The Journal Times Online - Racine, Wisconsin

I've been reading articles of the comings and goings of what the different governments have been doing for a while now. I've thinking this morning of ways to possibly save some taxpayer monies. As for RUSD, maybe it would be wise to combine some schools together. RUSD can't make up their minds about the boarders because of racial issues, which shouldn't be a factor anyway. Racism should remain in the past. Anyway, my thought behind the merging of schools would be, less empty buses, less property usage and more diversity. How many elementary schools are there? Middle Schools? And think about all the cross busing going on. If RUSD merges a few elementary schools together and sells the vacant schools to developers, that should pay for expansion of the merged school to fit everybody in. Don't you think? With this, you'd have more diversity. We'd also spend less on combining some of the positions as all won't be necessary, electricity, heat, busing... The list could go on and on. Think about it.

Same would be true if possibly merging government entities. Say, move all the Federal entities into one (IRS, SS, whatever else...). All the Racine County into one... Wouldn't it make more sense to have a 1 stop shop? Kind of like what the Workforce Center has started? You have unemployment sector in the same building as the employment search sector. With this idea, you may not minimize the jobs, but you'd definitely minimize the the cost of the maintaining *several* buildings. That would alone save on taxpayers pocket books as the budget wouldn't need to be so high. Where would we build these complexes as there's not much room left in the city? Well, for one, there's plenty of land left the Mount Pleasant plans to use up anyway. Might as well make it worth while. Or how about bulldozing some of the ghetto? That'd pretty up some of the City that nobody wants to look at anyway. If the slum lords complain, then they could use their monies received from the sale of their properties to build apartment buildings in the same areas. That would pretty up Racine too...

I'm really proud of John Lehman for this. I live in a school district that has palatial grounds (which ticks me off a bit), excellent buildings and great curricula, huge parent involvement. It makes me almost embarrassed that we have so much while the city has so little. It's like eating cake while others starve for bread. I know my neighbors object to school taxes all the time, but they fail to see that it is that investment in our schools that contribute heavily to drive up the value of their property. And, yes, property taxes can suck...but would you rather have your property value decline? I think if that were the case they would go collectively ballistic. GSOBMT, I agree with everything you've proposed. I've brought up some of those points myself in the past. It seems like we go out of our way to hold back effeciency more often than not. Building maintence is a big cost that could be greatly reduced. And, if we build new we can install solar collectors and other green energy that would save a ton of money in the long run. Heck, a school could have a wind generator and sell the excess electricity when they produce more than they're using!

Could you imagine how this town could be run, to be green and cost effective too, if we were to run this town together? You and I'd make a great team Kay! Would you really have to build new to install these things? Couldn't you renovate??

Yes, you can renovate..which is also more *green*, but more costly--oddly enough.

I have posted before that there are all these exhibits that go up around the country where people from places like MIT and other colleges build green houses for display and then have to take them down after the competition is over because it's done on public land. corporations do the same thing during big expositions. Why not invite them to Racine and then leave them up for the city to sell at a minimum cost to poor residents. It would sort of be like Habitat for Humanity but green. Just think how much it would help a poor family to have a place that didn't cost that much to heat and cool and the city would get a nice facelift!

That would be cool. Did you hear about the new store on Taylor called "Restore"? It's recycled house fixtures, like 2nd hand cupboards and stuff. All the benefits are for building more Habitat for Humanity homes. I want to check out that place to see what they have. We're always renovating this or that around the house, might find something useful.