4-17-26 Willie with Tracy Schwegman

0:00Support for the show comes from public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stock, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtests it against the S&P 500. Then, you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com slash podcast, and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash podcast, paid for by public investing, brokerage services by open to the public investing ink, member Finra and SIPC, advisory services by public advisors LLC, SEC registered advisor. Data assets is an interactive analysis tool, output is for informational purposes only, and is not an investment recommendation or advice, complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures.

1:01The countdown is on for the 2026 NFL Draft, presented by Bud Light. Catch all seven rounds three days live from Pittsburgh, April 23rd through 25th. Watch every pick live on NFL Network ESPN and ABC. NFL Network is also streaming with NFL+. It all starts Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern. Visit NFL.com slash draft for more information, subscription required for NFL+. Visit plus.nfl.com for turns. You've earned your place, and now it's time to enjoy the perks. At High Bipecino, the Prestige loyalty program rewards your play with real benefits. Reach icon status to get two extra sweepscoins on a 180 game points daily. Just for logging in, level up and unlock up to 50 sweepscoin bonus plus growing daily rewards. It's dynamic, it's exclusive, it's prestige, and it's only at High Five Casino. Log in now to check your status. Your next High Five moment awaits. No purchase necessary void were prohibited by lawmen's between when years are older terms and conditions apply. High Five Casino.

2:01Kids, pets, life, your sofa sees it all. But with a washable sofa, stains don't stand a chance. All of our sofa collections come with fully-machine washable covers and cushions, making clean up effortless. Liquid and stain resistant fabrics provide extra protection against everyday messes. Plus with modular designs, you can rearrange your sofa however you like. Perfect for growing families and changing spaces. Starting at just $699, it's time to upgrade to a stress-free, mess-proof sofa. Visit washablesofas.com today and save. Authors are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. My Billy Cunningham, the great American. Welcome to Spotted Ethelene, the Tri-State. A little break is yesterday at the ballpark that almost didn't happen. I love the reds being so feisty, but that's a different matter. And it's going to be great whether today looks a little iffy over the weekend, but nonetheless Red Spaceball kicks off. Minnesota tonight, first pitch about 805. Our coverage starts an hour ahead of time. And Joining Unite Unite now is Tracy Swagman.

3:01She's in charge of the security at the banks and related matters. And tonight's something a little different is going to be happening. And it's going to be implemented. And first of all, Tracy Swagman, welcome to the Bill Cunningham show. And tell the American people what's happening tonight at the banks. Well, Bill, thanks for having me as always. And we wanted to take the opportunity to let folks know that we are bringing back that 21 and up ID checkpoints down at the banks on Friday and Saturday nights, going from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. That will start this evening. And we'll, the plan is to run us through the end of October. And there's also other curfews in effect in the city that you don't control. I think after 9 o'clock, you can't be out. And if you are out, then oh, hell breaks loose. They don't take you to do a holding tank because you're these are kids. You can't do that. So let's say, is there buy-in from the business owners in relationship to what happened an opening day that you're dealing with dozens and dozens of business owners,

4:02hundreds of residents? How much of a buy-in is there? You know, then what we found last year was the program was really successful. You know, it was a pilot program last year and we made some tweaks along the way and we worked with the police to make some of those tweaks. But the feedback that we got from everybody, whether it was residents, businesses, customers, the police, the city, everybody felt it was a good, solid initiative and was a positive contributor to the overall sort of safety plan that they had going on in and around downtown. So, you know, the plan was to work to try and bring it back this year. It's not an inexpensive exercise. And so, you know, a couple of the key components that going into making this an issue that happened is you've got to find the money. And it's going to cost banks, businesses, and stakeholders. Again, over $300,000 this year to put this program in place. That is 100% private funds that we have to come up with to fund this initiative. And then, of course, you've got to go through the permitting process

5:02with the city of Cincinnati where they, you know, they have to issue a special permit to let you do this type of thing. And that means everybody weighs in. You know, they tell you what time you're allowed to start and when you have to end and what does the operation look like and how do you interface with things like, you know, red games and all of that good stuff and exiting people out of the stadium. So, it's no small list to try and put it in place. But the news is we were able to secure all those things and we're able to start it this weekend, which is pretty much the same time we started it last year. Last year, our first date was April the 25th. So, we are pretty much right on target. If this had been an effect for Red's opening day, of course, you're talking about 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. It was a 4 4 10 start. Most of the activities took place 6 7 or 8 o'clock. When you look back on what happened Red's opening day, were mistakes made, mistakes not made. What's is something you couldn't control. Explain to the American people what happened Red's opening day. Well, you know, Red's opening day, I'll tell you this. It was probably one of the best opening days that I had been a part of in 15 years.

6:07I mean, from 9 o'clock in the morning until about 5 o'clock at night, the banks was humming and hopping and was terrific. And the Red's Community Fund put on a fantastic block party as they do every year. You know, unfortunately, the negative activity that was occurring uptown, you know, all afternoon, got moved around, you know, through Washington Park and moved through Fountains Square and worked its way all the way through downtown and landed down the banks, you know, at, you know, 5.30, 6 o'clock-ish. And, you know, when you have thousands of kids that come cascading in on you, it's a tough thing. And, you know, the police made a difficult call on opening day to decide to shut things down. And they started doing that in about 6.30. I don't even think the game was over yet. It folks hadn't even let out. So you still have 40,000 people, you know, that hadn't even exited the ballpark when the police were already saying, shut it down. You know, it's overwhelming. It's too much, you know, turn the music off and by 8 o'clock, after the Red's game had exited, they shut everything down.

7:08That's a tough call that they made. And let me tell you, they're working their back sides off. They are, that's not a wrap on the police by any stretch of the imagination. They're working their tails off and they're understaffed. And they made a tough call. At the end of the day, everybody went home safe. Nobody got hurt. So, you know, that's a plus. But that was a, that was a painful, that was a painful day. For sure. No, frankly, it was a very unfortunate, bad ending to what was otherwise a terrific day. You know, Tracy Swagman, uneasy rest ahead that wears the crown. It's your responsibility. And you caught some flak. I don't know if you saw social media. Yeah. Is there anything you would have done differently? I'm thinking, well, do you shut down the banks at five o'clock or four o'clock? It's a Red's game, but it's a different crowd. Is there anything you would have done differently? You know, it's a hard thing to try and entangle. You know, opening day is basically a city-wide from all kinds of purposes, a city-wide holiday. There are other permits in place where, you know, other events are happening

8:13that we don't control. You know, the earliest we would have been able to put in place any kind of barricade or what have you to do at ID checkpoint would have been nine o'clock at night. That would have been the earliest based on the things that we are required to adhere to as it relates to that ID checkpointing. Now, I don't know if the city or the police will determine that special events and permit holders have to do things differently going forward. I don't really know the answer to that. I know that they probably had quite a number of conversations about what to do next, but, you know, that's a bit above my pay grade quite frankly. You know, what we try to do with this 21 and up ID checkpoint is quite frankly, we are trying to preserve and protect the business environment for those customers wanting to patronize our businesses. And that comes at any moment's expense, but the cost of not doing anything is, you know, exceptionally high as well.

9:14When it comes to overall city policy relating to special events and curfew youth curfews and, you know, gun violence and all the things, that is way above and beyond our pay grade down to banks. I mean, the best that we can try and do is, you know, preserve and protect that environment for our business customers and our residents and, you know, hotel guests and what have you. And hope that the city has had some plans going forward for the balance of summer. Well, Tracy is trying the other thing is you're responsible for security at the banks, which is a geographically small part. Cops have told me that one or 200 kids who maybe can't get into the banks goes of ID. Well, that's no big deal. They go to Schmell Park and do whatever they're going to do. They go to Washington Park where my family has deep roots. They go to Fountain Square. They go to government square. It's not, it's salt, what solves the problem are functional families, functional mothers and fathers and functional teenagers

10:16who conform to just dictates of the law that feel as if there's consequences for bad behavior. And we have a rather weak court system that individuals show up in juvenile court and judge a bloom doesn't consider it a serious matter. Everything's on the unofficial docket, which means there's no record. And all kinds of bad things can happen. In which case, there's no record for the individual who does it. And releasing them back into that situation is terrible. Well, we have a situation. This is outside your bailiwick too. And that is there's about four to five thousand homeless children going into Cincinnati public schools. Now you and I live in functional communities with functional families. But if you're homeless and you're four to five thousand of those kids age appropriate roaming around Cincinnati on a free pass on a bus, that's a problem. You have nothing, you can't control that either. So this is a small piece of a larger problem. And we can't have street takeovers anymore. Now, I will also note that can a can a can a father or a mother or a guardian

11:20bring people say that are 18, 19 years old. Tony Bender often has guardianships of young children. He likes to bring them into exciting areas. And is it legal to do that if you bring an adult with you? So on Friday and Saturday nights, if you want to come to the bank after 10 o'clock at night, you either must be 21 or older or you must be accompanied by a parent, not an adult, a parent. There's a difference. So the 19 year old can't show up with this 21 year old brother and get in. You have to be there with a parent. Okay, that's a big point. Now, how do you determine who's a parent? I guess a 21 year old can't be the parent of a 19 year old. So if someone's age appropriate, maybe you've got an 18 year old and the person appears to be 35 years old, what do you do? It's a tough thing. It's a tough call. The adult in the group is certainly going to be ID.

12:21If nothing else, they're going to be stopped. And they're going to be asked some questions. And they're going to be asked questions by private security. And there will be uniformed off duty since I police officers in the plaza area as well. So you're going to be asked some hard questions. And you're going to be stopped for sure. And you're not going to be able to ask a young person necessarily for an ID. It could be a close call. But having done it for about a year, there tend to be very few of them. Does that usually pretty obvious? Does that negatively affect business? Because the message is we have to have security. And by the way, these are not on duties since the 90 cops. Correct? These are off-duty cops and private security. Paid for by the businesses there. Correct? Correct. Correct. What we've heard from the businesses, and frankly, what we've heard from the patrons as well, from the guests that actually go through the checkpoints and come into the area. And then, frankly, they get ID'd again to get into the bars.

13:23There's a double check. What we've heard is they're actually thanking us for being there. They're thanking us for doing this. Because they want to come to the banks. The banks is exceptionally popular. There are 7 million people that come to the banks every year. And for those that want to come and patronize the area, they want to have a sense of security and safety. And the feedback that we got last year was thank you for being here. Thank you for doing this. This is great. You're right. At 10 o'clock at night, there isn't anything here that is age appropriate for anybody under the age of 21. So let's preserve the environment for those that want to patronize the businesses and do so in a responsible fashion. And the kids need to find some place that is age appropriate and safe and structured for them to recreate. And whether there's a curfew or not, it's in place of being enforced, irrespective of that.

14:25It's not a place for young people after certain hour and evening. When I speak to some of the shakers and movers in Cincinnati, they tell me they want an overall security plan for downtown. Because downtown, some say teetering, the publicity nationwide we received on Reds Opening Day was awful. It's happened before. Lots of shootouts on Fountain Square. Lots of crime being committed in Washington, Park, and OTR. And the 25 large business owners in Cincinnati, the Procter & Gamble, the Jeff Ruby Steakhouse, is the Joseph Automotive Group, the Croger Facilities, the big boys in town have told the city, they want an overall security plan that makes sense. It's recently, right after we had the the fracas on Reds Opening Day, I spoke to, I circled back to two or three of those and said, do you have a plan? And the answer is no. No functional plan is put in place.

15:27Can you agree or disagree with the idea that the banks is part of it, but you got Schmale Park, you got Fountain Square, you got Washington Park, you got OTR, you got Government Square, you got the downtown business district. We're going to have in the next year or two, a large hotel with the convention center. Are you part of discussions to develop an overall plan outside of the banks? We have not been a part of those conversations. We would be happy to be a part of those conversations. And we are, I would guarantee you that the businesses of the banks are supportive of those conversations. You know, there's a lot of people that care deeply about the state of downtown Cincinnati. And an overall security plan would be a, I think, a welcome addition and welcome news to certainly all of the banks' businesses and stakeholders. And I would be hard pressed to imagine that anything they roll out, we would not be in support of us. It's a social plan.

16:28I see the same stuff in Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis. It's the same thing happening in major cities. Large numbers of kids without things to do. Many times there's a free bus pass that allows transportation. By the way, are there free deer knowledge? I think there were free bus passes on opening day. Are there free bus passes now to your knowledge? I'm not aware of free buses. There was an opening day. Metro was running free routes on opening day, which I believe they've done to the last 10 years or so. The street car runs, and it's free. I mean, I think there are some environmental things that you can do still to help knock down some of this, whether it's getting rid of the scooters, getting rid of the red bikes, which, quite frankly, it's been demonstrated they are part of criminal activities and facilitating criminal activity. Perhaps charging for the street car after a certain point in the evening. That kind of transportation and moving folks around

17:29and facilitating bad activity and bad behavior, those are just things like some low-hanging fruit to me. And perhaps that will be part of an overall safety and security plan that hopefully sounds like maybe rolling out soon. This is not an issue unique to Cincinnati. It is going on all around the country. And it takes a lot of different angles. And at the moment, the banks is trying to do what it can to support our business community. And frankly, keep them around because the problem is doing this. This is an exceptionally expensive endeavor. Not just, this is the second year in a row. So this is not a budgeted expense. Nobody just has $300,000 laying around. But the cost of doing nothing is too great in our customers. And the feedback that we've gotten from the city and the police and the stakeholders down to the customers,

18:29it's been well received. So we're happy to put it in place again and try and do our part at least for our little neighborhood. You know, it's sad that you have to be a mother and a father and a guardian and a protector of children engaged and terrible likes. People doing this are not 25 and 45 years old. They tend to be 15 to 25 years old. And when you say, well, you know, we can't provide free buses. That's what we shouldn't do that because it facilitates movement. But we should the free street car. Well, that facilitates movement. Scooters and red bikes. I assume companies are involved in that trying to make a buck. And that's being used to commit crime. And it's just a sad commentary on our society. Cincinnati is better off than other major American cities. I think we're better off than St. Louis or Chicago or Atlanta. But unless it's going to be stopped, we can't continue like this. And this $300,000 is part of like the HOA fee that the businesses are paying based upon square footage.

19:30And they didn't budget this. And it's going to be it's going to hit the bottom line. And those costs will be passed on to customers in the form of higher prices that people pay. And that's not that's not good either. Well, Tracy Schwagman, thank you. I was going to talk about my rap career. You and I were together a couple nights ago in an event. And I started rapping. And I couldn't stop. And I just wrapped out. And you said that I could be the voice of our generation. And I just feel good about that. You know, Bill, you could be great breaking totally new ground with that rap career. You know, it's quite intriguing. That's a nice way to put it. My wife says, Penny tells me you're making it do it fully yourself. But, you know, I'm sure M&M in the beginning made a fool of himself. And he got better because of repetition. So that's kind of my goal. I want to be the voice of our generation. I know. Do you ever listen to rap? By the way, do you listen to rap music? You and Tom Wheedman. I don't listen to rap music. It's not my genre. Well, that's a concern.

20:31Now, my music, my music is, yeah, I grew up with it. Yeah, the 70s and 80s. And now that that's that that's the role on the oldies stations. So, you know, that just that's a show you where I am. I'm rapidly rolling into the oldies station. Yeah, well, I mean, everybody's getting older if they're lucky. And if they're not lucky, they don't get older. But nonetheless, my wife is a reason. There's not a rapper for our generation because there's no market. But that's the difference. Well, I use a smart lady. Your wife is a smart lady. So, you know, you know, you know, you know, certainly listening to her feedback is going to make your life a little easier. God bless America. Tracy, good luck tonight. We'll see what happens. Here we go again. But may you and yours have a great weekend. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. God bless you all. Let's continue with more. That's Tracy Swagman. She's in charge of security at the banks. Also in charge of security and reds opening day. But that's a different matter. Let's continue with more Bill Cunningham. By the way, later on, we have Senator John Yucid coming up. We've scheduled. And also the Attorney General David Yost

21:33on News Radio 700. W. The countdown is on for the 2026 NFL Draft presented by Bud Light. Catch all seven rounds three days live from Pittsburgh April 23rd through 25th. Watch every pick live on NFL Network ESPN and ABC. NFL Network is also streaming with NFL Plus. It all starts Thursday at 8 p.m. Easter. Visit NFL.com slash draft for more information. Subscription required for NFL Plus. Visit plus dot NFL dot com for turns. High five casino. You've earned your place. And now it's time to enjoy the perks. At high five casino, the Prestige loyalty program rewards your play with real benefits. Reach icon status to get two extra sweet coins on a 180 game coins daily. Just for logging in. Level up and unlock up to 50 sweet coin bonus plus growing daily rewards. It's dynamic. It's exclusive. It's prestige. And it's only at high five casino. Log in now to check your status. Your next high five moment awaits. No purchase necessary void. We're prohibited by law must between

22:33when you're older terms and conditions apply. High five casino. Life gets messy. Spills. Stains. Head accidents and kid chaos. But with anabay, cleaning up is easy. Our sofas are fully machine washable inside and out. So you never have to stress about messes again. Made with liquid and stain resistant fabrics, that means fewer stains and more peace of mind. Designed for real life, our sofas feature changeable fabric covers. Allow you to refresh your style any time. Need flexibility? Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly. Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes. Plus, they're earth friendly and built to last. That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch. Upgrade your space today. Sofa start at just $699. Visit washablesofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life. That's washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

23:37Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. The message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything goodness world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at MintMobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three month plan. Equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate for three months only. Then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at MintMobile.com.