 Welcome to the Seventh Annual Candidate Forum. This is the first forum that will be held this week. This is sponsored by the Sheboygan Branch of the American Association of University Women, AAUW. A little bit of information about Sheboygan AAUW. It has celebrated its 100th year, years of empowering women and girls this past October. Sheboygan AAUW is a nonpartisan organization. It does not endorse candidates. However, AAUW has been instrumental in legislation for improving opportunities for women and girls. A few noteworthy items. Locally, AAUW provides scholarships to non-traditional women students. The deadline for the $3,000 scholarship is April 30th. They also hold STEM workshops of 6 to 9th grade girls each fall. This will be the Seventh Annual Workshop. In addition, they co-sponsor the Great Decision Series with Mead Public Library in the fall. Just to add that new members are always welcome to help with the mission and membership information is available at the AAUW website, Sheboyganwi.aauw.net. I am Fay Wingrove. I'm the moderator this evening. We have a list of questions. Just a little bit of background. I'm a local business owner here in Sheboygan and have been for 30 years. Locally, I've been involved with the AAUW, the League of Women Voters, five-year Sheboygan County Board Member and the Sheboygan Board of Review. Introducing our candidates this evening. We have a number of questions and we're first going to ask them to give a brief one-minute introduction of themselves. Why don't we start with you, Joseph Bragavenvich and then we'll continue on down the slate of candidates. Yes, my name is Joseph Fugranovic and I'm just a resident of Sheboygan City of Sheboygan. I don't really have much of a knowledge of this situation here. I've been to high school, South High. I graduated from 1997. All I do is stay home, work. I work in a factory right now and I'm kind of excited about it, but I'm also excited to be here in front of all you guys. Just to hear all your questions, I appreciate being here. I'm Dean Decker. I am the current Alderperson in the Sixth District and I'm also the Council President. I would first like to thank the AAUW for hosting this event. It's very generous of you to take your time to do this event. I have been a lifelong resident of the city of Sheboygan. I have a wife and three children. I'm very passionate for this city and that's the reason that I am running for this position. Good evening. I would like to thank the League for sponsoring this event. My name is Joe Heidemann. I live at 4819 South 12th Street. It's the first house coming in to Sheboygan or the last house going out of Sheboygan on 12th Street. I live there with my wife Lynn and our cat Liberty. I have three children, five grandchildren. I'm proud to say that I was a member of the United States Air Force. And when my beard grows out, some may look like I'm Amish. And in fact, Don Hammond, who used to serve in the Council, he was a great leader. He would always call me his Amish friend, but I'm a Catholic my whole life and I attend the three Southside parishes. I am currently the Alderman of District 10. I have previously served in this capacity when there were 16 Aldermen. I was an Alderman in a mirror where I lived in Sheboygan Falls. My experience as someone that I've seen many developments through our city, past budgets, worked on long range plans that helped Sheboygan become the city it is today. This makes me more than qualified. I've served under eight different mayors between Sheboygan and Sheboygan Falls. These experiences have helped me throughout my service to the communities I lived in. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Marcia Reinfowler and I'm running for Alderman in District 10. I'd like to thank the AAUW for organizing this forum to the audience and the people watching at home this evening. I'm a fourth generation city of Sheboygan resident. My husband and I of 34 years, my husband Tom was here with me tonight, raised our two adult children and our son who recently was married added to our family with a daughter-in-law this past October and they chose to buy a house in the city as well and set roots here. So we're very proud of our heritage in the city of Sheboygan and I look forward to serving on the council. I'm currently employed by the Kohler Company. I've been an employee for 38 years and I have a background in finance as well as operations and customer service and I'm currently the director of customer experience for the Calista brand. I have a degree in marketing and business admin with a minor in computer science. I look forward to serving this district. That minute goes fast. Hello, my name is Robert Lefebvre and I'm a candidate for the District 4 Alderman seat. My friends call me Bob. My family calls me Papa. Now I've been a citizen in a lifelong person that's come from the city of Sheboygan. It's the city that I absolutely love and during my entire adult life I've been civically active and I've been really... I try to be a champion for working-class people. Now I've worked for over 30 years at the Kohler Company and I was a proud member of local 1472 of the United Auto Workers. I held many positions and chairmanship inside of that union and I've been a board member at large of the UAW CAP Council in Sheboygan for the last 15 years. Thank you for your time and thank you very much for having this tonight. Thank you very much. Deborah Yocas is not here this evening and I'm just going to point out that the candidates are peered by those running. We really have pretty much of the whole part of the north side, the central and the southern part of Sheboygan covered today with the districts we have. So getting into the questions. The first question we'll start with you, Dean. We're going to alternate who begins the questions. It's a two-in-one question and you have three minutes. The questions are, why are you running for the council and what is your leadership experience? Well, first of all, why I'm running is because, like I said before, I have a passion for the city. I really enjoy doing this. I've done this now for, this is my sixth year as a council member. I've been on the council for this time. During this time, I've been the chair for the last four years of the Public Works Committee. I've been a member of the Public Works Committee for that six years. I've been a member of the Long Licensing and Public Safety Committee for that time. I've been president for the past year. During that time, we've hired a new administrator. We've also hired a new Planning and Development Director to help lead the city. I have, what was the second part of the question? I'm sorry. What is your leadership experience? I guess that would be my experience on that as far as why I'm running. I just feel that over the time that I've been here, we've done some great things. We've got some really good things coming forward. And I just want to be part of that. I think that we, as a city, as a whole, can move forward from a lot of these things and we have a lot of great things going forward. What makes, well, why am I running? I've got three separate answers because I was asked that three different times at different debates. So I'm going to try to give you the one I think that's the best. I have the experience to hold this position, being retired. I have the time to provide quality representation for the 10th District. There is little that I haven't experienced in my previous terms on the Council while helping to run this city. I can give you another one. I'm currently the Alderman of the 10th District. I was on the Sheboygan Council previously. I was also the Alderman and Mayor of Sheboygan Falls having served two communities addressing issues during different time periods of growth and lack of growth. I have hands-on, real-time understanding of how cities must adapt to changing financial issues and other things. Thank you, Marsha. Thank you. Local government is a passion of mine. I served on the Sheboygan Area School District Board of Education for 12 years. I took a break for the past two years so my husband and I could build our retirement home. Knowing that the city of Sheboygan is very near and dear to my heart and that I wanted to get back into local government someday, we needed to find a spot in the city of Sheboygan where we could build. And we did that. Now, since that has settled, it was time for me to run for a local government seat. Again, I thought that the city council would be something new since I had 12 years of experience on the Sheboygan Area School District Board. I would run for the seat in District 10. I'm not running against a person. I'm running for a seat because I love local government. I believe that my business background will give me the skillset that I need to be able to listen to people, to make good fiscal decisions within the city and to work well with others in our group to make great decisions and keep our city moving forward. I also had leadership positions on the school board. I was the past president, vice president, treasurer and clerk and I co-chaired or chaired all of the communities on the school board. I love our community and I think this is a great stepping stone and I can bring a different perspective to our council. Thank you. Robert. Okay. As I said before, my entire life, I've been civically active and in the process of being civically active, some people inside the community got to know me. And when it became clear that the current office holder for the fourth district was not seeking reelection, some people in that community came to me and asked me if I would consider a run for this office. After a short period of time considering it, I realized it was my civic responsibility to step up to the call. Now, what I have to offer? Well, I'm a four-time delegate for the UAW as a member of the CAP Council here to the halls of Congress. I've lobbied on Capitol Hill on four different occasions. I can't tell you the number of times that I've lobbied at the State House for such issues as prevailing wage workers' rights and I believe that I have the ability to work really well. That's what I like to do. I like to work in committee. I like to work with other people. Now, I've always said that common sense doesn't cost time but when it's coupled with compassion, compassionate common sense is something that I think would work very well on our common counsel. And I thank you for your time. Why am I running for office is because I have a passion for Sheboygan. I've lived in Sheboygan most of my life and I feel that it's been up and down and I want to make sure that if we build a stronger city, we can all come together as a whole and build it that way. To have something that's more compatible with other cities like Milwaukee, do I have any experience in this? Absolutely not. I have no experience at all but I can say one thing is that I believe in if you have no experience, you can always get it by running it. Thank you. The next series of questions will be Two Minute Answers and we'll start with Joe Heidman. And the question is, what do you see are the three most important challenges facing the city council? Okay, right now we're looking at affordable housing which is something that we should all be concerned about and having been part of it, it's affordable housing and the development of the Gartman and both farms we've heard over and over. What size of development? What is the best fit for our neighborhood? We all have in our hearts to make Sheboygan a better place. How does this affect our police and fire protection and DPW in bringing services at reasonable cost? I want to see a plan for the future and avoid mistakes which will be there for a long time. Along with the housing issue we have to make sure that we maintain our police and fire department and DPW at their current staffing and also as far as budget is concerned we need to make sure that we come in at a decent rate and make sure that we're not spending our tax dollars that we receive poorly. Marcia? I believe like Alder Hydeman said, housing is our number one issue to have attainable housing. We have over 3,000 open positions in the county of Sheboygan for employment. Our businesses are hungry to get people into our community to work so they don't need to leave. We are very fortunate that we have businesses that believe and have a loyalty to the county and where we can develop and bring in different levels of employees I think should be our first priority. I do look at our public safety. I think we have great teams but if we are going to develop and we are going to grow we need to make sure that we have the resources and the infrastructure in place for our public safety. And finally I look at our roads and I hear from everybody about roads. Our constituents I've been speaking with, it's like roads. I've looked at past forums and roads has always been a subject. I want to figure out why they haven't been taken care of. Is it just, you know, we don't have the budget for it but then what do we need to do to have that because I want to take that off the table as an issue. So thank you. Okay, thank you. So like everyone says here, housing is a big problem because according to what I've heard the corporations inside of the city of Sheboygan are hungry for employees and they have like between 850 and 1,000 jobs that they have to get tomorrow. Now the thing about the housing is Sheboygan has only about 1% of its open units that are unoccupied. That is not a healthy situation. A healthy situation in the community would be between 5% to 10% vacancies. That means that there's a housing shortage. That means that those rental units that go out are going to cost more. So if we get some way to make more housing across the board in low income housing, medium class housing and yes those upper units too. We need to do it across the board. We need to have an expansion of our rental units so that people that come in to make the new jobs and the new talent that we need inside the city will have a place to live and grow and this is a great place for them to do it. Now another thing that we have is again like everyone says the roads. I understand and I've talked to some people inside of the DPW and we have a pretty good plan in place. I would like to work with them to make sure that that plan comes to full fruition and to maybe even improve it if there's any way that we can. Now I also would like to do what Shuborgan is already doing being in great partnership with the Shuborgan County Economic Development Corporation and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. These are the organizations that bring talent into the town. So this is what I would like to see get done. Oh, thank you. Joseph, let me know if I can repeat the question. Can you please repeat that question there? Yes, certainly. What do you see are the three most important challenges facing the city council? Just like everybody else said that affordable housing is one of them. That's the main cause that we have a problem with right now is affordable housing. How are we going to come up with that is by numerous things. I mean, can we utilize buildings that are vacant? Can we put it in our budget to help it with that? The other ones are, of course, the roads. Roads are another main problem that we're having with is how we're going to fix it, where we're going to end up with it. We got to check our budget for it. And the third one, that's a pretty difficult one for me. I have no questions for that. Dean? Okay, the three challenges that I would say are, again, I'm going to be a broken record here, but housing is it's workforce housing. We need workforce housing. Like Marcia said, we have a problem right now. We could probably fill about 3,000 jobs in this county right now without, you know, if we have people. We've talked to the manufacturers around here. We've talked to some of the larger employees around here. And they are all looking for employees. The Shpoigen County's unemployment rate right now is 2.1%, which is great for people that are looking for jobs. If you're looking for a job and you're, Shpoigen is the place to be. We actually lost an expansion of one of our businesses in Shpoigen because of not having enough workers that can't happen. We can't be losing manufacturers to other communities because we don't have them. So as far as the way we work it, we're currently doing some great things. The Gartman Farm is one of them, as Joe mentioned. That is an area where we, you know, that's going to be a mix of different housing. It's going to be, I guess I should get down to the other questions, but we've got a lot of things going on that are going forward on that. The other thing is roads. We have been working on a lot of roads in my district alone in the last couple of years, Indiana Avenue, Georgia Avenue, and this spring or this summer we'll be working on Broadway Avenue. There's also been a lot of other ones like North Avenue and stuff like that that have been done in the future. The other big issue I think that's facing the city is the marina. The marina is, it's coming forward. It's going to be one of those things that's, we're doing a study right now, and I think it's going to take a lot of citizen involvement. That's going to be the key. I think the rest of the citizens in the Shpoigen should be involved with this so that we can move forward from there. Thank you. Thank you all. Excellent job. Marcia, you'll start the next round of questions and again we'll follow through as we have been. Two minute question. How do you plan to foster collaboration and cooperation among fellow council members, CD departments, and community stakeholders to address the diverse needs and challenges of our great city? Thank you. Great question. I think there will only be success if we can find collaboration. The one thing I think everybody will agree on is that we're not going to agree on everything. And so I think it's going to be important that we communicate and be transparent and that we explain the why's, like we voted a certain way or we passed a certain ordinance and this is why we did it. And you don't have to agree, but at least you'll know the thought process that was put into it. And there's 10 people sitting up here and in the seats making those decisions. And so it's not like one person's just going off and making a decision. So I think it's going to be important that in committee that when it's talked about it's very transparent and very open and nobody has a personal agenda because hopefully they were out speaking with their constituents and trying to find out what their views were. My personal feelings would not come up to this council. It would be the constituents voices that I would be portraying. And sometimes I found when I was on the school board it may be something that I don't agree with but it's what the parents wanted. And we needed to vote a certain way to support that. So I think that that is where I will be standing. I will always be very transparent. And I do think with the city leadership I've met with a few of them right now. I think they have a very transparent open communication open policy and I'm looking forward to working with them in the future. Thank you. Okay. As I said before I'm a member of a local labor union. And one thing that you learn when you're in the union is when you're sitting at a negotiating table if everybody leaves the table and isn't upset about something you guys didn't do your job. So all but what we can do though is we can have as I said before compassionate common sense. This is a nonpartisan position that we're doing all of that other stuff, you know leave that for those idiots that I talked to when I was up in Washington DC but you gotta know that when you're dealing with a community you have to reach out to your neighbors and you have to find out what's best for everybody and that's what I think I can bring. I've been a member of countless numbers of committees. I work well in committee and that's I believe that I would treat the common council like it is a committee also so that I would work with my fellow elders and I would do the best job that I can to come to a good solution. One that's good for everybody. This is a beautiful city and we could make it even better. Thank you. This is pretty difficult for me anyway since this is the first time I've done this but I believe that if everybody came together and had their own opinions I think we can for say come up with a solution to help each other out just like neighbors after neighbors and blocks after blocks have it all set up where we can take their opinions and try to make things work. For thereon I'm kind of shocked that I don't know what the heck I'm talking about. We can move on Dean. Okay. For collaboration I think is key and it's one of the things we worked on all my time on the council I think I've worked well with all different council members along the way some that I didn't agree with and some that I did and sometimes you know at the end of the day I think our work together has made the city stronger. I think the committees are where I think a lot of the the big collaboration does occur public works, law and licensing, finance I think that's where a lot of the meat and potatoes actually in this whole council actually does a lot of the things and during that we that's where we work with city staff we work with them and on it and I think we as a whole have done a good job. I serve a committee with Dean on two of them and when I first came to the common council I was only assigned to one committee but then the mayor asked me to take on another responsibility for an alderman on DPW that was no longer going to be there so I said, yeah, I'm going to step up I'll do it because I've done it before I have years and years of experience at committee meetings at council meetings and making sure that there is some type of discussion on anything that comes before our common council again we don't all agree but we have to make the effort to make sure that every item that comes before us gets discussed part of that getting that discussion is being prepared when you get to the meeting whether it's the council meeting or a committee meeting again when I served with 16 it seemed like we had more communication with 16 than we do with 10 right now I'd like to open that communication up and be responsive to the other alderman and my constituents. All right, so I believe we're starting a new round, yes of questions and we will start with Robert we'll begin the series and we're about halfway through so we've got about 30 minutes to go the next question is what do you see as the greatest assets of the city of Sheboygan and how would you build upon them? Oh, come on, give me a break just a couple of blocks over here we got one of the biggest inland seas Lake Michigan when I take my grandkids down to the lake and we see other people and we start talking to them because I'm kind of a talker and they you know, they say how lovely this city is they say how beautiful it is and it is Sheboygan itself can sell itself all we have to do is make sure that we keep it going and strong and fresh and resilient and we have some really wonderful activities that go on during the summer I believe we should do so even more just recently we had that Mercury Marine boat races that I believe that we need about almost 4.7 million dollars of income into the yeah, approximately 4.7 million dollars I think that we should do more things like that we have an organization in town that's called the seas it teaches young people how to do yachting let's see if we maybe can get some yacht races and stuff like that and have those off of our off of our shoreline we have a lot of wonderful green space I had many people that have come into Sheboygan to be with us in the end of the year and they just think that the parks that we have here they go, how are you guys able to have such wonderful parks? things like this need to be kept up and we need to invest in them because it's going to be an attractive thing we'll attract that new talent that we need to get into Sheboygan with the just beautiful thing that we have thank you Joseph? Sheboygan is a beautiful place I've lived here most of my life but I think we need to do a little bit more on the amusement part we don't have much of amusement we do have the Blue Harbor which is very great it's right by the marina there we're all good with that but there's not enough for people to do I think we need to build that stronger up if we decide anything like that we should be starting to make like a tourist town get it into something for like kids to play around in or besides the parks for instance maybe like a bay beach or something we can add into probably build it stronger make more assets for it Dean? I completely agree with Bob and the greatest asset is that beautiful lake at the front I mean any day you want to go drive just you know I don't know even when the water is rough it's just something to just drive down past there and watch it sometimes just to so that is probably is our greatest asset and I think that we need to cherish it and take care of it and foster the things like I said working with it one of the things is with like the marina things like that that we're working on to move forward I think we have to see what we can do to enhance that lakefront property also the other greatest asset is the people the people of this city are top notch it really are I mean that's the reason that this city is the way it is I think that that has to be recognized also I also agree with Bob on the parks we have some awesome parks I mean the other things you take a drive through evergreen park on a hot summer night and just drive through and see all the people and see everything going on and I think that we have to continue to maintain those parks and continue to build on them so I guess that's all I have right now Joe? Okay again I'm not going to beat it to death but it is the lake one of the one of the things that I had moving here from Sheboygan Falls I'm fortunate where I live in order to get to the north side of Sheboygan I have to drive all along or all along the lake I mean I could go other ways but I'm not going to go that way so what we have to do is make sure that we preserve that we make sure that that is beneficial to our it's because it's so beneficial to our entire community that we need to keep that open space where people can see the lake whether it's from the south side all the way to the north side also the people of Sheboygan are just phenomenal but some of the key people of Sheboygan are the people that work in the city of Sheboygan our police department our fire department our DPW workers our city staff in the last couple of years they've went through as much as any other staff could have ever went through and they're still there and we want to continue to provide great jobs for these people and keep these people in place to make sure that our services aren't deteriorated thank you Marshall thank you broken record again the lake of course is our most valuable asset I believe in our city or one of them I'm going to hone in a little bit more on the marina I think that is underutilized I've gone there a few times and sat on the higher levels and just looked over the marina and the lake and think I'm on vacation that I'm not here in my own hometown it is so beautiful but it feels like it's our best kept secret in the community and the community does not support it and why is that and how can we change that because it is so beautiful so I would look at how do we better utilize the marina for our community members and not just for the boats that rent the slips I think there is an opportunity for us I also the people are just great in Sheboygan you can leave and come back and you're always you're always welcome you're always known I worked at the American Club for 12 years and I had repeat guests that would come in they parked their boat at the marina and then get come into the American Club but they loved coming to Sheboygan instead of going to Green Bay or Milwaukee because the people were friendly they developed relationships over the years and so I would go with people and underutilized marina that I really would want to see better use out of thank you okay so then Joseph you will start the next group of questions here and it is going to follow on that marina theme because changes are coming to the Sheboygan marina and this city announced that a study and a multi-year revitalization plan will occur so I'm looking at what your input is for the future of the marina and I realized this summer to many people surprise the pool will be shut down the some of the other amenities at the marina will not be open including the bar area so we're going through some changes to kind of reset what's happening with the marina and what is your input on the future of the marina in Sheboygan not know much about the marina I barely ever get my chances to get down there but it is a beautiful area I do believe that if we do anything with the marina and have it completed within a year or so I think that we can try to get in some like cruise ships or something like that you know I don't know what the marina is all about I haven't really stepped a foot in it I do drive by but that's about all I get to do thank you okay Dean with the marina I think that I think we're on the right path as far as with having a study looking into this to see what's the best what's the best options are coming forward getting the citizens input getting what getting the rest of the citizens of the city showing into this so that they get their their their input and to find out what they want out of the marina what the city there's been a tremendous cost to the marina over the years from the original cost it's still it still has not paid off its original debt from 30 years ago we have to come up with a way to finance this correctly that this is not so it's not a burden on taxpayers we have to find out a way that we can and make it more available so that more like marshes that this that the that the more people from the city itself can be involved with it so it's not just the voters that are are using it Joe having sat on the dpw for many years us the expense and cost of that marina is outrageous for what the citizens I'm talking the true citizens got out of it okay so every year we come they'd say well the there's some docks that are broke this is wrecked this is all wrecked because of where you know the ice or whatever so then when we hired companies to manage this problem someone took someone some of them took had the ability to kind of slow that down but now in this last year or so the company that wanted us to hire them again one incredible amount of money that's not something we're going to pay okay so we're doing it ourselves what has to happen now is we have to have something that we develop that's useful to the city of sheboygan I love to have the tourist dollars come in I want to have that at the larger boats that that's fine but again this has to be a community marina not a marina for somebody from Milwaukee or Chicago thank you Marsha thank you like I said earlier the marina is underutilized I agree with both Dean and Joe when they were talking about how do we make this you know more for our community get our community involved it is a very expensive endeavor for our city you know whatever our community thinks might be the best use of that area but we definitely need community input to figure out how to best utilize our tax dollars and impossibly find revenue streams coming in from the community whether it be like jet ski rental or kayak rental or lessons or something so that eventually the goal would be in my mind to have it just be self-sufficient and pay for itself in the future okay the marina is 30 years old now and it is had had significant financial problems and issues and because of that like Joe said the corporation that was running it or operating it F3 they did not redo the contract with them now we need to get more revenue out of there some ideas might be you know yeah kayaks and jet skis our you know rentals for those and I've been to that bar at the marina boy I tell you what that's a nice space if somebody if we could get enough people to see that that's an opportunity for a business and we've vetted them properly and we would look at maybe other ideas or other venues that they had where they would have some entertainment and refreshments maybe even a small restaurant or grill make that place a destination not only for the people that are coming in on the boats and having a slip at the marina but also for the city of shabuigan you know I'll take my wife there on a Friday or Saturday night because it's the place to be if we could do that we could deal a lot you know that could generate enough income so that it could almost be self-sufficient so the marina is it could be it could be a big asset the next question we'll have Dean start out two minutes again how can shabuigan attract and retain young talent and additional workers how can we attract and retain well I one of the I guess the biggest thing is is to we we go right back to that we need the housing we need places for them to live we don't have that right now so I think we need to continue with some of the ideas that we have been working on I mean the garden area we also need to look at other areas where we can expand on our housing I you know so bring in talent with that way I also believe that we need to revive do some revitalization in our downtown area we need to make the make things more attractive for young professionals to go down town to make more of a have more of a nightlife type area we currently don't really have that that's why we'll agree with Joe we don't have some of those amenities I think we need to try to attract more amenities to bring people in because that's what we're going to need to to attract workers is to have vibrant downtown and and the housing thank you Joe okay again having a community that people want to live in the challenge today and about the town leaving when you can take your talent and work for a company in Sheboygan but you can live in Tennessee how do you because you can use it on I mean how do we compete with the computer okay there's only one way is have the amenities have the parks have the police have the services that everybody wants to have and they enjoy living in Sheboygan I want that person that's live in someplace else to come to Sheboygan and work on their computer so that's that's a phenomena that many many communities are going to go through because that's it's so easy for people to work in Sheboygan but live someplace else I want them to live in Sheboygan and work for somebody someplace else is Marcia the housing is is a major issue but I do agree with what Joe had said as far as you know the attraction to have people have them stay here I think we need to have a marketing campaign when you really stop and think about it we have very low cost of living some people will disagree with it but that's okay we're going to agree disagree I feel they low cost of living they don't have to live in the major cities of Milwaukee, Chicago, Green Bay and have the major crime in all issues we have the same issues on a much smaller scale it's a it's a relatively safe place to live here in Sheboygan but we need to get that word out as well as improving our amenities that will attract those people and keep them here and a sense of adventure but again it's going to take making people aware of our community thank you okay bringing new talent into the city of Sheboygan one sit right over there it's my daughter she used to live in Milwaukee but she decided to come back and do that job with a computer out of her house her house that she bought because affordable housing is actually here for people who are you know have a good job that can get house now what we need to do is we need to keep that partnership with the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation in Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation and you know to attract that because Sheboygan does truthfully sell itself it does this is you have on one side like I said that beautiful Lake Michigan and then on the other side of us you have the Kettle Marine which my family has enjoyed on many occasions I consider that probably the place where Adam and Eve took off you know that is the Garden of Eden now we need to well I also know that we are we're trying to establish four new tax instrumental districts and that would help along with a lot of the other work that we're doing to attract that talent because we've got to get that talent here in town and but of course as we've all said the big key is giving them a place to live where they can live get married raise a family and bring another generation of Sheboyganites to this wonderful city thank you just like everybody else here said that the affordable housing is one that we need to get these people to move in Sheboygan's just to live along with the attraction we have to have the attraction down in the city of Sheboygan just so they can come here um not exactly sure how this is going to work yet but we'll figure something out all right thank you and Joe you'll start the next group and maybe maybe this round will we will keep to a to a minute so we don't go over our time what would you do to assist existing businesses to bring more business to Sheboygan Chamber of Commerce is a vital organization within the city of Sheboygan I know the common council and councils previously have done everything they could to help foster that that that organization uh the business you have to be able to have employees for the businesses you have to have people that actually use those businesses when I shop I shop at local businesses because I want to give them my money I don't necessarily have to go to Milwaukee to get to something I don't have to go to Costco to get something I'll try to buy it in the city Sheboygan so it's everybody's responsibility in the city to basically use our existing businesses to the full extent they possibly can and that will make that will keep those businesses there and make us have a better community I would work with our city leaders and try and figure out the best sort of incentives to bring businesses to our community I wouldn't just go look for businesses I would want the feedback of our citizens what do they feel our need is here we finally got our Olive Garden but if there are other businesses that we are lacking that they leave the community to go and find I would want to know about that and then work with our city leaders and then take that the next step and then try and find that type of a business to come to our community thank you although we do need again we got to drive home the boat that we need to have housing and not just affordable housing but housing across the board because we are thoroughly lacking we have some vacant and underdeveloped areas inside of the city of Sheboygan that here's an idea how about we develop them now there's an area on the west side of the city of Sheboygan's River from about Kiwanis all the way down to Blue Harbor that if we made some green space there some walking paths maybe some bicycle paths some enterprising young people might decide that's a good place to set up some kind of a shop or maybe we could set up a an area like we have at Peltin Park except having small amounts of minors now selling maybe things like they do at the John Michael Collard Art Center fair you know this is a way that we could bring items into the town thank you I really don't have any answers to this question yet like I said I've been new to this and this is my first time doing it so Dean I completely agree with my fellow alters our fellow candidates again and this you know we have to work with city staff help the help businesses that are interested in coming here or and existing businesses and in their needs and through that it's it's all through the infrastructure of the city to make sure everything that they have that they know that the the services that they need in order to be able to foster their business we just recently you know this wasn't a a in the city thing but we just recently the last night we approved extending a sewer system out to the Collard Generator Plant you need to do things like that to foster businesses to help them out so I guess that's my best answer on that okay well thank you all very much for your willingness to run and to be of service to the Schwagen community and appreciate your your time this evening I also want to thank the the camera Scott Miliff with the program director of WSCS for taping this forum this evening we we all will be voting on April 4th and believe it's nope April 2nd excuse me April 2nd and there will be two referendums on the ballot you know brought by the state you will be able to see those referendums and all of the candidates running in your district by going to my vote W W I dot gov and I'm just going to close with a quote from Mitzi Miller progress doesn't happen all at once it's a slow grind but a commitment to service as an agent of positive change will bring us closer one step closer have a good evening