Went to the mayoral forum at Gateway Technical College tonight. You can read the ho-hum nothing to see here move along coverage in the Journal Times here. I will get back to my problems with the newspaper’s coverage in a bit.
My reaction to what I heard was quite frankly not encouraging overall. The two biggest problems facing Racine in addition to a lack of leadership are crime and taxes. The crime in Racine is out of control, and it’s a tax hell. The property tax assessment shell game that began under former Mayor Jim Smith and exploded under former Mayor McPervert is threatening to drive people out of their homes.
What shell game? The practice of assessing and re-assessing homes based on factors beyond the homeowners’ control. Things like the sale of overpriced homes in the general vicinity. Hypothetical improvements, too. Works like imputed income. The city quickly figured out that they could lower the levy and claim they had lowered taxes while the property tax bills just kept going up and up. All the while the city would just raise the assessment.
Take the house I own, for example. The only reason my house is standing is that the termites are holding hands. A real estate guy who lives in the area told me before the housing market meltdown that he might be able to get me $60,000 if I sold it. What’s it assessed at by the city? Try $119,000. Why? Well, the house next door was sold three years ago for $125,000. A house two blocks east and one block north went for $140,000.
The house next door has a two car carage, nice new vinyl siding, a patio deck, a fenced in yard, etc. All sorts of amenities. Mine? 980 square feet, no garage, no patio, no vinyl siding, 50 year old windows and doors, needs a complete painting and re-carpeting. There’s a slab for a garage and a patio, but those went in before I owned the house and the previous owners ran out of money to finish the job.
Don’t look at me to finish it. The property taxes of $3,200 a year are enough to wish the damn thing would burn. I bet the neighbors would like that, too. It’s the eyesore of the neighborhood.
Most of what I heard tonight was same ol’, same ol’. Blah, blah, blah, need more money for schools, blah, blah, blah, Racine isn’t that bad, blah, blah, blah, need more jobs, blah, blah, blah, need the KRM choo-choo, blah, blah, blah. Same ol’, same ol’.
Crime? Most of what I heard tonight was that the crime problem stems from poverty and the lack of jobs, the same old mantra we’ve been hearing from the Left for 45 years ow. Never mind that we’ve spent $2 trillion on anti-poverty programs and have yet to see any decrease in the poverty rate. And, if it were true that poverty causes crime, the crime rate during the Great Depression should have been higher than it is now. If anything, we have a poverty of values and that causes crime. The “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is half mine” mentality. The “I’m entitled so it’s OK to steal” mentality. And so on.
Taxes? Hardly a word, despite the tax hell that is Racine. It’s as if the group — with one exception that I will get to shortly — is OK with the tax hell and almost seems to think like Gordon Gekko in Wall Street — “Greed (read: taxes) is good.”
No one — with one notable exception — touched on the need to reduce the tax load on homeowners and property owners and even implied we needed to spend more and demand more money from Uncle Jimbo and Uncle Barack.
Most of the candidates are local political insiders. They’ve been in power since time immemorial. They are part of the problem. What the hell have the guys who are on or have been on the Common Council been doing all these years except contributing to the sinkhole we’re in? That includes the political hacks that were or are in the state legislature. Madison insiders are running Bob Turner, state representative from Racine and a former member of the Common Council, just so that the Democrat hacks from Madison who’ve done such a wonderful job turning the state into an upholstered tax hell can attach the puppet strings to the mayor’s office in Racine. Plus, Turner is arguably one of the worst public speakers I have ever heard. About half of his words were unintelligible and the ones that were came out in a speaking voice made for newsprint.
The outsider candidate would appear to be Jody Harding, a CPA making her first run for public office. She was the only candidate who did not support the KRM black hole choo-choo, did not think the upholstered Port-a-John known as Racine Unified was that way because it just needs more money, did not think we can spend our way out of the predicament we are in, did not think that more cops is the answer to crime. In short, she seems to think outside the box. She understands that we cannot tax and spend our way out of the mess we are in. Businesses with jobs will not come to Racine if we are viewed as a crime-ridden tax hell. And building the choo-choo won’t bring them here, either.
But being the outsider resulted in the short shrift from the Journal Times for Harding. Most of the newspaper’s story focused on the insiders, one of which is John Dickert, who made one of the two most toxic statements tonight. Dickert, a consummate insider even though he holds no elective office, in answer to a question about mandates for homeowners to go green, supported such mandates. Screw you, John. It’s none of the government’s business how I heat my home, what type of windows, doors and insulation I use or anything else. Oh, another point for Harding: she was the only candidate on the panel that hadn’t consumed the global warming kool-aid.
The other toxic comment came from Jim Spangenberg, a current member of the Common Council, who parroted Our Lord and Savior Barack Hussein Obama by saying that we have an obligation to get involved in community service. Once again, the hell with that noise. I am obliged to do nothing other than grow old and die.
The other interesting development was when I exited Gateway and went to my car in the large parking lot on the east side of the building near the south end of the campus. Racine police had the south part of the parking lot and the streets east and south of Gateway blocked off. An overturned canoe had been found in Lake Michigan and rescue efforts were launched presuming someone was in the lake.
Good news to report: the canoe’s owner was located safe and sound and no one was injured. The rescue effort and search has been called off.
I was at the debate too and I think you misunderstood what Dickert said about increasing efficency in houses. He wanted to offer incentives to help homeowners and companies, i.e. help you replace those 50 year old windows so you can lower your heating costs. He said nothing of mandates.
An ordinance is a law. By definition that means it’s required. Dickert said he supported ordinances, which would require such changes. I heard him say he supported such ordinances.
Besides, I don’t even like incentives. It’s government trying to make you behave the way it wants you to behave.