Okay, Renee Kelly is here.
Let's get the numbers straight.
You are the 13th district all there for the city we're seeing, but the second district we're seeing County Board Supervisor.
That is
correct.
Which job you like more?
They're both my children.
I love them both
the same.
They're both so different.
I would say I'm busier with the city job.
But the county job I do enjoy.
I serve on the Health and Human Services Committee, and I really do enjoy that, you know, talking about, you know, mental health and some of our opioid issues that we have here in the county.
So I do enjoy that.
Which people do you get along with more, Bounty Board or the City of Racine Common Council?
You know, it's a...
50-50 split.
Well, you are a politician, aren't you?
No.
See, these are the type of jobs I've last nine seconds in because I tell everybody.
Well, I don't know if you were on the council in Racine when I had this box truck parked in front of my house every day.
The guy across the street just parked it there.
And his license plate was two years expired and the cops didn't do anything about it.
I called the cops.
And he said, there's nothing we can do.
Nothing you do is license plate expired for two years.
I see YouTube videos.
They tow those suckers right out of town.
So they wouldn't do anything.
And I talked to the guy across the street and basically slammed the door in my face.
He said, it's parked there.
And, you know, you get out in your porch and only sees a giant box truck there.
So I went to the council meeting.
I never had been to one before.
And I get up to speak and.
I just looked at them all and I said, here's what's going to happen.
I said, I told them the box truck story and I said, I spoke to Menards and I'm going to rent a box truck for the entire summer.
I already priced it out.
I'm going to pick one of your names in a hat.
I'm going to park that box truck in front of your house for the entire summer.
And I know there's nothing you can do about it because I went through this with the police and your quote was there's nothing we could do about it.
And everybody started looking down at their desk.
Nobody was looking at me anymore.
So
I said, if nothing is going to be done, I'm going out in one week and running that truck from Menards for three months.
And I'm just going to park it there, take the keys, good luck.
And the next day of the truck was removed from the front of my house.
I don't know what
happened.
Imagine that.
Yeah.
And if they thought I was kidding, I wasn't.
That's what I said to them.
I'm
joking.
I don't joke.
And so it wasn't going to be that much money for three months.
But that's what I was gonna do to get that box truck away.
Well, sometimes you gotta do that.
Yeah.
Get things done.
You weren't on the council when I made that threat.
I don't think so, no.
I would have remembered something like
that.
And after I made the threat, I said, have a good night.
I walked out.
Now, my wife was watching it on Channel 25 at the time.
And she said, Lee, came across really threatening.
I wanted that box truck done.
You want it gone.
Right.
But I don't understand how the police, with a license plate that was expired for two years,
Why was that a lie down the street?
I don't know.
It depends on the time frame too.
I know there were certain things, you know, during COVID time.
This was
before COVID.
Oh, was it?
Okay.
Pretty sure,
yeah.
Interesting,
yeah.
Well, you weren't involved, so
you're good.
I
get a free pass.
Okay, so let's start with the city council.
Okay.
What are we, anything going on there I should know about?
Because I live in the city of Racine and...
I know they're ripping up my street, Main Street.
I know they got all the barrels from Spring Street.
They moved them just onto Main Street.
They just rolled them down
the street and moved them
onto Main Street.
And I got a letter in the mail and I called them up.
They want to do something with the lead pipes or something.
I figure what it was.
And they said, well, how long is it going to take?
Oh, two, three years, maybe.
So a guy came to my door yesterday and he said, well, it's going to take about two months.
I said, what happened to two or three years because we're a new company doing it now?
So they're going to tear up in front of my house and I had assigned something so they can come in.
And yeah.
Yeah.
So that's part of.
They want to get the lead out.
Yes.
Part of the capital plan for some of the, I think the safe and clean water dollars that the city received.
My district's kind of boring.
I mean, well, it depends on the day, I suppose.
So
where is your district?
It's the 13th district.
Where does that border?
So shout out kind of on the edge of the district to Lee's deli so that my district kind of starts there at the corner of Washington and flat and then goes all the way to almost to this area here.
So, you know,
orchard and like republic kind of zigs and
gags.
Yeah, it does.
It's not like clear cut.
So it's like, I have some of 17th and then the rest is 16th.
So far from us.
No.
And my county district overlaps that.
So my aldermatic district for my county district is the smallest piece of the pie.
And then I have three other aldermatic districts that it spans over actually goes
all the way down to like Caron Butler, and then all the way over to 21st.
So it's a very large area.
Okay, so other than the rotten roads in Racine that are all potholely and ripped up and shredded, what else is going on for the city of Racine we got to know about?
Well, for me, you know, unfortunately, we had an incident across the street from my house.
We had a homicide a couple of weeks ago.
So just trying to work in my
district to put a community meeting together and working with the church.
So I'm doing that right now.
And like I said, my area is kind of boring other than that.
You know, I am like really simplistic where I want like
bike racks.
And I might want the little Christmas house painted or, you know, some flags put up in Westerosine.
So, you know, just stop signs, those kinds of things, public safety.
And I do serve on the public safety and licensing committee.
So that's, you know, right up my alley.
You're
involved in those by the zoo.
They get those flashing yellow.
I was not.
Okay.
So the other day, I'm driving down Main Street and I'm getting there.
I said, stop.
because the light was flashing yellow.
You know what I'm talking about?
Those yellow flashers now they have
on
the... I think what we have to do is we have to have a little more education on those because they're there.
It's a good idea, but I wasn't paying attention to them.
It was yellow.
It
could be red.
A red is what you stop at.
Yellow is when you say, ah, passing through that.
And there were people wanting to cross the street.
So I did stop.
But yeah, I think, and I had Jens Jorkensen in here the other day.
And I didn't think about it because I never came across it until the other day.
So
I think he pushed for those.
Yeah, he did.
And now we got to get some education on
him.
Right.
Because that would affect the people that are visiting the zoo, essentially.
No, that would affect the people on my front bumper.
That's what's
going
to affect.
I hear there's noise under the car.
What's that?
Yes.
Yeah.
So yeah, and it's a great idea, but I think we need, they probably should have been red.
I don't know, they can't do red because then people have to stop and.
I mean, as far as flashing signs go, I would like to see more stop signs that have the lights around them, you know, to kind of bring people's attention as I see people kind of blowing stop signs.
You want to see blowing stop signs?
Yeah.
Park yourself right on our stoop over here and just at the corner right with the radio station, nobody stops.
And they sometimes they make a half-hearted effort, but they go right through it.
Yeah.
And that's not a four-way stop.
Now, give me the phone.
Now it's mine.
Give me the
phone.
This is like school.
Remember
the teacher?
All right.
Give me the toy.
It's now you'll get it back at the end of the year.
All right.
Yeah.
And people blow stop signs all the time.
And.
I go out here every half hour, get some fresh air, get rid of the mold and the asbestos out of my lungs, and I go outside, take a couple of days, and I watch them blow that stop sign.
And when 16th Street was being redone, all the cars were using Victory Avenue, nobody stops at that, and I could see the sign.
We have that same problem, so there's multitude of accidents, and so I'm kind of like wondering what to propose at.
Right in Washington Avenue.
There's that kind of like little piece of land there where you have that other street and it's almost like, you know, we almost need like a roundabout or something.
There was an really bad accident there this past weekend.
No, we need people to
stop at stop signs.
Yes, well, that too.
Education and maybe.
You don't need an
education.
If you
got a driver's license, you know an octagon red sign with the word stop and it means stop.
It doesn't mean cruise through it.
It means
stop.
Yeah, it doesn't mean.
Step on the brake and keep going.
It means stop, especially it's not a four-way stop.
And so some cars get a neb you come on the other way.
Education.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't have confidence in people like you do.
We've got Renee Kelly in this morning and we've got she thinks this is going to be a fun chat.
You see, I don't know what's coming up.
Thirteenth district holder for the city of Racine and second district county board supervisor in Racine.
Let's talk about congratulations, by the way, finally Spring Street.
has been resurfaced.
Amen.
My son takes that way to work so he's happy as
well.
It's from the pick and save on down going west.
They resurfaced the rotten road there.
Congratulations
and
now is a pleasure.
Now the problem is where they did the other work by the hospital in further east.
They ripped up that whole thing and they patched it.
with concrete and it's... Oh yeah.
At first I thought that was my car.
I was like, something's wrong with my truck.
No.
It's wrong with the past jobs
they do.
I don't
know why they just don't... When they add the concrete... Why don't they just fix it?
Do it right the first time.
Come on, you're on the county board,
you're
on
the Racine Council.
This is your territory.
I know.
Sometimes we have to pick and choose, you know, our battles with...
whether or not we're going to resurface or redo the entire road.
So it's just depending on what's on the capital plan and what the level of things.
Do I have to run
for county executive and the mayor?
Do I need to do this to get this thing done?
Maybe mayor.
Yeah,
but that's a county road.
Oh, yeah, well.
Do I need to run for county executive to get that road fixed?
And then I'll just resign after it's fixed.
I'll just
say,
gotta go.
Yeah, we
you could sign a petition maybe pass a petition out and
the other horrible things are and this is something we don't have control over it's the railroads those crossings Some are nice some are just your cars are
going
your cars get out.
It's all doing gyrations going
over
the railroad
tracks.
I'll take the bottom of your car out.
Yes, absolutely.
What are we doing about that?
That I don't know I
went ahead Melissa Caprillion in here.
She actually got on one of those pickup trucks
that rides on the tracks, and he was showing your stuff.
Yeah, he was showing
it to you.
What about fixing it?
And again, it's the railroads have to fix it.
But some of the railroad track crossings are wonderful.
They have those metal things.
Some of them are the wooden ones, and it's bubble, bubble, bubble.
You're traveling over and you got to slow down.
The guy behind you didn't want to stop.
So now he's on your bumper.
Well, I can think of a couple of spots, especially on the north side.
There's one street over there.
I don't know if that's high street or not, but I don't know.
Every time I go, when I come up to it, I automatically like my body tenses up and then I slow down because I know that it's going to be a rough go over that.
Yeah, the people
with the car dealerships and all these body, oh good, more bumps.
Yes.
They're making money off this stuff.
Right.
And I don't know if it was always like that and I'm just getting more sensitive as they get older.
I never noticed it before.
Right.
All these potholes on the road.
But my wife once put a thing on Facebook years ago, the Pothole Patrol, and she didn't get a lot of response to it.
But she wanted to keep track of a list of all the Potholes.
Don't look at the clock.
You're not going anywhere.
We got a lot of work
to do.
You're
going to be here until about 10 o'clock this morning.
Oh my God.
Anyway, so what in the county, not city we're seeing, but the county, what's going on at the county board?
Anything we need to know?
For my district, we're currently building the mental health facility that's on Taylor Avenue.
So that's kind of exciting.
Oh, you
have money for that, but not to fix the potholes.
Okay, good.
Let's go.
They have a lot of capital projects which is
more important.
Yeah, they have the new public safety building next to the where the Ives Grove's building is where we have our meetings.
And then a lot of the work that's being done at the marina.
And we were way past our extended life on a lot of the things that needed to be done.
So that was kind of a priority.
So we'll see what happens when the budget is presented.
Actually, they're going to be doing that early this year.
So who's just announced this week that they'll be doing a budget presentation next month.
So it'll be several weeks early.
to start the process this year.
That's like a lot of
work.
The budget, yes.
Everything involved in
politics.
Oh, yeah.
You can't
get two people to agree on anything.
You
have a lot of
arguing in the city and also the county.
A lot of people arguing about
it.
Well, it used to be not at the county so much, but recently I feel like some internal politics have taken over, which is unfortunate, but...
Who's
the troublemakers?
Melissa?
No.
Okay.
You can tell me.
I'm not going to say any names, but you know, I'm not in it for that.
You know, I never, I never ran for any seat of the original.
I think you know my every time I.
come in here, I tell the same story.
But, you know, I ran because for the city alderman because my house was shot.
So, you know, I just wasn't getting the response
across the
street.
Your house was I know it's terrible.
Yeah.
Wow.
My poor neighbors are so traumatized.
You know, and so just putting together meetings so they can come and, you know, air their grievances and get some support is important to me.
you know, and that's why I do that, you know.
You get people in stores going up to you.
Uh, really get over here.
Uh, they got a little thing in front of my house and my curb
is a
crack in it.
I want to fix it.
Not at the store so much, but, uh, you know, it's like, if I go down to like first Fridays or, which I haven't been to in a hot minute, but, um, because
they're drinking and now they go away.
I want to talk to you about this curb over here.
I don't like that.
No, I got a guy across
the street.
Give me dirty looks.
I want you to take
care of it.
No, thanks.
I'm good.
Like you're
the mob or something where you can take care of that stuff.
Right.
I just couldn't deal with that.
I
just couldn't deal with it.
I have a job where I don't have to deal with the public head on.
Right.
And that's, I love this job because I never have to deal with the public.
I couldn't deal with it.
I'd be out of your jetty.
They throw me on two seconds because I couldn't
deal with it.
I like helping people.
I mean, you know.
I do too, but I don't like
complaining to me.
Right.
This comes with the job.
I know.
With any job, really.
You can't have to be a special kind of person to want to do that kind of stuff.
Right.
I'm a fixer.
The
higher you get, the less you have to deal head on with people getting fixed.
But when you're on the level you're on, we're right here in the city
and the
county.
Yeah, you're right up in there.
How do you like your boss at the county?
Oh, Ralph, I love him.
Yeah, he's great.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's, he's good.
Does he give you free food at Pigley Wiggly?
Oh my gosh.
No.
I
didn't know if that's one of the perks.
No.
No.
He's a great guy.
He has like
$10 at the deli counter.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Good businessman.
Nice guy.
Uh-huh.
He was in here and
he was
similarly a really straight guy
and
good straight shooter and yeah, no problem.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, that's good.
So yeah.
So nothing really.
Nothing we could sink our teeth into going, everything's smooth, huh?
Well, I mean, I wouldn't say so.
I mean, just strap yourself in for the budget.
It should be exciting on both county and city levels.
I, you know, it's just whatever's proposed, it depends on how it's going to go.
Does everybody have their pet projects?
Yeah, you know, I mean...
Mine is going to be stop signs, but we'll see.
You'll see, you know, getting a little resistance from DPW on that.
How
expensive can a stop sign
be?
Not much.
It's just their favorite word is no.
So I'm not kidding.
Favorite word is no.
It is.
It's like the running joke.
Well, why don't we put you on the set?
You know those ones that the crossing guards have that stop sign that goes either way?
Oh, yeah.
We'll put you on
there.
Yeah.
Each week we'll give you a different location.
Right.
When does school start
up?
Oh, well, my daughter's school starts next Wednesday.
And so actually it took today off to go get all the school supplies and stuff.
But I think RUSD starts the Monday or is it the Tuesday after?
Yeah, Labor Day usually.
I never had,
where I come from, never had school starting before Labor Day.
It was always the first Wednesday after Labor Day.
Never in August.
When I first moved to Wisconsin, it said August.
What are you doing to these poor kids?
Yes, but my daughter is done the like the week before Memorial Day is their finals.
We were always in like June 20th, June 21st around there.
Yeah.
Well, thank you for coming
in.
Yeah, I do want to say a couple quick things.
Do you want to say a shout out to my coworker who's part of my grants team.
I got a new job.
I'm working at Gateway.
And so I'm part of the grants team over there.
So I know Blanca listens to this morning show.
So I wanted to give a shout out to her and the whole grants team.
So go team.
Sorry, I can't be there.
I'll see you tomorrow morning.
All
right.
Well, that's great.
I'm glad.
First of all, I'm glad they listened.
And then we're too.
I'm glad you're doing well at your jobs.
And
when do you get, when's the election up for you next two years, right?
For the city, it would be in the spring, spring of 27.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Okay.
You're gonna run again?
I don't know the answer to that question yet.
Oh,
every politician says that.
Oh, I just threw out my arm
doing
that.
Oh, don't do that.
Oh, my
God.
Oh, I just threw out my arm when I waved
it at you.
See, swift punishment.
Oh.
And what about the county?
When does that job come up?
So that one we just, so that one this past April, I saw that too.
Oh, so you're in.
Yeah.
You
can sit back
and not
do anything for two years.
Oh, my goodness.
You sit back and relax and not do anything.
Yeah.
Thank you, Renee.
All right, thank you.
Good luck to you.
Renee Kelly.
Yeah, Renee Kelly, who is your...
Works for the city of Racine.
It's your 13th district all there and works for the counties or second district.
Wait, just hurt my arm.
Second district county board supervisor.
That sounds important.
County board supervisor.
Yeah.
Nice little ring.
Yeah, nice thing to it.
This jockey never had a good ring to it.
We
sounded cheap and sleazy.
Right.