 Hello, welcome to the Donahue Group. We're glad you could join us for this good half hour of conversation about local issues in the city of Sheboygan. I'm Mary Lynn Donahue, the host of this erstwhile group. Ken Ristow now on vacation. Tom Paneski now on vacation. Cal Potter retired. Me? Working, yeah. I'm just working and working and working. And then when I'm not working, I'm working. But in any event. One person for three retirees. That's it. Sounds good to me. I need to continue their social security. I'm just going to. And the snappy camera work here. But just to point out, in case we hadn't mentioned it before, more than five or six times. This show, the Donahue Group, Award of Merit. This is no kind of silly show that you're watching. This is a show that was awarded some merit. And so congratulations, gentlemen. I think I'm happy to share this honor. We couldn't have done it without you. We couldn't have done it without you. And all the little people. Yes. Next year, we're going to be called the Ristow Show. And then after that, the Paneski Show, then the Potter Show. And then we'll just rotate back. But in any event, glad you could be here. We're here on a very warm summer afternoon, feeling just a little wilted. But having come off a very, very nice 4th of July weekend, we had a good time. I hope all of you did. Let the record reflect that Professor Paneski played Lobster Louie in the parade. Was that your real name, Lobster Louie? Might as well be Lobster Louie. I saw you. You look great. He did look great. Those red ears really become you. I think Rush Limbaugh ought to check and see if maybe one of those, I beg your pardon, lobster hats wouldn't just fit him perfectly. But in any event, why were you wearing the lobster hat? Well, the lobster boil is July 18th. So we had a place in the parade to advertise the lobster boil. And we were handing out flyers to let people know. And we also had a telephone that they could call and get tickets. Early bird rotary. Early bird rotary. Thank you. It's a good cause. Fountain park. At Fountain Park, it's I think from 4.30 till 9.10 o'clock, we have the band Buffalo Joe. They'll be in the Fountain Park band shell playing through the evening. OK, that's enough. What's the date? Friday, July 18th. It'll go until the lobster and the mosquito are at about the same size. And then it'll be time to go home for the evening. There won't be any mosquitoes? Buffalo Joe will see it to that. I've played my bagpipes outside. You'd think that'd scare off the mosquitoes. Not a chance. In fact, it seems to attract them. I just want to start back with some older news that there was, in fact, good news that the pollution that was found on the plot of land that the city is trying to, or I'm sorry, that the school district has for sale was minor and that it can be easily cleaned up. I have not heard anything further about what plans there are for that. But I know there was some concern that this would be just this huge, you know, minefield of intoxicants, or not intoxicants. You've been reading the press. That's going to be Tom's item later. Let him into that. Toxins. Toxins, not intoxins. But in any event, so that was good news. And I still think that development on that parcel is a good idea. That's the YBCA's proposal. What parcel is this? Out on Taylor Drive. Taylor Drive. Right, across from the field of dreams. OK. And the school district has had it for sale. There's been a little controversy and various competing interests and so forth. But I do hope the Y can pull that together and so forth. June was also, unfortunately, much more notable for the 11 inches of rain, I think, that fell in huge chunks throughout the month. The press says that the county is going to be requesting $385,000 from FEMA in repairs and so forth. So I think it was really a blow. It does appear that the storm system sewers, whatever, that they put in after 1998 did perform pretty well. But it's like the mayor said, you've got a funnel. And it will efficiently funnel water. But if you dump a huge amount in, it's going to take a little while. And there's going to be some spilling and so forth. So I think that is what happened. Those stormwater ponds that they built, there's one on the south side off of, what is that? Washington Avenue. 28 or what? Washington Avenue. Washington Avenue, that is 20. And then I drive by that one frequently. And I noticed it was full, I mean very full. And on dry days and everything else, you could see the bottom. So I think it worked, yeah. Because that area on the south side really flooded a few years ago. But here's what happened just recently. And I'm interested in your comments. The city council has now just recently approved an increase in the city's debt ceiling for an additional $2 million in borrowing for capital projects related to stormwater improvement. Necessitated by the repeal of the stormwater tax, which I think we were all in great favor of. I wasn't. We were in favor of keeping the tax. I wasn't in favor of keeping the tax. Keeping the tax. Because I thought it was a broad base. And it was a tax on everybody I believe. And I think even you could, stormwater tax, I think that even was a tax on the nonprofits. Because they had need for stormwater to run off, et cetera, and they could have a tax. Now that it was gone, it has to go on the property tax, and the nonprofits aren't axed. So others are gonna have to pay. We're gonna pay for it, and then pay for it, and pay for interest. Yep. Excellent. Excellent. Moving forward, we are in the city, yes. Am I about the sun too long, or does that not make a lot of sense to me? I'm sorry. Well, it's keeping the bond markets going. That it's fueling that economic engine that needs to be fueled, and we're just, we're the ones providing the energy. And likewise, add the wheel tax. They are repealing, or is it already gone? I think it's already, the wheel tax is gone, they repeal that. But that was on people who had vehicles in the city, and a lot of nonprofits had vehicles, trucks and cars. And now they don't have that, so they have to raise money via bonding, for street repairs, et cetera. So in a way they, well, we don't want to tax people, but we were spreading the tax, but now we're gonna have to raise the money anyway to repair roads, and repair streets, and. Wouldn't it be nice if we could have actual, thoughtful, intelligent political discussions on legislative floor, really talking about the pluses and minuses of things, instead of having the, what I call the pandermeter, you know, set in full motion, so people need to pander and pretend that they're, not raising taxes, or pretending that they're doing. I know, the tax are not, and elderly, maybe who live in a home, don't really have a car, they get around by, so, but they still have to pay property tax. They're in fixed incomes. They're fixed incomes. And they could well pay. And they could well pay, they have four or five cars. Well, if they could forward four or five cars. One of the problems you get with stormwater runoff too, is that the more that you pave the more runoff that you have, that certainly makes some sense. And of course, businesses with large parking lots, even churches. South High School, the North High School. Okay, yeah. They were flooded. Oh, were they flooded? Oh, sure. Sure. The parking lots are the buildings. The parking lots, and then the way that was pitched, the water itself anyway, was running right into the commons. Oh dear. Right. And then 12th Street, that 12th, the intersection of 12th and Washington Avenue was at least three inches underwater. Because all that now is coming off the parking lots and it's running into the street and running downward toward the lake. But it was pretty, it was pretty ugly. Pretty ugly. I mean, there's drains there, but they're just not adequate to all kind of water. I think that the, I mean, the issue is, is that, I mean, talking about taxing, either nonprofits or businesses or whatever, is that when you put these very large parking lots in, you just create this problem. And so I think maybe the idea was that if you put a great big parking lot down, then maybe you ought to contribute a little bit toward the, you know, solving some of the stormwater runoff. But it'll be interesting to see how it goes. The city debt limit is pretty high. And I think Alderman Rindfleisch, as I remember, was the only person voting against the, the increasing the debt ceiling. So, well, if you were on the council or even when you were on the council, was there a lot of, I call it pandering, but talk about not raising taxes. And if you said, gee, this is a service and people ought to pay for it. I mean, could you do that in your city council days without getting beat up? See, that's 15 years ago, I gotta think about. But I mean, we initiated the wheel tax, I think, in our city council. And that ran into pros and cons and disgust. But, and it didn't pass unanimously. I think there were strong advocates for not doing it. And, but we, we passed it. So, and I don't remember when the stormwater tax was initiated, whether I was on the council or since I was on the council, I don't remember. But yeah, we, we would, I don't know. I mean, every alderman has their own views on how they're going to address issues. And some may say we're just not gonna tax at all if they could, if they could help it. My feeling driving around Sheboygan as opposed to driving around other similar sized cities in the, in the state is that although our property taxes are high, the quality of the roads, generally the, the curbing gutters, things like that is high. That it's a very well maintained and well taken care of city. And it really costs money to do that. So. And compared to other states too, many states you'll find one streetlight hanging above an intersection on a wire, no curbing gutter, very few saw, maybe they won't even have storm sores. You know, just ditches. You find that in many, many states don't have the infrastructure that Wisconsin cities do. So that, you know, you can go back and people say, well, why do I pay such high taxes in Wisconsin? We do provide a high level of service. We go a little bit step beyond, I guess, many communities in this country. And we did like the state does. They have user fees. I think people used our parks. I mean, you know, Evergreen Park was used a lot and we charged people for renting the facility. So I think when I was on the council we talked about raising the fees for usage because they were the people who were using it and they should pay for it. Although we still have a wonderful park system where you can go with your kids and not pay anything and or should you, I mean, if a municipality can't provide green space and has, you know, the opportunity to do it, it certainly should in my opinion, but in any event. So it'll be interesting. I know that when Mayor Perez was running and even after just discovering or really getting a grip on the city's debt is pretty difficult. The city imposed a debt limit that was a little bit below the ceiling that they could absolutely go up to, but they were just absolutely bumping up against that debt ceiling. So I don't know what this particular bonding does, you know, or authorization to bond does if that will increase the debt service even more because it's about 20, 25% of what we pay is interest on the debt and, you know, reflecting state and federal issues too, so. But in any event, it'll be interesting to see how that turns out. I do note that Alderman Giesha did say that you couldn't have people living in filth and mud. And so. It's pretty in latent position for Alderman Giesha. Well, now let's move right along. I was pleased to see he's against filth and mud. Now, if we are taking off the air, we will know who to blame directly. So. I listened to Alderman Giesha when he was a talk, radio talk commentary and that my comments are fairly light compared to his. So I'm not even on a roll. I'm not even getting started yet here. And he has rested and relaxed and might I add a little tan? I think that the. A lot of gardening. So summer is good for him in that way. Some of us are just pasty white. Did I mention that I'm working? No, nevermind. That's the contrast. That's the contrast. Hey, this is Irish Catholic skin. So leave it alone. The city council. I thought did something very interesting by imposing a city residency requirement on non-union workers. Where did that come from? I, I. Alderman. My Alderman. Boran. Boran put it onto the floor. It was a kind of a curious argument. It's his argument at the beginning of his, I was read the press, he was come, if he was quoted properly, was that it would increase city efficiency. And compatibility or something. Yeah, cohesiveness and camaraderie. I guess presumably we could all go to the same parks and hang out together after work or something. I'm not quite sure. I mean, it makes some sense if you have a job where you need to respond in a short period of time to your responsibilities. But I just can't imagine that most city workers, you know, when the alarms go off or the bells go off or the sirens go off or whatever, need to be, you know, running from their municipalities. I was surprised that the press had something along the lines of 42% of the missable employees don't live in the city of Sheboygan. I was very surprised by that number. That's, that's. Well, now we do have a lot of condos. Surprised by that. That need to be filled. And so this may be a way of trying to do that. Cause 42% is a very high number. And so those are people who are not contributing to the tax base. When we had, we had a residency requirement when I was on the council and we got rid of it except for department heads. Terry, Terry Van Akron was on the council and I came to an agreement, so to speak that department heads who make decisions should not be confronted with conflicts of interest. So they should live in the city. But other people who work as underneath department heads and we want the best people, they could live anywhere and work for the city and give us their best. And it turned out we, the reason we were pushing for that and we finally got it passed that for about three years was that people's personal lives change. They have aunts and uncles living in towns and maybe they die and now they're gonna move into the house where so-and-so lives. That means they're leaving the city and now do they have to give up their city job? And there were people who would rent an apartment and live in the town. And you know, just to get around the city, residents are being. I mean, it is one of those things that seems very simple on the face, just live in the city. But I think it is complicated. The fire department apparently has rules now requiring residency after your period of probation. For a period I think of up to five years is what I read in the paper. And what's the point of that? What's the point of that? I don't know about the five years. I mean, it's a compromise, it's half a loaf of bread, but yeah, it's just a compromise. It's one of those things of like watching sausage, but you know, so you hold them in a sense, hostage to the city for five years and they can go their merry way. I don't quite understand the logic of that. Yeah. I mean, if they need to be in close proximity because of the nature of their job, that's the nature of their job and it doesn't change after five years. I don't... Yeah. And if you've got good people living in the town falls or Schwoigen Falls or Kohler and there's a job opening in the city, I'm not gonna move to take a job opening, so we lose good people, that way too. And then today with two people working in a family, it's, you know, you probably look for someplace in the middle between the two jobs just by gas prices alone, but this is gonna provide a very interesting scenario for somebody who has to live in Schwoigen and maybe one spouse wants to work in Fond du Lac or something, you know? You can't live in Plymouth, you're stuck. It does appear to be one of those solutions in search of a problem. And I'm not sure that the problem was particularly, clearly articulated except, gee, you're getting paid with city taxpayer money, why don't you be a city taxpayer? I mean, I think that's the equitable position that you take. There is another aspect of it, but it doesn't affect Schwoigen as much and that's the Milwaukee area where you found a very high percentage of professional police fire living outside the city and then it was the, you do a demographic profile, you find there was the black fireman and the black policeman living in the city and the white living in the suburb and then you start saying, is this white flight? Does this serve for morale on the various departments that have, you know, a racial split and you get some sympathy for it, but Schwoigen and Schwoigen Falls and Calder and the melding of the communities really isn't a big deal, I think, but. It would really, if it was considered on the other side of the city government, that is the district, the school district, it really would be difficult to do that because a lot of our higher-ease, you know, just what we're talking about, are now starting, especially the economy, the way it is where people have jobs tend to hang onto those jobs. I would say that a good four or five of our candidates we wanted to hire had spouses who, you know, we just hired a person who's living right now in Michicot and her husband is working in two rivers and so they live in two rivers because it was kind of the, now she's gonna be commuting or I don't think they're gonna be moving or maybe they'll move to Manitowoc as a halfway position. You have these residence requirements, you may find when Milwaukee found the studies done by Mark Shug, professor at Economics at UWM, Milwaukee's teacher residency requirement really has restricted the number and the kinds of people they wanted to hire. And I think you'd see that, at least on the teacher side. As city employees, maybe a different kettle of fish. I don't know. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. And I know when we interview for department heads, it's an issue. Yeah, it's an issue. And you may get a good candidate for, say, human resources director who lives in Port Washington and who does, wants to stay in Port Washington and people do make that kind of commute every day. So it's interesting. It is nice, I think, in terms of disaster scenarios to have your fire department fairly close by. I don't know, that one feels okay to me, but the rest, I'm just, I don't think access time is reasonable. That place and fire ought to be within 15 minutes of their job. That's reasonable expectation. But I don't know about necessarily residency just because you want to be punitive somehow expecting them to live in that taxing base. I don't know. I don't know. Well, it's just another way to fill the condos. It's a great idea, so. I have real estate. Yeah. I'm wearing her investments, I don't know. I miss the boat. Are we paying our city employees that well if they can buy those kinds of boats? Well, I was wondering who was going to. Are we expecting six of them to live together? Yeah, right, right. I mean, what is, there's kind of an assumption going on here that I didn't even, there's a new story here. I've just seen the prices on those things. Whoa. Yeah, I hate that. How do we pay these people to cut grass in the parks? Those are priced even outside the reach of an experienced teacher. You need several, you need several of us. We need a whole department, the faculty department. There are some cheaper condos in town, but I was waiting for someone to make that point. So, in any event. Glad I served a purpose this morning. All right, all right. The election season tis upon us. I always check the, now the government accountability board site instead of the state elections board to see who has filed nomination papers and so forth. And as of this morning at least, our district attorney had not filed his required 500 signatures and he had until five o'clock tonight. So Joe may in fact be on his way to Madison, but it did not look like there would be any opponents at least filing. But I note that Job Jose has filed papers and is going to be running against Terry Van Akron. A rematch of the last time. Yes, although interestingly enough on the website, but not mentioned in the paper, two other Republican candidates have taken out papers or have filed declarations of candidacy had not turned in the requisite number of signatures. So you would have a Republican primary which I thought was pretty interesting. One fellow from Kohler and I can't remember the other. One was a Libertarian. And it's always nice to mix a Libertarian into the mix and take it from there You mean they had to be filed by today? Today was the deadline? At five PM. Okay, so then if tomorrow should be a story about who's running or at least in the near future who's running for the assembly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I think Terry Seed is pretty secure. I would think so. He, one would, I think 72% of the vote, something like that, last time. Yeah, I think Job is gonna have to run a long time to kind of chip away at that lead, but you never know. But I thought it was interesting. And I believe Costella's unchallenged. Glenn Grossman of all people has got a couple of challengers. And the Republicans? There's one Republican challenging Grossman. Senator Grossman is from West Bend from State Senate District. Don't ask me. I don't know, I don't know. I can't possibly keep the numbers straight. It used to be the 20th, but I don't know anymore. Yeah. And I don't think he's had opposition for really quite a long time. It's completely safe. Washington and Luzaki County is a really safe district, yes. The battle over there was always how conservative you were. I mean, Mary cans are a more moderate Republicans beat by Glenn Grossman in a Republican primary. So that's usually the battle in that area this week. Yeah, yeah. So in any event, July, August, September, October, so we have four full months of the campaign. Whatever they shoveled our way, I guess. Yeah. It'll be interesting, because I know Justice Abrahamson is up and running. We can talk about that in our next episode. But I think it's always nice, as we've talked many times before, about having contested races and really contested races. Well, the Republicans on the state level are having a lot of retirements. And I believe the Democrats have fielded candidates, something like 95 out of 99 districts, just the highest since about 84, I believe. So they're feeling good about their chances by fielding nothing else, more candidates than they have for a long time. And then, of course, the traditional sacrificial lamb has been offered up against James Sensenbrenner. Do you remember last time, was it the two fellows were going to job share? They were election their campaign sharing. And that went sour in not too much time at all. But now there's just one candidate running against Sensenbrenner in really not much chance. And Jim Sensenbrenner doesn't come to any of our parades anymore. Oh, really? Well, you wouldn't know, because you don't live in the city. You better not try to work for us. But did the Senate? Although we'll sell you a great condo if you want to. Well, he used to have the city. And now that Petra got the city back in the sixth. But he does represent the southern part. So it would be a matter of how many of his constituents, I guess, from Woosburg, Cedar Grove, and wherever else in the southern area couldn't be shaboying for the parade item. Probably if he has to make a judgment, he's better off in Mechwan or somewhere else. That's for sure. Yeah. Can I interrupt? Yes. You mentioned Woosburg. And they had this big article about the convenience store that's opening on Sunday. And they're selling in Woosburg on Sunday. Oh dear, are they selling beer? I don't know. But they're just selling. They're operating a business on Sunday. It's an abomination. And normally they don't. And they're selling gasoline. And the people are saying it's great to stop there and pick up a snack, pick up something we need, buy gas. And I'm thinking that's the new thing for Woosburg. They're coming liberal. Oh, not so much. I don't think we probably have the need to worry over much about that. But in any event, and poor Ken is speechless with the thought that there might be a gas station open in Woosburg. It's an abomination. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt. There's something in Leviticus that bars. That's all right. We are almost out of time. So if there's any more trench and political commentary, we have a minute left. They shut the slide down. What slide? Did you see that? I saw that. I'm disappointed. But it's for safety reasons. Yeah, exactly. The slide at the corner, it's rusted and it's unsafe. And they really have to take it down and either repair it or replace it entirely. So we have actually somebody came and inspected it and did their job and said, this can't be used anymore. It's not good. Let's get bring your lawyer. They said a lot of joints were rusted. Yeah, the joints were rusted. $300,000 to replace it. Perhaps we can borrow it. I was going to say, there's a municipal bond in here. Well, thank you. Or charge each kid $0.50 before he goes down the slide. I think they already do. But in any event, thank you for joining us. And we've enjoyed your company as well.