 Good evening, and welcome to the Mayoral and Aldermanic District II candidate forums sponsored by the Sheboygan Branch of the American Association of University Women. AAUW seeks to empower girls and women and promote equity for girls and women through advocacy, education, and research. We are a nonpartisan organization. We do not endorse candidates, but we do take positions on issues and have been instrumental in legislation for improved opportunities for women and girls. Our local branch also gives a $2,500 scholarship every year to a non-traditional woman student who has returned to work, to school. The moderator for the Mayoral forum is Mike Klosson. He's not an AUW member, but his wife is. And the timekeeper is Linda Bolgert. The Aldermanic forum will immediately follow. The Mayoral forum. The Mayoral candidates are Ryan Sorenson and Mike van der Steen. Hello, welcome. Thank you for making yourselves available to go through these important issues. And thank you to everybody watching at home. I'm sorry we couldn't have you here in person. We decided in advance that we would alternate questions starting with Ryan Sorenson. So let me get right into it. The most pressing issue of the last 15 months is undoubtedly the global pandemic of the COVID-19 virus. With the introduction of effective vaccines, we're in a much more secure position today than we were last year, but the disruption will take time to heal. Last week, the American Rescue Plan was passed into law, providing funding support for local government expenses, education, small business, renters, and more. Because Mayor, what do you plan to do to access this support? Well, first off, I'd like to thank the AAUW for hosting this forum tonight. I'm excited to share my vision and ideas for a fresh new leadership for the city of Sheboygan. To the question, this has been a huge topic that's been discussed with a lot of business owners that I've been working with and talking to throughout this campaign. And quite frankly, we're still not out of the woods just yet. I'm glad Congress passed the American Rescue Plan. And a lot of their funds that they're using are targeted for municipalities specifically, as well as housing assistance, as well as business support system. I think it's vital that the city government as well as the mayor take a key role in ensuring that we're communicating, working directly with businesses and working with our key partnerships across this area, whether it's the Chamber of Commerce, whether it's the Business Improvement District, and other neighborhood associations as well that have connections with local businesses, ensuring that we're getting this money out to them, to businesses that are in need, to families that are still struggling, to folks that are struggling to pay their rent. This pandemic has hurt every single one of us in many different ways. And it's vital that the city steps up and is a key leader in getting that information out there and connecting those with the resources that need it. Thank you very much. Mr. Banderstein, same question. Thank you very much. And I also want to thank the AUW for organizing this event. The American Recovery Program that was just passed is something that I've lobbied for in Congress for some time. I've written letters to Congressman and House Leader Pelosi and some of her associates. I've gotten online with some of our congressional representatives, encouraging them to give the city some direct support. We did get some money to help us with COVID expenses, but we really didn't get any money to help us out with revenue replacement. And as of last September, we had accounted for about $1.2 million in last revenues to the city of Sheboygan. And that's going to be a big impact on our upcoming budget, because we had to scramble and find other ways to cover those expenses without the revenues that we normally had. So as far as the COVID in general, you know, we've tried to put together some really great programs for our businesses. So there's two rounds that we did of funding for businesses that were five or under employees so that they could make it through this COVID period and then come back and be great businesses in Sheboygan as time goes on. We're also worrying about our residents. So we also put together a mortgage assistance program that can help some of the low income people out so that they can maintain their ownership of their home and again, survive this COVID period. And the state has got a great program in place right now to help people out with rental assistance. So there is help out there. And one of the problems I see is a lot of people don't want to ask for the help. So I hope that they'd let their pride go a little bit and take advantage of the dollars that we put together because we really like to push all of it out the door and help as many people as we can to survive this COVID pandemic that we've had in the nation. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next question will go to Mike first. President Biden declared that by the 4th of July, it should be possible to gather and celebrate in small groups. So do you expect that our annual parade can go forward with modifications such as a longer route to spread out the crowds or something else? Well, I just had the pleasure of making an announcement at the last council meeting that Visit Sheboygan and Sheboygan have decided to begin the planning for this event. If we don't start planning it now, we won't be able to pull it off on a very short timeframe later on. But we've had a great downward trend in the trajectory in the city of Sheboygan in the county with cases that we have. And the last I looked, we were about 164 per 100,000 people burden rate, and we need to get under 100 to be in the medium range. Right now we're in the high range. So we're hoping that we can accomplish that, and that'll open up the door for everything to happen as it normally has in the past. But we'll be encouraging people to maintain what social distance they can to wear a mask when they're close to others. Extending the parade route is something that definitely we can consider. So all of those things are on the table, and we will make a final decision as we get closer to that actual event as to whether or not it's going to be held and what parts of it will be held. So it might be possible to maybe have the fireworks, but maybe not a parade. So we'll have to see. We're also moving ahead with plans to conduct the Memorial Day parade as well. Thank you very much. Thank you. Ryan? I would agree with Nervander-Steen as well. The point is we're still not out of the woods just yet with this pandemic. So it's vitally important that we ensure that folks get the vaccine so that we can get to that point so that we can have a safe Fourth of July. Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays. So I want the parade and I want all the events just as much as everyone else does. But we got to make sure we're playing it smart. We're doing it right. I think there have been some other communities that we can look at that have successfully pulled off events during the pandemic that have done safely and effectively. So I'm hoping that the numbers will continue to decrease. We get the vaccines rolling out there. People still mask up in social distance so that we can have the Fourth of July parade. And that's something I'm looking forward to and I know everyone else in the city is. Thank you. Research has been done and studies have shown that diversity can be an important part of good decision-making, bringing in different experiences and outlooks, make sure that more viewpoints are represented in the decisions we make. Race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, education, living with a disability. Diversity has many, many expressions. Sheboygan is becoming a much more diverse community which should bring more diversity in hiring, appointments to advisory boards, decision-making boards. What will you do as mayor to encourage inclusion? I think this is an awesome topic and this has been a huge issue that a lot of folks have been talking about, whether it's students in our school district, whether it's local business owners and just folks all over the city. I think it's vitally important again that the mayor is a role and a leader in addressing our diverse community and just quite frankly, the diverse talent that we have with everybody that makes up our community. I've been a founding member of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Initiative working with other community leaders all across Sheboygan County to address some of these key issues. And I'm on the city subcommittee for that group as well. We look at different practices that the city can implement, whether it's around hiring, whether it's around appointments to boards and commissions and also engaging with other folks throughout the process. The more voices and ideas that you have at a table, the better ideas that you can bring together and you have a stronger output. So I see the role as the mayor to address this issue by elevating the voices, ensuring that any appointment reflects the key diversity of our community and city as well. And just ensuring that those voices are heard, I know that we'll be continuing to make Sheboygan a more welcoming, inclusive place. But we also need to look at how lack of diversity and inclusion impacts our workforce. A lot of folks, a lot of business leaders are struggling to hire diverse talent and grow their businesses because we're not a welcoming, inclusive community in some parts. So there's work to do. And I would look forward to making a huge impact on this issue as mayor. Thank you, Ryan. Mike? Thank you very much. You're right, Sheboygan is becoming a very diverse community right now. We're a majority minority community in our school district. And as those students grow up, that's going to again accentuate itself in the rest of the population. I have made several appointments trying to bring some of these diverse people in our community that have expressed interest in participation in some of our city committees. So there's people like Marcos and Jerry and Sammy and Jose who are serving on different committees that I've appointed in the past. But I'm almost looking for new people. And one of the things that I'm gonna be doing in the next term is giving people a page on our website where they can apply and ask to be put on a certain committee. And so we have more of a list of people that we can go to. You know, I've pointed some of the people that I've met during my travels as mayor and look for those people that would fit a certain role on a certain committee. So we've done a fair amount in that, but I think there's more room for additional appointments in those areas. I agree that diversity is something where we wanna make sure that everyone in this city feels that they're treated with dignity and respect. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mike. The next question has to do with the increase in public protests and demonstrations in Sheboygan and across the country, particularly in the last year. What's your view of this form of civic involvement? Well, I think most of the protests that we saw were because of the George Floyd incident and really highlighted some of the problems that we have with race relations in our nation. Some of those marches took place here. We had, I think, four different people locally that were organizing those marches. And our police department responded to that by contacting them, building a relationship with them so that when there was a march, they'd let them know. They were police department people that were in the crowd and they didn't have any riot gear on. They were just wearing their normal outfits that they have in their uniforms. And they participated with the other people. And that really made a difference, I think, to those organizers, to know that the city was behind them. And the first march that we had, the following, that was on a Friday and the following Tuesday, I met with a gentleman who planned that first march and began a dialogue with them and expressed that we wanted to see them have a chance to express themselves, but we wanted to make sure that it was done safely and there wasn't any violence or damage. And they really worked with us to accomplish that. We had a second shooting here in the city of Sheboygan that took place and a black man died. And there was a group from Green Bay that came in as marched, as well as some of our other local people that were concerned and they wanted to express, you know, their dismay at this event. And we worked with that group to handle things. And again, we were successful in not having any damage done or any violence at all associated with it. So I really commend our police department for the great job they've done to control these issues. Thank you. Ryan, your response? Yeah, I think protesting and having these activities, you know, when they're done peacefully, I think this is exactly what the vision of our founding fathers of what they had in expressing different points of view and raising different issues that are impacting different communities across Sheboygan. I think it's vitally important to really make sure that the city, no matter what level, we're engaging with folks, listening to what they're having to say and ensuring that their voices are heard fundamentally and ensuring that we can keep them safe moving forward and continue those dialogues and addressing those issues and making sure that we're making some real positive changes in this community. Thank you. This next question will start with Ryan. Cyber security is becoming more important every year with the increase in online activities and the importance of that online activity. One major vulnerability is the rise in ransomware attacks that lock up computer networks until a payment is made to the hackers. In particular, cities, schools, and hospitals are targeted with increasing frequency. What will you do to protect Sheboygan from such attacks? Yeah, surprisingly, this is an increasing issue for a lot of municipalities around the state. Vitally important, I think it's that we need to fundamentally ensure that we're supporting our IT department, giving them the tools that they need to be successful in protecting cities' information, whether it's with HR or finance or public works or managing our fleet system. A lot of what we do on the city right now is online, on the internet, and it's a great way for folks to plug in and get connected with their city and kind of knowing what's going on. So making sure that we're listening with their IT department, making sure that we're providing them with the cunning edge support that they need and the tools that they need to be successful to protect our city with any sort of cybersecurity related issue. Thank you. Mike, your response? Thank you. This is a growing problem, and just when you think you've solved it for one community and you've gotten by, they dream up a new way to attack you. And the city of Sheboygan has been proactive in setting up redundant servers, so we have a backup, a system that we have, and we've been really careful about all the emails that are coming into the city and putting those in a sandbox, having the software analyze them so that we're sure that there aren't any bad things in the code of those emails. But there are phishing schemes where, you know, if somebody clicks on something wrong and doesn't use good judgment sometimes, you can make a mistake. So we've been trying to put together some programs where we'll send something out that mimics what some of these things do and try to catch people making a mistake so that we can work with them to correct that behavior so it doesn't happen if there's a real phishing scheme that comes to one of our computers through email. But with those redundant systems, I think we're in a good position, but we have to continue to work to see that we're on top of all the new things that are coming out. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, Mike, this next question will start with you. Roads and other methods of travel are key to any city, but this is a complex problem. We'd like to hear your thoughts on road maintenance and improvements and in the spirit of inclusion, feel free to include your thoughts on alternatives such as bike paths, public transit, sidewalks, other pedestrian paths, any other solution, including the private automobile and other things. Well, as I've listened to our taxpayers, this is one of their big concerns our city streets. And especially this time of the year when the freeze thought cycle shows a lot of potholes. But this was a concern that I've dealt with over the years and in the six years prior to me becoming mayor, we were only resurfacing 1.4 miles of streets. And I've really made this an effort that we did respond. And during the last seven years, we've been able to hit 4.2 miles of streets repaved on an average every year. So that's a three-fold increase in the number of streets that are being addressed. And we're not just doing our major thoroughfares, we're doing a lot of our neighborhood streets as well. So we're not ignoring those, but we're still having a priority on those major volume thoroughfares. We've also made a move to purchase a paving machine so that we can repair many of the streets with our own crew. That allows them to mill off asphalt that's failing on a street and have our crew come in and put a new surface on. And we also are able to buy the asphalt from Sheboygan County and pay a much cheaper price because they don't have any profit involved and we're using our own laborers. So that allows us to extend those dollars much further. And the other thing that we're working with is our public transit. One of the big accomplishments that we had two years ago was cutting a deal with the Sheboygan area school district so that every student with their student ID can get on a city bus and ride it for free. So they can use this to get to school, they can get to things that they have to do after school, to the library, and we're training a whole new generation of people in the city of Sheboygan. Those students are gonna, I think, use public transportation much more than many of us do today. So that's gonna really help us as time goes on and get maximum advantage of our transit system, which is a very good system. Thank you. Ryan? Definitely, roads is the hot topic out there today and this has been a huge issue for many years for the city that we've yet to fully tackle and address. Fundamentally, we all understand that our roads are in pretty poor condition. I believe a report came out a couple of weeks ago giving Wisconsin's infrastructure a D rating and I'm sure Sheboygan plays a key role in that low grade as well. We have over 200 miles of roads in the city and it's a huge task in terms of how we're gonna look at how we're gonna fix these roads. Right now, I do think that we need to re-look at what our roads plan is. I don't think folks wanna wait 14 years to ensure that their roads are done. We need to make sure that we're having a strategic plan that's incorporated with that, looking at the timing for that, looking at the funding mechanisms, looking at what other options are out there so that we can diversify our funding for roads as well. We need to ensure that our Public Works Department is supported and that they have that backup as well to get the job done and do it right, making sure that we have the proper tools in place so that when we're doing a project, we're doing it right. It's a high quality project and the work is getting done in a timely manner and we're respecting taxpayer dollars as well. We also need to look at the impact that the loss of shared revenue has from the state in terms of how this has impacted the transportation funding from the local municipal level. So I'll make sure I'm a strong mayor that's communicating with our legislators, whether it's in Madison or Washington, D.C., making sure that we're getting our fair shake and shared revenue so that we can increase more roads so that we can ensure infrastructure is sound so that our roads are repaired so that we can help support our businesses and our local economy and tourism because we all utilize the roads. We all wanna make sure our infrastructure is rock solid. Thank you. The next question also has to do with the way things are changing. It's not business and commerce aren't done the same way they've always been done. So in the news a lot around the country, various cities such as Sheboygan, short-term lodging rentals are coming under fire. They're getting increased scrutiny because they compete with existing hotels and they also compete with the permanent residents looking for affordable housing for long-term rentals. What controls, if any, should the city exercise over this type of business? Ryan, yes. So I think the popular one we're referring to is like Airbnb is a growing global company that has provided new tools and new resources that help municipalities like Sheboygan as well as neighbors that have concerns with these issues. So I think there's some space there that the city of Sheboygan can kind of step up and have some good partnerships in creating in terms of how we're communicating with with those neighbors that are experiencing these issues. We need to understand that these are tools that do help with our tourism as well. I mean, we have some pretty big events coming down the line here for Sheboygan with the Ryder Cup as well as key events at Road America. So we need to make sure that when we have these short-term lodging access and points in the city that we have that strong communication with the residents and with the city government ensuring that these are used properly and that they're not causing any disturbances in the neighbors. I represent part of the southern shore of Lake Michigan and I've been working with a lot of neighbors on these issues as well. So I hear their concerns. We're making sure that we're taking those smart approaches so that when those come to visit and utilize these short-term rentals that they're experiencing Sheboygan and having fun here, but also respecting the local neighborhood and community as well. Thank you, Mike. Thank you. There's been a couple of issues with these short-term rentals. One of them is to have them pay room tax and we appreciate the move that our federal government took to require all these Airbnb's and VBRO companies to make sure that those payments are made. As far as the city of Sheboygan, we're hosting the Ryder Cup coming up this year, it looks like, and there's gonna be a lot of places that are gonna be rented out and we hope that none of these guests that are coming into our community are gonna raise too much of a ruckus, that they're gonna eat and sleep and then go back out to the golf course every day and it'll bring a lot of revenue into our community, it'll bring a lot of notoriety to our community. It seems like every time there's a PGA event the year after we get a real boom in our tourism. So we're waiting for the boom that'll come in 2022 because of all this and there'll be more and more people that'll wanna rent an Airbnb and come to Sheboygan. Now, we do have some neighbors who have put up with maybe some Airbnb operators that haven't made the best decision on their guests and again, the companies are trying to protect the communities as well and trying to put more restrictions on the guests and the things that they can do. So we wanna work with them to try to accomplish that so that the people in Sheboygan can get the maximum value out of the real estate that they own, the city tourism benefits from that and we have a much stronger community as a result of all that activity. Thank you very much. Now, I touched on it a little bit in the last question but I'd like to expand more on the question of affordable housing and what kinds of things can be done to increase access? How do we make the determination where they should be located, how they're controlled, how they are doled out among the people that need to access that? It's a key part of business growth is finding employees that can't afford to live in the community and serve that community. So Mike, you can go first on this. Thank you very much. Affordable housing is a real touch point for our community but we've built about just over 1,013 units right now in the last term and 60% of those units are affordable, subsidized housing for our workforce in Sheboygan. And first of all, we want to have enough room for all the people that are working in our different businesses and commerce so that they have a place to live in Sheboygan because if they have to live in Fond du Lac or Manitouac, we're not getting the full value out of the employment that's in our community. We want them to live here and spend all their dollars here as well as work here. The other thing that I think is misnomer is we don't often get to decide where they're gonna build these things. It's the developers that are gonna decide. So we have projects and we work with developers. Every year we have a developer summit. We bring them in, we show off Sheboygan. We show some of the fun things you can do in the community and we take them around to all the development sites that we have and they can pick and choose the different ones that they see that they feel might be primed for their type of development. And then we have to work with them to get a development contract together and approve everything through the Planning Commission and our Architecture Review Board and then finally hopefully we'll get to see a project built but we really don't get to decide where many of these are gonna go. We show people available sites and they might find their own and say, well, I wanna build it here. Can you approve this? And so we'd be working with these developers to try to do this because one of the ways that we keep taxes down is to build more tax base and so that's gonna be a prime activity for us to continue in this community. Thank you. Ryan? Definitely affordable housing is an issue that I've been hearing a lot about and it impacts us in a lot of different ways. Whether it's senior citizens ensuring that they can stay in their homes when they're on a fixed income. Whether it's younger folks looking to plant their roots and grow in Sheboygan. I mean, there's difficulty in a lot of different ways with housing whether it's the increase of homelessness in our community whether it's the lack of business development and growth because there's simply not enough housing in our housing stock to recruit and maintain that talent for our workforce in the general area. Right now, over 40% of our population pays more than 30% of their income on housing. By HUD standards, this does not meet the definition of affordable housing. So there's a large group of our population in the city that struggles to pay for their housing costs. So we need to really relook at how we're serving our residents and supporting them when they're living in our community. I served as the chairman of the Sheboygan County Housing Coalition a few years back working with different nonprofit groups across the county looking at how we can address some of our housing issues as well. So I'll work with developers to really kind of understand the key root and cause of why housing first off is more expensive to build in our community than it is in other parts of the state as well. I think there's a lot of different opportunities where we can help developers and provide a steady hand in direction and showing them what our needs are as a community as well as how that benefits folks that are struggling to pay for their homes. And also we're helping attract new folks to help our businesses grow and expand. I don't believe we need to be building more luxury apartments. I think we need to diversify our housing stock by building duplex homes, single family homes, townhouses. Other communities are doing this. Janesville, Sherwood have gotten creative with how they use TIF financing to bring new affordable housing to their community. So I think that there's a lot of good examples out there of what we can look at in terms of how we can provide sound housing for our community. Thank you very much. Ryan, this next question I'll start with you. And it's somewhat related in that for affordable housing, one easy way to afford more housing is to get a more high paying job. Right now, there are many, many hundreds of jobs if not thousands in the city and the county that are requiring higher skills, either college education or technical training or some of the trades. And they're unable to fill those because there aren't enough applicants with the proper training. They've proven very difficult to fill. So how can we as a city attract either new workers to the area with these skills and training and or fill the pipeline and train local people for these jobs for the future? Yeah, and this is definitely a huge issue I've been hearing from local business leaders as well in our community. Sheboygan County for the last several years we've had over 3,000, 4,000 jobs available in the community and we can never seem to make a dent at that for some reason. So in my opinion, what we're doing right now is simply not working in terms of how we're filling the workforce need in our community. And it kind of becomes a chicken before the egg sort of situation in terms of housing as well and in terms of job training and development. But I think Sheboygan, we have a lot of great organizations and a lot of great companies that fundamentally care about the people that we serve. I think if you look at the Red Raider program that the Sheboygan Area School District has, I think foundationally that's an awesome program that we have to get our kids adjusted and exposed to some new skills out there so that we can provide those resources to fill those job gaps as well. So Sheboygan's lucky, we're very blessed to have some awesome partnerships. I think we gotta lean in in terms of the partnerships we're creating with the Sheboygan Area School District making sure that we're exposing kids at a young age about all the job training opportunities that are out there. We can work more closely with Lakeland University as well as LTC and UW Green Bay, the Sheboygan campus and making sure that we can fill the needs and provide these job training programs that are specific to our community to ensure that the businesses that we have can grow and thrive and making sure that new businesses that wanna come and plant their roots here in Sheboygan County have access to those tools as well. And I think some simple partnership and simple planning like that, I think that will go a long way. Again, other communities have done this. I think we can lead by example in terms of how we're providing this innovative approach and how we're helping fill these gaps in the job market right now. Thank you, Mike. Thank you very much. The Sheboygan Area School District has done a great job of working with our business community with the Red Raider Manufacturing Program to put programs in place that people in our community need to pick skills up that companies are requiring. And the companies are providing the machines, they're providing the programming. And so they also are doing internships with the students so that they can all get those skills and become acclimated to their workforce very easily. And then on the other hand, we've seen Lakeland University and LTC working with a lot of the communities and businesses to again put similar programs together and work with them to train the staff that they need. As far as getting more people to the community, I think what we need to do is reach back and try to find people that grew up in the area, people that left because they wanted to see the world. And now that they're married, maybe they have kids, they might wanna come back home to Sheboygan because we're one of the best places in the nation to raise a family. Maybe their parents are older now and they can't get along by themselves as well as they might, and they can come home to help them out in their later years. So that's one of the big things that I think we should try to capitalize on. Working with some of the families, maybe when they're home during the holidays be the perfect time for a job fair or working with reunion groups that are having reunions for the high school classes in the county to try to bring people back to Sheboygan. I know Acuity has done a lot of work with that to try to bring people back to Wisconsin and they've been real successful in getting the kids to come back right out of college. So again, we need more workers. It's a problem that's gonna continue and I think some of these new methods will help us to achieve that goal. Thank you very much. I'd like to take a brief second here to give a shout out to a local resource that helps with the training. The AAUW, I know, has programs with young girls, young women, ladies to get them excited about higher education and technical training. There are events periodically throughout the year. So check out AAUW and see if they have something that you are interested in. All right, next up, talking about business more in general, this I'll start with Mike. Many businesses in the city are struggling for the pandemic and for other reasons, just the economy is changing so rapidly. How can the city help them survive and thrive while also attracting new businesses? Well, I appreciate that question and these businesses are very important to our city, our residents depend on them for a lot of important services. So during COVID, we've worked with them to allow some of our hospitality industries to operate more outdoors. We've reduced some fees on the permits that were needed and we've streamlined that fee process so that they can have more outdoor events. And then we put together these assistance programs. We put $420,000 that we got from COVID-1, the CARES Act, and put that money in place so that these businesses could apply for loans from $2,000 up to $15,000 to help these small businesses out. In the past, we've had pop-up shops to develop new businesses and we've got a lot of empty spaces now and I think we should go back to having more pop-up shops to bring a new growth in businesses in our community. So that's what I really think we need to do. We have other programs for job development like redevelopment authority has revolving loans that are available and we've made many, many different loans to different businesses and we'll take a second or third position so that the bank has a little bit more assurance that this business is gonna be successful and some of the great businesses that we have right now, like Three Sheeps, they were helped with this business program and it's great to see them flourish. There's, it's just been a great program. There's probably about $800,000 in that program to low-note for job development right now so we wanna put all of that money to use and hope that those businesses will come and approach us and we'll do what we can to assist them. Thank you, Ryan? I think fundamentally needs to start with listening and engaging with our local businesses. On the onset of this pandemic, on the council, a few of us, myself included, we met with different local business owners, partnered with the chamber, heard what their concerns are, hearing what barriers the city had for them to be successful. So we introduced legislation to cut red tape and ensuring that those businesses could get creative in doing outdoor seating and closing down Eighth Street so that they could provide their services and keeping their customers safe and their staff safe as well. So I think that the listening part is fundamental in identifying the problems that we're hearing and ensuring that we can be an advocate for the businesses. And we have a lot of great resources and partnerships throughout the county, whether it's the Sheboydon County Economic Development Corporation, the Chamber of Commerce, or the BID. We have so many awesome opportunities here to advocate for businesses and the city needs to be better plugged into them as well. When we were provided aid at the start of the pandemic, quite frankly, in my opinion, the city was sitting on that aid for far too long. When we're getting aid to local businesses, we need to ensure that we're reaching out to them directly and doing those mailers right away so that we're connecting and getting that money to those that need it. We also have a lot of great assets in the city. Right now we have the South Point Enterprise Campus that is clamoring to be filled with business development and expansion right here. We have shovel ready land and we need to promote that. We need to promote the resources and resilient people that we are in Sheboydon. We have a strong great work ethic as well and I know if we promote that and use those soft tools that we have in our toolbox, I know that we can be successful in the long term for small businesses as well and for businesses that wanna grow and develop in our community. Thank you very much. I'd like to turn away from money and infrastructure, things like that and let's talk about something a little bit more natural. We live with a unique world class natural resource on our doorstep, the magnificent Lake Michigan. I'm sure you're all familiar with it. It is a natural wonder, but it is always changing and it requires us to be adaptable. Pollution, shoreline erosion, public access. How do you see the city's role in protecting the lake using it to improve our quality of life and leveraging its unique appeal? Ryan? Yeah, number one, the thing that we hear every single year from businesses, community members, residents is that Lake Michigan is our number one asset. We're so blessed to live on such a truly great lake and Lake Michigan provides so many awesome opportunities for us, whether it's tourism, whether it's recreation, whether it's jobs and industry as well. So we need to do as much as we can to protect and ensure that Lake Michigan is respected and we're making sure that our lake shore is protected as well. I've been endorsed by Clean Wisconsin Action Fund as well because conservation groups know that I'm gonna be the strongest advocate when it comes to protecting the lake and ensuring that our natural resources are preserved so that future generations can enjoy them. Sheboygan is so unique as well because we have the most access to the beach per capita in the state of Wisconsin compared to any other municipality. So whether you're going on the beach to enjoy a sunny day, whether you're going to the dog walk on the south side, whether you're taking your boat out to go fishing, there's a lot of awesome opportunities and we need to ensure that we're working with those partners that benefit and utilize the lake hearing what they're having to say so that we can maximize the experience and we can do what we can to protect the lake for future generations as well. Thank you. Mike? Thank you very much. Lake Michigan is our greatest asset. When we promote our tourism, we cite ourselves as the Malibu the Midwest and with the best freshwater surfing on Lake Michigan and that's been a unique hook that has really helped to promote our tourism and bring more people to our community. Recreation is a key part of all tourism today and not only the surfing but the wind surfers, the kayakers, the people that are sport fishing that really plays into why people come to a community so it's a big ticket for us to bring people here. You're right, the lake levels are causing some issues. The city's going to have to reinforce the south side sewer interceptor that's going to be at least an eight million dollar project. We're going to realign that as well as reinforce it and we've got to make those investments to ensure that that utility is there for our community in the future. The other thing that I've been working on, I'm chairman of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, a group of just over a hundred mayors and Ronald Great Lakes in both the US and Canada and we've been trying to work to keep the Asian carp out of the Great Lake system. Right now, the Brandon Road Dam on the Chicago River is very close to Lake Michigan and you've all seen those pictures of the Asian carp jumping out of the water when a boat goes through and that would just devastate our recreation that we have on the Sheboygan River and they would also decimate the sport fishing that we have over time on Lake Michigan. So that's a big thing that we've been fighting for and we just got an okay from the Corps of Engineers on that. The other thing that I've been doing is going to Great Lakes Day and also lobbying our congressional representatives for funds to assist us in these programs. So we've been able to keep the Great Lakes Restoration Fund in place that had a big impact on Sheboygan when we cleaned up the Sheboygan River and we just have to be very careful of this resource so that it continue to serve our community for the future. Thank you very much. The next question is also dealing with the lake. The National Marine Sanctuary System has identified Sheboygan as a part of the so-called Shipwreck Coast. Do you see an opportunity for the city to make that part of the identity? Mike? Yes, I do. Again, I've been working on this for the last eight years with the cities of Port Washington, Manitowoc and Two Rivers and we were able to get Governor Walker to submit an application for us. Unfortunately, I had second thoughts about it and he pulled it back but we worked with Governor Evers. He's now resubmitted our application and right now the Congress just approved the new Secretary of the Commerce Department and the Commerce Department will be in charge of pushing this forward. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we're maybe about six months away from designation as a National Marine Sanctuary. Now each community will have different things that they'll promote as far as their association with it. We really have a great facility in Manitowoc to handle the Shipwrecks and the Maritime Museum but what Sheboygan is trying to do is tackle the science and technology. And again, we look at this as building good things in our students so that they get a good steam education here in our community and the things that we're gonna put in and a new exhibit that we wanna put into our Visit Sheboygan office down on A Street is the Science in the Sky exhibit and this will have a lot of different things like solar panels, aquaponics, rain gardens, things that we wanna teach our children about and understand and it'll also focus on technology. Right now in place, we have the Science in the Sky exhibit which is a globe with four projectors and that allows you to show all kinds of different educational things in that globe. You can show all kinds of different things as if that's with the Earth, you could show a seismic activity, the resulting shock waves and the tsunami that that could produce as well as make that show like any planet that's out there, any star. So I'm really happy that it's progressed this far. This will give us another reason for people to come to Sheboygan and we'll be on a really short list with 14 other National Marine Sanctuaries around the United States. Thank you, Ryan. Yeah, I'm on the same page with Mike and agree that the Marine Sanctuary will be an asset to our community. A lot of folks don't know that there is a lot of different shipwrecks place just right off of our shore here and this is an awesome way to promote our community with divers and different explorers as well and truly pun intended dive right in and enjoy a lot of the sunken ship in Great Lake history that we have right off our shore. So I'm supportive in hoping that this plan gets moved forward as well but there've been issues with this raised along the way in terms of just local control and I wanna ensure that we're hearing those concerns and making sure that we're addressing those as well and addressing those homeowners that live on the lake and making sure that their voices are heard so that we can make sure that we are truly successful when we implement this plan moving forward. Thank you very much. Next, there are currently more than 300 municipal broadband networks in the US and it's claimed that these networks can provide affordable high speed access to more people and stimulate economic development by attracting new businesses. Do you support a Sheboygan municipal broadband network? Ryan, yes, I'm sorry. Yeah, I think that this is an interesting topic that's been discussed through the Liga municipalities and other communities across Wisconsin as well. Overall, I would say I am supportive. I would wanna look at costs in terms of how it's implemented as well but I think 2020 or the past year in the COVID pandemic has truly illustrated the importance of high speed internet, whether it's kids that are learning remotely from school or whether it's businesses that are increasing their virtual offerings with their businesses and getting creative. So I think if this is a tool that helps businesses succeed, helps the community succeeds and offers a resource for students to learn, I'm all for it but let's make sure that we're doing it right and that it fits in with our community and that we can have a true benefit from it. Thank you, Mike. Thank you. The broadband issue in Sheboygan is something that our municipalities have dealt with together at least for our own use. We put a ring of fiber around the city of Sheboygan and that serves the Sheboygan area school district, Sheboygan County and the city of Sheboygan and we shared the cost of this ring to give us the access that we need to the internet for all of our operations. It's unfortunate but the state of Wisconsin prevents the city of Sheboygan from offering a municipal broadband network. So in order to do any of the other things to help our businesses out or maybe residential properties, we're gonna need to have laws changed in the state of Wisconsin's capital in order to allow that to happen. But I think that the moves that we've made gives the city all the broadband that we need it supports all of our networks and it makes it easy for the Sheboygan area school district to provide all the services that they need to their students, as well as Sheboygan County. There's a chance that Sheboygan County might extend this out into the county further but that would be at their cost and if they do, I hope that they give other municipalities a chance to participate like we've done here with the city and the Sheboygan area school district. Thank you. The final question I have, we've got enough time so I'm going to ask one more question and then give you each an opportunity to give a closing statement for a couple of minutes. But this final question might be a simple one that we could knock off quickly. I'll start with Mike. Some cities offer an incentive to city employees if they live in the city. What are your views on this type of program? Well, you know, I'd like all of our city, I mean our employees to be city residents but right now we're like many businesses and we're trying hard to find some of the special employees that we need. And so while that would be a desire, it's a little bit more of a need when it comes to some of our safety personnel but while that's a desire, it's something that I think we have to put on the back burner right now because we can't not hire a great employee that we've seen just because they don't live in the city or they don't want to move into the city. We've got to take every chance to bring the best into our operation and make them part of our employee base to provide good services for our community. So it's not as important to me as maybe it was to some of the legislators in the past. It's a desire but not something that I must have for me as far as our hires. Thank you, Ryan. I think having city employees live in the city is a wonderful thing that all cities want to strive and achieve. However, there's a multitude of other issues that play and come into effect when you're talking about that. And again, in my opinion, I think there's housing components that make it more difficult when housing is not available for folks to relocate and move their family here as well. So those are different challenges as well that need to be addressed but I agree with Mike in what he said in terms too that we want to make sure that we're hiring the best talent that we can so our city can be successful in how we're delivering services throughout the community. But I don't necessarily know if it's the right moment for us to make that approach. Thank you very much. Now, we've spent almost an hour listening to me ask my questions and steer the conversation in a certain direction. So what I would like to do is give you both an opportunity to share with us the things that you find most important, the skills that you bring to this position. Give us a closing statement. I'll start with Ryan and we'll have two minutes and then immediately after this event there's going to be the next forum. And I also would like to take this opportunity to remind everybody if you have not registered to vote it is not too late. Election day is the 6th of April. Call the city clerk. They'll be happy to give you all of the information and how to do that. Thank you. Go ahead, Ryan, two minutes. Well, thanks again for the AUW for having this forum. This was a great opportunity to share my ideas and reflections of what I've been hearing from folks and what I'm hoping to do in the future. I think right now what's before you in terms of when we're moving forward to the April election, we need to ask the question to ourselves what do you want Shubwagon to be in the next four years? Do you believe that another term of the same recycled ideas is going to get us there? Or do you believe like I believe that to reach our fullest potential to grow our incredible community that we need to take a new fresh direction in how we're helping serve our local government? When you're voting in the voting booth on April 6th, I'm asking you not to choose who's going to lead Shubwagon, but what future do you want for our community? I'm running for mayor of my hometown because I know with hard work, creative problem solving, and fresh leadership in City Hall, we can build a middle class making sure that they're growing, that everyone has a sense of belonging, that we all have access to affordable housing, our roads are repaired, and where we all can thrive. I'd be honored to have your vote on April 6th. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Mike, final word to you this evening. Well, again, thanks to AUW for putting this event together. And I would really like to emphasize the experience and leadership that I've gained during my 48 years in Shubwagon. I came to Shubwagon and became involved in the community organizations and assumed leadership roles in the JCs, Shubwagon Rotary, the YMCA, and Big Brothers and Big Sisters. I've also had business experience. I managed Dubois Formal War for 40 years, served as the president of the Downtown Shubwagon Association, the Harbor Center bid, and on the Shubwagon Development Corporation. And then local government experience, I served as a citizen on the city planning commission, the capital improvement commission, and chair of the park board. And then as elected representative, I served as a city alder person, a county supervisor, county board chairman, mayor, and on the Shubwagon Development Corporation board. And I also have regional experience as the board chair of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, a bi-national organization of 100 mayors in the U.S. and Canada. That's really driving the protection of our Great Lakes. While serving in all these roles, I've learned the importance of listening to our residents. Because I listened, I was able to implement changes that our residents were looking for, like a street resurfacing program that's really achieved real results in tripling the amount of streets resurfaced, forming the mayor's neighborhood leadership council and supporting our growth of our neighborhood associations from two to 12, partnering with the police department to reduce part one crimes by 31%. And improving the communication on our community with things like our city newsletter and next door. So tonight we had a good discussion of the issues facing the city of Shubwagon and I've outlined my 48 years of experience in the community and outstanding achievements during the last eight years. And it's a real experience that you can trust to lead Shubwagon forward to face the challenges that we have in the future. I appreciate the opportunity to serve in the role as mayor and respectfully ask for your vote to serve in number four terms. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your time and thank you everybody for watching. We appreciate it. Don't forget to vote April 6th. Thank you, Mike. And thank you, Ryan and Mike for participating in tonight's event. Moving right on to the forum for the second district aldermanic contest. We have two candidates, Roberta Filicki Paneski and John Ranieri. The moderator will be Margaret Hall. The timekeeper will be Eleanor Young. They are both members of AAUW. Thank you. Good evening, Roberta and John. I'd like to ask you some questions and we'd appreciate your responses on them. So let's start with you, Roberta, excuse me. Why are you running for council and what is the one best contribution that you will bring to council? Be here, I appreciate that. Likely one of my better contributions, I think, will be the fact that I have served on the city redevelopment authority for a number of years. I have been appointed by five different mayors. Development is one of my passions. So I have a depth of knowledge and a real excitement about the growth of the growth of our community and the growth of our tax base and doing it in a planned, organized, sensible fashion. I also have a background as a financial advisor. So I do like the money part when I was appointed to the council. Actually, I was elected to the council last July to fill a vacancy. I was appointed to the finance and personnel committee. So I've served for 10 months and would like to continue to do that. Thank you. And John, why are you running for council and what is the one best contribution that you will bring to the council? I'm running for city council to help further our community. My contribution that I bring is the business that I am currently in. I see residents daily and hear from them every day. So I know some of the things that the city is looking for, the residents and things that can help out with the city. Thank you. And then John, we'll start the next question with you. What are the three most important challenges facing the city council? I think some of the things discussed in the mayoral forum are the challenges that the city council faces, the issue with the roads and how to get those done and get them done in a timely fashion, just in our district too. There's a lot of bad roads and some of the roads aren't just side roads. There's main thoroughfares like Ghillie Avenue and Sixth Street that are in bad disrepair. The lake erosion is one thing that a lot of citizens living right on the lake is a big concern for and how to handle that problem. And affordable housing. Again, having affordable housing to attract people to our community and fill job vacancies, it's not easy to hire somebody in the city of Sheboygan right now. Thank you. Roberta, what do you think are the three most challenging items facing the city council? Balancing the budget. This year, the budget was tight. Next year, it is likely to be tighter because the revenues that we have collected in 2020 and beginning in 2021 are down significantly. So balancing the budget, I also think that diversity, equity and inclusion, I think we're seeing the beginning of a movement that is not going to go away. This community is 73% white. That means that 25% plus of our community may or may not be included in what we do. So that would be my second. And the third is protection and or and plus development of our most precious resource, which is right out most people's front door. And that's our Lake Michigan. We've got to really understand that we are who we are because we live on that lake. And it is extremely significant for our community. Thank you. Roberta, we'll start with you on this one. That's right. What are the greatest assets of the city of Sheboygan and how would you build upon them? Just mentioned one in the previous question. And I think the most significant asset is our magnificent lakefront. As a member of the redevelopment authority over the years, we have significantly said the redevelopment authority owns property. For example, the redevelopment authority owns South Pier. We own the land, the land. Other people come and develop it. We own the land on the waterfront. And I am a big proponent of the city should continue to own the land along the waterfront because the waterfront is everybody's land and other people can come in and develop it and do what they want within guidelines. But I think that's our biggest asset. Our second asset is our population. We are hardworking. We are generous to a fault sometimes. We are involved and we like it here. Most people really like it here. So those are precious things. We are a human scale community. You can walk anywhere in this community. You can drive from one end to the other in 15 minutes. And there are not very many communities left that are as human scale and as wonderful. Thank you. And John, what are the greatest assets of Sheboygan and how would you build upon them? Well, I would have to agree with Roberta on the lake as one of the greatest asset that Sheboygan has. It brings in tourism. It brings people to live here because it's so close. It's within walking distance for most people, if not just a short five minute drive. There's so many recreational opportunities with fishing. My family enjoys having a fire around the fire rings down there to see more things like that. More opportunities for families and children and adults to use the lake would be a great thing to drive more people into our community. I mean, the second greatest asset of just our community as a place to live. It's one of the, I believe the top 10 cities who retire in or bring a family to live in the country and to be able to bring more people into the community to live and work is a great thing. Thank you. Our next question, and we'll start with John. What do you envision as a most appropriate development for the Armory site? There's many things that could happen at the Armory site. I believe actually one of the things that we're looked at in trying to save the Armory was to make it into a recreational spot, a place with a park and things for families and the community to use. And I think that would be a great asset to the community to turn that into a recreational area, possibly put a ice skating rink or something in there for the community in the wintertime. I think that would be a great use for it. Thank you. Roberta. The Armory site, which is now not an Armory, but a sometimes gravel-heeled kind of grassy space. Interesting to watch it come down. I was on the committee that reviewed the initial project plans for that site for the developers. There were several good ideas. Everything from save the Armory and make it a recreational space, interior music venue to the one that was eventually, as part of this committee, the winner, which was a small boutique hotel. And we ended up doing none of those and the projects will have to go out for a bit again. The simple answer is we need to put something there that respects the space and respects the consistency of that neighborhood. When the building for the hotel was there, they were very careful to say it will be a short building. It's not gonna be seven stories, it's gonna be one story and two story and three story so that we don't dwarf the neighborhood that's there. So big answer is something that is consistent with the neighborhood that is there. And the next answer is developers come into the community because they look to put something there that will put a return on their investment. So we wait to see what they propose and what might be possible. But big thing for the community and we need to have a lot of listening. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Then Roberta, we'll begin the next one with you. The city is increasingly diverse ethnically, religiously, in gender and in many other ways. We see this reflected in our neighborhoods and schools and classrooms. Yet it's not reflected in the government and civic leadership positions. How would you include and encourage citizens from these groups to serve on committees and participate in city government? I have said previously that our community is 73% white. The workers in the city of Strabogan are 98% white. So we need to start at home and we need to be very proactive. One of the things that the League of Municipalities has tracked over years, people tend, if people are here as workers, they tend to recommend their neighbor's friends' relatives for jobs because they know there are job openings coming up, which then perpetuates not reaching outside of the normal. So what we need to do is be more creative about where we look for people, how we look for people, and partner with those community organizations that regularly stay in touch with the underrepresented in the community. I know there are a lot of people willing and there are a lot of people able. I was pleased to hear that there perhaps would be a website where if you are willing and able, you can put your name in to work here, be a member of a committee. It does make a difference. Every study ever done says it makes a difference to have diversity when you're trying to reach a conclusion and the conclusions are heartier, more stable, and more welcoming all around. Thank you. John, how would you include and encourage citizens from these groups to serve in committees and in city government? Well, I think some of that can start at the school level, grade school, high school, encouraging, taking tours of the city hall, encouraging younger people to enter into government things when they're in their younger ages. It's not, it's kind of somewhat of a scary thing to jump into no matter who you are, but to encourage that and cities having that website to try to encourage more people to apply for things within the city. Just a lot of talking, encouraging other people to do things like that. People ask me about running, why I'm running, and people from all different races and everything else. And I personally encourage them to do it because you can't do anything if you're just sitting in the sidelines. Thank you. And our next question, we'll start with John. The city's marina has always been a financial burden on taxpayers, contrary to the rosy predictions as when it was being built. It is still two to $3 million in debt. Many of the dogs have never been leased. Ice damage is a big cost in severe winters. What is the future of the marina as it continues to struggle? That is a very good question. I don't know much about the marina as it currently is. If the docks are not currently being leased, then it's something to take a look at is why they're not being leased. It doesn't require a $50,000 study to figure out reasons why as a business owner, I'm constantly looking at reasons why and reasons there are ways to improve what is going on. The marina is the same thing. It's a business, it's losing money because it's not being properly utilized. I know I went in with some friends and purchased a boat last year and the marina is very expensive to be at. So we found a much less expensive place to be at. So the cost of a dockslet could be a reason that people are discouraged from putting their boats there, looking at all the reasons and maybe it's not being promoted properly to get people to utilize the marina. It's another thing, what kind of advertising is being done. When I purchased the boat with friends, I had all the different clubs in the city who were trying to get me to put their docks there, but nobody encouraged me to put it at the marina. Thank you. Roberta. I think there are probably a couple of primary reasons. One is lack of advertising, the ability to promote and the enthusiasm with which you promote is pretty important to continue with the marina. I know they have been struggling. Some of it is also people locally are not oftentimes aware of all of the possibilities in that marina. So I think come and see your tourism at home, come and see a tour your own marina. The second is a little bit more complex and it is by virtue of the fact that the marina is about, is not about, it is eight blocks away from all of the businesses and fun things you can do. And in some communities, the marina example, Port Washington, the marina backs right up to their downtown. You get off the boat, you go to the restaurant, you go to the movies, you go, you walk everywhere, you go buy a little t-shirt at a local store. We can't move 8th Street down to the marina nor can we move the marina up to 8th Street. But we can be creative in making alleyways and pedestrian pathways with X number of feet between the ice cream shop and a place to stop and put your feet up on a chair in a niche park. So we have to be a little bit more creative and enter into making that marina more hospitable, I could say, make the marina more hospitable and maybe it will cash flow better. Thank you. All right, Roberta, we'll start with you this time. Milwaukee, West Bend, Racine, and Kacana are offering incentives to city employees if they live in the city. Would you support this plan, Fisher Boygan? Interesting, you should ask because just recently I had a discussion with another older person about the very same thing. I do think there are some issues with that. One is, let's assume I'm a city worker and I am sitting next to somebody, I'm also a city worker doing exactly the same kind of city job that we both do. I'm earning more by virtue of where I live or my colleague is earning more by virtue of where they live. I have a little bit of a hard time with that. It also would be difficult because of the pool of talent when you look for a specialized talent, we are still a city of around 50,000 people. Specialty talent can't always come from a pool of 50,000 people. The other problem statement is you find a specialty talent, they want to move into the city and we run into housing. There's no place, there's a housing shortage. I think it's probably, other communities have done it. I think it is probably worth looking at. I think we need to tread carefully by bifurcating, bifurcating pay by virtue of where you live. Thank you. John, would you like me to repeat it again? No. Okay. I'd say it depends on what the incentive is. Like Roberto was saying, if it's a older manic position, it's not a paid position, so to speak. But other city clerk and people like that are police officers, et cetera. City of Milwaukee had a mandatory residency up until a number of years ago and they eliminated that for the exact same reason we're talking about it right now is because it's hard to get necessarily the people that you need that are here in the community so you have to pull from other places. A move-in incentive versus like a dollar amount you make would be something that would make sense to ease the transition into moving into the city versus making more money than somebody that lives in the city because as far as fairness and everything like that, it doesn't tread well with anybody really except for the person that's making the more money for moving to the city. But a moving incentive as long as it fits into the city budget makes sense to me. Thank you. Our next question, and we'll start with John, is how can the city repurpose the big box buildings that have been empty for years such as the pick and save building on Calumet and South Business Drive and the former shopco store? The city, as far as repurposing those, again it's trying to drive more businesses to come into the city and that again has to do with a residency and gaining more residents here because a big box company that would take over something like that is going to look for a larger population to succeed in there and that's why some of those stores are empty. The city was gonna repurpose them. We'd have to look and see what type of developments and developers that are looking to do things within our community to make things happen. Thank you. Roberta, what would you do or propose with the empty big box stores? First I'd market the pieces out of them starting there. Again, it's a developer that would be interested in a big box store. Now, having said that, there are a few things that the city can do and one of those is we've already done it. Our senior center is relocating to a former big box store on North A Street, former grocery store and it was kind of a set of match needs. The senior center needed different space. They needed larger space. That space was empty and it was also on a bus route. The senior center where it was previously was not on a bus route. It didn't have enough parking. This one has a lot of parking but the overriding issue was that is in neighborhood that really needs a little boost and I think that's where the city can move in and look at some creative ways to do that. Some of the spaces you mentioned are primarily commercial so it's a matter of getting a developer interested and allowing them to determine what might work and what might not work in that space. Thank you. Ann Roberta, the next question will begin with you. What ideas do you have for bringing more people and businesses to the downtown? One of the things that was done and started years ago and I was involved with the Chamber of Commerce as well as the redevelopment authority. We started the tours and when we started, you know, come and see what Sheboygan has to offer, the first tour we did and it was kind of the beta test for inviting heavy duty developers to town, we took our own realtors, put them on the little trolley, took them around, fed them breakfast, fed them lunch and talked about all of the resources that we had. I was a trolley writer for one afternoon and we went out to Bookworm Gardens and the dean of the university came out to greet the group and we looked at Bookworm Gardens. I was amazed when I heard in the crowd I never knew this was here and I thought, okay, we need to keep doing these kinds of things. So looking at that, there are numbers of ways that we can do something about it. Thank you. John. What would you do to bring more people and businesses to the downtown? I think I encourage you more of those pop-up shops that we were doing last year, letting people put in businesses for a short period of time helps encourage that if something really takes off, they can run with it. There's quite a few empty spots in our downtown area and one of the things that has always run through my mind as I try to park downtown and we have parking meters everywhere and actually this is just for businesses but for tourism which is gonna help support the businesses as we have these outdated parking meters and sometimes I don't have 25 cents so then I'm driving and walking two, three blocks to get to where I'm going because I can't park right in front of the store. So removing parking meters or updating our parking meters where people can use credit cards or pay on their phone is something a lot of cities are switching to in their downtown areas, especially the more cashless our society becomes is one thing but finding different ways to encourage businesses to come into the community through different developments. Sure, there's different grants out there offered from our state and federal government that we can be encouraging people to take advantage of. Thank you. Then some of the solutions to the restrictions required for safety during the pandemic have an uneven impact on the people in Sheboygan. Working and learning remotely is possible but not necessarily available to all equally. What can be done to give everyone better access to available services? And we'll start with John. That's interesting question. Getting better access to services relies on internet. The questions during the mayoral forum was the broadband for the city that working with the state to encourage them to change their laws to allow for a municipal broadband would be one way to gain better access to those who don't have access to go to different places. It's a tough topic really because it's uncharted territory and still is uncharted territory for different accesses to everything. Elderly there's always been different community services or state paid for transportation and things like that but for younger people who are at home there really isn't a lot for them. So it actually would require a lot of discussion and teamwork and brainstorming to make something like that more accessible. One man doesn't have the answer for that. Thank you. Roberta. Can you repeat that? I was just gonna say let me repeat that. Thank you. Some of the solutions to the restrictions required for safety during the pandemic have had an uneven impact on people in Sheboygan. Working and learning remotely is possible but not necessarily available to all equally. What can be done to give everyone better access to available services? The question to me is there's a couple parts to it. The pandemic has treated frontline workers differently. It has treated people of color differently. Oftentimes because those are the very people that are in our restaurants making our food, washing the dishes, cleaning the houses, cleaning the commercial buildings. They don't have the opportunity that so-called white-collar workers have had to stay home and do their work. They can't. Their work is where their work is. Factory workers on the line didn't have the option to stay home. They had to be online to do the work. I don't know that an intervention can help with those kinds of resources. Any kind of resources can help with that kind of intervention. Putting them further ahead in the COVID line for vaccinations would help but that's one. The school children are a different thing. Oftentimes it's not only the lack of an internet but also the lack of the equipment that get you on the internet. And that is something that the school system can address and needs to address. If the city can ring the city with broadband, there's a way to do that for the children. Thank you. How can we maintain safe neighborhoods? Roberta? In the great scheme of things, I do believe that our neighborhoods are relatively safe in the great scheme of things. I can go for a walk and feel relatively comfortable when I go out at midnight by myself, you know, but we do have a safe city and our statistics from our police department show us that there is, we are a safe city. We can always be more vigilant. We can make it safer. The effort at neighborhood policing has I think been significant. You can know your own police officer by name and you can see your police officer at neighborhood meetings, neighborhood organizations. So I think doing what we are doing, doing more of the same and something that we haven't brought up is the drug trafficking, the people trafficking and efforts to curtail that, I think will also keep our community safe. Thank you. John, how can we maintain safe neighborhoods? The, again, the city is, it's a pretty safe city to live in, take a walk in. I don't think many people have a major, major safety concerns in the city of Sheboygan. I think our police department, they do a lot to maintain community relationships. I know they do a lot of like their brat fries and I think I can't remember what the name of it is, like what they do. They're cookouts, different areas of the community to try to bring everybody together as a community. Our neighborhood associations, I think do a lot to help maintain the neighborhoods and the safety of the neighborhoods. Neighborhood watch areas, which you don't see a lot of in the city of Sheboygan, but it's one way to also help maintain that and the drug trafficking, human trafficking is a big thing that kind of gets swept under the rug as far as safety goes because it gets just swept under the rug, but there's different ways to help combat that and it's something that our big pharmacy has kind of made happen in the last 20 or 30 years and in our country in general. So it's something that's gonna be a continually battle to fight. Thank you. Next question, how can Sheboygan retain and service companies that want to expand? Ken? That goes back to affordable housing in our community and being able to attract people into the community. Just owning a small business with 10 employees. If I have somebody that leaves the city for a different job or I have younger employees that are going to college, it's hard just to hire one person, no matter what the pay is, even if it's a higher paying position. So to get business to expand, this again gonna entails a lot of different aspects in the community, but I think Sheboygan is moving in the right direction, is asking the right questions to get people into our community. Thank you. And Roberta? I am. How would you retain services and help companies that want to expand? The Chamber of Commerce did several years ago, systematically they interviewed by industrial groups, so interviewed all the printers in our community, interviewed all the food manufacturers in our community, and by industry category, and we developed a sense of what that particular industry needed. Case in point is the Old World Creamery. It used to be a milk production was there. They had the equipment that the butter people needed to make butter at the Old World Creamery. They came in and they approached the redevelopment authority. We gave them, I believe the first loan was a quarter of a million, and after that, they were up and running, much to the amazement of other local businesses. They had more applicants than they needed to have. One of my observations was, of course they're on a bus route. So they had employees that were very eager to work there. And within two years, I think, they came back to us and said, we'd like it here so much. We would like to install a second line of specialty butter, and do you think that's feasible? They came back to the redevelopment authority. We said, yes, we are very happy with you. We like you. You've been creating jobs, creating more jobs than they were obligated to create. And it was a win, win, win for everybody. So we've got the mechanisms and we can do it. Thank you. The city has not been very successful in attracting businesses to the new business park on the south side. What would you do to bring new businesses to Sheboygan? Roberta, you're first. Sure, there is some activity going on behind the scenes. There are a couple of nibbles. What is significant, again, is marketing. And we recently developed a plan with something called New North, which is a regional area bordering the lake, northeastern Wisconsin, basically. And they have a market program specifically for what is called shovel ready, meaning we've got the roads, we've got the lights, we've got the streets, we've got it all. You come in with your shovel and on day one in that property, you can build your factory. So there are ways to do that. Regrettably, that particular park came to fruition at about the same time that COVID started going the opposite way. So we're up and running again. We're trying some new and innovative things, again, to market, to make people aware that it's there. And it is a lovely space, shovel ready, which probably doesn't mean a whole lot to a home owner, but it certainly means a lot to a corporation. So hopefully there will be better days ahead. Thank you. John, what would you do to bring new businesses to the Southside Sheboygan Business Park? I think advertising and promotion is the one way to do it. And not necessarily just doing it within Sheboygan, but you have to look at all forms of promoting in order to do that. I'm sure there's people in our city currently that don't know what's going on in that area. Actually, my business is located across the street from the area we're talking about. And I have people ask me all the time, what's going on over there? And I explain to them what's going on. But not everybody knows about it. There's a lot of businesses that I'm sure wouldn't mind going in there. But I think looking beyond the city of Sheboygan to attract business in there is one way to really do that. And all different forms of advertising pay in different ways to do that. So it's looking at what the forms of advertising that business owners are gonna look at and listen to. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And our final question is how can the city generate revenue other than increasing property taxes? John? Actually, that goes to all the things that we've already been talking about. Getting businesses to fill those empty spots, getting businesses to fill the empty spot that we're creating on Indiana Avenue. That's gonna bring in more tourism dollars, taking care of the lakefront and more recreational opportunities. It's gonna bring in those more tourism dollars, both the city and the county. And I don't wanna see my property taxes go up no more than anyone else here. Thank you. Roberto? The way to not increase taxes is to increase the base of the taxpayers. So if we've got a larger tax base, we can have more revenue and spread it out so that not the same people aren't being asked to do more and more and more with their slice of the tax base. So attracting new businesses, attracting those people who want to live in those apartments so that they come here and they spend their money here. Also attracting visitors, the visitor and convention bureau and all of the recreational and attractive things in our community. So we have to look at the income side of the revenue when we talk about income side of the balance sheet, when we talk about not wanting our tax base, our taxes to expand. Thank you. And now I'm gonna turn it back over to Dulcy Johnson and you'll be able to make your final statements. Thank you, Roberta and John, for participating in the forum. Thank you, Margaret, as our moderator and Eleanor as our timekeeper. This concludes our event. I want to remind our audiences to remember to vote on April 6th, your vote is your voice. And my all feeling has always been if you don't vote, you can't complain. Thank you and good night. Also, I will tell you that WSES will be running this forum throughout their schedule until the election. And you can also view it on WSES, Shabuigan, YouTube and Facebook. So thank you and have a good evening.