Holiday week garbage collection confusion

Eliminating the weekend, overtime charges for holiday week garbage collection is probably a good idea.   It is one of those cost savings things that the city Council makes when it wants to make sure the taxpayers feel the sting.   Why cut an upper level bureaucrat, like the City Administrator, when no one but his friends would care?

It is unreasonable for unions to be charging time and a half for working Saturdays.   I don’t know of anyone in the private sector who gets paid extra just because they are working on a Saturday.   And I think the unions are ready to talk and maybe concede that issue.   In which case this holiday week scheme would not be necessary.

Only the most avid of the government program followers is going to be able to figure out those holiday week garbage pickup schemes.   Just about each holiday week has it own unique schedule.

Health Care Costs continue to be a (hidden) Problem

In 2005 the Racine Taxpayers Association, lead by then president Jayne Siler, had observed is that over the prior years, government had not been growing so much as it had been just getting more expensive.   Then County Executive Bill McReynolds indicated to the Association that the culprit was Health Care Costs.   The Taxpayers Association then did a series of studies on health care costs of the local taxing entities: Gateway, The City of Racine, the county and Racine Unified revealing the exorbitant government plans.   But that is as far as it went.   Nothing was ever done about these costs until this year when Scott Walker at least got government employees contributing to the extravaganza.

Since those studies, Health Savings Accounts have come upon the scene.   They have proven effective.   With salaries and fringes constituting 76% of the General Fund Budget, there may be room to save millions of dollars just in Health care costs.

It is time to investigate these plans and put them into use for government employees.

Doubling up the tax payments rejected by aldermen

Taxpayers got a break from the aldermen on the property tax payment plan.   The proposal by the administration was to change from four payments to two payments.   Under the proposed change the first payment would have been a double payment and would have been due January 31st.   The second payment would have been due July 31st.

According to City records, under the current system, 9.6% of the taxpayers do not make that first payment in time and end up paying a 1% per month interest charge and a .5% monthly penalty charge, not only on that first payment, but on all the rest of the unpaid taxes for that year.

Demanding the double payment would most certainly have increased that 9.6% who could not make the January 31st payment in time.   The result would have been an increase in delinquency interest and penalty payment, which would take even more money out of the private sector and put it into the government coffers.

And that would not have been good for our local economy.

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.