Well, good evening, everyone.

The hour of six o'clock.

I will now call to order this special council meeting of the City Council of Racine.

The first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.

If you could please join me as you are able in that Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

We have one item on the agenda this evening, which is the 2026 budget address.

President Horton, Vice President Harmon, and other esteemed members of the Common Council, members of the public, and those of you watching online, welcome.

I say welcome to the City of Racine 2026 budget address.

As I mentioned in the State of the City Address, there is one big budget challenge, the stone we must roll up hill again and again, and that is the restrictions placed upon us by state government in Madison.

For nearly two decades, we have seen aid to cities frozen, locked away like some miser's gold.

Two years ago, yes, we saw the state aid increase for a single year, but one year and nearly 20 does not heal the wounds that had to be inflicted, does not restore the services that were diminished, does not resurrect the neighborhoods that were ignored and left to languish in that peculiar American twilight between hope and abandonment.

And on top of that, we cannot raise revenue beyond the rate of new construction growth.

While we had a record year last year, that increase does not even keep pace with inflation.

We're like a man running full tilt just to stand still.

I want to thank the voters again for passing the referendum that allowed us to keep our firefighters.

But let me speak plainly, we should not have had to have held that referendum in the first place.

It was a necessity, born of neglect.

Republicans in the legislature insisted on tax cuts of nearly four billion dollars that mostly went to the wealthy instead of funding our police and fire departments, our schools, human services, or health care.

That leaves all of us, all of us at the local level forced to make the decision to cut services, propose referenda to raise taxes, or some unhappy combination of both.

A choice between bad and worse, as Mark Twain once said.

The state has a responsibility, I would argue, a moral obligation to fund local units of government.

What could have been an opportunity to invest in our children's schools and the resource communities across the state need to keep us healthy and safe was squandered, distributed instead for more tax cuts to people who need them the least.

As for local taxpayers, you are paying twice, once for the local services and again for the money that went to Madison that should have come home that went for the tax cuts.

I do have this dream, friends, that we could begin to see that every community, whether rural or urban, has children who want to learn small businesses that want to succeed and neighborhoods that need to be kept safe.

The cuts in grant funding from the federal government have started to sting as well.

Congressionally directed spending has been clawed back, and grants that would have made our neighborhoods safer and more resilient have been eliminated, vanishing like morning mist.

We need state and federal partners for our city to function.

In spite of these disappointments, and they are disappointments that cut deep.

We will persist and make a balanced budget.

We must, for the alternative is unthinkable.

So we have a budget that is based on our values and our vision.

It's about numbers and priority, but it's about values and vision too.

The things that matter when the ledgers are closed, and we ask ourselves what kind of city we are building for our children.

So if we build it on our foundation, we acknowledge that Racine is blessed to be home to a diverse and hardworking community with a proud manufacturing tradition.

We sit on the shores of Lake Michigan between Chicago and Milwaukee, positioned like a jewel between two great cities.

This budget seeks to better position us in the region, to build on economic opportunities that surround us like ripe fruit, waiting to be picked.

This budget invests in our neighborhood.

Whether it is the new exciting developments like the Breakwater or Woodman's grocery store, the neighborhood home repair grants, the clean sweep program to address some of our challenged neighborhoods, or the exciting transformation happening in the Lincoln King neighborhood with the King Center Health Clinic.

This budget continues to prioritize making investments in our neighborhoods, the very sinew and bone of our city.

This budget is about fiscal responsibility with vision, balancing prudent spending with key investments in neighborhoods, economic development, and infrastructure that move our community forward, not recklessly, but with purpose and determination.

This budget is about economic opportunity for all, addressing workforce development, small business support, and job creation, critical for a post-industrial city like ours, working to diversify its economy and write a new chapter in its long storied history.

This budget invests in quality of life because we know those issues matter.

We are making investments in a new King Center, parks, public safety, community services, and Lake Michigan access, the things that make Racine livable and attractive, the things that make a city more than just building and streets.

This is a budget preparing for tomorrow.

We are addressing infrastructure needs, roads, water systems, climate resilience, and modernization while being honest about our financial constraints.

Climate mitigation is expensive but necessary given the frequency and intensity of our storms and the impacts they have for nature will not will not wait on our budget deliberations.

Our departments have several goals that I want to highlight tonight.

There are a few that merit special consideration and mention.

The first is data-driven decision making.

In many places within city government, data is used to good effect to measure outcomes and improved services.

This year, each department will commit to better using data to drive outcomes of their goals, to let facts, not just instinct, guide our hand.

We will continue to focus on lead service line removal.

It is a critical goal.

Safe drinking water is as important as any service we provide to the public.

This year we ramp up our five-year plan to remove approximately 11,000 lead service lines and lead water mains.

This plan is a critically important commitment to our community to improve the health of our drinking water.

It also responds to the federal mandate to remove the pipes and takes advantage of federal funding while it lasts for tomorrow's funding is never guaranteed.

This budget prioritizes Mark Rail.

In 2026, the City of Racine, in collaboration with the cities of Milwaukee and Kenosha, will apply to the federal government for funding to begin planning and environmental reviews for regional passenger rail that would extend service that already runs from Chicago to Kenosha on through Racine to the airport and on to Milwaukee.

This is perhaps one of the most important economic development opportunities in decades, a golden spike moment for our generation.

This budget prioritizes city jobs for city residents.

We will continue our work to reduce unemployment in the city of Racine through our position as one of the area's largest employers.

The Youth Employment Program, the Police and Fire Cadet Program, and our employee incentives are joined by a commercial driver's license training program and a recruiter position to ensure the program succeeds.

This budget codifies the clean sweep and neighborhood enhancements that we know we need to be part of our annual efforts.

Racine will host three clean sweeps events in 2026, giving the opportunity to beautify and strengthen our neighborhoods.

These events will clean up a neighborhood by focusing on city resources to remove debris, replace sidewalk squares, trim trees, fill potholes, and repair homes.

Clean sweeps are critical investments in public safety, quality of life, and shared spaces we call home.

This budget is also about celebrating America at its semi-quincentennial.

Our experiment is the oldest continuously running democracy in the world reaches 250 years next year.

This creates an important opportunity to celebrate our democracy and freedoms together as a community with events throughout the year.

Budgets are also about numbers, so let's get to those.10 to 11.75 per thousand, the lowest rate in 15 years in the eighth year in a row, I have proposed dropping the property tax rate.

When I began as mayor in 2017, the mill rate was 16.93.

Today it is proposed at 11.75, a 30% reduction in our property tax rate, and the lowest rate in 15 years.

Notwithstanding the referendum to maintain fire services, when you add property taxes and fees together on an average 175,000 home in Racine, this budget reduces them by just over 1% to $2,400, a 22% reduction since 2017.

Our borrowing capacity has also improved due to a combination of frugal budgeting and increased valuation and growth.

When I began as mayor in 2017, we were at 58% of our borrowing capacity.

Today, under this budget, we will be at 45% of our maximum borrowing capacity.

We have a lower per capita debt than our per communities and borrow less of our state borrowing capacity than all but one of them.

According to the Wisconsin Policy Forum, at the end of last year, our per capita debt was $1,300 compared to $2,100 for Mount Pleasant and $3,400 per capita for Caledonia.

This low debt ratio remains true even with substantial capital investments that we have made this year.

Let me better explain some of our goals for the devil and the angels both live in the details.

There are places in city government that do an excellent job collecting data and then use that information to better provide services to our residents.

The forestry department can tell you the age, species, and stormwater benefits of every tree in the public right-of-way.

The police department can tell you what types of crimes are occurring, where they are recurring, and make projections that help us solve and prevent crime.

The development department can measure the value of properties in certain neighborhoods and assess whether values in that neighborhood are increasing or decreasing.

The city uses data in a myriad of ways every day to improve its decision making.

Just two years ago, this council approved a budget that established the Department of Customer Service.

This effort merged customer service functions of several departments into one, cross-trained staff to better serve the public and their needs, but it also began the work of tracking customer complaints.

What were they about?

How well were we solving people's problems?

Are we answering their questions?

We now use data to drag people's concerns, allowing us to develop strategies that reduce complaints and improve resident satisfaction, moving the city to more of a data-driven decision-making culture, and it offers several advantages.

It lets us be efficient about resource allocation.

Resource operates as we all know with limited funding.

Data helps identify where investments will have the greatest impact, whether that's targeting repairs to the most deteriorated streets, deploying police resources to high crime areas, or optimizing bus routes based on actual ridership patterns.

It lets us use evidence over intuition.

We can move beyond assumptions about what residents need, for example, surveys can use data and reveal that a neighborhood might actually prefer more quality of life amenities like parks and community centers to less desirable uses, like an overabundance of liquor stores, pawn shops, and pay-day loans.

It provides better accountability when decisions are backed by data.

Cities can show residents exactly why they made certain choices.

This builds public trust and makes it easier to justify spending to taxpayers.

It gives us predictive capabilities.

Historical data helps cities anticipate problems before they escalate, predicting when infrastructure will fail, forecasting traffic, calming strategies, or identifying areas at risk for flooding that may best take advantage of our sump pump program.

This allows for proactive rather than reactive management.

It lets us measure what works.

We can track outcomes over time to see if our programs actually achieve their goals.

For too long, some city activities have been driven by an ethos of, well, we've always done it this way.

Data reveals this quickly so that resources can be redirected and services can be improved.

And it lets us look at equity.

Data can expose disparities in service delivery across neighborhoods, whether it's fewer parks in certain neighborhoods, or choosing the King Community Center to be located in the Lincoln King community because the FQHC data shows us that that is where the health disparities were the greatest.

There is perhaps no better recent example of the use of data than I can point out than the work we are doing in the customer service department.

We acquired software to track the concerns of our residents and have used that data to identify areas of concern.

Looking at comparing 2025 to 2024 data, our residents' complaints have dropped 52%.

This data has also allowed us to identify where we get the greatest number of complaints from our residents.

72% of complaints come from residents raising concerns about services they receive from the Department of Public Works, mostly about solid waste and recycling pickup.

Even though most of our complaints are coming regarding DPW, comparing year over year data, we have seen a 42% reduction in DTW related complaints.

This budget sets a goal of reducing those complaints by an additional 50% by the end of next year.

The improvements in customer service were successful for several reasons.

First, we merge customer service staff into one department to cross-train people, ensure bilingual services were always available, and make it easier for residents to have one-stop shopping here in City Hall.

Second, we use computer software to track what the complaints were about so that we could improve system breakdowns that were generating complaints in the first place.

Finally, we not only decrease the number of complaints by 50%, we increased the speed with which our residents' complaints were addressed and resolved.

Moving ahead, we will install cameras on the garbage trucks to better understand the source of the complaints, improve training, and help reduce workers' compensation costs.

This will give us real-time data to improve services.

This year, the Department of Customer Service will also establish a satellite office at the Caesar Chavez Community Center, giving special focus to Spanish language services to better serve our Latino community.

We're also looking at consolidating some services.

The data-driven approach also helps us identify efficiencies that may be possible.

For a penny saved is indeed a penny earned, as old Ben Franklin would remind us.

This year's budget has the benefit of the American Rescue Plan dollars allocated during the Biden administration.

However, it's never too early to look for efficiencies and savings where they can be found.

There are several that I would like to mention.

In 2026, we will merge the services of public health water testing laboratory into the water and wastewater laboratories, while maintaining our commitment to water testing and quality at North Beach and the Rue River.

This consolidation will allow staff to collaborate and better communicate with the public.

This budget also merges the customer service and finance functions of the water and wastewater utilities into the customer service department and finance department, respectively.

This merger allows for better communication, accounting, cross-training, and ultimately better services for residents.

This budget reduces hours at Pearl Street to Saturdays and creates a plan of action so that next year we can merge the services of Pearl Street with the waste transfer station we opened last year.

It was not the intention to run two facilities, but rather have one place where residents can discard their waste, whatever form it might be.

The groundwork we lay in the year ahead should create the ability to save money in the future by making these operations more effective and efficient.

This budget also prioritizes lead pipe service line replacement.

Let me speak plainly now, because it demands real truth and justice.

There is no safe level of lead for children to consume.

Not one drop, none whatsoever.

As someone who has looked into the eyes of children and seen their infinite potential shining there like stars, I have long committed to removing this public health scourge from our water supply.

For what does it profit a city to balance its books if we jeopardize the health of the very children who are our future?

While we have already removed thousands of lead pipes, and I say this with some measure of pride, but no satisfaction, we have more than 11,000 homes yet to go.

11,000 families still drinking uncertainty with their morning coffee, still bathing their babies in water that carries the weight of our past mistakes.

None of this comes as quickly or as easily as we would like, for the work of justice is always slower than our hearts demand, always harder than our hopes imagine, but we have a plan, a commitment sealed with determination to remove the remaining pipes in the next five years.

We do this both as a sacred commitment to public health and to maximize every federal dollar available to help pay for the removal and replacement, for we must be wise stewards of every penny that comes to serve our people.

I want to thank and celebrate a key partner in this sacred work, the Racine Interfaith Coalition, known to many of us simply as RIC, has long advocated for the removal of lead pipes from our drinking supply with the persistence of profits crying in the wilderness.

They have been community partners in the truest sense, working shoulder to shoulder with high school students and young adults who live in these neighborhoods that are most affected by lead pipes, providing education that enlightens and obtaining homeowner permission with patience and respect.

These young people, our future leaders go door to door, not as strangers but as neighbors, building trustwand conversation at a time, knocking on doors the way opportunity should knock, but too often does not.

Thank you, Rick, for showing us the work of justice requires not just government action, but community soul.

In the year ahead, the city of Racine will embark on an ambitious and legally mandated program to remove more than 11,000 lead pipe service lines across the city.

If residents want to see if their home is in the lead service line area and what year we are planning to remove it, please go to this app that's at the Racine Water Utility and use the tool shown here.

You can see where we plan to be in 2026 and the years beyond.

And while the pace of it may depend partially on the amount of federal funding we are allocated by the Department of Natural Resources, we anticipate a very busy infrastructure to remove lead pipes from our water supply and reaffirm our responsibility to provide safe drinking water to all of our residents.

What I call our golden ticket.

I would like to turn your attention now to what could be the most important redevelopment opportunity for Racine in a generation, bringing passenger rail through our city, connecting us to Milwaukee to the north and Kenosha and from there Chicago to the south.

For 20 years or more, folks have been talking about bringing passenger rail to this corridor.

It's such a good idea, it just won't go away.

Like truth, it keeps rising to the surface no matter how many times somebody tries to bury it.

The way a good story survives every time someone attempts to silence it.

In 2021, Congress allocated 66 billion dollars for new passenger rail projects.

What we have going for us is golden.

Racine sits on an already existing rail line in one of the biggest metro areas in America, stretching between Milwaukee and Chicago like a bridge across possibility, like a promise waiting to be kept.

That rail line puts us within half an hour of more than 450,000 jobs.

Conservative estimates predict more than a billion dollars in real estate investment around the proposed train stations.

I've said it before, and I will say it again, Racine has many opportunities and many challenges.

Not all of our obstacles will fall away from any single thing that would be foolish thinking.

The kind of wishful dreaming that gets gets communities nowhere fast.

But if you ask me point blank, mayor, you can pick one thing, one thing that would help rebuild the middle class, I tell you without hesitation, it would be this.

It would be passenger rail.

That is our golden ticket, friends, our chance to connect our dreams to the broader tapestry of American opportunity.

Last month, this council boldly and unanimously took an historic step, entering into an intergovernmental agreement with our friends and neighbors in Milwaukee and Kenosha.

Since the state of the city address, all three cities have passed resolutions to enter into this intergovernmental agreement.

All three communities passed their resolutions unanimously.

This agreement will allow us to stand as one to begin the planning and design work for a passenger rail project connecting our three cities in common purpose.

The project will let passengers commute all the way to Chicago on the Union Pacific Metro line.

Imagine that.

While this project will take some time to complain, complete, neither Rome nor passenger rail services were built in a day.

This is a crucial and critical first step that could lead to one of the biggest economic development projects in Racine's history.

I do again want to thank Mayors Johnson and Bagdala of Milwaukee and Kenosha respectively for their leadership and collaboration here.

But I would be most remiss if I did not acknowledge again the leadership of U.S.

Tammy Baldwin, who secured congressional funding we needed to put together the strongest possible application when opportunity comes knocking later this year.

We continue to be concerned about unemployment in the city.

For too long, the city of Racine has led the state in unemployment, a distinction no city wants, a crown no community should have to wear.

This council, in its wisdom, has invested in programs that intentionally open the doors of opportunity for city residents to become city employees.

Transit leads the way with 75% of their employees as city residents.

The library is the most improved with more than half of its employees now living in the city.

In the last few years, the percentage of our employees who are residents has risen from 32 to 37%.

Think of it this way.

We can do better.

We should do better.

We must do better.

In the Gospel of Luke, it is written, physician, heal thyself.

As one of the largest employers in the area, we can achieve a great deal in reducing unemployment in the entire city of Racine.

If two-thirds of our employees were residents instead of the roughly one-third who are residents now, we would cut unemployment for the entire city in half.

As an employer, we can begin to heal the scourge of long-term unemployment to be the change we wish to see.

If all employers in the area helped reduce the number of people who are unemployed in the city by approximately 600 people, we would be at the state average for unemployment.

We will need help from other employers to achieve this goal, but it is so important for us to lead by example in this space if we want other employers to do the same, to practice what we preach, to walk the walk, as well as talk the talk.

The first is the youth employment program.

For me, the idea of public service was modeled at home.

My mother was an educator, and my brother and sister both teach at the collegiate and elementary level, respectively.

I was able to see firsthand how a career in public service could really make a difference in people's lives and be rewarding as well.

Not enough people living in the city have that same opportunity.

As we do this work, we find that before we persuade city residents to consider a career in public service, they first need to know what opportunities even exist.

As one participant of the youth employment program said to me, Mayor, it's not that city residents don't want these jobs.

They don't even know about them.

Of the initiatives that my administration has started, there are few that I am proud of, as proud of as the Youth Employment Program.

It gives urgency to our ability to expose young people to city careers and as importantly, exposes city departments to qualified local candidates, so when job openings occur, city applicants have experience in the field.

The City of Racine's youth employment program is a successful eight-week summer internship initiative that introduces local youth to careers and public service.

Since its launch in 2022, the program has become a pipeline for future city employees, inspiring the next generation of inspectors, environmental scientists, police officers, and beyond.

In four years, we've had over 200 interns employed across city departments.

39 of those participants have now been hired into full or poor time city employees.

That means approximately 20% of participants just in those four years have gone to permanent employment here in the city of Racine.

The youth employment program continues to strengthen connections between Racine's youth and meaningful career pathways in local government.

As importantly, it puts local residents on a path to the middle class.

City jobs pay a living wage with health benefits and a pension.

Those residents likely become homeowners and contributing members of the community.

It's the American dream in action.

In the last year, I've had the benefit of participating in the Bloomberg Cities Initiative, where the city was asked to address a problem that required some data analysis.

We took on this topic and found that while there were city residents applying for city jobs, in many cases, local residents lacked the credentials needed to be considered for the positions.

To address these concerns, the budget lays out two initiatives to improve results.

The first is the fact that we've already received the Wisconsin Fast Forward Grant.

We received $350,000 to expand our workforce training efforts over the next two years.

These funds will support the launch of two new programs, commercial driver's license training and the fire cadet program, designed to help residents develop skills for essential family supporting careers.

The CDL training program provides full funding for permit fees, testing, and licensing.

Those participants will be trained for careers in the parks department, public works, water, wastewater, and transit.

The fire cadet programs covers EMT, firefighter, and paramedic training, as well as required certifications and testing.

This program will create a pathway for Racine's next generation of firefighters.

Together, these initiatives will strengthen our local workforce, fill critical service roles, and ensure more Racine residents have access to sustainable family supporting careers.

This budget also proposes a workforce and recruitment specialist.

To expand our impact, we are proposing the creation of a workforce specialist.

This role will focus on connecting local talent to stable, rewarding careers in the city of Racine.

The specialist will combine strategic recruitment, creative storytelling, and community engagement to ensure our workforce reflects the community we serve.

Key responsibilities will include the recruitment of local residents to CDL training, the police and fire cadet program, and the youth employment program.

In addition, the recruiter will encourage local residents to become qualified for city positions and encourage their application for positions through recruitment efforts.

I know this sounds simple, but if we have learned anything about these programs that we have started to move people into the middle class, it is that recruiting people into these spaces is critical for the program's success.

If we want these efforts to be successful, if we want our training program to be a success, if we no longer want to lead the state in unemployment, we need one city employee whose job it is every day to think about these efforts exclusively.

This position will help the city of Racine compete for talent while providing residents with accessible career opportunities in public service.

This community also, or this budget also invests in community neighborhoods.

It reminds us that home is where the heart is.

But for too many in our community, that is not their story.

We have too many homes that have been left to neglect and blight, oftentimes by landlords who are trying to extract as much income as they can from poor neighborhoods, not reinvesting in properties that need love and attention, to say nothing of resources to make them safe and habitable.

Landlords who see dollar signs where they should see human beings.

In his groundbreaking work evicted, Arthur Matthew Desmond lays out how devastating housing instability can be for residents and families in Milwaukee.

But he also lays out just how profitable it can be to be a landlord who does not care for your property, has no concern for the health of its tenants, and sometimes doesn't even pay taxes.

It is a vicious cycle that leads to more poverty, blight, and disinvestment.

A downward spiral that seems to have no bottom.

For decades, these trends were not given the attention they deserve, but there is an urgency we should feel to repair these neighborhoods for our residents who call these places home.

Urban blights creates significant challenges, some of them financial.

In blighted neighborhoods, properties depress surrounding home values, sometimes by 50% or more.

This erosion shrinks the city's tax base, reducing revenue for essential services, while those services often cost more in blighted areas.

There are infrastructure costs.

Abandoned properties require ongoing city intervention.

We are required to secure buildings, cut tall grass, demolish unsafe structures, clear debris, respond to fires and other emergencies.

These costs drain municipal coffers without generating any revenue.

It hinders economic development.

It hinders regional competitiveness.

Cities compete for residents and businesses.

Visible blight drives people to suburbs or other cities, further weakening the urban tax base and economic vitality.

It also hinders public health.

Deteriorating structures pose immediate physical dangers, collapsing roofs, exposed wiring, asbestos, lead paint, overgrown lots, harbor vermin, and become dumping grounds for hazardous materials.

It has real mental health and physical health impacts that reduce the health and quality of life for its residents.

Abandoned properties attract crime and drug activity, creating environments that discourage outdoor exercise and social connection.

And it impacts environmental justice.

And there's simple moral reasons that we need to address blight.

There is a basic dignity and equity that all residents deserve, safe and decent living environments.

Allowing blight to concentrate in specific neighborhoods while others thrive represents a failure of civic responsibility and perpetuates inequality in inequity, a betrayal of the promise that all are created equal.

And it impacts intergenerational impact.

Children growing up surrounded by abandon and decay face developmental disadvantage from reduced education outcomes to normalized low expectations about what communities should provide.

It is ultimately a break with civic trust.

It says to the neighborhood that the community has turned its back on you.

These dimensions reinforce each other.

Economic decline worsens health outcomes, which further depresses property values, which reduces resources for interventions.

Breaking the cycle requires recognizing that addressing blight isn't just aesthetic.

It's foundational to urban health, to prosperity, and yes, even to justice.

Everyone deserves to live in a safe and healthy neighborhood, neighborhoods where the living conditions allow people not just to survive, but to thrive and flourish.

This administration, with the approval of council, has taken bold and decisive actions to invest in our neighborhoods.

We created the rents ordinance, which holds property owners accountable to keep their buildings safe and up to the building code.

Now the neighborhood enforcement division routinely inspects homes and neighborhoods to get them up to code.

We created the neighborhood TID program, which to date has put more than five million dollars in 10,000 home repair and enhancement grants in designated neighborhoods.

We are proudly investing in the Lincoln King neighborhood with a new King Community Center with a health clinic in it and 32 housing units being built around it.

In fact, the governor will be here on Wednesday, commemorating the signing of the last steel beam needed for the community center's completion.

The investments in Lincoln King are nearly 100 million, with more than 80% of it coming from state and federal sources.

But we need to raise standards further.

Part of what the city can continue to do is change expectations for what we demand from property owners.

While we have done good work to date, this budget puts in place additional tools to help set higher standards for our neighborhoods.

Vacant buildings that have sat idle for too long fall into disrepair until the city is often left with raising the property.

Property owners will now have to maintain their buildings through a new registry if their property is vacant.

A uniform code of maintenance is proposed to keep buildings in a state of good repair and allow the city to intervene before the building deteriorates to the point where it is structurally unsound.

This budget adopts the international uniform building maintenance code that many other cities use.

Adult family group homes play an important role in the housing of our community for some of our most vulnerable residents, some of them with above average needs.

We need well-run adult family group homes.

For those that are not well run, that become nuisance properties in their neighborhood, or generate a high number of police and fire calls.

This budget sets in motion an ordinance that makes use of state statutes that allow the planning commission and the city council to hold bad operators accountable for their actions and require occupancy permits for operators.

This budget goes after illegal dumping, particularly in our alleyways where they are a chronic problem.

Now, if you do a legal dumping, we will fine you $5,000 and offer a reward of a thousand dollars for reporting it.

We will install cameras in those areas most at risk for dumping.

These tools taken together can help change the culture of blight that some property owners hold.

It is an expectation that we intend to break with incentives and enforcement with both carrot and stick.

Want to talk now about our clean sweep program and the spirit of our community.

This past week, dozens of city employees were joined by employees at S.

C.

Johnson for our second clean sweep pilot.

It was another huge success, a triumph of neighbors meeting neighbors of community made manifest in what felt like an old-fashioned barn raising, everybody pitched in with many hands that made for lighter work, the way it used to be done before we all got so busy being busy.

Trees were trimmed, sidewalk squares were replaced, bulky waste and trash were removed, fences were replaced, leaves were raked, and smoke detectors were installed.

But that just sort of tells you the to-do list of what we did in that neighborhood.

The surface story, you might say.

Let me tell you about some of the people we met.

We met a grandmother who will receive a new ramp for her front porch so that she can get her wheelchair safely to the sidewalk.

We met a single dad raising his two kids who needs help removing lead paint from his home.

We met a man who inherited his house from his grandparents and had already put in the sweat equity to build a new deck and remodel the interior.

He'll get help with a new roof, and we met two sisters on disability, both struggling with medical issues, who will get help with their siding and fence.

Taken together, these efforts don't just clean up a neighborhood, they build community.

They build a better community, stronger and more resilient than before.

It improves not just on the built environment on those streets, it strengthens the relationships between the city and our residents.

The sacred bond between government and the governed.

This budget seeks to make clean sweeps an ongoing effort in the city of Racine, one that rebuilds one neighborhood at a time, brick by brick, home by home.

If you really want to understand what makes Racine work, you don't have to look at a spreadsheet, although God knows we have plenty of those.

You just have to look at the work of Racine's dedicated city employees.

Every one of them plays a part in keeping Racine moving, and every once in a while we get to see that teamwork in full view, like we did with Clean Sweep.

It was like watching a great machine where all the gears turned together in perfect harmony.

For a few days, the silos came down, those invisible walls that separate us fell away like morning mist.

People from across departments rolled up their sleeves and work shoulder to shoulder, experts doing what they do best, and others stepping in wherever help was needed.

It was collaboration in its purest form.

People caring deeply not just about their work, but about how it serves our community, about how it lifts up our neighbors and strengthens the bonds that hold us together.

And that's really who we are as Racine.

The city has always believed in rolling up our sleeves, in finding local solutions when state and federal partners fall short in making a way out of no way.

But it's not just limited to that.

It captured that determination, and at the same time, it drove creativity in every department and every public servant who keeps the city moving forward against whatever odds we might face.

I want to bring my attention now to the Department of Community Safety and the work that it does to prevent crime.

When I talk with residents about what makes a neighborhood strong, safety comes up in nearly every conversation, but not just safety from crime, not just locks on doors and lights and on streets.

People often discuss safety in terms of fear, trauma, and disconnection, in terms of the weight they carry and the worries that keep them up at night.

They want their children to walk to school without worry.

They want neighbors who look after each other.

They want city systems that take care enough to act before tragedy strikes before the wound is inflicted rather than after.

That's why we created the Department of Community Safety to move from reaction to prevention and to treat safety as a public health issue, not just as a law enforcement matter.

Violence doesn't appear out of nowhere like some sudden thunderstorm.

It grows where opportunity, connection, and stability are missing, where hope has been deferred so long that it withers on the vine.

This department works, this department's work begins there at the root, not at the symptom.

In its first year, the Department of Community Safety worked to understand the roots of violence and the conditions that make people feel unsafe, to name the demons before we could cast them out.

Through the community safety survey, we learned that over 80% of respondents had experienced some form of trauma, racism, or bullying.

These are not isolated acts, random misfortunes or scattered across the community like leaves.

They are indicators of stress and inequity that are woven into the fabric of our community, threads of pain running through the whole cloth.

So we are addressing safety from every angle, expanding youth engagement, investing community-based interventions, coordinating with public health and law enforcement, and supporting families before and after crises occur.

We are developing strategies to stop retaliatory cycles of violence, to break the chain before it wraps around another generation, to strengthen neighborhood cohesion and improve trust between residents and police.

This work that saves lives and rebuilds trust and also aligns city operation with the same goal that every Racine resident gets to live, work, and exist in a same neighborhood without the hope being lost and the fear of crime and dread.

The Department continues implementing its five-year comprehensive safety plan will strengthen collaboration across departments with nonprofit partners and with residents themselves.

When we invest in prevention, in connection and in the dignity of every person, we're not just building a safer Racine.

We're building a stronger one, a community that stands together rather than falls apart.

Our work to reduce gun violence in this space has been substantial, and the numbers tell a story worth hearing.

Non-domestic homicides are down 62% in the last four years.

Nonfatal shootings are down 60% over the time period.

I want to be clear about this point, clear as springwater.

While the trends are headed in the right direction, if you or your family have been a victim of gun violence, it is at a hundred percent in your household.

I don't want to minimize that or paper over that for a second with statistics.

But I do want to talk about what works.

The Department of Community Safety is built on evidence-based models for reducing gun violence.

It takes a public health approach to reducing gun violence by intervening with the families that may be at risk of being the victims and the perpetrators of the cycle of gun violence, stopping the wheel before it crushes another generation.

So let me give you an example, a very recent example of the work that this community does.

For the particular always illuminates the general better than abstractions ever could.

This past week we saw senseless gun violence at the Tyler Domer Community Center, a place that is meant to be a sanctuary from violence and a safe space for families, a place that should be sacred ground.

What makes it worse is this event involved two 16-year-olds engaged in gun violence and a 14-year-old was struck by ricochet gunfire as well.

Children, all of them, barely started in life.

Now the police quickly got to the scene, made arrests, and the case will make its way through the court system.

The police did an excellent job solving this crime, bringing swift justice as they are trained to do.

But in the wake of that gun violence, the families of the injured are headed to the same hospital in concern for their loved ones' safety.

They are angry, they are confused, they are hurt and afraid for what might happen next.

And they are all in the same space, grief and rage mixing together like volatile chemicals that could explode at any moment.

This, this space right there, is where the Department of Community Safety plays a critical role, stepping into that dangerous space between tragedy and revenge.

Working with police, the county, and the school district, our staff arrive at these scenes to answer questions, to try to assuage the pain and confusion the families are feeling, to direct them to much needed family support services, and critically to abate the desire that someone might have to seek revenge through additional gun violence.

They stand in the gap, as the Bible says, between what has happened and what might happen next.

These efforts prevent crimes that might emanate from an event like this, crimes that would spawn, more crimes and an endless cycle of retaliation.

Why this is not all the department does, it is a critically important part of it, and a significant reason why our homicides and non-fatal shootings are down 60%.

Up until now, this program has been a hundred percent grant funded.

There are opportunities for both state and federal grants to extend this program.

However, we will not know if these grants will be awarded until after this budget has passed, which puts us in the uncomfortable position of planning for an uncertain future.

This budget repeals the policy set last year that requires this department to be a hundred percent grant funded.

As an aside, there is no other department that has such a requirement.

No other service we've decided can only exist if someone else pays for it.

It also creates city levy funded positions to keep the three staff in this department going.

Our expectation is that we will get one or both of these grants, but there are no guarantees, and we cannot gamble with people's lives on the hope that grants may that may come or may never come.

The work that the Department of Community Safety does is based on the research done on gun violence interventions in Boston.

The book, Bleeding Out, lays out their experience with unflinching honesty.

What they found in Boston, which could be a cautionary tale here as well, a warning written in blood if we're wise enough to read it, is that after seeing initial success with gun violence reduction, the erroneous conclusion they made in Boston was that the gun violence had abated, that they'd solved it, that they could reduce these efforts and move on.

The exact opposite was true.

By reducing these gun violence prevention efforts, Boston saw their gun violence increase again, climbing back towards levels they fought so hard to bring down.

Let's learn from other communities' mistakes so that we don't have to repeat them.

If we want to prevent crime and reduce gun violence, we need to keep these efforts going, steady and sustained, not starting and stopping, like a car with a bad engine.

In the year ahead, we will look at how to better identify who is coming and going from our community centers in response to the recent event.

A Racine municipal photo identification card will be established to address some of these concerns.

Sometimes there is a time to build, and sometimes there is a time to tear down.

Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a season for all things under heaven.

And while much of this budget addresses the things that we will build up, there is also a season to demolish, to clear away what no longer serves us so that something new might grow.

People have no doubt, have no doubt noticed the former YMCA demolition that occurred this year that can now make way for an exciting new development.

But that is not what I'm talking about here.

The McMinn ramp on the corner of 7th and Maine needs to be torn, has needed it for longer than we'd like to admit.

We have already had complaints in the past year of crumbling debris from the ceiling, falling on cars parked there, concrete raining down like some kind of slow motion disaster waiting to happen.

In the year ahead, this budget would fund the removal of the McMinn ramp and replace it with a surface lot that can accommodate those who park there now.

I also want to address the need for traffic calming.

It's one that we often hear about from residents who watch cars speed down their streets like they're competing in some kind of race.

This budget lays out several traffic calming efforts to increase public safety.

First, if funded, it will install several audio-aided street crossing signals at traffic lights in the downtown.

Second, it adds pedestrian crossings with lights and signage.

And third, it continues our work with speed bumps, simple solutions that save lives.

The adaptation, frankly, the money required to deal with climate change is expensive and ongoing, a cost we cannot avoid no matter how much we might wish otherwise.

Rising temperatures lead to more frequent and intense storms, requiring us to upgrade our sanitary and stormwater systems to comply with the law and keep pollution out of Lake Michigan, that great body of water that defines us.

To address this, the sanitary sewer utility will hire full someone full time to manage the sump pump program, our best effort to reduce info and infiltration into the sewer system.

There are funds not being deployed because the program isn't being used, and what the effort needs is someone to handle the customer service side of the program so that it's easier for residents to participate.

We continue to work with partners to seek funding that will make our lakefront more resilient, better able to withstand the storms that are coming with increasing frequency and fury.

Just this morning, there was a story in the news about how Lake Michigan is five degrees warmer than normal.

Five degrees, which may not sound like much until you understand what it means.

This summer, the water utility faced an unprecedented challenge, odor in the water supply caused in part by an algo bloom in Lake Michigan because of rising lake temperatures, turned our water supply into something odiferous and pungent.

In response, the Racine Water Utility will install an additional carbon filter to remove the contributing circumstances that happened last summer.

All of these efforts are in response to how climate change is impacting our built environment, the infrastructure we depend on every single day.

But we also continue to do the other side of the ledger, to do our part to reduce the carbon we contribute into the environment, for we cannot only adapt, we must mitigate and prevent.

We will pursue passenger rail, which is a much cleaner form of transportation than cars clogging our highways.

We will continue to install electric chargers as we convert the city fleet of vehicles one by one from fossil fuels to clean electricity.

Next year, the King Center upon its completion will be our first net zero building, producing as much energy as it consumes, a model for the future.

I also want to address lakefront safety, protecting our greatest asset and the people who enjoy it.

So just as a point of reference, Racine is the only community in Wisconsin that still has paid lifeguards on Lake Michigan.

Every other community simply posts signs that say swim at your own risk and washes their hands of the responsibility.

In contrast, this budget expands that effort by adding an additional lifeguard at Zoo Beach.

Despite our efforts, Lake Michigan is the lake where more people drown each year than any other Great Lakes, a grim distinction that reminds us of the power and danger of water.

We have added signage and rescue rings at other areas to discourage swimming in unguarded areas.

The fire department continues to partner with Racine Unified to educate young people about water safety.

The city remains open to working with the community on other efforts that might improve water safety, for the lake gives us so much, and we owe it to ourselves to treat it with respect.

I also just want to make reference to net new construction and city services.

One other thing to remind ourselves is the opportunity to put our net new construction to work for our residents.

This is the largest increase in net new construction we've ever had in city history.

This is an increase that also allows us to use that city levy for the library to ensure that this year it is again fully funded, books and learning for all who seek them.

I want to close tonight by addressing the opportunity, well, really the encouragement to invest in something I hope we can all believe in America itself.

Specifically our nation's 250th or semi-quincentennial.

Next year will mark an opportunity for us to reflect on this great experiment in democracy, this radical notion that people can govern themselves.

We are the longest continuously running democracy in the world, a fact worth celebrating, a fact worth protecting.

As we go to take part in this celebration, we do so in extraordinarily divisive times, times when the center seems not to hold, when things fall apart in ways that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago.

The federal government is sending military forces into American cities.

Our immigrant community feels targeted and afraid, and what once seemed like foundational values, expanding the American dream to celebrate and include our diversity in the pursuit of a more equitable country now seems to be verboten, forbidden, cast aside like yesterday's newspaper.

So let us mark the year 2026 with the celebration of what is the best country in the world.

Let us remember what liberties and values make us the best country in the world, lest those freedoms be lost like sand through our fingers.

And let us put our love for our country above any enmity we might feel for other political factions.

For if we cannot do this, if we cannot find common ground, we will lose what generations before us fought and died to preserve.

The celebrations in the year ahead will be about celebrating the things that bind us together as Americans, as opposed to the work of opposing what our political opponents are doing.

The hope, maybe it's naive, but the hope is to remind ourselves that the freedoms and traditions that make us Americans are stronger than the political debates that divide us, or at least they should be, must be, if we were to survive as one nation.

These events will be in person, face to face, the old-fashioned way.

Nearly four decades ago, the linguist Noam Chomsky wrote a book called Manufacturing Consent, in which he argued that what was then known as the mass media had its own economic agenda.

Today we live in a news world dominated by social media, where attention is prolonged by making us angry or scared, sometimes at one another, feeding our fears and divisions like parasites.

This has created a climate of what one author called the age of manufactured outrage, which analyzes how social media platforms convert emotional intensity into profit, positioning outrage as an industrialized algorithm-driven activity, a business model built on making us hate each other.

One of the best ways to overcome this manufactured rage is to meet, as my kids would say, IRL in real life.

The goal is for all of these events to be in person, not on our smartphones, not on Zoom or Teams, so that we might want to talk to one another and remind ourselves that the traditions and freedoms we hold dear need to be stronger than our divisions if we are to keep this country going for another two hundred and fifty years.

When you meet someone face to face, when you look into their eyes and shake their hand, it's harder to hate them.

Harder to see them as the enemy.

They become human again, complicated and contradictory, just like you.

This isn't to say that there isn't a need for dissent, far from it.

As we watch our liberties threatened by this administration, it is no surprise that this past weekend, more than five million people across the country were there in protest, taking to the streets in numbers not seen in decades.

Some government officials describe the protest as un American, which shows how far we maybe strayed from our founding principle.

I would argue that there is something inherently American about a protest, something as American as apple pie and baseball.

As we watch democratic norms threatened, as National Guard troops are federalized just 70 miles to the south of us, as health care and food are taken from the poor and vulnerable to pay for tax breaks that favor rich people, and as immigrant families fear for their safety, of course we will protest.

That is our right, that is our duty, our heritage as Americans who have never been afraid to speak truth to power.

But we also we also need to engage in things that we can all agree on as Americans, things that unite rather than divide us.

We should be engaging in the opportunity to register people to vote.

For voting is the foundation of democracy, the peaceful way we make our voices heard.

We should make the Fourth Fest the best parade to celebrate our 250th birthday.

We will admire the fireworks with additional matching funds to make this celebration even better and bigger, a display of light against the darkness, a reminder that this country still has so much to celebrate.

Lakeview Park has the opportunity to build a new playground with playground equipment, a dream playground that could be boundless and fun, where children of all backgrounds can play together.

Aldermax suggested, and I agree, that we should ask the community to contribute funds to match the city funds here in what could be an exciting semi-quincentennial playground park, a place where future generations will make memories.

In addition, we will plant 250 semiquinnial trees across the city, each one a symbol of hope, stewardship, and growth.

There's a Greek proverb that says, a society grows great when people plant trees in whose shade they will never sit.

That is the essence of public service.

Every investment we make in safety, in clean water, in opportunity is a seed for those who will inherit the city after us.

We will come together to bury a time capsule, one that captures a snapshot of what we are today to be opened in another 50 years, a message to the future from this present moment with all our imperfections and all.

We can celebrate all the founders and re-founders who made this great experiment move forward.

A story of a moral universe that bends toward justice slowly and with great effort, but bends nonetheless toward expanding our freedoms and opportunities to more people.

We the people means all of the people, with all the diversity that our city and country represent, not just some of the people, not just the people who look like us or pray like us or love like us, but all of us.

Ben Franklin was asked after the ratification of the American Constitution what kind of government we had.

He replied that we'd formed a democratic republic and then paused with a warning that has echoed down through the centuries.

If you can keep it, he said.

So that is the challenge for all of us, even in these very uncertain and politically divisive times, perhaps especially in these uncertain times.

I believe that there is still enough goodwill amongst enough of us that if we put down our phones and come together as a community, we would discover, or perhaps even rediscover, that we hold more in common than we realize.

That is what is right about this country, that what is right about this country can fix what's wrong with it, and that there is much to admire about this country that should enjoy all of our respect and admiration.

If you can keep it, those four words contain a warning and a promise, a challenge and a hope.

They remind us that democracy is not a given, not something we can take for granted and expect to endure without effort.

It requires vigilance.

It requires participation, requires that we show up and do the work generation after generation.

It requires that we see the humanity in each other and not as enemies, but as fellow travelers on this journey, that we extend grace to one another even when we disagree, that we remember we are all Americans trying to make our way in this complicated world.

That we remember we are all Americans trying to make our way in this complicated world.

That work ahead will not be easy.

But it doesn't solve every problem.

It doesn't heal every wound, and it can't right every wrong.

But what it can do is move us forward, step by step, neighborhood by neighborhood, toward the city we want to be.

A city of opportunity and justice, of safe streets and strong communities, of clean water and good jobs of neighbors helping neighbors and government serving the people.

That is the Racine we are building together.

That is the America we are trying to preserve.

Thank you.

And may God bless the city of Racine and may God bless these United States of America.

Thank you, everyone, for your attention.

I am gonna uh refer the last item over to the city administrator who will go over the budget process that will begin over the course of the next few weeks.

Okay, thank you.

Mayor Mason, uh, in order to set out the agenda so committee members are aware of what follows in this budget process.

Also, folks who are joining us, either viewing at home uh or here in the council chamber.

There was a resolution that was passed by the common council on June 17th.

That is resolution 0567-25 that delineates the structure of the budget process going forward.

Tonight we heard Mayor Mason's budget address.

Um we're also introducing the budget.

Uh when we're done here, the budget books that have been prepared for you by the finance department are available in the aldermanic office just to the back of the council chamber.

Uh tomorrow, Tuesday, October the 21st, we will have a budget overview that will be provided by Finance Director Kathleen Fisher.

The following day, Wednesday, we will have our first committee of the whole meeting that will be for presentations from departments.

On Thursday, we will have a second committee of the whole uh meeting, and we'll have if there are any remaining presentations and also questions from members of the common council.

On Monday, October the 27th, we will have the finance and personnel committee scheduled on Monday.

Um every other Monday, in this case, reviewing the budget.

Uh, there will be a public works and services meeting on Tuesday, October the 28th, public safety and licensing on Wednesday the 29th, and then we return to committee of the whole meetings on Thursday, October 30th.

This will be our third committee of the whole meeting, and that meeting will be a public hearing for members of the public to comment on the budget.

Uh Friday, October 31st is another date to keep in mind.

Budget amendments are required to be submitted in writing uh by the close of business on October 31st, and per the resolution passed by the council.

Uh, those need to be submitted in writing to the finance director by the close of business Friday, October 31st.

Amendments submitted after the date will not be considered by the council.

Uh, there is a council meeting regularly scheduled for Tuesday, November the 4th.

On Wednesday, November the 5th, there is a committee of the whole budget amendments will be debated and voted.

And then on Thursday, November the 6th, we have a scheduled special council meeting for final budget adoption.

Uh, there is a finance and personnel committee meeting scheduled for Monday, November the 10th.

Public works and services on November 11th.

If there are any uh veto from the mayor, that is the deadline for mayoral vetoes on Tuesday, November the 11th.

Wednesday, November the 12th, there is a public safety and licensing committee meeting, and Tuesday, the November the 18th.

Uh, the last scheduled budget date is uh devoted to any potential mayoral veto overrides.

Thank you.

This does conclude our agenda, so at this time I would entertain a motion to adjourn.