City of Racine Mayor Gary Becker

State of the City Address - April 15^th, 2008

2008 State of the City

Good evening.  Thank you all for being here tonight and thank you to those that are watching at home on CAR 25.

Congratulations to the 7 aldermen who won re-election.  A special welcome to our only new alderman, Terry McCarthy, who will finish out the final year in District 9.

You may notice a little different layout of the Council Chambers.  Except for special events I am sitting at the same level as the aldermen.  The council and I are in this together.  We are working together to move Racine ahead.  This new layout is symbolic of my commitment to work as one to solve the problems and issues we face.

Five years ago when I was sworn in I talked about change.  My campaign that year was all about change and providing the leadership to make Racine a great place to live, work and raise a family.  While we have seen many changes in the past five years, we are nowhere done changing.

The book that was at each alderman’s desk tonight explains why we can never be satisfied with where we are.  The book “Caught in the Middle” does a great job of explaining the impact globalism has on the Midwest and provides ideas to not only survive, but to have our city prosper.

The world is not going to stop changing because those of us in Racine find it uncomfortable or difficult to continue to adapt to a new world.  The key to the future of our city is in doing everything we can to make education at all levels accessible.  Whether is it K-12, technical, university, or on-the-job training, the people of Racine need to take advantage of educational opportunities unless they want to be on the bottom of the economic ladder.  In addition, we must make our city attractive to others who can bring key skills and creativity to our community.

We must think beyond the limits of our city.  The lines that separate us from Mt. Pleasant and Caledonia can only exist on the map.  We must continue working together for our immediate area.  There are things we need to work together on to strengthen the Racine area. 

But regionalism needs to go further.  We can not view the rest of SE Wisconsin as competitors.  They must become partners as we all have different strengths, and what is good for one is generally good for the region.

And then we need to understand that the Illinois state line means nothing.  The benefits from Chicago’s economy can positively impact us if we choose to understand that they are the engine that drives our region.

Looking back for a moment I would like to remind people of some of the changes we have instituted in the past five years.  We have changed how we deal with our neighborhoods. We use a targeted approach with the UNIT, but more importantly we collaborate with many city departments, and we also involve our community groups and businesses.  It is only by everyone working together that we can be successful.  Crime rates, while not ever low enough have been greatly improved and 2007 was the lowest in decades for many categories.

Our housing in the neighborhoods is improving.  The foreclosure crisis is presenting new challenges and is making it even more challenging to rid our city of boarded up buildings. 

We have reworked the health department lab and now work with outside groups to ensure everyone has access to the services we used to provide.  Our efforts will save nearly $200,000 each and every year.  By supporting the founding of the Community Health Clinic we have increased access to quality basic medical and dental care.

We have committed extra dollars to improve our parks and community centers.  We helped establish a senior center.  We have become nationally recognized in environmental beach and lake research.  We have collaborated with UW – Parkside and others to open an environmental center on the Root River.  (Their grand opening is May 3rd.)

We have targeted improving the environment of our city.  We have established a permanent household hazardous waste site, increased tree planting and banned phosphorous in lawn fertilizers. We are installing our first solar panels to help power our city hall annex.  The list of changes goes on.

An issue I have touched on every year is commuter rail. Now more than ever I am convinced it is vitally important to connecting the Chicago-Milwaukee region.  While Racine will always have its own identity it grows ever more critical to strengthen the bonds between Milwaukee, and even more so to the economy of Chicago.  As the legislature convenes its Legislative Council I am doing all I can to be appointed as a member.  This committee will forward a recommendation on RTA legislation to the Wisconsin Legislature.

But that is enough looking back at what we have accomplished.  It is time to look forward to what our city needs to do to keep up with a world that is moving on and changing at a record pace.

Our number one problem continues to be unemployment.  We will continue to work with RCEDC to recruit new businesses, and to help our existing businesses to grow.  CEDCO and WBIC are partners in working with start up and small businesses.  They help develop business plans, provide training and technical resources to strengthen small entrepreneurs so they can prosper.

Attraction and retention are critical.  This is why our focus on Brownfield development must remain strong.  The former Jacobsen site, now the Southside Industrial Park, has taken years and millions of dollars to recycle into usable industrial land.  We have an agreement with the owners of the former Racine Steel site to have that land eventually come to the city.  That site will eventually be available for redevelopment.  The key to these sites is they will create jobs where the workers are.  That is one side of job development. 

The other and just as difficult aspect of the unemployment issue is job readiness.  The jobs that filled our city 30-40 years ago are gone.  They are not coming back.  The days when a strong back and willingness to work were enough to earn a middle class living are over.

The jobs of today and the future require skills that our parents never could have imagined.  This is why education is critical to the future of us all.

As a community we must instill in our young people the connection between education and their future.  It is critical that our youth understand that dropping out of high school will lead to a life in a low-paying job at best, and many times will have much more severe consequences.  Monday I met with the 3 finalists for Superintendent at Unified schools and I stressed the importance of their role in helping the community communicate this message to our students.  I am confident we will have a willing partner in our schools to help get this message out.

In addition we need to continue to make available job training and additional education to all workers in Racine. To further this, I am pleased to announce that the city will be instituting a tuition reimbursement program for city workers.  For those working towards an advanced degree the city will pay up to $500 per semester for those maintaining a C or above grade point average.  This is just one additional tool to enable our employees to continually improve their skills and value to the City.

We will also continue to work with Gateway, Workforce Development, Racine Vocational Ministries, First Choice Pre-Apprentice Program and others that offer our residents an opportunity to improve their work skills.  Currently Workforce Development is finishing a plan to deal with the high level of unemployment in our city.  In the near future we will have a presentation to the Council at a Committee of the Whole meeting on what they and others are doing to help create jobs and improve the skills of our workers.

Looking ahead we have a number of exciting projects moving forward in our neighborhoods.  First as the aldermen have seen in a report from Director Donnie Snow, the recreation division is moving ahead with new programs at all of our community centers.  The goal is to make the centers critical assets to the neighborhoods they are in.  We will partner with any group looking to bring quality programming to our youth and seniors.  We want our centers to be resources for personal development as well as recreation programs.

The housing in our neighborhoods is a continuing challenge.  We have raised the bar as to what we will accept regarding the appearance of buildings and yard maintenance.  We have made great progress, but we are nowhere close to what I envision for our neighborhoods.

My vision for our neighborhoods is where we have a mix of homeowners and renters.  The goal is to have at least 50% of the properties owner-occupied.  I envision landlords that rent to responsible tenants who respect others in their neighborhood.  Neighborhoods where people feel safe, know their neighbors and take pride in the upkeep of their property.

To continually improve our neighborhoods we will add a number of new approaches this year.  As many people know we are in the process of moving one COP house with another scheduled for later this year on the north side.  In each neighborhood we will have a 3 to 5 year plan to reduce crime, increase home ownership and to increase the residents level of satisfaction about where they live.

To increase home ownership we have a number of strategies we are applying. Our IDA (Individual Development Account) program will help 50 people become successful buyers and owners in our city.  I stress successful, because we do not want to enable someone to purchase a house that will not be successful in maintaining it.  As we have seen with the sub-priming lending crisis, letting people who are not really qualified to own a home is doing them and our city a disservice.

We are also continuing to partner with NHS (Neighborhood Housing Services) and Habitat for Humanity to build or rehab quality housing in our neighborhoods.  These groups do great work in helping us improve not only our housing stock, but our neighborhoods.

Our gateways into our community which run through small business districts will continue to be high on our priorities.  West Racine continues to be a challenge to find the right developer, but our commitment to bring high quality development will remain.

Uptown will begin to see physical changes in the near future.  The Redevelopment Authority has acquired 3 buildings and the city has taken the small lot on 13th and Washington and the former Schaefer Motors site.  I want to say “thank you” to Rick Schaefer for the donation of almost a full block to the city for redevelopment. These two areas along with the Douglas Avenue corridor all now have design review guidelines and you can see the quality of development and rehabilitations increasing. 

City planning will continue to work with developers as ideas are developed for quality growth.  Racine has become known throughout the region as being a good place to develop and a city that will work with investors to get projects done.

The city was dealt a disappointment with the failure of the Corinne Owens project to secure tax credits for a development on State Street.  While this setback is disheartening, it in no way will slow down our drive to develop and improve our city.

Development is not an easy process.  We have had successes this year, State and Main, River Bend Lofts and Atwater Condos.  However we have seen failures at Pointe Blue, temporary setbacks, Corinne Owens Project, and the lakefront tower development which the jury is still out on.

The only way to ensure no failures is to do nothing, and doing nothing in this world today is automatically failing without even trying.  This will never be my approach to leading this city.

As we move ahead we will try new approaches to solving problems and making our city competitive in SE Wisconsin, the Midwest, the country and in a global economy.  While we have seen many changes in the past 5 years, my hope is the pace of change in Racine only increases.  

We will make mistakes and we will have great successes.  We can never let the mistakes deter us from trying new and creative ideas in the future.  Nor can we let our successes lull us into believing we have done enough and that the time for change is past.

As you read “Caught in the Middle” I hope aldermen and staff will acquire the same sense of urgency to move our city ahead as I do.

Thank you all for listening and have a pleasant evening.