their concert, uh, November concert's coming up next weekend, and so we'll talk

• 2:02Speaker 03

  about that. Um, and then we have, uh, Kelly, uh, from Cap K is gonna be joining us at the bottom of the hour. Um, so that is Kelly Lowery. She's the program and administrator from Cap K. And we are gonna be talking about all things food. Obviously, with the government shutdown, uh, continuing, we are the, at the second longest government shutdown...

• 2:28Speaker 03

  In history, if we make it to Wednesday of next week, it'll become the longest in America history. Um, and at this point, there's Steve Z. Uh, at this point, at this point, we're the second longest, uh, uh, you know, government shutdown in history. Wednesday will make it the longest. Um, and it does not look like we are anywhere closer to anybody, uh, negotiating, uh, from either side of the aisle. Um, now there's more and more folks that are coming out and saying, get this done, put it together. Uh, we just heard from all of the airlines, American Airlines, United Airlines, you know, all of the airlines have come together and

• 3:13Speaker 03

  said, all right, folks, knock it off. Uh, get back together. We need our air traffic controllers, uh, get them paid and get them back on the job. Cause right now, every single air traffic controller, it's all you folks that are out there flying. You know, if you're, if you're flying and, uh, there's not enough air traffic controllers out there. How safe is that? Yeah. And right now they're not getting paid. They are not getting paid as we speak right now. So, um, yeah, we're going to talk about that, but you know, it's Kelly Lowery from the, the, the program administrator, Cap K. Uh, we're going to be talking about

• 3:53Speaker 03

  food benefits and, uh, SNAP that is, uh, expected to be, uh, curtailed over the weekend, although we did get a judgment from a judge. I'll talk to her about that and see what she thinks about that. Um, that, that came through, but, uh, yeah, it's going to be a great show. I'm your host today, Justin Leland here with.

• 4:11Speaker 04

  Frank Lee.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  Mr. Frank Lee.

• 4:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Also, please join us with any questions, comments, concerns. Um, we love to engage with our listeners, uh, six, six, one, three, nine, six, one thousand, six, six, one, three, nine, six, one thousand. Uh, we got the first message already came in. What was that? Uh, what do we got?

• 4:36Speaker 04

  Do you want me to read it off?

• 4:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, go right ahead. Let's see what we've got.

• 4:38Speaker 04

  So the message that came in is, uh, what is the name of the business you bring on to help kids get their transcript ready for college?

• 4:46Speaker 03

  Uh, I think I know who you're talking about. That would be Ms. Kat Klaus over at March Consulting. Um, she, and I'm not, I'm not, I don't have the phone number in front of me at this moment. Uh, but it's not just the transcripts. It's actually the, you know, the brag sheet, you know, writing the essays and all those other things to help, uh, guide kids into getting the scholarships that they, uh, that they've earned, right? They've done all the work. They might as well do it. Steven, quick on the keyboard there, six, six, one, seven, four, seven, forty-five, fourteen. That's Kat Klaus over at March Consulting, six, six, one, seven, four, seven, four, five, one, four.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  Um, can't, uh, can't, I really can't, uh, talk, say enough good things about March Consulting. Um, they've helped many people in our office and, and other friends of mine that have gone through their, their services, um, and done a fantastic job and, and got the kids, uh, and those teenagers, young adults, and got them ready for college, right? Got them, got them the, the scholarships and everything that they needed. So, yeah, definitely give Kat at March Consulting a call. Um, so we're going to do what we do best and we're going to get to some numbers here. Frank, what do we have on the, what we see green on the screen, do we not?

• 6:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, for, for a rocky week, you didn't think, uh, we'd end the, the week on green, but here we are. I mean, the Dow is up at least, uh, nine basis points, S and P 526 basis points, NASDAQ 61 basis points. Uh, so overall across the market, we're green, uh, and ending it on a Friday.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  Friday on the, uh, no. I was seeing here that, uh, the NASDAQ and S and P 500, they close, both closed higher thanks to Amazon. Um, and then I was looking, so Amazon had some great quarterly results, um, that were reported, uh, before the, uh,

• 6:51Speaker 03

  You know, before the the uh the opening of the markets today. So Amazon shares were up almost 10% today. Amazon shares were 9.6% up. Um, and then we also had, I saw there was somewhere on here that Netflix. Yeah, Netflix.

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  This was a weird one. They announced something big. What did they announce?

• 7:11Speaker 04

  Uh, a 10 for one stock split uh in November coming up.

• 7:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, so so their Netflix, their stock price was at what? It was getting pretty crazy, 800 or a thousand dollars a share.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, close, close, close to the.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  And.

• 7:29Speaker 04

  Let me look it up.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  So a lot of people think that, oh, stock splits um mean that the stock's poised to go higher, right? And so a lot of people have this this belief, oh, stock split, stock split. And they buy into it. Um, so NAS the NASDAQ, you know, Net Netflix added almost 3% today because of the announcement of the stock split. Well, what is really a stock split? All it is is taking the stocks that are currently owned by all of the shareholders and basically saying, oh, you have one share, you now have 10 shares and it's whatever the one share was worth before. Now we're going to divide that by 10 and that's the now the new share price.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  It didn't add.

• 8:09Speaker 04

  Liquidity.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  It didn't add anything to the business. They didn't sell anything more. They didn't decrease their debt at all. All of the ratios stay exactly the same as they were before the split. So why the change in the value? It's an emotional thing. Uh, people hear stock split and they think, oh, you know, Netflix has been at 800 dollars a share forever. Now it's at 80 dollars a share. Now I can buy what I want to buy and it'll be 800 dollars a share again. Not anytime soon, right? You know, so that's uh it's an emotional buy at that point. But it's interesting to see when when a company like that says, hey, we're going to do a three for one split. We're going to do a two for one split. I've rarely heard of a 10 for one split.

• 8:56Speaker 03

  That's a pretty rare instance to do a 10 to one split. Um, it's not saying it hasn't happened before, but it's

• 9:03Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  It's exceedingly rare.

• 9:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. I, I think the one other company I can think of that did a 10 for one was Amazon back in the day.

• 9:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was a long, long time ago, though, wasn't it?

• 9:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. So Netflix.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Their, their stock price had gotten up to like 4,000 a share or something like that. It was something ridiculous.

• 9:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, Netflix is around 1,200 right now. So that 10 for one, so you're going to be, what, $120 by the time, maybe a little less.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Right. Well, so then the question I have for you, Frank, is, uh, what is, uh, look this up, look what Berkshire Hathaway A shares are at this point. What is the Berkshire Hathaway A shares? Is it over a million dollars a share?

• 9:48Speaker 04

  About 715, wow.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  715,000. And so, yeah, it's, that's one that's, everybody's been like, hey, if we can get them to stow it, do a, no, Warren Buffett's never going to split that stock. It's, it's a prestige stock, right? To be able to say, I own one share of Berkshire A.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  I own a fraction of a fraction.

• 10:13Speaker 03

  I own a fraction of a fraction of a share, uh, to say Berkshire A. Uh, anyhow, no, we're, it's, uh, it's, it's interesting to see that. I hadn't seen that, uh, you know, I, I have not seen that recently that there's a 10 to one split. So, yeah, we're, we're looking for, uh, it'll be interesting to see. Um, hey, we're going to take a quick break a little bit early right now, but when we come back, we're going to have Nick Gonzalez and Stillian Kiraf from the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra talking about the next, uh, big concert here. I believe it's next week.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  Are you curious to learn more about how you can be money wise? Check out the Money Wise website at MoneyWiseGuys.com to get more info about what we do.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  Welcome back to the Money Wise Show going into the weekend. Friday show. I'm your host, Justin Leland here with Frank Lee. We had a message in over the break. Frank, what did we get there? What's, uh, what's it say?

• 11:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. So let's, let's read off this message and then we can get to our, our guests here. Yeah. So the message is in Halloween fashion, I heard on the news that there is a website that you can look up to see if someone has died in your home. It's something like died in house.com.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  Oh, boy.

• 11:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. Happy Halloween, guys. I saw a place down doing a downtown ghost tour and wondered if the Woolworth Building has ghosts.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  Um, I don't know if the Woolworth Building has ghosts, but I sure know that Seth thinks it does.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  We, we definitely need to tell Seth that it's true.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know. We can probably, uh, you know, poke the bear a little bit and.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Spook him a little.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  Spook him a little, like just hide in certain like weird parts of the building and just start like playing the piano or something downstairs. You know, and then nobody else is here. It'd be interesting.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  I will say, uh, I was in the building this morning before anyone and it is a bit creepy. I will just say.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  I mean, it is a huge building and you have no idea if somebody's here or not.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 03

  That I will say. And if you're here at like 5:00 AM and there ain't nobody here and you start hearing things, it, uh.

• 12:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  Little creaks. It'll make the, it'll make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. I'll tell you that.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  So no, I don't believe it is haunted, but I'm sure there's a couple of folks that think so. Um, but I, I can tell you right now, nobody's died in my house. It was brand new when I bought it. So there's that.

• 12:46Speaker 04

  Oh, my gosh. I did look up the website.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 12:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. I'm afraid to click on it.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  No, don't do it. Don't do it.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  Don't do it.

• 12:55Speaker 03

  It'll, it'll never be the same. You'll never be the same.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  Do I want to go down that rabbit hole?

• 12:59Speaker 03

  No, you do not want to go down that rabbit hole. Not worth it. Uh, because now you have to disclose it if you ever sell the house.

• 13:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.

• 13:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, ignorance is bliss at this point.

• 13:13Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  Hey, we're gonna take, we're gonna, we're gonna move on here. Nick and Stillian, uh, Nick Gonzalez is the new executive director for the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra. Stillian Kirov, obviously the, uh, the conductor, the maestro, the musical genius behind the BSO. Um, and has been with us for, gosh, it's been, I think.

• 13:34Speaker 05

  Almost 10 years.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  10 years now?

• 13:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  Almost 10 years. Oh my goodness. Stillian, Nick, how are you? It's good to have you on the show.

• 13:44Speaker 05

  Hey, so good to be here.

• 13:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, thanks so much for having us. Yeah, happy Halloween. Absolutely. Happy Halloween. Uh, did Stillian dress up as a, as a conductor? Does he, does he carry around his, uh?

• 13:57Speaker 05

  I do. I do.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  You do?

• 13:58Speaker 05

  Yes. My neighbors look at me weirdly with the tuxedo and everything, throwing out the garbage today, but part of that, it's all good.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  You have to throw off the scent a little bit. Yeah, I know.

• 14:11Speaker 05

  Yes, absolutely.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  Right, right. Hey, so obviously the, uh, the, the big news is Nick, obviously you've come on now, um, you're, you're in your what? Third week as the, uh, executive director for the, uh, Symphony Orchestra. Congratulations on the new gig. Um, and, uh, you know, we obviously, you know, you came on a, a cup, you know, a week or so late for the, the big gala that happened earlier in October. Uh, but now we've got the next concert that's coming up. Let's talk about that a little bit. And let's talk about your, your chops in the music industry and, and, uh, you know, uh, thoughts on the, um, your thoughts on the symphony and, and, and everything that goes on there.

• 14:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, thank you so much. I'm, I'm, you know, so excited, obviously, to be in this new role as the Executive Director for the BSO. Yeah, you know, I come from a very musical background, grew up in East Bakersfield and, you know, my dad, my uncles, they performed music, you know, back since the 50s. You know, my Uncle Lou's, he performed 1957, I think, was his first performance. You know, back on Baker Street. Yeah, you know, there, there's a great, you know, great bands back then, the Latineers, the Marquise, they were on the radio back in the day. You know, so I owe all of my musical, you know, ability and appreciation from, you know, my uncles and my, and my dad.

• 15:38Speaker 03

  For your family.

• 15:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly. You know, I'm so excited to be here with the Symphony. You know, I don't have as much experience with symphonic music, but you know, this position opened up and, you know, it seemed like a great opportunity to really, you know, kind of help take it to the next level. And, you know, of course, hearing Stillian, you know, world-class musician and conductor, you know, that really drew me to this, to this job and you know, I'm just really excited about, you know, where we're going to take it, you know, have some, have some new ideas for collaborating with different local partners and, you know, fresh programming. So, yeah, I'm super excited. Our upcoming concert is actually next Saturday.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is coming up Saturday, right? The 6th, right?

• 16:26Speaker 06

  It's going to be November 8.

• 16:28Speaker 03

  November 8, that's right. Okay.

• 16:30Speaker 06

  Right. And so, yeah, it's called An American Salute. So it's for all of our veterans, all those that serve our country. And we actually are doing a buy one, get one free promotion for all veterans, active-duty service members, and first responders. So, yeah, we're, we're super excited about that promotion. It's honoring all those who have served our country and continue to do so today, so.

• 16:58Speaker 03

  And that's amazing. And, and thank you for the, to the BSO for doing that for our veteran community. And so, Stillian, tell us a little bit about the music that was chosen for this concert and, you know, your thoughts on that and, and, you know, how do we get more people into the seats and selling more seats?

• 17:19Speaker 05

  Sure, uh, we try to really create programs where you can have something for for everybody. And this has been our approach, and I think this season has been particularly successful because we have some uh, programs that have a little bit more popular flavor to them, and we have some programs that are um, definitely uh a bit more classical, but we try to find a balance, and actually, our opening night was was a great example of this because we played some music by John Williams. We also played The Planets um by Gustav Hals, but in the same time, we also had projections. So people can really, really march into the music and have and have experience that is a bit unique.

• 18:02Speaker 05

  So we're really, really trying to achieve something like that, that will make the community excited about coming to our concerts.

• 18:10Speaker 05

  We, for for the November concert, concert in particularly, um, it's it's a program that it that's a mixture of different pieces that are all very, very exciting. So yes, we have some music by John Williams. We have the Armed Forces Salute, um, we have some Sousa marches. Um, and we also have Tchaikovsky's Eighteen Twelve For Virture as well, which is the more classical aspect of the program. Uh, and and some more. So we really, um, we're it's it's a program with a lot of selections that are a little bit shorter, but that everybody can uh, embrace and celebrate our veterans with.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely. And I can tell you, you know, firsthand that, you know, over the past few years, still, and you've done a fantastic job of of merging both the modern and the classical and and doing what you can to, you know, to to merge those two things that can sometimes seem so so opposite with each other, but artistically are so amazing when you put them together. Um, so I have to say thank you for doing that.

• 19:15Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you. I I appreciate it, and and this has been really the theme, and sometimes, you know, you find these connections between music musical pieces that are very far apart, you would think, and yet they're very close and they have some common theme or common inspiration that happened over a couple of centuries of difference. So so this is this is definitely what we are going for.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, and there's a similar thread that kind of flows through all of the pieces um with with that same kind of thought process, right? So

• 19:45Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  It is amazing. And so You know, the concert is coming up here next Saturday, the eighth. Uh, when do the doors open? And uh, what else is going on with the, you know, there's the, obviously the something came into my ears there. Um, somebody speeding down the street, down the nineteenth street. Um, anyhow, so uh, what about the uh, the tickets? And um, you know, other things that are going on prior to the show uh, for, for this concert on, on Saturday?

• 20:18Speaker 06

  Right, so um, so the concert uh, doors open at five o'clock. Uh, the concert officially starts at six thirty P M. Uh, and then we always have a pre-concert lecture uh, from Scott Dircksey. And that's gonna be at five thirty, uh, just to talk a little bit about the music.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  Which is always an amazing time. I will say that, that is always a great learning experience.

• 20:41Speaker 05

  Scott is phenomenal. He makes it very fun and educational, but you're really having fun while you're learning. I think that's, he's, he's really doing a great job.

• 20:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so then the tickets, you know, the, this concert actually starts at six thirty. Uh, doors open at five. Um, so how much are the tickets? And are there, how many tickets are still available? How can somebody go, if they're listening right now and wants to get online and grab some tickets? How would they go about doing that?

• 21:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, so uh, tickets are currently forty dollars um, uh, starting price. And then they go up to uh, I believe sixty dollars or so. Um, so if they would like to purchase tickets, um, you can go directly through the symphony. Um, if you call our um, main phone, or if you come to the office, uh, and we're at twenty-three hundred Truxton Avenue, uh, Suite two hundred. Um, and yeah, you can come during our office hours. Uh, you can also purchase tickets uh, through our third-party uh, A X S. Um, but there are fees attached to that. So we, you know, we do ask, um, you know, it, it may be better to go directly through the symphony.

• 21:49Speaker 03

  Directly through the source rather than going through A X S, yeah.

• 21:52Speaker 06

  Right, exactly. And yeah, and like I mentioned, we are doing a buy one, get one free. And that's an offer that we're going to be having through Wednesday, November 5.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 22:05Speaker 06

  And yeah, so like I said, you know, for all veterans, active duty service members, first responders, we want to make sure we we give our appreciation for all of you, you know, what you do for the for the country and for our community. So yeah, so that's, those are the prices there. And yeah, if you want to go to our website, you can always find out more information about about our tickets and our upcoming concerts as well.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  And I will say this as being, you know, somebody who's gone to many of these concerts, there's really not a bad seat in that arena, in the convention center. You know, yeah, if you want to sit really close, you can, right? But the the music is the music, right? And the acoustics of the building are pretty darn good. So there's really not a bad seat in in the house, if I would can say so. So honestly, thank you so much, Nick. Thank you, Stillian, for joining us right now. We're going to make sure that the phone number, you know, website address, all of the things are there for people if they want to go to get tickets.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  We'll make sure that's on our podcast notes, Stephen. And so we'll make sure that that's all out there for you. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we have we have Kelly from the Cap K to talk about food insecurity. So we'll be right back.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  Are you an employee with a company-sponsored retirement plan? Do you fully understand how you're invested? And whether or not you are maximizing your retirement plan's options? For more information on a free assessment, contact MoneyWise's 401K Specialist, Justin Leland, at 661-847-1000. That's 661-847-1000.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  Welcome back to the Money Wise Show. I'm your host, Justin Leland, here with Frank Lee, taking you into the weekend, just a half an hour away. Well, maybe longer for some of you, not for me.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  Anyhow, I want to say a quick thank you to Stillian and Nick from the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra for joining us in the last segment, talking about the upcoming concert, the Veterans Concert, coming up next Saturday, the 8th. You know, go get your tickets, by all means. Go listen to some great music and, you know, support the Symphony Orchestra. It's a great orchestra, great music. But we're joined now today by Kelly Lowery, the Program Director, Program Administrator for the Food Bank over at CAP-K. Kelly, thank you for joining us today. How are you doing?

• 24:43Speaker 07

  Fantastic. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  Absolutely, absolutely. I'm guessing you're kind of busy right now, so I'm glad you can join us today. I'm guessing the Food Bank is, you know, a pretty happening place right now.

• 24:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, you know, things are ramping up here. We are responding to the government shutdown and the people's loss of CalFresh benefit by surging additional resources to some distributions, specifically designed to target those that are unfortunately struggling right now under the high cost of living and increased food costs, and now on top of that, to make it even worse, the loss of the CalFresh benefit.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, so tell us about the CalFresh benefit and, you know, is that in any way connected to SNAP benefits as well, or how is that administered?

• 25:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, those are the same thing. So SNAP is the name of the federal program, but here in California, it's administered by California Department of Social Services, and so the program is called CalFresh here in California. So those terms are synonymous.

• 25:52Speaker 03

  Wow, okay, so then, you know, for folks that are already, um, you know, food insecure to begin with, who are relying on those SNAP benefits, the CalFresh benefits, um, with the government shutdown and the specter of SNAP benefits being shut off as of tomorrow, you know, I mean, that's gotta be just an absolute nightmare situation for, for folks that are, you know, already experiencing that kind of level of food insecurity, in addition to what we already deal with. Um, now, now we're also dealing with, you have federal workers that have, you know, at this point, not been paid for a month.

• 26:35Speaker 03

  Um, you know, are you seeing more and more folks that are from that side of the aisle? That are, that are federal workers that are, hey, you know, I, I need food?

• 26:48Speaker 07

  Right, so what we know is that all the federal workers here in Kern County have now been without a paycheck for two of their pay periods. They've missed two paychecks.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:57Speaker 07

  And I don't know about you, but the, I, I don't know too many people that can live missing a single paycheck. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck. They've now missed two paychecks. And, you know, some people are real quick to say like, well, yeah, but you know, they're gonna, as soon as the government opens back up, they're gonna get all that sort of back pay. And, and that might be true, but that doesn't help pay the bills today.

• 27:16Speaker 03

  Today, yeah, I mean, that's all fine and good.

• 27:19Speaker 07

  Food on the table today. And so, you know, here at the food bank, we have a, a choice market here, uh, where we give, uh, people the opportunity to, instead of just getting a food box, uh, we give people an opportunity to choose and to select and shop for things that, that benefit their family. And so it's called Cottonwood Commons, since our food bank is located out here in Cottonwood. And so, um, so with that market, we have opened up hours, additional hours, uh, both in the morning and on the weekend, specifically for federal workers to be able to, uh, get some food resources and groceries, uh, to help their families during this time.

• 27:56Speaker 03

  Now, you're also talking about this kind of surge of, you know, how are you doing that? Like, you're bringing in, you know, do you have other partners? Cause I know that, that Cap K, obviously, partners with Ag and, and other providers to bring that food to the food bank. But talk to me a little bit about how the logistics of being able to to provide this kind of a surge in in support.

• 28:20Speaker 07

  So the Food Bank on an ongoing basis, we serve around fifty to fifty-five thousand families every single month.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 28:27Speaker 07

  Every single month in Kern County, there are fifty to fifty-five thousand families who receive food assistance from a food pantry somewhere in Kern County. Now, there's some importance, you guys are numbers guys, I'll just share some numbers with you. There are over a hundred thousand CalFresh cases in Kern County, a hundred thousand families in Kern County that are on CalFresh. And so what that tells you, if you look at the numbers, that means that even if every person, every family, I mean, who is in Kern County that is comes to the Food Bank, even if all of them receive CalFresh benefit, which they don't all.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  They don't, right, yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 07

  Um, even if that was the case, that means that there's potentially sixty to seventy thousand families in Kern County that that don't receive services from the Food Bank, they receive CalFresh and that benefit is what they need. That's why it's super effective, because that meets their grocery need, that makes up the difference between, you know, what they bring in in their normal income with their job and then what their need is for their family, that that meets their needs, so they don't need to come to the Food Bank. Uh, now, there is a segment, as I mentioned, of folks that still do need extra assistance from the Food Bank, and that's why we're here. But now, with all those folks without the CalFresh benefit, now they're turning to

• 29:45Speaker 07

  the Food Bank and, uh, and we have resources on hand right now, Justin, that, um, we keep on hand about a month's ahead of time supply for the following month's, uh, food needs. And so really what we're doing is we're we're serving December's food supply on top of November's food supply in order to meet this need. So that's essentially.

• 30:08Speaker 03

  Bringing it all forward.

• 30:09Speaker 07

  That, yeah, that's essentially, we're emptying the cupboards and just putting it all forward, kinda like if we're playing poker, we're just going all in. And and what we're doing is we are, um, creating, uh, food distribution. Sites around the county to target the folks that are now without this CalFresh benefit. So our first distribution is going to be this Monday and it's going to be at the fairgrounds. And it'll be every, every day, Monday through Friday from seven AM until, I mean, sorry, from nine AM till seven PM. So we're going to go a little bit later in the day to be able to help folks that are, that are working and that need to be able to get some additional support. So that's at the fairgrounds here in Bakersfield.

• 30:51Speaker 07

  And then that's on, starting on Monday, it will be every day, Monday through Friday. And then on Tuesday, Tuesday through Friday, we're going to do a second distribution at another area, another location around the county. So for example, Tuesday will be in Ridgecrest.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 31:06Speaker 07

  Tuesday will be in Delano, Thursday will be in Taft and Friday will be in Mojave and then four more locations the following week.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  Gotcha. I had also seen somewhere where the food bank, and I, I can't remember what the statistic it exactly was, but it boggled the mind. It was something like, you know, three hundred boxes of food, you know, delivered per day or something like that. Now it's going to be like six thousand or something like that.

• 31:31Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  What was that stat that I saw?

• 31:33Speaker 07

  Yeah. So typically at a, a normal distribution site that our pantry partners run. So anytime there's a, a church, a school, a community organization that does a regular food distribution around the county. Uh, the greatest likelihood is they get their food from the Capke Food Bank. And typically, uh, they serve, you know, around three hundred families or so at, on average, at one of these distribution sites. So what we're endeavoring to do, uh, is serve three thousand, uh, three thousand families at each of the distributions. And so to, so beginning Monday at the fairgrounds, we're, we're, we're making it a goal to feed around three thousand families on Monday alone.

• 32:13Speaker 07

  And then, uh, repeating that every day, Monday through Friday, and then adding another three thousand at the county location. So Tuesday through Friday, uh, six thousand families on top of the normal work that we're already doing on a monthly basis. Because, you know, once this surge is over, once the, the shutdown is over, once the government, you know, gets back up and running and everything. You know, there's still going to be people in need and we're going to, we're going to continue to need our network to be strong. And so we're trying to, you know, minimize the impact on our agency partners that are doing this work, uh, week in and week out.

• 32:46Speaker 03

  So we got a message that popped in here says, uh, so the EBT cards will not be refilled this weekend, or is it just the SNAP program?

• 32:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, so those are all synonymous. Those are all terminology. So SNAP, EBT and CalFresh, those are all synonymous terminology. But so one of the things that happened just today, actually just this morning, is that there's a couple of federal judges, uh, one in Rhode Island, one in Massachusetts that.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  I was going to ask you about that. Yeah, I saw that the, the, yeah, federal courts had said, yeah, you gotta, you have to still fund SNAP.

• 33:17Speaker 07

  Right.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  Regardless of the shutdown.

• 33:19Speaker 07

  Uh, SNAP is administered federally by the USDA and so the USDA has a contingency fund of a little over $5 billion. Now, uh, on a monthly basis, it takes over $9 billion to fund SNAP on a monthly basis. And so even with the contingency fund, if the, if it actually holds, if this, if these go, uh, if these rulings hold.

• 33:42Speaker 07

  Um, you know, the best case scenario, it's going to be several days before, uh, the, the payments are, are made to folks. And then when they're made, there's no way that they could be full payments because there's just not enough in the contingency.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, that's the thing is when you think about it, it's like, okay, that's a lot of money, five and a half billion dollars. But when you run through that in about 10 days.

• 34:04Speaker 07

  Right.

• 34:04Speaker 03

  Or, or less.

• 34:05Speaker 07

  Right.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  That's not, that's not enough of a contingency, especially if the federal government is not, uh, negotiating in good faith and, and trying to close this, this shutdown. Um, so we got another message here says, thank you for sharing this. We have families that will be hurting through the next few weeks. How does one get on the list, uh, to go, uh, to these food pickups? I'm not trying to get political, but I thought SNAP was already paid throughout the year. Now it's a pay as you go kind of a program.

• 34:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's actually a monthly benefit and so it has to be funded each month separately. And, um, so to make it real simple, I will just tell you that, uh, folks can go to capk.org. Shutdown to get more information around the specifics of where the distributions are. There's no additional documentation or verification or pre-signing up or anything that needs to happen. Other than the fact that we are targeting the CalFresh SNAP recipients. So they will need their EBT card at the location. In order to receive the in order to receive the food assistance. Now, if somebody says, hey, man, I'm in need of food and but I'm not on CalFresh. We have our normal network of agency partners that do this work, as I mentioned, month in and month out.

• 35:17Speaker 07

  So. So that's not what these extra distributions that I mentioned at the fairgrounds and other places are for. These are for the families that are on CalFresh, and so they'll just need to have their EBT card with them.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  Right, and you know, I'm looking at the website right now, there's two separate buttons. One says how to receive food support if you are a CalFresh recipient. The other one says how to receive food support if you are a federal worker. So I mean, that's a pretty can't can't get much more clear cut than that on the website. You know, amazing work, but you know, what are your thoughts? And I mean, you're not in the job of prognosticating or anything like that. That's you know, you're here to feed in boots on the ground and get food into people's bellies and into their homes. But you know, what kind of long term effect can this possibly have? If this shutdown continues on, say, for another week or 10 days?

• 36:12Speaker 03

  You know, what is your what is your prediction that, you know, might might happen going if this continues on any length of time?

• 36:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's a great question. So. If the shutdown ends within the next week to 10 days. For us here at the food bank, we will be able to return to normal operations without too much of a disruption, without much of a disruption. If it extends beyond about two weeks, we're going to start to see some cascading effects at our ability to maintain the service at the at the level that we're providing right now. And the reason why is because the resources that I mentioned before that we are tapping into and using to kind of surge into this need right now. Are resources that are dedicated for the next month. And so we're going to continue to get resources in.

• 36:59Speaker 07

  But one of the one of the issues is that a big part of the resources that we get comes directly from USDA. Well, when the government shut down and and we make calls to to, you know, place orders with USDA, nobody's answering the phone. So so eventually, there's going to come a point in which now, right now, the trucks are still coming because they're coming with orders that we had placed before the government shutdown.

• 37:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:24Speaker 07

  But eventually, if the shutdown lasts, you know, a long time, those trucks that are coming now aren't going to be coming anymore. And and so that will have a a big impact and.

• 37:36Speaker 03

  Like you said, a rolling and cascading effect, right?

• 37:38Speaker 07

  For sure. And I I would say, once we get into sort of the the the end of of November, middle end of November. If we're still in this government shutdown, i- it's going to have some pretty critical impacts on on our on our county.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, not and just everybody in general. I mean, so the follow up question to that is, so, you know, not everybody is on SNAP or CalFresh, not everybody is in need. Um, I we know that, you know, obviously, life is more expensive than it was five years ago. And these kind of costs are, you know, um, definitely something to to pay attention to. But for those people that are out there listening, who are able to help, how can how can we help, uh, you know, our community that's in need? How how can we help Cap K and the food bank?

• 38:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, thank you. Thanks for asking that. So a couple of things, uh, obviously, there's really three main areas. All three can be found on that capk.org slash shutdown site that we set up. But um, donating food, we made it real simple that, uh, we have a drive through, uh, uh, line here at the food bank where you don't even have to really get out of your car. There's a bin that we've set up, you come right through, uh, the line here at the food bank and you can drop food off here. Uh, and so our address is five twenty Washington Street, people can get information on the website there about that. So donating food, uh, maybe you can do a food drive or something like that at your place of business and collect food, bring it bring it to the food bank. That's one of the that's one of the most, uh, clear ways that food gets from you to the next person.

• 39:12Speaker 07

  Because we we bring it in and we turn it back around and it goes right. Onto the shelves of and and onto the plates of families in need. Um. The second way is obviously um donating funds. One of the things that people don't realize is that um while we do pick up a lot of donated food from grocery stores and you know, places like that, uh we also get a lot of USDA commodity foods, which is allowing us to to really accomplish this big uh effort that we're we're doing as we described before. Um. But the other thing is that we actually purchase a lot of food. Uh. We spend a a pretty good amount of food of money purchasing food because the reason why is that when when we pick up food from grocery stores, it's very volatile.

• 39:53Speaker 07

  It's hard to it's hard to uh to plan what we're able to provide to families because um you know, one month we're we're picking up and the main thing we're picking up from the grocery stores, you know, marshmallows and and jalapenos, which

• 40:09Speaker 03

  How do you turn that into a meal?

• 40:10Speaker 07

  Exactly. So

• 40:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 40:12Speaker 07

  Um. While we're grateful for everything the stores donate, they're not really incentivized by what goes out the back door in donation. They're incentivized by what goes out the front door in our carts when we purchase things, right? So by the time it gets to us at the food bank, it's stuff that, you know, others didn't buy or you know, that sort of thing. And so it's very volatile month to month. So our ability to purchase food actually um is a is a huge benefit because it brings stability to what we are able to then provide to our agency partners around the county. So

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Right.

• 40:40Speaker 07

  They can count on the fact that we're going to have fruits and vegetables, starch, protein and and juice every time they come in because we're able to purchase. And then the last area is volunteering. Um. There's ways to just kind of put your shoulder on the load and volunteer and say, I can, I may not have money, I may not have food to give, but I can volunteer my time. So there's actually a direct way to do that on the capk.org slash shutdown site as well to sign up to volunteer.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I know that money wise on a monthly basis, we go out there and fill up food buck food food boxes out at the pantry and we love doing it and uh I I I we're gonna have to look and see what the uh the the number is at the end of the year, how many pounds of uh uh food we've been able to to put into boxes for people. Um. But it's very critical now, um more critical than it was even in March or April, right? When we first started doing this. Um. Now, there's another message popped in, says, uh, this is terrible. Yeah, no kidding. So does the food bank uh need to help out families through the holidays? That's a nonstarter. That's always been the case. I don't think it's ever, but it's, I think it's more, it's more acute today.

• 41:48Speaker 07

  Right. Yeah. So one of the things we're doing as well is we've already planned a food drive that we do every year in November. We actually hold it out there at the, at the Walmart on Gosford. And we specifically ask our folks to donate holiday specific items for families that struggle, you know, to, um, you know, to put holiday specific food on the table. And so that's a way to help, for people to help too, and say, I can donate some time helping you collect food at that food drive. And there's a way to sign up for that as well on the site.

• 42:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I think that, you know, I mean, we're really hoping, and I think all of us are praying and hoping that this government shutdown ends quickly. And that the SNAP benefits are, are released back and that the people are able to then, you know, use those ABT cards and go to the grocery store and buy the food that they need. And they're not going to be relying on these, these community services. Um, but

• 42:48Speaker 03

  if it doesn't, and if this continues to drag on, like we've been talking about, you know, here we are, we're coming up into Thanksgiving, you know, we're coming up into the holidays. Uh, and so, I mean, there's got to be a lot of people that are really, um, you know, just very worried about what's going to happen over the next, you know, three weeks or so. Um, and if it doesn't get fixed by then, you know, Thanksgiving is not a, you know, that's, that's a holiday for, you know, for everybody, but you know, when you're, when you're food insecure, just any food, anything. It doesn't have to be a big holiday meal, right? But it's just anything. And so, you know, um, it's, it's very difficult to, to see this happening in our own country.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  And, you know, obviously we've known for a long time that Kern County, it kind of leads, uh, or is near the top of the list in, in, in California in food insecurity in the first place. Before any of this other stuff happened.

• 43:46Speaker 07

  Well, you know, I shared the number earlier that there's over 105,000 cases, meaning families that are on CalFresh specifically. And if the average family size, which we know in Kern County is over 3.15, you just do the math, you can figure out that over 330,000, 340,000 or more of our neighbors are benefit, they benefit from the CalFresh program. Well, our population of Kern County is a little over 900,000.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  Right under a million.

• 44:15Speaker 07

  Right, so it's about a third of our county. Every one out of three people that you run into benefits from the CalFresh program. So just kind of put that in perspective a little bit. When you look at the scope of what we're, what we're talking about here.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  And you know, and remember the other statistics, and this is even prior to going into this shutdown and everything. How many, how many children are food insecure in our county? What is like one, one in four?

• 44:42Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's actually, it's actually more closer to 30%. Between 25 and 30%.

• 44:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. And that's just in, in a county that is the breadbasket of the world. We produce more agricultural products than really any other county in the, in the country. For us to have that level of food insecurity, you know, without even talking about the government shutdown and the SNAP program and all of the other issues that we're dealing with. It's definitely something we need to be talking about. Kelly, thank you so much for joining us. I know it's a very, it's a very tough topic. It's, it's a very heavy topic for a Friday afternoon. But it's something that's very timely and happening right now as we're speaking. And we need to, we need to do something to help our neighbors.

• 45:25Speaker 07

  And, and if you, if you'll let me just really briefly, I just want to say thank you. We, we've convened a task force of folks to be able to help tackle this issue. And so we have a lot of participation from our, our city leaders, our county leaders, county staff, the Department of DHS, you know, even our state elected officials. So there's been a lot of really good momentum around this and a lot of good participation, a lot of private donations from our ag producers and some others that have come through with some finance, large financial donations as well. And so I appreciate the support from the community and we just need to keep showing up for our neighbors.

• 46:05Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Couldn't be better said. We need to be standing up and doing something for our neighbors. Absolutely. Kelly, thank you so much for joining us. Have a wonderful weekend. I know you'll be working hard for the foreseeable future, but you know, Godspeed, man. You're doing yeoman's work out there. You're doing a great job.

• 46:25Speaker 07

  And I'll see you the next time you guys are out building boxes with us.

• 46:27Speaker 03

  Absolutely. We'll be there in a couple of Fridays. Absolutely.

• 46:31Speaker 07

  Next Friday.

• 46:32Speaker 03

  Next Friday. That's right. We'll be out there. Thank you so much for joining us.

• 46:36Speaker 07

  Thanks. Thank you, Kelly.

• 46:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so again, you know, from the bottom of my heart, you know, this is something that is, you know, transcends politics, transcends all of the, you know, the back and forth. We're not a political show. Period. We're not a political show. We're a finance show. But when we're talking about food insecurity and people losing benefits that they are desperately in need of. You know, the issue that I have is that nobody deserves to go hungry.

• 47:14Speaker 03

  Nobody deserves to go hungry.

• 47:18Speaker 03

  And, you know, the the thought process in a lot of folks is saying that, you know, there's a lot of fraud or whatever. You know, the SNAP program, CalFresh program, these types of programs statistically have less fraud in them, less than 1% of the money spent in SNAP

• 47:41Speaker 03

  is taken up by fraud. It's one of the most, it's one of the most, the cleanest programs out there available. And it is something we, nobody deserves to go home hungry. So that is just from the bottom of my heart. These guys are doing fantastic work. Cap K is doing an amazing job. Kelly doing an amazing job. Really love everything that they're doing. If you can find it in your heart, go to their website. We'll make sure that the link is on the podcast notes. And we'll make sure that, you know, that gets out there. So please go on there, donate food, donate time, donate money, whatever you can do to help our neighbors. We need to, absolutely need to.

• 48:22Speaker 03

  With that being said, we're going into the weekend. Love you guys. Have a happy Halloween. Be safe out there. Be smart. Be safe. Be money wise. See you on Monday.

• 48:31Speaker 02

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