Cory Sebastian is here, Alder, for the 15th district, and I made you a Congresswoman a
little while ago.
Not yet.
Okay, I'm going to look close and record a mile of that.
All right.
Not yet.
Let's start off with a little question that maybe you know, maybe you don't know.
All right?
Yes, sir.
I had it.
Oh, yeah.
There was a failed constitutional amendment back in 1960, and you'll be in government.
You might know this.
A failed constitutional amendment in 1960, would it give an Americans a vote on whether or
not to go to war?
It failed.
Do you know why it failed?
No, sir.
Okay.
The people who voted yes were required to enlist and so it failed.
All right.
Well, that is a good piece of a little facts for the morning.
Now, we're not doing anything like that and proceeding hopefully.
Okay.
I asked everybody who's either an Alder or running for office, and I asked him the same
question.
The last time you were in here, what do you want to do this?
I mean, I don't know what the upside is.
I wouldn't want to be at a restaurant, even the restaurant you own, Sebastian's restaurant.
Somebody walking up to you, you're enjoying a nice dinner, enjoying the wine and the food.
Somebody says, hey, they make it too much noise in the street.
The cars are running too fast.
What are you going to do about it?
I mean, no matter where you are, it's so much going to call up and complain to you about
it.
Why would you want to deal with that?
Well, that's why I don't go places, but at the end of the day, why I do it, serving
people is my love language.
It has been my entire life.
That's how it was brought up, being in the hospitality industry, and then with being
in the non-profit sector, I love helping others.
I'm maybe I'm a crazy person, which I think I am, but I just love doing everything I can
for other people.
I don't know.
I just really enjoy it.
And it's so fulfilling, it feels good at the end of the day to be able to make a difference
in people's lives.
Well, that's good.
Okay.
So how long you've been on Alder in the 15th district?
So I started in October of 2022.
So that was a unique situation where there was a vacancy in my district, like sort of exactly
what's coming up with district two with that vacancy.
So the same process.
Is that Molly Jones?
Of course.
And I was saying story.
Love Molly.
She was in here when she was very nervous about coming in.
And I assured her, I said, it's just going to be a conversation.
I could see she didn't want to do it by the end.
She said, Oh, this was fine.
When can I come back?
Right.
And unfortunately, she passed away recently and that was sad.
Absolutely.
Okay.
So you're an Alder.
There are more things to do.
What do you want to do with the city?
You have one vote amongst many in the council.
So what do you want to do?
One of the things that I've said and I'll continue to say is I can't fix or alter or
change the entire city.
What I can do is the best I can do by my constituents.
I can take care of our neighborhood.
I can take care of their needs.
And then also have my one vote, try to my best to represent them when it comes to council
as a whole.
At the end of the day of looking at the bigger picture, I would like to possibly reunite
this city and help you a part of the healing process.
And there's a lot of animosity and there has been and I would like to be a part of the
change for good.
What kind of animosity?
Well, I mean, I think it's no secret that there's been challenges between council members
with the mayor, with directors, with constituents.
I feel as though things are pretty divided-ish across the board.
And we're all better together and I want to get back to that space.
possible to do it?
Absolutely.
What do they, we have to, I mean, I've been around for a couple of years.
I've never seen the whole country more divided than now.
I mean, this is something I've never seen before.
I, you know, I take that back during the Vietnam War, who were very divided in this country.
When Richard Nixon was president, very divided, and we now have that ended, that didn't
end well.
So what do you, what can you add to it to bring back peace and harmony?
I believe so, I was at the League of Municipalities Conference a couple of years ago and there
was an author, that wrote a book that said, that was called, I never thought about it that
way.
And that really resonated with me.
It's sitting back and listening to another person and be like, oh, there are good parts
of what everyone is trying to do because everyone's passion is the same, right?
We're all in this for the people, for the city.
So let's continue on that.
Let's keep reminding each other why we are doing this.
It's not for ourselves, it's for those we live around.
So give us, before we take quick break, I want to, which boundaries of the 15th district
we're talking about?
Because a lot of people don't know what district they're in.
So the 15th is the furthest north of Racine.
So I, and I would say it goes as far north as three mile, but actually there's a little
patch past three mile behind Pinin Dolan there that's still a part of the district,
and then goes far south as north street, but and then it goes, it's a really odd district
and then we go as far west of some parts of Douglas, but not all of, and then we go
as far as east from some parts of Erie to not.
It's a, it's a very interesting.
If people could see my hand motions right now, I'm trying it out with my hand.
Did I hear that you wanted to build a wall between Racine and Caledonia and have Caledonia
pay for it?
Was that true?
Absolutely not because everyone knows I do have Caledonia as well.
Okay, if that was you who said that, I guess it was wrong.
Cory Sebastian is here.
She's your 15th district alder and she's running for office again.
She's going to want your vote.
We'll talk more with Cory coming up in just a moment here at WRJN.
Cory is here.
Cory Sebastian and she is our 15th district alder.
I still, I feel better now saying alder.
I would say alderman all the time and it bothered me because I, if I was there and somebody
said, well, we're using alder woman for you, Don, and I wouldn't like it.
So I use alder.
Is that?
I prefer alderman.
Oh, do you really?
I do.
I do.
There was somebody who is may or may not be in importance these days told me years ago
that I should say alderman because it doesn't sound lazy.
So I have been going with alderman alderman alderman alderman Cory Sebastian is here from
the 15th district running again.
The election is April 1st.
That's a tough day to have an election on April fools day in it.
You know, say, well, Cory, you lost them.
It's the April fool.
I mean, it's people there.
I actually have a pretty good April fool story for you.
So several years ago, maybe 10 years ago, I was in, I think it was 10 years ago.
I was actually out of town with the Ruby and Violet high ladies and I get a call from
the police department at four o'clock in the morning and I was like, why is the Caledonian
police department call me at four o'clock in the morning?
Someone had driven through our restaurants into the bathrooms, crashed through the whole
thing.
So as I'm texting to everyone the next day and putting it out that we're close, the whole
thing.
I was like, is this an April fool's joke?
I was like, no, absolutely not.
This did happen.
It happened.
Yes, it did.
It happened and it was not fun.
But luckily, everyone was safe.
But yes, everyone was.
You see those videos of people crashing into places, yeah, it was wild.
So it was not an April fool's joke, but I did get the weekend off.
Okay, we got a couple of referenda is referendai, referendums, referendai, referendee,
referendums.
I like referendai though.
I like that.
Okay, referendai coming up.
And one is for the fire department's ones for the school.
Mm-hmm.
How'd you talk about them?
Give us your opinion.
Yes, absolutely.
So I would like to start with the fire department referendum.
At the end of the day, and I'll actually, I'll put these two together.
At the end of the day, as we're looking at what the cost would be to the taxpayer, yes,
it's $30 per 100,000 for household, roughly for fire each ish.
And at the end of the day, we want taxes to get lowered, right?
But they're really, that's just not going to happen.
Things are going to cost more as we move forward in life.
And we have to think about what do we want to spend our funds on?
Well, I think children, schools, fire, and safety are pretty good investment as far
as what we want to spend our money on.
And you know, I'd like to say that the city had this money tree, right?
So that we could support it or our USD and the county.
So everyone could support it and we wouldn't have to go this way.
But again, that's not the way the world works.
So the fire department, my father was a Milwaukee firefighter.
He was near and dear to my heart.
I believe that the fire department should have every single thing that they possibly can.
They are risking their lives every day, every day.
And it's, it's true.
I mean, the stories that I've heard and being able to be equipped and have enough staff
to be able to take care of the citizens' versing, that's an old brainer to me.
And regarding the RUSD referendum, if you look over, you know, so, you know, it's 190
over five years, and then as it gets dispersed out over those five years, obviously, it increases.
And that's where operations, I lived with a teacher in Milwaukee.
We both worked two jobs.
And I remember what she did for her students and what she personally contributed
from her own, we both worked two jobs at that time from her own personal money
so that these kids could have simple things, simple needs.
And she didn't care that much about herself.
She cared about her students.
And I believe that the teachers, I believe the majority of teachers are that way.
It's the least we can do.
They are taking care of our youth.
They truly are.
You know, we hand them off.
It's up to them, you know, and we want to make sure they got what they need.
And there's enough, enough of them, enough money for operations so that our students can thrive.
But that mean the youth, that's our next generation.
We need them to thrive.
And hopefully they're not going to live off their screens forever.
But cross her fingers, I don't think I don't think we'll win on that one.
My father's sister was the teacher in the New York schools.
And one day I saw her when she brought her briefcase, a briefcase home, and she was doing
some work.
And she had a teacher's edition of a book that we were using in our class.
And I said, can I see that?
As you can have that, I had the teacher's edition of the book.
And of course, I couldn't keep my mouth shut.
I told everybody in the class, I was like in third grade, and I told everybody in the
classroom, the teacher, can I see that book and she took it?
I just kept my big mouth shut.
What did we learn, Don?
What did we learn?
When you're in third grade, you want to tell everybody, I got the teacher's edition.
Let's talk about one of the topic here before we go.
And it's about dogs.
You're a doggy person.
Yes.
I wanted to bring some joy to people's mornings.
Everyone loves a good dog story.
But the one that I wanted to bring up is Hope Safe House.
We've donated, I've volunteered, we've done our best to contribute to them as best as
we can.
And that's where we got my latest brother, Charlie.
So he's been a pleasure, what made me think of it yesterday, it was 41 degrees, but it
was sunny and there was no wind.
We went on a walk without a coat and it was just so wonderful and it was so great that
he's in our lives.
And without their help and Katie's canine and with Dorf Astoria, we wouldn't have the
opportunity to have this lovely, boisterous, beautiful man in our lives.
You can look at my Facebook page, there's a lot of photos of him, and we're so thankful
that there's organizations like this in our community that are allowing folks to adopt
and then help facilitate, you know, any of these animals and creatures of any kind get
to the homes and be happy where they should be.
So if we could all be more like dog rescues, I think the world would be a better place.
That's a good idea.
Now I feel about dogs, I have cats, dogs, hamsters, I have, my father had pigeons all his life
for 60 years.
So we've always had animals crawling in our house.
Corey, thank you very much, Corey Sebastian, who is our alderman, who are the 15 Alderman
district district, and she's running for election again, April 1st, April 1st is the
election and go to your polling place and vote.
If you don't vote, don't complain, lose up, you lose your right to complain if you don't
vote.
And good luck to you.
Thank you so much, Don, it's always a pleasure.
The mornings are not my favorite, but seeing you makes it a lot better.
Oh, look at that.
All right.
I can't vote for you.
I'm not in your district.
So that was wasted.
I love you anyways, man.
Thank you, Corey.
Thank you so much.
Corey Sebastian, and she wants your vote on April 1st.