Let's Not Wreck the Holidays

The holiday season means more travel and celebration, but it also means an increased risk of impaired driving. Do you have a plan for a sober ride home?

This week the commissioners spoke with Justice of the Peace Landee Holloway and Health Specialist Steve Schmidt about recent impaired driving trends in Missoula County and what resources are available to residents.

• Substance Abuse Treatment Resources
• Drive Safe Missoula
• R.O.A.D Court
• No Joke Theatre

Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:10] Welcome back to the agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners. I'm Josh Slotnick and I'm here with my fellow Commissioner, Dave Strohmaier. Our friend and colleague. Juanita Vero is out today. So as you all know, it's the holiday season and we're taking time to talk about some holiday behavior. So we've got people going to parties and enjoying the season everywhere. Often they drive to where they're going and are planning on driving home. So we're actually talking about impaired driving or driving under the influence. We've got two guests with us today. Could you guys each introduce yourselves and talk about your roles here at Missoula County and how your roles intersect with our subject today?

Landee Holloway: [00:00:47] All right. Thanks. Commissioner Slotnick, I am Landee Holloway. I'm a justice of the peace here in Missoula. I've been on the bench for about seven years, and in our court we see a lot of misdemeanor DUIs and some of the felony DUIs before they go up to district court. One of the other involvements I have with impaired driving is that I oversee and built road court, which is a responsibility, opportunity and accountability for drivers. It is a treatment and accountability court. So those are some of the things that I'm connected with.

Steve Schmidt: [00:01:16] Hi, I'm Steve Schmidt. I run Drive Safe Missoula, which is home to our local DUI task force and our Buckle Up Montana coalition. I work out of the health department. My primary jobs are to keep people driving sober and buckled up wearing their safety belts. That's kind of why I'm here today. Great.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:01:33] And do you like to go by Steve or Schmitty?

Steve Schmidt: [00:01:35] Uh, you know, either one. Uh, there's a lot of Steves in this world, so Schmitty is oftentimes what I go by. Yeah, you got it.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:42] So, Landee, in your intro, you mentioned misdemeanor DUIs, felony DUIs and road court. Could you give a little breakdown on what those three things are?

Landee Holloway: [00:01:51] You bet. Felony DUIs in the state of Montana is if you've had a fourth or subsequent fourth. Yes, fourth. Some states across the nation, there are thirds are felony. But in the state of Montana it's a fourth or subsequent is a felony.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:03] What do you mean fourth or sub... Oh fourth. Subsequent meaning fifth. Sixth. Okay.

Landee Holloway: [00:02:06] Yeah. And I think you'll see that every once in a while in the media, you're going to see somebody who shows up with ten, 12, 14 DUIs. And, you know, those are just really unfortunate situations. The primary cases that we see in Justice Court are first, second and third DUIs and misdemeanors. That's correct. Primarily most of those who get a first DUI. I think the stats used to read about 60% do not re-offend. So somebody comes into court, they're like, wow, this is not where I want to be. I'm going to address my issue. I don't want to go to jail. I don't like the fines. I don't like the financial aspect. You get into the second and thirds, the penalties are increasing. There's additional jail time. It's additional cost to the taxpayers, not to mention the danger that it is on the roads out impaired driving. I think we really have to talk about, too, that it's not just alcohol. And I think our culture needs to like shift from impaired driving is there's a lot of different substances that are out there. And so just let's do a little snapshot at some data. I think in Missoula County, I've been tracking data primarily for grants when we apply for road court. And in 2018 out of I'm just going to give you some justice court stats 2018, there were 248 misdemeanor DUIs. There were 21 felony DUIs. And these are convictions. There's a lot of things that can happen after a charge. We go to 2019. We're up to 213 misdemeanors in justice court 2000, 2194 misdemeanors and Justice Court. I doubt it fluctuates a little bit. I think we've seen some changes. We've seen some changes in the impacts with Covid. We've seen some changes with regards to the legalization of marijuana and our poly substance users. 2021 we had 201 misdemeanors and Justice Court 209 and 2022. Now, this is what's going to be shocking as of October 2023, just in justice court, we had 295 misdemeanors.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:58] What happened?

Dave Strohmaier: [00:03:59] Yeah, I guess along Josh's line of questioning there is are we, uh, more effective at enforcement or are people I mean, are we sliding in the wrong direction as far as more impaired drivers on the road? Or.

Landee Holloway: [00:04:13] I think that there's a lot of varieties. There's a lot of things that are in there and I'm not quite sure. You know, I think with regards to Covid and the pandemic, there's so many variables that we don't really know how they impact currently. I think we also have to take a look at what's going on in our mental health aspect of our community, and there's some issues that are happening there. So I think what I really want you to walk away with is that there are increases in impaired driving and impaired driving, and we'll talk, I'm sure, a little bit more about this of the different substances that are happening out there with regards to impaired driving.

Josh Slotnick: [00:04:45] So you mentioned Road court and I just want to get you to talk about it a little bit, because after witnessing a road court graduation, I was so moved. It's such a powerful thing. Would you mind giving a little description of what it is, how it works?

Landee Holloway: [00:04:56] You bet. Happy to do that. I'm always happy to talk about Road Court. So we started about five years ago. It is a treatment and accountability court. The incentive to coming into road court is that you might have your jail time waived and partial of your fines, but you. I also have to come to court for a whole year, and you have to work with a team of persons on misdemeanor probation. It's really a holistic approach to treating substance use and impaired driving. It works. There's data out there where national best practices, the way we run our program. By the time somebody graduates, they've had to provide many UAS they call in every day to provide a urine sample. They wear an alcohol monitor, they work with a treatment coordinator, and they come into court on a regular basis. It's pretty powerful when you see somebody graduate, when they've really committed to change, their family members show up. They're seeing money in their bank account, they're seeing their health changing. And so it is truly a commitment to changing behavior. I think we've had about 42 graduates currently. We have 28 people in the program. It is at least 12 to 18 months long for people, for folks to be involved.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:59] The one graduation I witnessed was a really emotional event. You could tell for the folks who were graduating that they were enjoying a sense of achievement, and they had loved ones in the audience. And it was a it was a big deal. And it wasn't easy. It wasn't like a high school. Graduations are wonderful, but it's kind of a foregone conclusion for most people. I got the sense watching Road court graduation, it was not a foregone conclusion. It was tough and they were relieved and really happy to be there.

Landee Holloway: [00:06:25] Right. And I think that if anybody wanted to think that that's taking an easy approach to DUIs, it's absolutely not coming in and seeing the commitment and the efforts that an individual has to put into changing their behavior is huge. And I think that's kind of what brings us to this month's National Impaired Driving Awareness Month. And so I reached out to Schmitty to say, hey, let's see if we can get out there and really impact the messaging in our community. And, you know, people need to hear it, not just from the courts and not just from law enforcement, but how do we really get at the heart of this? People need to take some different actions, make some plans, and take care of one another out there.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:07:02] And so schmitty what does that look like beyond just just say no? We remember that in the past with maybe mixed results, but.

Steve Schmidt: [00:07:11] Right, right. Well, you know, one of the big things that I'm really trying to focus on locally, statewide, even some national aspects of things is I'm really trying to focus on the concept of psychological reactance. People don't like to be told what to do, and that's a psychological reaction. Yeah. Josh!

Dave Strohmaier: [00:07:28] Stop yapping. You got it? Got it. Yeah. So there you.

Steve Schmidt: [00:07:32] Go. So people don't like to be told what to do and understanding that pretty much what I try to do with most of my messaging and trying to get others that are in the traffic safety world with their style of messaging, is how do we make it a little bit more inclusive? How do we become part of that message as well? Because it's not just about one person or one group of people. We're all part of this world when it comes to impaired driving, and it affects all of us, and we can all play a positive role in making sure that we can help get impaired drivers off our roads. One, that's us obviously trying to set the example of what it means to always be 100% sober when we're on the roadways, but two, how do we look out for one another if we have an office party that's going on and we have all our coworkers there, how do we make sure that we have sober transportation for a ride home for everybody? If we have a family get together, how are we making sure that all our family members and our guests are leaving this gathering with a 100% sober driver? Does that mean we arrange for other transportation, whether it's Uber or Lyft, a bus or a designated driver beforehand? You know, while everybody's sober, clear mind, thinking straight and logically that we set that all up. So we plan ahead and we we take that responsibility upon ourselves, even though we might not be the ones that are out there driving, we can still help out.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:52] Could you give an example of a message that isn't a psychological reactant?

Steve Schmidt: [00:08:56] Sure, sure. Well, um, say, for example, with the traditional traffic safety messaging that we see, you know, we see, you know, drive sober or get pulled over, click it or ticket. You text, you drive, you pay. All of those are telling people exactly what to do. And most people are like, don't tell me what to do. I'm going to do what I want to do. For example, when we started this whole let's not Wreck the Holidays campaign, initially it was Don't Wreck the Holidays, which of course is telling in nature. So by doing that slight little tweak by saying, let's not wreck the holidays, the people that are delivering the message, whether it be government agencies, law enforcement, employers, they're part of that message saying, we all have that part, the play to make sure that our roads stay as sober as they can be, if that makes sense. Yeah, that absolutely does.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:09:45] So this December, this holiday season, what are the methods that you're working with to try to get that message out?

Steve Schmidt: [00:09:53] Most of it is online okay. That's where we're doing most of that online stuff. So if you go to drive Safe Missoula. Com right there on the front main page, there's a let's not wreck the holiday spot. You can click on that. If you're looking to join the campaign. We've tried to make it as easy as possible. There's a whole section on social media. Where people could just click and share. They don't have to develop anything. There's pre-made letters that if an organization or a company wants to send these letters out to their employees or to their customers, to just let our community know that they are taking this seriously and they're going to do everything that they possibly can to keep their employees safe, their family safe, their customers safe by, you know, getting on board with this and saying, hey, look, we're not going to wreck the holidays either. This is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to pledge to make sure we're 100% sober. When we're on those roadways, companies can get involved. They can hop on there, put their name and logo right on one of those letters and send it out to their employees. I try to make it as easy as possible for them.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:52] So I can imagine somebody listening to this who maybe is a little more cynical than me and Dave. Sure, sure, saying, come on, who's going to go to drive safe Missoula as a web page? It's not it's not going to happen. Uh, how's this these folks actually going to get the word out to people out there in the world living their normal kind of day to day lives with the normal kind of phone surfing that people do when they're hanging out, like, how are you actually going to reach those folks?

Steve Schmidt: [00:11:15] So one, a great example of a company who has understood the assignment of let's not wreck the holidays is Missoula mugs.com. A lot of people go to Missoula mugs already. They're checking the...

Dave Strohmaier: [00:11:28] Tell us what is what is this Missoula mugs?

Steve Schmidt: [00:11:29] It's basically just all the intake photos at the at our local jail shots, the mug shots at our local jail. And you can see what people, uh, you know, who's being arrested and what they're arrested for. And, and this.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:43] Gets a lot of hits.

Steve Schmidt: [00:11:44] It gets a tremendous amount of views. So people are on there looking at this stuff. And you'll be surprised to see how many impaired drivers you see on here. So Missoula mugs took that. And right at the top of the Missoula mugs page is a little banner. Uh, looks like a little holiday banner. If you click on that, you can read exactly what Missoula Mugs has to say about how people look, or I should say, how bad they look in their DUI mug shots. He or she or whoever runs Missoula mugs. We're not 100% sure. Uh, just talks about those photos and sort of makes fun of people in a way that is quite humorous, but I think it might actually catch on. And then it directs people to my website at Drive Safe Missoula. Com slash holiday, which is where I have all of that information so people can connect there. And it has driven a tremendous amount of traffic to the website. Fantastic. Yeah, we're talking like 2,000% increase. Wow. Wow. So well.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:12:37] Done. So one thing that folks oftentimes like to do is I think it's just human nature to compare ourselves to others. So how is Missoula doing compared to the rest of the state or the rest of the nation as it relates to impaired driving? Any sense, any sense of that? Are we worse about the same trending in one direction or the other?

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:57] It's such an interesting question. Right?

Steve Schmidt: [00:12:59] Right. And it's really hard. Trend data on DUIs is really difficult to follow. There's a couple different aspects that we can look at. One, we can look at overall fatalities that we have, but we can look at serious injuries that are a result of crashes as well. We can also look at arrest data. One of the issues that we have as far as arrest data goes is that sometimes our local law enforcement, with an increase of population here in our area, increase for calls for service, where people are calling 911, asking for, you know, law enforcement help, officers might not have the ability to do what's called proactive searching for these DUIs as they're out and about because they're answering call to call to call, or they're short staffed on a particular night. And with the number of calls for service, typically, if an officer gets a DUI, they're off the street for anywhere from 2 to 3 hours processing that DUI. Some may be a little bit shorter if they're faster processing these, you know, these arrests. So with that being the case, that doesn't necessarily mean there are less DUIs on our streets. It just means that officers are capturing less people driving impaired. Oftentimes they're a result of a crash where it ultimately comes from A911 call for service. So our trends look like they are going down a little bit. However, crashes are primarily the same as far as they have been over the last couple of years. Prior to Covid, there was a downward trend of crashes if you look at those overall, and then they picked up once the pandemic hit, and that was pretty much like that across the country now. Now, there might be a slight upward trend here recently.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:29] That's what Judge Holloway's numbers said.

Landee Holloway: [00:14:30] I think in Missoula County, we're starting to see that trend. And I think anybody who lives in Missoula County sees that there's alcohol just about in every event. And so like and not necessarily that that's bad, but we have a lot of people in our community who have substance use issues. And so just being aware of that and really looking out for each other and making sure no one's driving impaired, I might have some stats from the NHTSA website. That's NHTSA, it's the.

Steve Schmidt: [00:14:53] National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Landee Holloway: [00:14:55] Thank you. And so one of the stats from 2021, in every state it is illegal to drink and drive. And yet one person was killed in a drunk driving crash every 39 minutes in the United States. So if you. Think about every 39 minutes across our state. Our nation is somebody is dying. And that's not just a person. That's a family that's impacting a lot of people. And then when we talk, about 31% of all traffic crash fatalities in the United States involves a drunk driver. So what we're seeing in 2021, over 13,000 people were killed from preventable crashes. So we're not saying don't go out and have fun and celebrate. Do it safely. Keep everybody else safe, and make sure that you're not ending up in jail or before me in court. We don't want to see those. And you know, you want to keep you alive. We want our roadways to be safe. We want to know that people out there are driving and they're not driving impaired.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:47] So, Schmitty, when you were answering Dave's question about how do we compare to other places, it kind of sounded to me like you were saying, we can't really tell. There's too many variables. There's this and that. It's hard to tell given that it's difficult to tell. One would really like to know, are we making progress? Is Bozeman doing it better than we are? Does our looking out the window right now it's pretty much gray from October to May, right? Right. Does that have an effect? We have a really vibrant and alive beer food wine culture in Missoula that's celebratory. And it's really it's wonderful. That means there's a lot of alcohol around. Does that contribute to it? Would it be worse in a small town with three bars and nothing else going on? But how do how do these things play out in terms of the type of culture, the type of geography and weather, etc.? Isolation versus community? How does that play into impaired driving?

Steve Schmidt: [00:16:34] Yeah, and well, most of our fatality crashes occur in a rural environment.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:39] So I'm just talking impaired driving not.

Steve Schmidt: [00:16:41] Yeah yeah yeah. Impaired. So that's one of the things that we use utilize to measure this stuff. So in the rural environments have a little bit less opportunity as far as ride share options. You know here in Missoula the city limits they have access to things like Uber or Lyft or City Bus and things like that. So some of those things, you know, help reduce the amount of impaired driving that we have specifically within the city limits. So the rural environment, you know, is a little bit more difficulty as far as finding those sober rides, if that helps.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:09] Sure. That makes that makes sense. If you're in a rural area, you have no other option. Yeah. Or you may feel like you have no other option. We're here and in a place like and we're because we're sitting in downtown, there's a lot of people who can walk to downtown, walk home.

Landee Holloway: [00:17:21] Correct. But there used to be Home Free in Missoula, and that's not happening anymore. And I was just recently and I think it was over in Helena, and I noticed they still have home free. I'd like to bring that back. What? Missoula you could tell the bartender you needed a ride home, or you turn over your keys and they would give you a ride home. There's some money set aside for that, you know, and I know we we live in a community where there's there's Uber and Lyft, but honestly, it's not out there as much as as we'd like to have it. We need some more rides home. There's been a reduction in our taxis. I don't even think we have a taxi service. 

Steve Schmidt: [00:17:53] Right, right. Which really has some of the issues of how our Home Safe program dissolved ultimately. Right.

Landee Holloway: [00:17:59] And so, I mean, I just think personally it would be great to bring that back. And I think that's something I'd like to work on next year, even with the Tavern Association, and reach out to them to see, can we get this back? Because it's it's about our community safety.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:10] Imagine a combined set of funding sources. It would come together to create a pool of money such that if someone asks for such a thing, the bartender calls Uber or Lyft, and that that bill gets paid out of this funding source.

Landee Holloway: [00:18:22] But really, the best way to approach this is have a plan before you go out, for sure. You know, if you're out and you're celebrating and all of a sudden you're under the influence of something, you might not be making the best decisions. And so if you have that already set aside, you didn't have your car keys, you're not downtown and you're going to get a ride home from somebody. Have that plan ahead of time.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:40] Yeah, I get that would be plan A. Plan B might be a home free kind of thing. Yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:18:44] So so backing up from even before the point where someone gets behind the wheel of a motor vehicle and might be set up for failure by way of impaired driving. And as Josh mentioned, it is, uh, it is dark and dreary a lot of the year here in, uh, Missoula, Montana. That might be a contributing factor to depression. Are there resources available for folks who might be in the situation of substance abuse or substance use?

Steve Schmidt: [00:19:11] Sure. Obviously, as far as alcohol goes, one of the biggest resources would be our local AA community and recovery community. As far as that goes, uh, if it's other substances outside of alcohol, there's like our Narcotics Anonymous groups here in town. Those are great places to reach out to. And also SAMHSa has a national hotline that people can reach out to. Samhsa, SAMHSa is the substance.

Landee Holloway: [00:19:36] Samhsa, uh, yeah. Mental health? Uh, no.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:40] It's a federal program?

Steve Schmidt: [00:19:41] Yeah, it's a federal thing. Yeah, yeah, I could I could look it up here and find out. Exactly. But they have a national hotline where people can reach out to and then get access to those local resources for them. I have a lot of it listed on my website under the DUI Task Force, under resources. People can click on there and see a lot of those local resources.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:20:00] Is the DUI Task Force website different than Drive Safe Missoula.Com? If they.

Steve Schmidt: [00:20:04] Go to Drive Safe Missoula.Com right at the top you'll see DUI. Task force. You click on that drop down and then you'll see resources there.

Landee Holloway: [00:20:11] There's also good to remember that there's a lot of substance abuse, chemical dependency agencies who provide treatment to those folks that are in need. And then even with alcohol detoxing occasionally, then someone actually needs to get to the hospital because it's pretty dangerous out there. But keeping in mind that there's a lot of substances that are out there, we're seeing from the state crime lab, those blood tests that come back on the blood draws poly substances. Even if you're taking a prescription medication. Remember to read the labels, be aware if you're impaired or if there's some restriction on when you should be operating a motor vehicle. And then, of course, there's all the illegal substances that are out there. Being at your best and driving your best is not only is public safety, but it's good for your own mental health. There's nothing worse than sitting in a courtroom sentencing someone because they were operating a motor vehicle and they killed them. We do see those cases in justice court of careless driving resulting in death, being out there and being behind the wheel. Be safe. Okay. That is a responsibility everyone has.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:21:07] So, Judge Holloway, you mentioned other substances beyond alcohol. Any trends that you're seeing there in terms of what's coming into your courtroom as far as impaired driving?

Landee Holloway: [00:21:18] So oftentimes when we see somebody in the beginning, it's from a citation where in a law enforcement officer has seen some type of impairment, if they've blown on a breathalyzer, it's those blood tests that come back later that could be testing positive for fentanyl and methamphetamine or marijuana. And I think that's important to keep in mind. If drunk driving DUIs are not just about alcohol, it's marijuana can be very impairing the potency of the THC that is being sold out there recreationally at times, just makes you not in a good place to drive.

Steve Schmidt: [00:21:47] You know, what are the big things there? You know, kind of what she was talking about as far as that poly substance use, that could be anything from the marijuana combined with alcohol. Alcohol combined with over the counter medications like cold medications or prescription meds, if you have any of those substances, if you feel different, you drive different. And that could be even, you know, maybe 1 or 2 drinks, but you're really tired. So you combine that, maybe you're under the legal limit, but you're also tired, so you feel different before you even start consuming alcohol. Now, one drink in and now you're really impaired because you're tired on top of it. So those are all the different aspects. I really think we just need to look out for one another. One of the great things that we're doing is I'm fortunate enough to have been connected with an individual in our community named Leah Joki. She's the first Montanan to ever graduate from the Juilliard School of Acting. And what she is doing here in our community is absolutely amazing, working with people that are, you know, part of the addiction community, working with individuals that come from our prerelease center, working from individuals that come from Judge Holloway's Road court, teaching them how to write their stories in a play format, and then acting them out on stage for not only their own individual therapeutic treatment aspect of things by bringing this their stories in the theater, but also for those who are attending and watching and listening to these stories, that they can relate to them on a level that they've never been able to relate to another story. The therapeutic nature from those sitting in the audience is amazing. Wow. Bringing this to the surface, are.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:19] These performances available for the public?

Steve Schmidt: [00:23:21] We just finished one here just this last week. We had a Thursday Friday event, but she just received some funding, a $10,000 grant and then was able to raise some funds during this event this last week. So we are looking to have a spring program, so it definitely be something we would love to get the community out to, to watch, to witness, to engage and really support this because it's it's providing a level of service to those that have addictions and those people who have experienced addictions through family members and things like that. A level of support that I've never seen before. It is it's truly what movies are made of. If you think of movies like Mr. Holland's Opus or Good Will hunting or something like that, it's happening live right now in Missoula with what? Leah, I don't understand why they haven't started making her movie yet about what she does, but it's truly amazing and they should be making a movie.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:16] What's her organization called? Or what's the program called?

Steve Schmidt: [00:24:19] No joke theater.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:20] So somebody could type in no joke theater, no joke.

Steve Schmidt: [00:24:23] Theater online or Leah Joki. J-o-k-i,you also get to to the no joke theater. Awesome. She spent 23 years in the California prison system, not as an inmate, but as an actor, teaching acting to people who have had like 25 to life and inmates that that, you know, should not be in the same room together because they'll likely kill each other. She was able to to get these individuals to cooperate and act. And it was just it's a beautiful what she does and amazing. Yeah, it was phenomenal. Well, Smitty.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:53] You might have just answered this next question, but we always like to end our podcast by giving our guests the opportunity to share a nugget of wisdom. Good book. You've read recently something that you'd like to share from either a personal or. Professional standpoint. Judge Holloway Schmitty anything else?

Landee Holloway: [00:25:11] I have one organization I'd like to just give a shout out to. Yeah, a little bit different. What you're asking.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:25:16] Know that that that'll work.

Landee Holloway: [00:25:18] So when people are looking for different activities and events and in doing it in a sober environment, the Phoenix organization, it's called thePhoenix.Org. It's an organization that's alive and well in Missoula that actually has basketball and different events where people can go bowling and they can learn how to get into a different type of community and an environment if they want to go out there. Other than that, I mean, I think we all got to just end on let's not wreck the holidays. You don't want to end up in court in front of me. You don't want to end up on Missoula mugs or the jail roster. Go out there, have happy holidays, be safe and keep our roads safe out there.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:25:51] And do some surfing on the web. No Joke Theater, Missoulamugs.com, Drive safe Missoula.com

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:57] Well done. Well well well summarized Dave.

Steve Schmidt: [00:26:00] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely right. Yeah. Just jumping on this campaign, maybe sharing some of that information out with your family and friends because we all take that part. And if we can look out for one another as we're out there enjoying the holidays, we can just keep our roads safer 100%.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:15] So that's a great sentiment to end on.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:26:17] Thanks for joining us. Yeah.

Landee Holloway: [00:26:18] Thank you, thank you. Happy holidays.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:26:19] Happy holidays.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:21] Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot. If you rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:29] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:26:35] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television, better known as mCAT, and our staff in the Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:47] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to communications@missoulacounty.us.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:54] To find out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to Missoula.co/countyupdates.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:27:02] Thanks for listening.