Doing More With Less: 2025 South Milwaukee Budget Includes Cuts, Small Levy Increase

From the City of South Milwaukee …

We are pleased to share details of the City’s 2025 budget, which reflects our commitment to fiscal responsibility and delivering essential services to the community.

The total levy for the 2025 budget is $13,127,877, representing a modest 0.25% increase over the 2024 budget. While inflation, measured at 3.2% by the Consumer Price Index, presents challenges, we are keeping increases in check. The City’s portion of the tax rate will rise from $7.83 to $7.89 per $1,000 of assessed value (a 0.77% increase). For example, a home assessed at $250,000 will see a $15 property tax increase for the City’s portion. The overall tax rate, which includes the School District, Milwaukee County, and MATC, will increase by 7.12%.

We have also made difficult but necessary reductions to meet our financial goals. These include closing the Senior Center at the end of 2024, reducing staffing in the Street Department, scaling back the Public Library’s allocation by 5%, and trimming seasonal help. Beyond these specifics, every major category of the City’s budget is being reduced aside from Public Safety and Debt Service. Public Safety remains our top priority. See the full budget document here: https://bit.ly/SM2025Budget

I shared my thoughts about the Senior Center closure here.

The city tells me the Street Department cuts will result in the reduction of staff by one full-time position and the hiring of only two seasonal helpers instead of the five employed in 2024.

As to the library funding cut, which comes as the Wisconsin Policy Forum continues its study of the future of the local institution, I asked Library Board President David Maass for his reaction:

Other than the continuation of reduced hours of operation, the effect of the five percent budget cut on library services will not affect patrons. Budget adjustments were made to non-public areas, one-time savings, and other shared Federated library costs. All parties entrusted with library services are committed to library services for the long run. The goal of the Wisconsin policy Forum study is to study how best to provide a wide array of library services within the city budget that is permitted by the state.

Also, starting in 2025, the library’s financial management functions will be handled by the city’s Clerk and Treasurer offices, instead of the library director. From the city …

To support this transition and cover the additional workload, the Library has agreed to fund an extra eight hours per week (416 hours annually) for the part-time employee in the Clerk’s Office, at an approximate cost of $12,800 per year. With this shift in responsibilities, the Library Board has decided not to proceed with hiring an Assistant Director, a position previously budgeted for. Instead, a 28-hour per week librarian will be hired to assist with reference desk responsibilities. Overall, this plan is expected to save the Library and the City up to $22,000 annually.

Efficiencies aside, all in, this was a really difficult budget, with the most signficant cuts seen in years. And much of it comes back to a challenge that has faced communities across the state for more than a decade: State-imposed levy limits. While the shared revenue increases in the current biennial budget helped, they did not make up for decades of disinvestment in the program, and they didn’t solve the core problem: The inability of local governments to raise revenue to fund city services.

In some ways, they are the same constraints put on local school districts. And their impact is real, across the state.

Consider: The City of South Milwaukee initially faced a negative levy limit for its 2025 budget, as the amount of “net new construction” — which determines how much a government can increase its tax levy, by far its largest revenue source — fell year over year. That means fully developed, small- or no-growth communities like South Milwaukee, and even those on the other end of the growth spectrum, can’t easily raise revenue to adequately fund current services, much less add new ones or innovate, or even fund pay raises.

That is a travesty, and I hope lawmakers in the increasingly purple legislature have the courage to address it in their upcoming budget.

News flash: They probably won’t. And we will be back here again in 2025.