Note: The official minutes indicate the meeting occurred on January 21, 2025, but the provided metadata specifies January 31, 2025. This summary uses the provided date as instructed, with the discrepancy noted.
The Racine Common Council met to consider a range of items including a public-private partnership for Shoop Golf Course, the creation of a downtown Community Oriented Policing (COP) office, a marketing contract for the Department of Community Safety, and several alcohol licensing matters. Public comments were heard on food truck hours and city customer service.
Good evening, everyone. The hour of six o'clock having arrived on this twenty first of January twenty twenty five, it is my honor to call to order the city of Racine Common Council. First item of business is the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. If you could please rise as you are able and join me in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Any discussion on said minutes seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, that motion carries. Everywhere we look, black people's work has transformed societies across the nation. And whereas we honor the contributions of black residents who have enriched our community to their leadership service and cultural contributions. Now therefore I, Corey Mason, mayor of Racine hereby proclaim February 2025 Black History Month here in Racine, Wisconsin, and call upon community members to reflect upon the significant achievement of black Americans. And witness thereof, I have hereinto set my hand and cause the seal of racine to be affixed on this 21st day of January. Well, now I move on to public comments. If the clerk could please uh read the procedures on the public comments before we begin. The public comment segment is an opportunity for citizens to speak directly to the common council. Speakers will limit their remarks to three minutes. There shall be no dialogue or interaction between the speaker and elected officials or staff. The time is not intended to be a debate or a discussion. The common council shall not hear personal complaints or attacks against any city employee or elected official or any matter related to individual claim, citation, appeal, or lawsuit. Profane, disruptive, threatening or conduct that otherwise impedes the safe, orderly, and effective connected. Just one minute, sir. Okay. Please begin. Good evening. I'm speaking on behalf of uh my name is Edward Scarvers. I'm the owner of ID's Taste of Soul Seafood, Chicken, and more. It's a food truck. And I'm speaking to you guys uh because we had had a discussion uh last I think it was last Tuesday about the hours of food truck. And I wanted to let you guys my point of view of this, you know, what racing is a small city, and I know they're trying to say that uh they want us to stop operating our businesses at 12 o'clock at night. You know, and if you're not familiar with racing, I know you guys are. There's not that many restaurants open after about 10 o'clock. These food trucks, not only do we pay the same amount of taxes or food taxes as the bigger restaurants, you know, and they have no limit on when they can stay open, when they can open, when they can close, any of those things. You know, and you kind of limit it us. We did talk to the uh chief of police, and he is willing to have more dialogue with the food trucks, so then we can kind of work something out, you know, maybe like one 130, so then everybody can be satisfied, you know, so we can try to make this fair for everybody. You know, along with that, I don't think you guys really understand that we have approximately I think 12 food trucks in Racine, you know, but only four of them reside in Racine. You know, and that's tax dollars that actually come to Racine based on that. These other these other dollars go to Milwaukee, go to Oak Creek, wherever they might be, you know, and I think it's a lot of things that we probably should be looking at more so than just the hours of a food truck, but the cleanliness and stuff like that when you have trucks that are not reporting to their home base when they supposed to, but those four trucks that are based at Racine are doing those things. So we might have to suffer because of these other trucks, and I'm not saying it's them, I'm not saying it's whoever, but what I would like you guys to reconsider those hours and allow us, along with the police uh chief, to discuss this before you take a vote because I think it's only fair for him to hear us, and even if he wanted to come out and he can, you know, I think I don't know if any of you guys have ever came to one of these food trucks. You know, I know you might not be up late, but you know, when you get hungry, it's only really one place you can go, and that's Wendy's on the west side, and then you got Taco Bell on the north side. You know what I mean? Some people don't want that. Some people want something different, you know what I mean. And I I think I'm just like trying to hammer home that it's almost 1,400 a year that we pay. The same as McDonald's, the same as Wendy's, the same as everything. So just give us that same opportunity as you give them. Thank you. Next is Kevin Lynch, 1200 West. Hello, my name is Kevin Lynch, uh 1208 West Street, uh, owner of AK Wings and things. Uh again, uh I'm here to speak up about the hours of operation as well. Uh I think uh shutting down at midnight is not only uh hurting us, but it's hurting our employees as well. We have employees that everybody, everybody is not a first or a second shift type of person.