Thursday, April 30, 2026
First Fridays kick off in downtown Racine on May 1
RACINE -- The Downtown Racine Corporation's First Fridays kick off on May 1 with a Creative Crawl, a citywide celebration of art, creativity and community.
There will be hands-on activities, artist demonstrations, local author readings, pop-up exhibits and more from 4-9 p.m. throughout Downtown Racine.
Racine Art Museum, 441 Main St., will feature:
- A live set by DJ Unknown (5-8 p.m.).
- Interactive art stations for kids & adults (4-8 p.m.).
- Art Treasure Hunt with prizes.
- Meet the Artist: Amanda Browder (6:30 p.m. talk).
- Live Urban Sketching with Patti Fallon.
- Outdoor public art/postcard painting station.
- Artist demos throughout downtown featuring RAM artists.
Live art and hands-on experiences will include these venues:
- Revelyn Soul: Watch artist Erin Krembs create felted beads & animal sculptures.
- The New Café: Create beaded wind chimes with Pop-Up Adventures.
- Stitched: Fiber art demo with Sherrye Smith + explore Racine’s newest fiber arts hub.
- Art Metals Studio: Father/daughter duo showcasing painting/metalwork collaboration.
The Hotel Verdant, 500 Main St., is offering:
- A rare behind-the-scenes look at a private guest floor.
- Creative cocktail specials at Marguerite.
- A paper floral art demonstration with Laura Gillespie.
Among other highlights will be:
- Busia’s XOXO, 210 3rd St.: Hands-on cookie icing station.
- Photographic Design: Opening reception for the "Windows of the World" exhibit.
- Racine Art Guild, 419 6th St., Spring Juried Show.
- COP House: Student-made jewelry from repurposed materials.
- Over Our Head Players: Interactive puppet “Joke Booth.”
- Public art installations and demos throughout downtown.
Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Why Wisconsin gas prices are expected to jump dramatically
Caden Perry
Expect gas prices to shoot up dramatically in southeast Wisconsin soon, gas experts told the Journal Sentinel.
Refinery issues in Indiana will choke many Great Lakes markets into higher prices as soon as April 29 through May 1, GasBuddy head analyst Patrick De Haan said.
While southeast Wisconsin will be hit hardest with these refinery issues, blockage issues at the Strait of Hormuz will also increase gas prices across the board.
"The ceasefire did nothing, is doing nothing. The Strait is closed. There's a continued block on crude oil, and that is driving oil prices back up slowly but steadily the longer it continues," De Haan added.
Individual gas stations will set final prices, but De Haan said he saw many stations buying gasoline at a more expensive rate on April 28 already.
"Some stations may go up a big amount all at once, other stations may go up a little bit here and there for the next few days, but the numbers point to a pretty noticeable rise in price," De Haan said.
According to AAA, the average price per gallon in Wisconsin was $3.93 on April 28, up from $3.70 one week ago on April 21, one month ago at $3.64 on March 28 and up from one year ago at $2.99 on April 28, 2025.
The issue, De Haan described, is with a major refinery outage in Indiana. The Times of Northwest Indiana reported BP's Whiting Refinery suffered a power outage on April 27.
That's the second major shutdown since a fire at the refinery shut operations down for more than a week in October last year.
Business and Industry Connection Magazine also reported an ongoing labor dispute at the Whiting Refinery has locked out about 800 United Steelworks laborers since March 19.
Wisconsin's gas markets are split down the middle: eastern markets feed from Chicago-centered distributors and western stations from Great Plains markets.
The Whiting Refinery outage affected the Chicago markets much more than usual because other refineries have begun annual maintenance with spring's arrival.
"The Chicago market is kind of white-hot," De Haan said. "There's not as much capacity in the system while refineries are doing maintenance. There's less margin for error because if a refinery unexpectedly goes down, it's not like the others can just spring into action."
De Haan said the spike could take weeks to smooth back out, and the gap in Wisconsin will widen even further before courses are corrected.
Wisconsin average gas prices by metro area on April 28
Here's the average price per gallon for gasoline on April 28 from lowest to highest, according to AAA.
- Eau Claire: $3.68
- La Crosse: $3.77
- Superior: $3.83
- Pierce-St. Croix County: $3.84
- Janesville-Beloit: $3.93
- National average: $3.93
- Appleton: $3.94
- Milwaukee-Waukesha: $3.95
- Racine: $3.96
- Oshkosh: $3.96
- Madison: $3.97
- Wausau: $3.97
- Sheboygan: $3.99
- Kenosha: $3.99
- Fond du Lac: $4.00
- Green Bay: $4.00
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
Former RUSD janitor sentenced in child pornography case
Milana Doné
RACINE — A 29-year-old Caledonia man was sentenced three years of incarceration Tuesday in connection to child pornography possession charges.
Nicholas Wotnoske, a former school janitor, was charged in July 2024 with six counts of sexual exploitation of a child and 15 counts of possession of child pornography.
He was found guilty of three counts of child pornography possession in February, and the remaining counts were dismissed but read in to the court record.
Wotnoske also was ordered to serve three years of extended supervision, and the court imposed a $500 surcharge for each of 21 images, according to online court records.
According to previous Journal Times reporting, the Racine County Sheriff’s Office announced Wotnoske’s arrest July 8, 2024, identifying him as a second-shift janitor in the Racine Unified School District.
Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Michael Luell said investigators did not believe any RUSD students or other local children were alleged victims in the case, and that the accusations against Wotnoske were unrelated to his employment.
RUSD spokeswoman Stacy Tapp said in July 2024 that the school district had placed Wotnoske on unpaid administrative leave.
The district hired Wotnoske as a building engineer in 2021, and Tapp said there had been no complaints about him.
“We were extremely concerned to learn of these charges,” she said.
According to RCSO, the Internet Crimes Against Children unit intercepted photos and video of child pornography “in relation to” a residence in Caledonia.
Investigators reportedly found about 44,000 illegal images in Wotnoske’s possession and RCSO said he allegedly admitted to possessing child pornography.
Monday, April 27, 2026
Wisconsin data center tax break to cost state more than $2 billion
This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. It was made possible by donors like you.
Wisconsin is poised to forgo more than $2 billion in sales tax revenue to subsidize hyperscale data centers built by trillion-dollar companies such as Microsoft and Meta.
Data centers were granted a sales tax exemption in the 2023-25 state budget, which was approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers as a way to attract economic development to the state.
That means the $1 billion data center in Beaver Dam, a $20 billion complex in Mount Pleasant and a $15 billion facility in Port Washington don’t have to pay the 5% state sales tax, or local sales taxes, on purchases for constructing and equipping their facilities.
When the budget passed in July 2023, the scale of the data center boom was so uncertain that the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau did not estimate how much state revenue would be “forgone” under the exemption, aside from a hypothetical example.
But now a fiscal bureau projection is in:
The state will be out $1.5 billion in forgone state sales tax revenue during construction, which can take years, plus $369 million annually once the facilities are built.
The estimates apply to the hyperscale data centers under construction in Beaver Dam and Port Washington and the facilities under construction or planned in Mount Pleasant. A much smaller Epic project in Verona is also part of the estimate.
It’s unclear whether the data centers would have been built in Wisconsin without the tax incentive.
“Obviously it's a big number, but it’s right to think that this is not really revenue that the state realistically could have ever captured,” said economist Ross Milton, a state government tax expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“It seems quite likely that if Wisconsin wasn't providing incentives of these kinds, we wouldn't be seeing these data centers being built here.”
Highlighting the fierce competition for development, 38 states offer data center sales tax exemptions or other tax breaks, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Wisconsin offers sales tax exemptions for a wide array of products and services. One of the largest exempts food bought at the grocery store, which reduced state revenue by about $920 million in 2024.
Tricia Braun, executive director of the Wisconsin Data Center Coalition, a business group that supports data center development, pointed out that the fiscal bureau projection does not include economic benefits from data centers, including taxes paid by data center suppliers.
Wisconsin Watch reported in March that just three Wisconsin companies have done more than $1 billion in business supplying data centers.
Jason Stein, president of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, a nonpartisan think tank, said “the state has good possibilities for recovering” the forgone revenue. That could come from spending by construction workers and income taxes paid by those workers, their employers and permanent data center employees, as well as corporate income taxes and utility taxes, he said.
The unexpectedly large amount of forgone revenue has helped fuel efforts for data center regulation.
State Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin, D-Whitefish Bay, who requested the estimate, said lawmakers should discuss what the state can get in return for the exemption. She said the exemption could be tied to, for example, requirements to protect the environment.
Habush Sinykin wants the Legislature, which Republicans control, to convene what is known as an extraordinary session to discuss a variety of data center bills, rather than waiting until the next regular session in January.
Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, and Rep. Shannon Zimmerman, R-River Falls, introduced legislation in 2023 that led to the exemption and have proposed expanding it. They did not respond to requests for comment.
Their original legislation received more than 200 hours of lobbying support from Microsoft, power companies such as We Energies and Alliant Energy, and business groups. No one registered to lobby against the bill.
Nationally, state data center legislation has shifted from incentives to regulation.
In 2021 and 2022, 44 of the 45 data center bills introduced in states across the U.S. offered tax and economic incentives, according to an analysis released April 22. Since then, many other types of legislation have emerged. In 2026, only 61 of the 262 state data center bills covered incentives. The vast majority dealt with regulation of energy, environment and transparency.
Some states, including Minnesota, have taken steps to restrict or roll back data center sales tax exemptions.
Data center opponent Shawn Haney, a former elected town board member in Dane County, said he understands that Wisconsin created its sales tax exemption to attract economic development. But he thinks it should be modified so that the state can collect some sales tax revenue from data centers.
“I don't think anybody could have forecasted the size and magnitude of these massive data centers,” Haney said.
“You could do some good things with” the revenue, he said, tossing out a few ideas. “Look at all the roads we have to repair.”
Sunday, April 26, 2026
Hundreds of Alleged MS-13 Gang Members Face Mass Virtual Trial
Saturday, April 25, 2026
Friday, April 24, 2026
North, Zoo beaches earn ‘B’ on report cards for water quality
RACINE — North and Zoo beaches have both earned a B grade for water quality, according to the Racine Public Health Department's 2026 North and Zoo Beach Report Card.
The report summarizes the water quality monitoring and environmental data from 2020-25.
According to the report card, 88% of water samples at North Beach and 87% of samples at Zoo Beach met water swimming standards, earning the beaches the B grade.
The largest threat to water quality is stormwater runoff, the report card said; after a quarter-inch of rain, water samples were up to 16 times more likely to fail safety standards than on dry days.
Shoreline health also is an issue.
The beaches have lost almost five acres (31%) of dunes since 2018, which the department said is driven largely by high water levels and storms.
“The dunes and natural areas that help keep the water clean are disappearing, and that affects everyone who visits,” said Adrian “AJ” Koski, a grant coordinator and research assistant.
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