A New Proprietor for the North Beach Concession

Low bid contracts are generally a useful government tool, but it is not a tool that is always a good idea to use.

If the North Beach concession is mishandled there will be a lot of disappointed people and it will take a while to correct the errors.

“Leave Well Enough Alone” is probably the best policy there. The extra $10 or $15K the City might get from the concession is minor in comparison to the money wasted elsewhere in it’s $80 million budget. And bringing on problems at North Beach won’t be worth it.

The City wastes millions in upper level bureaucrats.

Making money off of business enterprises is not a government forte.

New Tax Payment Schedule

The room for cutting taxes at the city level is at the top of the bureaucratic food chain; for example, getting rid of the City Administrator.   But governments never consider cutting out those high level paper shufflers.   Cuts are made at the lower level where productivity takes place.

The current example of this practice is the proposal to get rid of a couple of clerks by reducing taxpayer payment dates from four to two.   An earlier similar suggestion was to reduce garbage collection to every other week to save on labor costs of garbage collectors.

The city would save $75K on the tax payment date proposal.   If the City had dumped the unneeded City Administrator and assistant Park and Rec Director as was suggested last year during the budget debates, then instead of hiring a new DPW Chief Administrator this Spring, if either one of the capable Deputy DPW Administrators had been promoted to the position (no need to replace him at his old position), it would have saved the taxpayers about a half million dollars in wages, health care benefits and pensions.

There are millions more in savings available without having to cut services or increase taxpayers hardships.   But to find them, you have to look at the top of this over-staffed city bureaucratic nightmare.

West Racine Business Group Condemned for Abandoning Socialism

There was a time in the history of this country when socialism would not have even been considered, let alone thrust upon others without their knowing it. And certainly such a move would not have been tried on unsuspecting businessmen.

In the City of Racine that has now been done four times with the institution of business improvement districts (BIDs). And one of those groups, after getting wise to the sham, went through the difficult process of terminating the arrangement.

Then, with the last step in the dissolution process, came the greatest surprise: four of the City’s aldermen—who were required by law to approve the dissolution—condemned the businessmen for their “attitude.”

The verbal lynching of the businessmen was carried on by Alderman Greg Helding (soon to be President of the Council Greg Helding), departing alderman Jim Spangenberg (who also represents the BID), and Aron Wisneski. (Terry McCarthy made a weak statement about the businessmen spending their refund money properly.)

Collectivism has become the order of the day for our city council. Using a fascist approach to the control of business within the city has led to aggressive unionism, businesses failures and the departure of nearly 16,200 people from our community.

Instead of aldermen who condemn such independence as retaliatory and backwards, we would do better with a group of council members that acknowledge private property rights, the merits of the spirit of individual accomplishments and the history of the success of free enterprise.

Click here for a video of the discussion at the common council (length 11 minutes)

Census Results for Racine are in. Times Must Change

The Census figures have finally come out for Racine for 2010.  We are down another 3000 people.  This is not good.

Since 1970, when we reached our peak population at 95, 162, we have lost 16,300 people.

Such a loss does have its consequences.

But more importantly it makes a statement; a statement that it is difficult to live and survive in our city.  It is easier to take up roots and move than to try to stay here any longer.

There are probably many reasons for this loss that can be expounded upon.  But none that outweighs the argument that the focus of this problem is with the government of the City of Racine.   As a regulating instrument our Mayor, City Council and their bureaucracy have consistently fostered a system of increased taxes and increased regulations that make doing business here in Racine difficult, and starting a business here in Racine even more difficult.

Times must change.

The events of the last several months have indicated that the Mayor and aldermen are more comfortable living with and failing with past practices than it is to try something new that has a chance to succeed.

When Governor Scott Walker put in some promising reforms in Madison, then gave our Mayor and Council the tools to succeed with these reforms, they rejected them.  They preferred the comfort of the past rather than the challenges of the new.

Six years ago, Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana, put in reforms like those of Governor Scott Walker.  His ratings dropped to 30.   He was desecrated.

But by the time his first term was up, four years later, his reforms produced such success that he won an easy re-election.  Indiana went from being broke to one of only 5 states in the Union with a budget surplus.

It was the only industrial state in the Midwest to actually add jobs to the state rolls last in 2010.

We here in Wisconsin are on the verge of a similar success.   If we can get a Mayor and Council that “gets with the program” we here is Racine would ride the Walker/Daniels success train to new economic heights.

Condescending to unions, intense regulation of businesses, close monitoring of the lives of private citizens…these are all the old ways of doing things.

It is time to leave those things in the annuls of historic memorabilia.

It is time for something new.

Times must change.

DeltaHawk and Fascism

Maybe I should be opposing the City’s funding of the DeltaHawk airplane engine, but I am not.   I am just disappointed that we have sunk to such a low level of operation in this City that we must engage in such an activity to survive.

We used to be a national center for innovation.  But I would warrant that none of those great companies of that era, Twin Disc, InSinkErator and J. I. Case, to name a few, came to a government planning board for money to advance their products.

It is a signature characteristic of fascism that corporate profits are private, their losses are public.

DeltaHawk characterizes that scenario.  If DeltaHawk is successful, the profits will go to the stockholders, as they should. If DeltaHawk fails and the company disappears, the 1.2 million dollar investment will be paid by the taxpayers, as they shouldn't.

The reasons for this practice are more than academic.  In “Fascism Light,” you might call it, when regulation and taxation is limited and business and people are relatively free to function, there is no need for government subsidy of business.

But as a community gets in to “Fascism Regular” and restrictions and taxes become so heavy as to make economic expansion unreachable, the government must make up the gap with subsidies to business.

This is nothing new to the world.  Just about every socio-political society that has advanced beyond tribalism, has eventually progressed from Fascism Light to Fascism Regular.  It is only new to Racine to have reached that summit.

It is not the role of government in a free society to engage in speculative financial ventures with taxpayers money.

Such an engagement is actually why the corporate structure was invented: to provide a means to amass sufficient capital to engage in new ventures while limiting the liability of the investors should such a venture fail.

There has been a comment that this is not taxpayer money, that it comes from the Intergovernmental Revenue Sharing Account, essentially the Sewer Treatment Agreement.  It is all legal.

Yes it is legal. But is it right?

The Sewer treatment plant was paid for out of the wallets of Racine taxpayers through their water bills.  Any profits made from the leasing of that facility to other communities rightly should have gone back to those taxpayers in repayment of their investment.  Instead those water bill dollars were really just another tax and the lease money went to anything from the Zoo to parking lots.  And now the DeltaHawk.

The DeltaHawk promoters should be using the corporate mechanism for their needs.  Unfortunately they can’t.  Governments across the land have made that nearly impossible.  So a government must come to their rescue.

And it looks like that government is us.

Deal With Stray Animals Charitably

December 21, 2010 the City has renewed its contract with Countryside paying them $191,810 for 2011 to handle about 2500 stray animals for the city.   That’s about $75 per animal.  It is probably a reasonable price.

Stress mounts among animal lovers when statistics reveal that only about half the animals taken in by Countryside survive their stay there.

I think the problem is that we rely on government to deal with the problem of stray animals.   Government doesn’t treat human beings humanely.   How can you expect better for animals.

The project really should be taken on charitably with volunteers.   I am sure there are enough animal lovers out their with deep enough pockets and/or with a little time on their hands to take on the job as a labor of love.

It would be best for the animals, it would be best for all of us, to deal with strays charitably, voluntarily and with affection, none of which are attributes of a government.

250,000 jobs for Wisconsin

There are several theories expressed in the December 28, 2010 Journal Times lead article regarding Walker's ability to "produce" 250,000 jobs in Wisconsin.  But the facts are that the jobs are waiting to start up. And global activity really has little impact on it.

The real question is will Walker and the legislature have the guts to shut down the bureaucratic barriers to job growth?  No governor or legislature ever has.  Not since 1775, anyway, and Wisconsin wasn't a state then.

We could create a lot of jobs right here in Racine, regardless of the state, national or global environment.  It would require getting rid of activities like RCEDC, the city planning department, limitations on Class A liquor licenses, UNIT inspectors, transportation subsidies, building and health department inspectors, half the police department. Then with the reduced regulations and inspectors that over zealously monitor private activity along with lower taxes, companies would swarm into the city.

That gives you some idea of the magnitude of what Walker and the new legislature has to do at the state levelto get all those jobs into action.

(By the way, no government is going to "produce" any jobs. I don't think Walker is under such a delusion. That was probably written by a newspaper reporter. The government can only get out of the way. The private sector makes the jobs.)

It is a courageous project, rolling back all that bureaucracy. It scares the hell out of most people, just like my suggestions above scare the hell out of people from Racine that read it.

My expectations for results from Walker are low.

But my hopes are sky high. What if the TEA Party driven Wisconsin State government really does it?