I'm closing in the morning, double URJ and shake it morning to receive Mayor Cory Mason.
Thanks for sitting in with the library.
Yeah, great to do.
And once you have these cities, money's going, and that's where it's going.
Look, it's a really great library, they do fantastic things out at the library.
It's such a great community resource.
Every dollar is accounted for, right on the movie people say we put the money on the
big screen.
Well, it just came out with a really great graphic showing what the return on the
investments to the community, like, you know, what taxpayer dollars go to it in the
broader economic benefit, what that looks as.
And it's, I think it's like a threefold, like, for $3, we spend on it.
The community gets $3 back in services and economic activity.
So, you know, not only is it great community resources and edifying to, you know, create
readers and bring great programs to the community, but it has a positive impact on the economy
as well.
You said earlier, we played Soulman by Sam and Dave, I got to get this out before I
forget about this.
Yeah, yeah.
And you played in a band in high school, but it wasn't like that school.
Middle school.
It wasn't a marching band.
It was a rock band.
So, I went to Walden for middle school and Al Klassen was the director.
I'm trees long, we're tired now, I don't even, I spent years since I've seen him.
But at Walden at the time, the band was called HHB, which did for a horror con horn band,
the joke being we sounded like a bunch of geese when we were first learning to play.
But that year, at the beginning of the year, he had us all over for an event and we watched
the movie Blues Brothers, and this was a band that had like three vocalists and, you know,
a rhythm section, you know, bass guitar, rhythm guitar drums the whole bit is like, we're
going to do this.
We're going to do the Blues Brothers soundtrack, and so that's what we did that year.
And so, you know, we went to Florida to go perform it, but like, this wasn't like your
normal sort of concert band sort of thing.
It was like a legitimate rock and roll band, and we did the whole Blues Brothers soundtrack
that year.
It was a great experience.
And you played?
I played the saxophone.
Any good at it?
I was.
Yeah.
You know, I played through college, actually, and I hadn't picked it up in years.
Had I known this, I would have made you bring her with you.
Had I known this fun fact before you came in, I would have embarrassed you, but that's
what so man didn't play this morning, reminding me of like, oh, I remember, we did this
in band when I was in middle school.
Okay, I see orange barrels everywhere, roads are being dug up, and this is for the lid
pipe replacement, replacing all the lid pipes.
Now, I actually, from my house to the street is a clay pipe.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
We had a check once, we had a camera scope through it, and this isn't a great shape.
You got a couple of branches going through it, but no, he's in good shape.
It's a clay pipe.
Wow.
Not a lot of those left.
We actually have some areas that still have a wooden pipes, if you can believe it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember on the sixth street.
Yeah.
They had a wooden, they dug it up, and they'll, these wooden pipes, they're still in good
condition.
It's kind of amazing.
Yeah.
How long they last?
So what's going on with all these?
So, yeah, so the federal government has said, and rightly so, because it's not good for
human consumption.
It's particularly bad for young kids.
If you've got lead pipes, and if any of that lead leaches into the drinking water, it can
be really bad for kids.
Now, we treat the lead pipes with an additive that keeps it from corroding, but the federal
government has rightly said, you got to get rid of those pipes.
And so, it's a mandate, but the good thing is there's also federal dollars to go along
with it.
So, last week, we learned that we were going to get a $40 million grant to do lead pipe
removal.
So, that's an exciting opportunity for us, instead of doing, you know, just a couple
hundred lead pipes removed every year, which is what we've been doing for the last decade.
It'll get us to a place where we can remove the remaining 12,000 pipes in the next five
years.
So, it's an exciting opportunity to replace those lead laterals and those lead mains to ensure
that people have safe drinking water.
What's it being replaced with?
Oh, it's a good question.
Are they plastic or what?
Yeah, that's a good question.
I don't know.
I don't want to be guessing.
I know they've talked about it in the water commission in terms of what the replacement
is, but it's best despite being, you know, obviously, it's best, but a non lead non-toxic
material for certain.
You know, it's hard to believe, but I went to school.
All the tiles in the ceiling were asbestos.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, the reason taking the y-down took so long is we had to get really asbestos every
time the DNR would come.
Oh, we found some more and it's just, you know, but it has to be carefully treated and
removed and put into special landfills to make sure it doesn't cause any more pollution.
But if you think about it, the number of schools or hospitals or public buildings that, you
know, for years just had asbestos everywhere.
We had asbestos shingles on the back of our house, whereas growing up, and during the
summertime, they were cool.
So my friends and I used to come over and put our tongues on them.
With this asbestos shingles, we put our tongue back in the 60s, nobody, they didn't know
anything.
So we used to put our tongue, it was cool, and we used to lick the shingles, it was asbestos.
My dad had asbestosis because when he worked in big buildings in Manhattan, they had
the pipes wrapped in asbestos and when he took this covering, it just spilled all over
the place.
But they didn't know anything.
I'm not going to 50s, eight, they didn't know anything about asbestos, it's like cigarette
smoking.
Yeah.
It does not burn.
I mean, if you have asbestos anywhere in your building, it really is an effective fire
suppressant and retardant, it will not catch fire, but it's also terribly, terribly toxic.
Home repair loans.
Yeah.
So we have a home repair program that we're doing in now five neighborhood tids, and if
you want to go to our website, you can see if you're in one of those neighborhoods.
We gave out over 400 grants last year to homeowners to do up to a $10,000 repair on their
home, just to get their homes back up to code or to do an enhancement on their property.
But you know, one of the things we hear from a lot of people in the community is like,
you know, some of our houses are really falling on hard times, they don't look nice, the
porches might not be safe, the roofs might leak.
So this is a home repair grant program that we do through the neighborhood tids to create
a funding source for people to be able to repair their homes, and it's good for the
homeowners because it gets them to a place where it helps them out with repairs that they
need.
And it's really good for the neighborhoods.
It stabilizes the neighborhoods and removes blight and makes it a safer place for everyone.
What we did with our house was now we have a house is over well over 100 years old.
We pick one project a year, and we get that, and now I hire people to do with a good
contract right here.
So one thing you get that next year, we'll worry about the next thing and by the time
you get done, you're out of the new house.
Yeah.
It just takes a couple of years, but you can't do everything at once because you can't
afford it.
It's true.
I have a neighbor lives on Chatham, and he always asks me when you come in to ask him
about this, the home loans.
What is the now for his home?
I don't know what he makes.
I have no idea what his finances are.
How does he apply for a loan to get his house repaired?
So there's two programs on the home loan yet to be in the neighborhood, but assuming your
friend on Chatham is, it's between Melvin and Gould, and so Chatham wants to be there.
So assuming he's in that.
No, he's not.
He's out of Gould.
Okay.
So if you're south of Gould, you're not in that neighborhood.
If you're not in that neighborhood, we have another program where you have to income
qualify for the loans, and so you have to make under 80% area median income to qualify.
So we have sort of home, home repair loans for other parts of the community as well.
So in some parts of it, it's not income based to do the neighborhood to grants, but in
other parts of the community, it's like, hey, what about me if you income qualify and
make less than 80% of the county median income, which is most residents, you can qualify
for it that way.
City received mayor Corey Mason in this morning, and we're talking about a whole bunch
of items, but this one's a really big one.
Eddie violence and nuisance properties, and I got to find out more about these nuisance
properties, because I never heard of them before, but told about two months ago, when I
got a from your press release from your office, and what is that nuisance property?
What's going on in these places?
Yeah, let's talk about that.
Sure.
So we've had nuisance property ordinance on the books for a while.
In the last round of the budget, we added some additional language into our ordinances,
really put a little bit more teeth in it, but basically a nuisance property can be classified
at nuisance property for one of a couple reasons.
One is if you have multiple police calls and fire calls to the same address over and
over again, you can be labeled a nuisance property, right?
The other is if you have multiple building code violations, and we have to keep coming
back.
Like, look, you got to fix the roof.
You got to fix the windows.
You got to have this in a state of good repair so that people can live there and be healthy
when they do.
You can be a nuisance property that way.
So a couple of the properties that we've mined towers, one of them, just in the last couple
of years, we've got over 800 police calls.
Now where is that?
I mean, it's sort of kitty corner from the library.
Oh, I don't know where that is yet.
So over 800 police calls to that same address, 800 over the last couple of years.
What's going on in that building?
Well, that's what we're trying to figure out.
So we, you know, we have the police, when we declare you a nuisance property, the police
chief sits down with you and says, look, you've got to come up with an abatement plan because
we keep coming out here for the same purposes.
You've got to do something here in the building to make it safe for everybody to live here.
And it can't be that, you know, you're just going to call the police every time that there's
a problem here.
You've got to address the root problems.
And so ideally, we go through that.
They correct the issues and go through it.
If they don't, they start to get fines every time the police have to come out and respond
to a call.
And then if that doesn't work, ultimately, you know, the potential under state law is,
um, is the property could be put into receivership and somebody else would wind up owning the
building.
Yes, they're going to change anything.
No.
If you, if somebody else owned it, yeah, I think that's the idea.
Actually, if you get different, I mean, if a crime is crime, I mean, the owner of the
building can control the crime, can I mean?
Sure.
So look, look, if you have people who are always calling because like, look, people are
breaking into the building, why don't you have security, um, on the doors?
So it's a, people can't just walk in or why don't you have somebody to front desk to
make guests sign in so we know who's coming and going, why don't we make sure that there's
alarms on the doors when people come in and out on the stairwells to make sure that
people aren't breaking in.
There's, there's things that they can do, um, as, uh, as property owners and it is their
responsibility, particularly in these properties that are federally subsidized housing, it is
their responsibility to provide a safe and healthy place for those residents to live.
That is, that is their contract with, uh, with the government like, hey, we're going
to provide housing.
Okay.
So, okay.
So this has to do with the government subsidies for that.
Not direct.
I mean, it's not, it could be any home, it could be, it could be any multifamily, it could
be an individual home, it could be a bar, right?
I mean, so it could be any sort of things, I mean, we declared a bar a nuisance property
just last week.
Um, but you as a landlord have a responsibility to have a safe and healthy place.
So it could be a business too.
Sure.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, um, so this is like a bar, people calling the police, how many, it's just, it's a number
of times you have to go there and, yeah, yeah.
And so, so if we're, we're going back to the same place over and over again, right?
I mean, it's one of the definitions of insanity, right?
It's doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
So for property owners, they do have a responsibility to make sure that the place is safe and healthy
for their residents to live or for the, the homeless to live in.
So whether it's a giant, gaping hole in the roof or not having running water or multiple
police calls to the same address over and over again, um, you'll get declared a nuisance
property.
And then we want to work with you.
It's like, Hey, we need to do something differently here.
So we're not, you know, going out to the same place over and over again.
Um, now we do not count like domestic violence calls or, you know, abuse calls or any of those
other things we want people to report in.
Uh, if they're victims of crime, we don't sort of count those kind of calls, but if we keep
coming out to the, to the same property and, and the management of the property is not
doing what they're supposed to be doing to make it a safe and healthy place to live, uh,
you will get declared a nuisance property and look, look, we hear from people all the
time.
Like what is going on in this neighborhood?
What is going on with this property?
Why, you know, why can't you do something different here?
And that's, you know, what we do.
So the police chief works with those property owners and says, look, let's come up with
the plan, uh, so that we get different results, struggled strength and the violence,
yeah, you're never going to get rid of crime.
It's going to be even in the wealthiest, most posh neighborhoods in America.
Yeah.
There's break ins.
Right.
So I think what this is, this is actually part of our gun violence initiative, right?
And so again, you know, safe and healthy neighborhoods, it all sort of plays in the
same thing, whether it's the home repair grants or going after, you know, banned property
owners and declaring on nuisance properties, but this is a little bit more of the prevention
work.
So we have this department of community safety and its job, its job is primarily to prevent
crime.
We still need the police to solve crime and go after the back guys when they do bad things,
but we learned that we really need to not just fight crime, but fight the causes of crime.
So what, what this struggle to strengthen the program is about is just identifying people,
young men who might be in a position where they're likely to be victims or perpetrators
of gun violence and does interventions with them.
So they do these trainings where they just talk to people about like, Hey, how do you resolve
conflict?
Hey, what do you think your future looks like?
Hey, what do you think this will mean?
And so they had a graduation ceremony on Sunday at the, at the Bryant Center and Judge
Mitchell came down from, from Dane County, is African American judge there and just gave
a really powerful presentation to these young people.
You know, he went up there and he put his robe on and said, all rise, you know, the, the
judges here and he went through, you know, the, what he sees as part of his job as judge
is making sure that the kids are treated fairly as they go through the system.
If they need to be, how the accountable for bad action, we should do that, but we need
to make sure that the people have access to the resources that they need and, and try
to break the cycle of violence before it continues.
And then he called one of the, the participants of the program up and he took his robe off and
put his robe on the kid and he said, you know, someday you might be the judge and some
day it'll be your job to make sure that people are treated fairly under the wall, under
the law when they come to your courtroom.
So it was a really powerful program and really, you know, starts to ideally get people
to see differently about what their future might look like and, you know, sometimes it
feels like, but I can't change things or this is just how things are.
This is just what violence might look like in my neighborhood.
And this is really intended to disrupt that.
So they had over, you know, 70 people participated in the program and it was a really great
event. And so sometimes, you know, again, you need to have the police do their job and
solve crimes and arrest people when they do bad things.
But it's a really good investment of time and resources to try to prevent those things
before they even occur.
In our church, when people get baptized, young people, they do a testimony before they
get baptized.
And they've done some pretty bad things and they're not that old and they talk about their
time to the police, their time to the drugs, they turn themselves around.
Yeah, not doing that anymore.
So it is possible.
It is just because you see a kid in trouble say, well, there's another one for the prison
system.
Yeah, it doesn't mean that.
It doesn't.
But we've also found if you intervene with kids and their families earlier on, you really
have got a better shot of taking those choices off the table and helping them make better
decisions by giving them access to resources.
Now you need to do the other side of it, too.
If you're going to do gun violence and commit gun violence against other community members,
their consequences need to be swift and certain and severe and we need to do that side
of the ledger, too.
But before we get to that, we should try to do everything we can to disrupt that so that
young people really have a good shot at life and they're not ruining their lives or other
people's lives with some bad decisions.
Everybody makes mistakes.
They do.
They do.
They do.
If he didn't take a bite of that apple, everything would be perfect.
But unfortunately, she wanted to taste that apple.
Okay, it's the most wonderful time of the year because the tax bills are coming in her
mail.
So my neighbor got here.
I didn't get mine yet, so they all go at it at the same time, I'm not sure why your neighbor
got it.
I heard that if you don't get it with an eight days, then it's free.
Wouldn't that be great?
That's what I heard.
It's like that 30-minute delivery guarantee.
It's not a pizza delivery.
If you don't get it in 30 minutes for it.
Okay.
Now I did hear somebody complain by tax bill shot up, but not for city of recene.
It actually probably taxes for the city of recene, the city part went down.
So all the other stuff on there that increased our rate went down, but some of the bill did
go up.
So we did pass a fire referendum this year for nine firefighters.
So we did add money, voters decided to add money to the levy.
So you might see an increase in the city portion of it because of that, even though the rate
is going down because the referendum passed to pay for those firefighters, you might see
an increase.
And then we also passed a school district referendum, which was there.
And then as an extra bonus, the state legislature and its wisdom, instead of sending money
back to the schools, said, you know what, we're not going to give the schools more money
this year.
But if school districts want to raise property taxes even more, they can do that.
We're going to give our taxes, this tax revenue, a way to rich people who don't need it instead.
And so you're seeing a pretty decent increase in property taxes this year, but mostly driven
by those two referenda.
And frankly, you know, Madison needs to do right by property taxpayers and actually send
resources back to schools, back to cities.
So we can provide these services without keep putting it all on the property taxpayer.
Well, I like my garbage being picked up.
I like to have a firefighter standing by in case something happens.
I want police standing by in case something happens.
You got to pay for that stuff.
You want a library, you want services, you got to pay for this stuff.
It's not free.
You don't get a free meal every time you turn around.
But I'm pretty happy.
You know, I don't mind you years ago, my brother lived on Long Island, his term property
tax bill was $15,000.
Wow.
It's a lot.
Yeah.
And I look at mine and say, woo, it's not that bad.
Yeah.
You see some of these rich homes in America, hey, my friend, $25, $30,000 a year in property
taxes.
That's a lot.
That's a lot.
Yeah, but you live in a rich neighborhood, you know, right?
Firefighters show up in Gucci shoes.
I mean, you get to pay for that stuff.
Mayor, thank you very much for coming here.
Thank you.
I don't think I'm back until next year.
So I just want to wish everybody a happy Hanukkah and a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year
and just really encourage everybody to stay safe out there.
And if I could just end with this, I also just want to really thank all the city employees
who do great work to provide services or police and fire department, all the folks in
public works, all the folks at the library who do great things every day to serve this
community.
So thank you very much to them and Merry Christmas, everyone.
The people who empty the trash recycling, they're out on the coldest days of the year.
They're out in the rain, the snow.
If you find something, a gift card, you can give them, I think the max is $20.
And if you can find something like that, give it to them just, it's just a show of appreciation
for all the work you do because I tell you something, I wouldn't want to do that job.
It's tough work.
It is.
Merry Christmas to everybody in your step.
Nicholas too, in your office, who always ranges all my stuff here.
Yes, absolutely.
Everybody else there and to your family, you have that window fixed.
We do.
Yes, we do.
How about your arm?
Is that all fixed?
Yes.
It's straight down.
It's all straight down.
Thank you, Mayor.
Merry Christmas.
Happy New Year, everyone.
