We're going to talk more about Halloween and the, but the mayor suggested people do with Halloween, it should be a lot of fun.
His honor, Mayor Corey Mason is here for the City of Racine. You got a lot of serious stuff to talk about this morning first.
We do. And you want to start off with the budget or the snap?
Why don't we start with the food benefit stuff? It's quite a bit, right? It's quite, it's 25,000 Racine area residents that rely on those benefits.
And so with the government shutdown in Washington, the expectation is that those benefits are going to end November 1st, which is Saturday.
Now, if you're on food benefits or you've been on food benefits, you know, they work, but it's basically like a debit card.
And it reloads automatically and for a lot of people that happens the first of the month.
And so, you know, it's been in the news a lot and so we think people have heard about it, but some people won't have heard about it.
And, you know, they may try to show up at the grocery store on Saturday thinking that they've got benefits on their card and they're not going to be able to buy groceries.
And so here's to put that in context that's, you know, cities about 77, 78,000 people, 25,000 people in the area suddenly don't have access to those food benefits. That's a big deal.
It's a big deal. So we certainly hope the Republicans will bring Congress back in session and they'll reach some agreements that these food benefits and, you know, extension of the Obamacare health care benefits continue.
But boy, it's certainly cause for concern.
I will say if people want to help, there's certainly food pantries that are, you know, a lot of church groups are doing food drives and whatever.
If people are looking for the best way to do something about it, to supplement what we're doing, the United Way of Racine County is working with the Racine County Food Bank.
The best way to help honestly is just to contribute directly to the United Way. They have a link right on their front page and on their Facebook space to contribute directly if that's what people want to do.
I mean, if people want to do a food drive, we're doing one at City Hall. People can drop off food starting this afternoon in the clerk's office, the customer service department there.
But it's a, it could potentially turn into a real crisis. And it's one thing if it happens for a day or two, but if this continues for weeks, again, if the main source of food revenue for a third of the community is suddenly gone, that's a crisis in the making.
What about with benefits women and children with benefits as of right now what we're hearing is those will go through November.
It's slated to expire December 1st, if the government doesn't reopen. I mean, Washington just needs to, you know, the president, the Republican leadership, they need to come together and actually convene Congress and and pass a budget.
I mean, really playing, you know, playing with people's lives in terms of access to basic food. It's just really pretty, pretty frightening.
How do you get them back? Take away these salaries from Congress. Yeah, folks, and then I'll get paid. How do they get paid? They passed the law that said they get paid no matter what and they passed their own laws. Right.
How did that happen? Why? Why is it? Why aren't these news reporters challenging? Yeah, like Johnson up there saying, how come you are getting paid? Yeah, it's a fair question. It's a fair question.
I hope more reporters ask about it. The governor was here last week talking about this exact topic and post the same question, you know, they're taking benefits away from people who literally rely on these benefits to eat and keep their kids fed and everything else.
But it's a fair question. How is it that a government shutdown works it out in such a way that the legislators who refuse to come to an agreement still get paid?
Is the secretary of defense getting paid? Why is why are you getting paid? Why is the spokesman of the White House getting paid? So there are carveouts when they do this. So the military, you know, the discussion is the military still continue. It does. I mean, there's the VA continues to be to be funded. So they do these shutdowns, but they sort of carve out pieces of things that shut down and pieces of things that don't. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't think it makes sense to most Americans.
It's just on the ground here, if one in three residents are close to it, who may be dependent on these federal benefits to eat, right? And if you take that away from people, you know, whatever the differences might be politically, they've got to find a way to fund the government and and extend healthcare benefits for Obamacare and extend food care benefits so that, you know, women and children and seniors who are in fixed incomes can have enough food.
I must see them giving in. He was saying, yeah, the Republicans don't want to upset the president. The Democrats are have their heels dug in with the Obamacare. So I will say, I mean, Republicans control all three. I mean, they've got the house. They've got the Senate. They've got the president. The president himself once said, boy, there is a government shutdown. It really be the responsibility of the president to bring everybody together. And they have that on video. And so he should do that. He should bring everybody together and reach some resolution and move forward. And maybe, you know, less time on carrying down
the White House and more time on giving the government to function would be a better use of his time. And I just want to mention this, only because I heard people talking about it. I had never heard of this. Yeah. But I looked it up. And there it was in the New York Post and a few other publications as well. But the New York Post is pretty big about watch out on Saturday night.
Looters are going to go into supermarkets and start stealing food because they now, whether it really happens or just talk, I don't know, but it made the newspapers.
Yeah, I made a prestigious need of the New York Post. And I don't think that's all going to happen on the first day. But again, if there's 25,000 area residents who rely on those benefits every month to get by and all of a sudden, you know, they go to the store one day. And maybe they're hearing this broadcast and they go, no, I need to prepare the other thing that I think, you know,
we're seeing United Way is doing amazing work to try to supplement the space, the food banks trying to step in the church, you know, I go to Holy Communion, we have a food pantry.
And everybody's trying to do more to step up, but it's nowhere near enough to fill the gap if food benefits go away from the federal government. There's just not enough there. And so I think there's things that we can do for a period of time to try to supplement what the federal government does through charity and through other giving, but it's a real challenge.
To say the least. And so we've got to be aware that this is happening. And the first and foremost, I really wish the federal government and the president could pull people together and fund the government and give people their health care benefits and give people their snap benefits.
I relate their food share benefits. But in the wake of that on the ground here, right, in the real world, where cities and counties have to interact with people that are interacting with this.
You know, the nonprofit sector, other folks are really stepping in to help, but and that can be a, you know, a bridge for a period of time. But, you know, if this happens a day or, you know, a week, it could be really bad if this goes on for weeks.
You know, I don't want to predict what it could be like, but I would certainly in the meantime, you know, so first and foremost, call your members of Congress and tell them to get back to work and pass a budget and give people their food benefits.
But if you want to help with the local level, you know, United Way of Racine County has a really good way for people to give and contribute and get involved. And so people want to act locally in that space. I would encourage everyone to do that as well.
It'll be a month Saturday. Yeah, because on our city, we're seeing mayor Corey Mason is with us. Let's talk about the city budget. And I don't confuse this when we.
You're news with Mr. Jay Wattles talks about the county budget. You got the city by everything going on at the same time. We're talking about the city of Racine budget, right? So yeah, so every year in October and early November, we debate the city budget.
This year's budget was introduced last week. And so we're in the middle of about a three week process or then the legislative branch, the city council has its review of it.
But tonight is one of the nights that if the public wants to comment on the budget, they are certainly able and available to do that. So that's the public's opportunity to give any testimony.
There'll be another opportunity next Wednesday as well after the council proposes its amendments that people could give public comment.
But overall, it's a budget that reduces the tax rate just a little bit. Yeah, I noticed that. Yeah, it's going down.
So when I started as mayor, it was 17 and changed per thousand. Now it's 11.75 per thousand of the value of your home.
So that rate's been been going down for a bit. Now people may say then, well, then mayor, how come, you know, my bill doesn't seem to be going down.
So keep in mind, when you pay your tax bill, you pay taxes to the city, to the county, to the technical college, and to Racine Unified.
So it's all on the same bill. So if those other entities are raising rates or in our case in the city, voters did approve a referendum this April for nine firefighter positions.
And they passed a school referendum as well. So you may see your tax bill adjust because of those things.
But there's some good things in the budget that I just wanted to highlight that I think are really important.
First and foremost, we're really stepping up our work around neighborhood enhancement and doing more of these clean sweep projects that have been a huge success.
And having some more enforcement tools for the city to just requiring landlords and other property owners to keep their houses in a state of good repair and funding those operations.
We've got a great lead pipe replacement program that we've got coming up that we're really excited about.
We have a department of community safety that's been really integral in working with the police and public health and the county and the school district to reduce gun violence in this community.
So we're hoping to extend that work.
And this is something that I've been talking about for years, but we talk about it in every budget. It's really important.
So unfortunately, the city of Racine has led the state and unemployment since 1990.
And it's a distinction I'd really like us to lose, right?
But when you look at city government in addition to providing services, it's one of the biggest employers in the area.
What 900 employees and right now two out of three of them don't live in the city.
We're not legally required to allow to require people who are employees to live in the city, but we can encourage it.
And so what we want to be able to do and do a better job of is letting city residents know what jobs are available in city government and getting them trained and and access to those jobs.
CDL drivers training that we got a state grant to implement.
We've got our youth employment program that's been very successful where we have paid apprenticeships for eight weeks in the summer and all our departments.
And those are great.
But if we could get to a place where two thirds of our employees lived in the city instead of one third.
We would no longer leave the state and unemployment. We would be off that list.
So we really want to invest in staff and time and resources to make sure that city residents know about city jobs, which have healthcare benefits and good wages and a pension that people can be a part of.
The way I described is this city residents pay for 100% of city wages and they get about 37% of the benefits of it.
So we want to open that up to more people.
So people going to hear you say we dropped the rate. It's dropped again and you're right thinking I said welcome my bills more expensive.
It's good that you noted. It's not just city taxes on there. It's everybody else's taxes on there.
It's cool district. It's county. It's the technical college.
But you know, I get it. Most people look at it and they look at the one number and they think was as bigger or smaller than the number from last year.
I get that. But if you look at the city line, you know, that that rate has really come down.
So we've done a lot of good work there.
When you factor in fees and everything, it's about just it's not a huge it's a little bit shy of a 2% reduction.
When you factor in the tax rate and and the fees. So the fees do go up a little bit in a couple of places.
But overall, it's it's a pretty flat budget. Like I said, a slight decrease.
And we do a lot of good work with and live within the means that we have.
It is one of the things that unlike the federal government, we can't just print money and go into debt.
So we we balance the budget. We we use a lot rely on the federal grant money that that is still there from the Biden administration.
And we use some of the reserves that we have in place, but that puts us in a place where we've got a balanced budget that's pretty flat for most residents.
And one time banks all over the country printed their own money.
Yes. It was no scary thought.
I know. And you would get bank notes from banks all over the country.
And some banks wouldn't accept them. Some did. And we got to there.
There were some receive banks that printed them out one really time. Yeah.
Yeah. My grandfather used to collect, you know, coins and bills and whatnot.
And I was like, what are these? But there was apparently a received bank that that once printed its own.
Which was I guess the practice in the country. Yeah, it was ill banks printed their own money, but they weren't really good across the country.
Other banks wouldn't accept them.
Now we talked about the government shutdown effect being snap.
What are the programs in the city of Racine? Do you depend on for government funds that you're not getting?
Yeah. So there's just a lot of.
The most immediate thing is there's a bunch of grant funding that we've applied to that we're supposed to receive.
That just isn't coming in for now, right? Because there's nobody to call, right?
I mean, just sort of like what do you do? Like, how do we find out about this grant program?
What's going on with height? Well, there's really nobody there to answer your questions.
What's going on with these grants? So as it stands right now, we're still in 2025 and spending our 2025 allocation.
And so for the most part, our benefits aren't the direct human service ones.
So the county is responsible for food stamps and for workforce and those sorts of things.
So they get the money that is being sort of shut off through the state and then through the county.
But then for the city for us, it's public health services, it's workforce services.
It's the work that we do around some of the day to day operations.
But thankfully, most of our grants came in in big chunks at the beginning of the year.
But if this goes on much longer, I mean, we rely on police funding from the federal government,
we rely on fire department funding from the federal government, we rely on public health.
And then if you look at our transit system, that's 80% federally funded.
Every transit system in America is 80% funded by the federal government.
If they were to suddenly turn that off, I don't know how you would get the buses to keep running.
Now again, we're on sort of a 2025 grant that we're expanding at these points.
So it should still be okay.
But if this goes on much longer, you will see services come to a halt.
Let's talk about the department of community safety.
Yeah.
So this is a relatively new department.
I was established with some grant funding.
And you know, it's really made a big difference.
Milwaukee's had a program like this, Green Bay and Madison have similar programs.
But it basically says, look, we don't need to just solve crimes.
We need to look at the things that are causing some of this gun violence to happen
and prevent those things before they happen.
And so we've had for two years now, our department of community safety,
which is made up of three people.
And they've been able to do two really important things.
First of all, as they've had enough money to subgrant, money to groups like neighborhood watch,
and safe and sound, and fight to end exploitation, which goes after human trafficking,
efforts that are just really pernicious in this country.
So that's been really positive.
But what they do that's just really powerful is they look at what are the root causes of gun violence
that we're seeing in this community and across the country.
And it's based on a model that came out of Boston.
So I'd love to tell you that I was smart enough to figure this out myself.
But it's really borrowing ideas that have worked really well.
But basically it looks at, look, if there's this gun violence that happens, what causes that?
How does that happen?
And what we find is a lot of the people who are victims of gun violence are also likely to be the perpetrators.
It's a relatively small group in the community.
And if you can intervene there before gun violence occurs and redirect that activity in a way that's very effective, you can prevent it.
And you can also, when you work with the DA's office and the judges and say, look, we need a swift and certain response
that people are engaging in gun violence.
It can't be that we're getting around here when they go in front of a judge.
But in between that time, you can really do things to make sure that this gun violence doesn't spin out of control.
Let me give you just one example.
A couple of weeks ago, we had a shooting.
Unfortunately, one of our community centers involving three teenagers.
Kids way too young to be involved in gun violence.
But there's three of them are shot.
They go to the hospital. They're all taken to the hospital.
All three of their families show up at the same time.
They don't know what's going on.
They don't know if one party or another is to blame.
And so this is a space for the Department of Community Safety intervenes and make sure that they know what's going on
with the health of their kids there in the hospital, but also make sure that what's happening in that waiting room
doesn't escalate into more violence.
The people don't decide to seek revenge or do things that would make things work.
That's just one example of one of the things that we can do to sort of cool those passions when people are upset, understandably so,
and might think of taking on, taking matters into their own hands with more gun violence.
Since we've started this program, homicides are down 62% and non-fatal shootings of people getting shot are down 60%.
It's really making a difference.
We've had really good response from the police chief and from the county employees that do this work and the school district people who do this work.
So it's really important work and we need to keep it going.
It's in the budget and it's going to be up to the council if they see value in this program and having it continue.
Finally, the Halloween decorating.
Yeah, something fun.
So just as a reminder, trick or treating is Friday night from 5 to 7.
If you're going to do, yes, if you're doing candy, please leave your porch light on so kids know that they can come to your house.
But a little bit of fun.
I've just noticed, like, man, people are really, it used to be that Christmas lights were the big thing, but more and more people are decorating with those 12-foot skeletons.
Yes, we are decorating their front yards and ways that I've just never seen before.
So, you know, it's nothing but bragging rights that you get for it, but people are submitting their decorations at their house for, you know, best decorated house in the study of Racines.
So if you want to go to our webpage or our Facebook page and see how to take a picture and submit it, those are due, you know, coming up here pretty quick.
So we want to announce tomorrow who's got the best decorated house in the city of Racines.
So if you think that's you or a neighbor, what have you take a picture and send it in?
There were some really good ones out there.
Oh, man, there's a really creative member.
I like the ones with these big giant spiders crawling down the front of their house and those 12-foot skeletons are frightening.
They are. They're amazing.
I get the chills thinking about it.
Okay. Thank you very much for coming in, Mayor.
My pleasure. Have a safe and happy Halloween, everyone.
Yeah. Thank you for coming in and you keep that arm in good condition.
We'll do.
Two months ago, you broke it?
Yeah.
How's your window doing on your house?
It's repaired.
That's back together.
You got a broken window.
You got a broken arm.
Okay.
It's life.
Thank you, Mayor.
It's honor city perceived Mayor Corey Mason.
