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'DRAFT
<br /> 1 have great pictures, and I just talked to Matt on Tuesday and told him we were coming to this Board of Adjustment
<br /> 2 hearing, and he wished us good luck and still says that this, if he could have found any other people on the planet to
<br /> 3 sell the property to, we win the prize. So that's kind of, and it's 3 minutes from my farm, so from my son's farm, so 1
<br /> 4 love the fact that it's in my backyard, that it's a part of my community. Again, like, I am a macro-level social worker, so 1
<br /> 5 like to think about big systems and how we can change policies and programs to incorporate a larger number of people,
<br /> 6 especially people with disabilities, because that is my passion. And there are 1 in 39 individuals who have a diagnosis
<br /> 7 of autism in our country. These are our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, our neighbors, and we need to
<br /> 8 create spaces for them to feel welcome.
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<br /> 10 Ryan Moffitt: Gary?
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<br /> 12 Gary Cullen: Yeah. She's a tough act to follow, so lower your expectations. But I appreciate the opportunity to share
<br /> 13 our vision.
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<br /> 15 Leon Meyers: Excuse me if you could just identify yourself.
<br /> 16
<br /> 17 Gary Cullen: Oh, I'm sorry.
<br /> 18
<br /> 19 Gary Cullen: Gary Cullen.
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<br /> 21 Leon Meyers: Good.
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<br /> 23 Gary Cullen: Duly sworn in. Thank you very much for the reminder.
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<br /> 25 Leon Meyers: All right.
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<br /> 27 Gary Cullen: But I do appreciate the opportunity to share our vision for creating a sustainable business in the
<br /> 28 community that engages and employs people with disabilities. So, we see The Nest as the perfect environment to train
<br /> 29 individuals in skills that are valuable to the community, skills such as cleaning, marketing, gardening, customer service,
<br /> 30 administrative, as well as enabling a safe and welcoming environment for both interactions with the community for both
<br /> 31 neurodiverse and neurotypical people. So, the reason I'm excited is I have two kids with disabilities, young adults,
<br /> 32 males, down syndrome and then autism. And it allows me to bring my passion for those young men as well as my
<br /> 33 passion for building businesses. So, my first career, 25 years of building marketing agencies. And started an agency,
<br /> 34 built that for 25 years and had about 500 full-time employees, so I feel very confident about the ability to kind of build a
<br /> 35 business, of building The Nest. More importantly, in the last 18 months, I've been spending time and bought a business
<br /> 36 in Durham, a laundromat, and grew it from 4 employees to 13 people, a third of which have disabilities, and our revenue
<br /> 37 has grown, and our customer service has grown. So that is the kind of anticipated response that we'd expect at The
<br /> 38 Nest. And then lastly, a good friend of mine has a similar facility in Portland, Maine with the same construct. And he is
<br /> 39 about 7 years ahead of our journey, so he has given me a working plan, both the dos and the don'ts, so I'm very happy
<br /> 40 for his mentorship and his participation in the process. So, from a perspective of timing, what we're looking at here is
<br /> 41 that we're planning on leveraging the next 6 months to kind of plan, build budget, the operating plan, and get the team
<br /> 42 together, from which we will start building the cabins and the bathhouse into'24. We hope to have that open into '25.
<br /> 43 Once we have a full-time operation team into '25, we'll open that facility and then turn our attention to building the, 1
<br /> 44 prefer to call it a training facility, cause the bulk of the work that's going to be done is kind of training individuals into
<br /> 45 those skills that we talked about happening at that main facility. And that will be operational hopefully by the end of'25.
<br /> 46 So, ideally, that's how we envision it, and I'm excited to share that with everybody here tonight so you can not only
<br /> 47 understand the personal passion for it but also the experience to kind of bring it to life.
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<br /> 49 Ryan Moffitt: Thanks, Gary. Can you talk about just a little bit, when this is fully operational, what you all envision, you
<br /> 50 know, a day-to-day operation looking like?
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