And it is election season in the City of Racine, the first Tuesday in April, you'll
be electing offices for the older people. And that's all the even numbers. Yes, even
numbers. And two years to get the odd numbers. Right. Okay, so that's how it's working.
Now, there's a lot of elections coming up and I get so confused because some are in
April, some are in the primaries in August, some are in November. But you yours is coming
up first Tuesday in April. David Mack is here. He's your older for the fourth district
in Racine and he's running for reelection again. How many now you I ridden your bio here.
You were the in the fifth district at one time. I served as an older man for 10 years
between 2001 and 2011 in the fifth district. I did not move the district move because
of redistrict. Oh, that's how they're doing. So I had the privilege of serving both the
fifth and the fourth district. My little asterisk in city history is that when our former mayor
was arrested, I was city council president at the time and had to leave the city through
that right. So I remember that. Yeah. I was getting calls from all over the country from
people that saw what happened. People that I went to school with. The news went, you know,
nationwide. I mean, it was a big deal. I remember that morning. I remember the morning.
Tom Carco was talking to me. I said, I'm Carco broke the story by calling me. Well, he came
into me and he said, the mayor has been arrested in Kenosha. I said, what mayor? He said,
I'm there. I said, you said Kenosha. He's danger of arresting in Kenosha. I said,
oh, that was actually, I think Brookfield that he got arrested, but they put him in Kenosha.
And he was like shaking. And I said, this is going on like 530 in the morning here. I said,
run this by me one more time. And then he told me what he knew. We didn't know that much at the time.
And then he mentioned you. He called you. He was very factual about it. Basically,
what I knew, what I had repeated to all the aldermen. I, you know, it's like 1230
the morning. I get the call from Kurt Wallen, the police chief at the time. And I immediately
thought, if I don't tell my colleagues, we're going to have a problem. So I called each and every
aldermen and walked them up and said, the mayor has been arrested this evening. He's in the
Kenosha County jail. That's what I couldn't understand. What do you mean he's in Kenosha? The
Kenosha mayor has been written? No, our mayor. Then he's in receipt. No, he's in and I couldn't,
because he was like, he was still confusing at that point. Bill McRennelts was coming executive
at the time. And he, he was notified much earlier than I was. And he basically said, do not
put him in our jail, put him in Kenosha. And a couple of reasons. When it's a safety, it was a
safety issue not wanting to put him in and in the jail here in Racine down in Kenosha. They're
not going to know who he is. So see, I think your greatest job was running the emergency management
because that's life saving. Yeah, it was, it was a rewarding career. Yeah, all there is good.
They do things good. Emergency management, you're saving lives. And I think that's more important.
I just do. I didn't guess very important job. And you ran it for how long?
I want to say close to 32, 33 years. Oh, I started in 1990. And I five years ago, I walked out
the door at the end of October. So trying to do the math here because this will be October of
this year will be the fifth anniversary of retiring. I had your, your guy who followed you.
Lorenzo Santos was in here. Yeah, it's what you said. Yeah. Good guy. Yeah. I used to be in WRG
and all the time talking about emergency management stuff, even sometimes with you.
That is. That's an important job. This life saving. I mean, you hear these horror stories about
people with tornadoes. They would know what now, no warnings, floods, no warnings. But we always
had warnings here. And every Saturday at four o'clock. Yep. We hear how door warning,
siren. Yeah. That's good. The first Saturday of every month. Yeah. Yeah. First Saturday.
Not every Saturday. Yeah. First Saturday. All right. Now before we get to all the things you
want to do as older, where's your, where's the fourth district? It's my district, but we're
we're the boundaries. There's a lot of people don't know what this kind of hard to explain. I take
up the zoo, go over a little bit. I think disappear here. We jogged down. It's not a nice squarely
cut district. I'm into Marquette Street, way into there. We go to Hamilton. We have the lake
front zoo or north north and zoo beach. So we have quite an interesting. You got the, you got the,
you got the beach, the zoo, the beach and north beach. I do. That's a big one. I like to all
former Alderman Jim Kaplan called it the festive fourth. Then the parade goes through a
grand chunk of the, of the fourth district. Yeah. And you're on the fourth festival, right? Yeah.
And actually where the parade used to start in the fifth district. And then, you know, now it,
the fourth district basically goes up to the staging area. So the fifth district doesn't have
any of the paradecs up for maybe some staging. Really? But no, the fourth district has a lot of it.
The fourth, no, the fifth district. The fifth district. Okay. Yeah. The fifth district used to go,
when I first got a like get back in 2001, the fifth district went all the way down to high
street. But why do they, what do they, and then it moved and creeped up. And then I think it was
like English street. And then it's now up farther north. So I understand why congressional
districts have changed because they want to rig the voting. I get it. That's why they do it.
They want to rig the voting so they change it around. It's no secret. That's why they do it.
What do you do? Well, they're all the many districts. They're 15 districts in the city. Yeah.
And so when the maps are redrawn at the state level, it all kind of boils down
and you have to fit into these boxes. Okay. And when you have a city that's not,
if you, we had a nice square city, you know, that would be what's the nice square state? Like
Wyoming. Yeah. Yeah. Utah maybe has that little thing down, but you know, you can take, you can
divide it into nice little squares like a nicely cut cake. If you ever look at the maps of
the Dakotas, Wyoming, and you look at the counties, they're all like, yeah, like perfectly cut.
But when it comes to these districts, each district has to have a certain amount of people in it.
So if you lose population or gain population in an area, that may shrink or expand the,
the footprint of the district. So that's why these boundaries change. Each
argument has to represent the same number of people. And you got to fit that number of people
in the district. So that's where some people may call it gerrymandering, but gerrymandering is when
you carve out an area to keep somebody in it. Not, that's what I'm talking about. These
congressional districts, both sides do it. And they do it because they want to rig the election
in their favor. Yes, it's, it's not a secret. That's why they do it. David Mack is here. He is our
current fourth district. All they're running for reelection April 7th, April 7th, Tuesday,
Tuesday, April 7th. You know, I went down to my local polling place the last time they had the
primary or the better month ago. And they were no voting signs outside. And I said,
tomorrow, I've got to go on the door. See if we're supposed to vote today. So then I call the
city for seeing these voting, but only if it's contested. Right. So there was no, we had nothing
in our district, I believe, but you do now though, we do now, but you don't tell them off of the
primary. Okay. Okay. Okay. Now I get it. You know, last year, high voter turnout, but we had a
Supreme Court race that was heating up. And that racist time is kind of law. And I don't know what
the turnouts could be like next week, but I vote every time. Yeah. I do too. It's, I used to try
to be the first one in line. I know you was bragging about your number. But when I retire,
and I slept in, I didn't have to get up and get to work. And so, yeah, you're always showing
you number ticking on Facebook. Let's talk about some topics here. So with the Lakeview
Park playground, I used to see signs all over. Excuse me, people's lines. But Lakeview Park
be Lakeview Park. What what happened was, and this is before I was an alderman, the mayor had
put it out for a developer to give a proposal for putting housing or something on Lakeview Park.
And there was an uproar within the neighborhoods around Lakeview. And that's where they'll save
Lakeview Park signs came. That ended up getting put aside. And the mayor, my request put money
in the budget this year to enhance the playground. And then we're going to try to go out and
raise some money to do maybe a phase two and three so that it can be even bigger. I'd love to see
a dream playground there like they have in Kenosha. And so we're going to have a nice playground
hopefully installed by July 4th. And then if fundraising goes well, we'll be able to expand
it and make it even a little bigger. You just want to go on the swings. Okay. What does it? I mean,
I know that I don't want to give you, you know, I used to think that the playground at school had
monkey bars. Yeah. We used to hang upside down and it's like, if you fail, you broke your neck.
Nobody seemed to care. The teacher was sitting there smoking a cigarette on the side. And nobody's
paying attention to kids on the monkey bars. I have a column called growing up Gen X. And that is my
next column is I can't believe I'm still alive because I know some of those things were seat belt
at all that other stuff. And those things used to jump on the spin around if you had to jump on it
that it was like a centrifuge and three people. What were they thinking? All right, the King
Center. Let's talk about that. Well, I just the King Center is coming along real nice huge
development. The pillar health care center is functioning. They're going to move into the King
Center afterwards, but huge development and great for the neighborhood. Also housing is being
upgraded around that area. So we're one of the steps to stabilize some neighborhood set. We're
starting to have issues. So Douglas park Douglas park. That's an interesting one. The mayor sent out
a press release saying that we need to change the name, the community center, which was the
Caesar shop. But because of the news, my only comment is that I think we need to have a community
conversation about that. I don't the mayor suggested one name. I'm not sold that we need to have
that we should name it after somebody or that it should be a national figure. I think we need to
have a community conversation. Let the residents have some input into it. The shoot golf course.
That's a very controversial right now and an interesting topic. I've been putting up on my
David Mack for recene Facebook page. I'm trying to make it as factual as possible
and based off of information I have, but dissecting it and looking at the various issues that are out
there. But the city doesn't have any money to upgrade the golf course. And there are a number of
issues that have to be addressed. One is shoreline protection and bluff stabilization. Another is
a sprinkler system needs to be replaced. The clubhouse and the maintenance shed need to be replaced.
And the city doesn't have any money to do that. We're running a $10 million structural deficit
right now. And you have a private sector group that is willing to invest up to $10 million to
upgrade this this golf course and then run it for the city and the city would get a small
stake. It is over by the windpoint lighthouse. Oh, that's what I thought. Dr. Shoe donated this land
for public use back in, I believe, 1917. And one side, if the family, the Shoe family wanted to
have an old man's home, they could erect an old man's home. So the deed says that the property
has to be for public park usage or an old man's home. And where I'm going, the old man's home.
Well, that's what I was thinking. I'd love to sit on the porch looking at the sunrise every
morning and the lighthouse right there. But even that of the four bar. We're trying to go through.
Let's talk about Michigan Boulevard, the speed bumps. You know, we have speed hump.
Speed humps, excuse me. Yeah, Michigan Boulevard. A lot of complaints from the residents that live
on Michigan Boulevard about speeding. It's a long stretch. It's along the lake. I've seen first
hand a couple accidents that were pretty bad as a result of overspeeding. And so that's going to
be resurfaced in the fall. And it's part of the resurfacing project. They're going to be putting
some speed humps in there, which should slow down traffic on Michigan Boulevard. I don't know
why anyone went on speed on Michigan Boulevard because it's such a beautiful view. But they do.
Try main street speed. Oh, tell me about how it's driving here. I was doing 30 miles an hour
past Don Rosen's house. And this car goes flying by me. Had to be doing at least 45 or 50.
Did you wave to my wife? What's your best? She wasn't driving a Kia. So I mean, it wasn't a Kia. And
I'm like, where's a cop when you need him? I see it all the time when I'm going to work in the morning.
Yeah. They speed by me. The other morning, I got up at two thirty in the morning and you only go
15 miles an hour. I've seen your drive down. I go to the speed limit because I'm not late for work.
So I go to, I go to, I go to the look out the window to two thirty. Just take a look.
I see this car real fast. So I go back to bed and hear five police cars chase them.
Yeah, I know. They finally, you know, let's get in this guy. Okay, let's talk about the new
businesses along Douglas Avenue. Well, we, it's kind of nice to see something because it's a big
hole in the ground. Yeah, that was supposed to be a Dunkin Donut. But on my side of Douglas Avenue,
Jim's garage is relocating to the old old age bakery. And that's going to be a nice development.
They're going to run their operations out of the back. And then they are going to have a retail
shop in the front. We have a new Mexican grocery store large actually that opened up in the
old bill year. Yeah, that's all. Yeah, the old place there. So it's nice to see some new businesses
there. That area, you know, that part of Douglas Avenue is struggling a little bit. But we have a
Douglas Avenue business improvement district where the business owners contribute money towards
that. We recently had a big floor fight over an hour long debate about whether or not we were
going to accept a donation from the Douglas Avenue bid for trafficking enforcement on Douglas
Avenue, something that the business owners wanted. And we ended up proving that. And so I pictured
you in on Douglas Avenue when the bill you had placed was there. You got trouble, my friends.
Troubles right here in Racine. I'm sure. Yeah. And then you say it's trouble. It's a capital T and
rhymes with P stands for pool. I never went to the bill you had placed. But I've been to the new
Mexican grocery store. They even have a they have an area in the back where you can get tacos.
They have steak tacos. Yeah, yeah, yeah, great meats section. So um, check it out.
Go ahead. Give it quick pitch now. Give you a free commercial right here. Well, um, I
am a known commodity people know me and I've been active in our community for over 35 years.
I am an independent thinker. I try to get along and bridge the gap between both sides. And
I think things through I try to do what's best for the city of Racine. Not uh, what's in my best
interest necessarily. And um, you know, like I said, independent thinker meaning I'm not aligned with
either political party. Um, city issues are not Republican or Democrat issues. They're city
issues. And so I try to look at it through that filter. What is best for the city of Racine?
I have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers. So that's foremost in my mind. And then um,
you know, I try to be balanced. David Mack on the ballot for the fourth district
all their position. You'll see it on the ballot. April 7th is asking for your vote. Of course,
just in, you won't see his name if you live in the district. Just in the fourth Aldermanic district.
So he'll be on the ballot. April 7th. Good luck to you, my friend. Thank you.
