South Milwaukee Blog

Thanks to Franciscan Villa for this collaboration!

The legislature’s Join Finance Committee held its only Milwaukee-area budget public hearing on Wednesday in Oak Creek.

And while I had to leave the packed event before I could present them in person, I shared these remarks with the committee. From them …

The first few months of divided government have further polarized a polarized state, and instead of lawmakers working to unite us, we get the opposite. I fear the budget process will be another example of that.

But I have hope.

I have hope that you, the Joint Finance Committee, your colleagues and the governor will ultimately put their partisan differences aside starting with the budget process … coming together around common sense ideas that move Wisconsin forward and improve the lives of the people who live here – the millions who call our cities, villages and towns home.

I represent 21,000 of those people. And I stand before you today asking for your help in making our jobs a little easier, for your help in making sure we can continue to deliver our services in the manner and at the level our residents have come to expect of us.

Police, fire, paramedics, public health, our library and senior center, garbage pickup, and, yes, snowplowing – even on an April day like this – we deliver these on the front lines of government every day. We are the government people see most often, and what they rely on most.

Levy limits make that job increasingly difficult.

You will hear a lot of suggestions today and throughout these hearings, so I will make mine short and sweet: Deliver common-sense levy limit reform in this budget.

Keep alive the proposals Governor Evers has put forth, especially the one to allow communities to increase their levy from the prior year by 2% or by net new construction, whichever is greater. That small change alone would impact millions of residents of this state for the better, as it will allow us to more adequately fund the services they need and use every day or week.

Here is South Milwaukee’s story, in summary …

For 11 straight years, our “net new construction” figure – used to calculate how much we can increase our base levy, our largest source of revenue – has measured less than 1%. For 2019, it was 0.3%, meaning we were only able to increase our levy by approximately $22,000. 

$22,000. On a $19 million budget. And it was worse in previous years.

This is not sustainable. Costs go up, and we’re not allowed to reflect that in our budgets because the state has hamstrung us on revenue. And what if we want to give our people a raise, or if we want to add services? What do we do then?

I’ll tell you one thing we can’t do: Cut fat. We did that long ago. Cuts now are cuts to people, and services. The days of Cadillac benefits are long gone too. We certainly seek ways to do things better through efficiencies and partnerships, but those only go so far.

South Milwaukee went to referendum in 2017, to ensure we can adequately fund our paramedic  program and add two new police officers. It passed 2-to-1. While that allowed us to increase our levy and helped solve that problem, this is no way to fund a government. “One-off” solutions like this don’t solve the problem.

You can help solve the problem, with levy limit reform.

And don’t do it for us. Do it for the hundreds of communities like us across the state, big and small, blue and red, urban and rural, rich and poor, in every legislative district, including yours.

There’s a lot of data here, but I’ll offer this point from the Wisconsin Policy Forum: “During 2012-16, only 62 of nearly 600 cities and villages averaged new construction rates of 2% per year or more, while 186 averaged 0.5% or less.”

186 at 0.5% or less. And for many like us, this has been the case for a decade. We are not alone in doing more with less, literally.

Please fix this in the next state budget.

I’m not asking for more shared revenue or other state aids, although there is a strong case for that as well. Others will make that case. Today, I’m simply asking you to give us the tools and funding flexibility we need to do our jobs at the local level.

Enact common sense levy limit reform and, in doing so, make a stand for local government and for local control — and for the residents we serve, your constituents.

Effective April 4, 2019, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin has approved the South Milwaukee Water Utility’s application to increase water rates by an average of 41%.

Check out the Water Utility web page for more information, including details on the capital project the increase is supporting, the detailed ruling by the PSC and a list of frequently asked questions.

The utility tells me we will start billing the step 1 rates on a prorated basis May 1, and the step 2 rates on Sept. 1.

From the Rotary Club of Mitchell Field …

Welcome Summer with One of the First Food Truck Events in 2019 

Food Truck Sunday is coming on Sunday, May 19 at South Milwaukee’s Downtown Market, 11th & Milwaukee Avenues. The trucks start serving at noon and stay until 4 p.m. so there’s time to enjoy lunch, meet friends and take home dinner for later.

Returning food trucks include All About Tacos, Cupcake-A-Rhee, Little Havana Express, Marco Polo, The Rolling Cones, and Timber’s BBQ.

• All About Tacos has almost every taco combination you can imagine and donates a portion of their profits to breast cancer research.
• Cupcake-A-Rhee will make you drool with their mouth-watering selection of cupcakes.
• Little Havana Express claims some of the most “authentic” Cuban sandwiches in Milwaukee with their shredded beef and chicken breast sandwiches and Havana pork plates.
• Marco Polo serves crispy chicken with authentic international sauces.
• The Rolling Cones offers unique rolled bread cones stuffed with your choice of meat and vegetarian fillings.
• Timber’s BBQ has some of Milwaukee’s finest BBQ, smoking up wings, brisket, ribs and more with a distinct flair that sets it apart from the competition.

New this time around are A & A Cafe, My Funnel Truck, Pinâ Mexican Eats, Rollin Smoke, and Yogi’s Pud’n Bowltique.

• A & A Cafe features gourmet sandwiches, loaded homemade chips, and salads.
• My Funnel Truck is the place to get the “perfect funnel cake” and ice cream creations.
• Pinâ Mexican Eats, a spin off from the Pineapple Cafe, will make their debut with authentic tacos, burritos, nachos, and quesadillas.
• Rollin Smoke puts a new twist on barbecue with BBQ nachos, smoked Italian beef, BBQ mac & cheese, smoked cheesy potatoes, smoked chocolate mousse and fatties – bacon-wrapped sausages stuffed with all different things then sliced and served as a sandwich.
• Last, but not least, Yogi’s Pud’n Bowltique has people raving about her amazingly delicious, decadent, rich, and completely satisfying pudding flavors are.

The family-friendly event offers live music by acoustic guitarist Rohn Eric Larson and lots of seating at shaded picnic tables. Parking and admission are free.

Food Truck Sunday is hosted by the Rotary Club of Mitchell Field with support from Educators Credit Union. Proceeds from the sale of beverages go back to the South Shore communities of Milwaukee County via grants to non-profits and college scholarships for students.

For more information on Food Truck Sunday, visit facebook.com/southmilwaukeefoodtruck or rcomf.org.

I love this! From the South Shore Chamber of Commerce …

South Shore Soup: 4 p.m. on April 28 at Milwaukee Gourmet House, 800 Milwaukee Ave. in South Milwaukee.

South Shore Soup is a micro-granting soup dinner supporting creative projects in Cudahy, St. Francis, and South Milwaukee; the communities that make up the South Shore Chamber. This innovative micro-granting event has been done throughout the Country and in Milwaukee.

Please email infossccwi@gmail.com for an application.

Tickets can be purchased online at ssccwi.com

PLEASE RSVP ON OR BEFORE Friday, April 26, 2019

Deadline to Submit Application: Sunday, April 21, 2019. Winners will be contacted on April 22, 2019.

How to attend: For a donation of $10 for adults (children 12 and under are free), attendees receive a variety of hearty soup, salad, bread, desert and they VOTE for a grantee. Pr-registration is recommended to get a count for the food.

How it works: At the Soup dinner you hear from four presentations ranging from art, urban agriculture, social entrepreneurs, education, technology and more in hopes the attendees will “grant” them the proceeds from the soup dinner for their cause.

What is the process: Each presenter has four minutes to share their idea and answer four questions from the audience. At the event, attendees eat, talk, share resources, enjoy and vote on the project they think most benefits the cities most. At the end of the night we count the ballots and the winner goes home with all the attendee registration money raised to carry out their project.

Winners come back to a future Soup dinner to report their projects progress.

Do you have a project you would like to support? Do you know a group that would like to sign up? Have them fill out an application. Questions email Trish Wimer at trish2@wi.rr.com

Congratulations to the South Milwaukee boys’ and girls’ track teams, which both took home Woodland Conference East team championships on Tuesday. Check out the full results here.

A special shoutout to our champions!

• Boys: Aidan Sodemann (800 and 1600 meters); Riley Williams (triple jump); Ty Spaltholz (shot put); Daylehn Juszczak (pole vault); and the 4×400 relay team of Jacob Wysocki, Zach Fredrickson, Tarek Slusar, and Kashief Deacon.
• Girls: Katie Keller (3200 meters); Jordyn Benn (high jump); Kali Schlunz (pole vault); Kaylee Patnode (long jump and triple jump); the 4×160 relay team of Patnode, Olivia Osborne, Nora Rajchel-Wilcox and Araia Breedlove; and the 4×240 relay of Keegan Schell, Kiley Rohrscheib, Abby Benn, and Olga Ortiz-Salgado.

Go Rockets!

I’m really proud of the city’s Adopt a Tree program.

Created by the South Milwaukee Beautification Committee three years ago, this public-private partnership has already led to the planting of 100 trees on local streets, with another 50 coming this year.

And we’re not stopping anytime soon. The goal: Reforest city streets, and in doing so deliver all the benefits trees bring.

The good news for residents this year: After our initial solicitation for participants — letters sent to homeowners who have seen trees removed recently — we still have a couple dozen trees remaining for purchase. Cost is just $100, a fraction of the overall cost of the cost of the tree and planting.

Interested? Learn more here.

This program is just one aspect of our enhanced urban forestry efforts in the city in recent years, and there are more to come. I’ll share some of those successes on Arbor Day on April 26.

Like many communities, we continue to remove dead and dying trees across the city, especially ash. But for the first time in many years, we are planting, too, and that investment in our city’s green infrastructure is great news for South Milwaukee. The Adopt a Tree program brings that investment to life, literally.

South Milwaukee is looking for a new library director.

Nan Champe, who has served in the role since 2014, has accepted a position as the library director in Pewaukee, and I wish her nothing but the best. Her leadership during an important time of transition at the library was greatly appreciated.

From physical improvements (including an awesome new mural by a talented local artist) to stronger collection management to enhanced programming to internal operations, Nan drove an incredible amount of positive change for this vital community resource, and leaves the library in a really strong position for her replacement.

Check out the job posting here.

Thanks, Nan, for your service, and thanks to the South Milwaukee Library Board for your guidance during this important time, and going forward. This board is full of talented, passionate members who love libraries and this city — and I’m excited to see who they hire as Nan’s replacement.

Kathy Manning, previously in leadership roles at the Germantown and North Shore libraries, will serve as the interim director. Welcome, Kathy!

The results are in from Tuesday’s 2019 spring general election, and you can seem them on the city website here.

Some highlights …

• Turnout was strong, at more than 33 percent of registered voters. Of the 3,901 ballots cost, 601 were absentee.
• South Milwaukee Municipal Judge William Fenger won re-election with just under 47 percent of the vote, beating challenger Kelly Martyka.
• The South Milwaukee School Board race was not contested, and challenger Augie Vega will join incumbents Sophia Williams and Doug Perry on the board.
• In the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, Brian Hagedorn won locally, with more than 51 percent, to Lisa Neubauer’s 47 percent.

Thanks to everyone who turned out at the polls today, and a special thanks to our pollworkers and clerk’s office for their efforts on this and every election day.

We expect a decision soon from the Wisconsin Public Service Commission on the city’s request to increase water bills by an average of 41 percent. I’ll share that news when we get it.

As we await their decision, I have heard the concerns raised by residents and other property owners loud and clear. You aren’t happy, and I get it.

This is a significant increase with significant impacts, especially on those who are already struggling to make ends meet — and that’s a lot of people in our community, from seniors to families. It’s real money.

For the Brooks family, it may mean a $63.76 increase in our $178.32 bill we received in February, on top of the 35 percent increase in sewer costs last year and 5 percent this year. Paid three times a year. Other bigger users will pay even more.

People are rightfully upset, but the rationale is clear: This is money we must spend to ensure safe, clean drinking water for South Milwaukeeans.

Our recently published Q&A on this topic dives into the “why” more, and I shared some insights with TMJ4 as they came to town last week. Of note …  

• The state is requiring us to make the investment driving most of the increase. We were told in 2008 about the need to replace our underground clearwells — where we store about a day’s worth of already filtered water before we pump it to users — with those above ground. More details on the project here.
• Usage is down, way down. This is a critical point. While water conservation is a good thing in many ways, we now have fewer large users (think, Bucyrus, among others) to share in the burden of increases. Of note, we sold 773 million gallons of water in 1997, compared with 480 million in 2018. That is a 38 percent decrease in consumption. Our largest user is now Southtowne Apartments. That reality makes increases more painful for homeowners.
• Costs go up. We had our last major increase in 2010, and our 3 percent increase in 2013 — our last one — is not enough to cover inflation during those eight years. That’s a flaw in the system, I’d argue. I’d prefer we have more regular, smaller increases to normalize rates and avoid huge increases like this, but the PSC does not allow them. We can do this with our sewer utility, and we are.

We are also not alone in seeking these large increases – and having to make big-ticket, state-mandated upgrades at our facilities — but that doesn’t ease the pain for the ratepayer. Nor does it soften this harsh reality: If these increases are approved, we will have the most expensive water in the county. And that is deeply concerning to me.

At the same time, we must invest in clean water, and we are.

The new lift station — which drove the sewer rate increase — is part of that, as are the clear wells. So is the work we’re doing to plan for, and eventually accomplish, a cleaner Oak Creek watershed – an effort that will assuredly outline millions of dollars in potential improvements in this critical community corridor.

Our urban forestry efforts help keep our water clean, as does the everyday work of our crews sweeping streets, and even picking up leaves. Add in community efforts like the Earth Day cleanup, the planting this spring of a new downtown community garden, the tireless work of our Friends groups … the list goes on.

South Milwaukee has long rallied around clean water and chosen to invest in preserving it. It’s a community commitment to the most important resource we have. This is the latest example of that.

Today is Election Day! Please do your constitutional duty and vote.

There are contested races for State Supreme Court, Branch 40 of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, and South Milwaukee Municipal Judge. The South Milwaukee School Board race is also on the ballot, with three candidates seeking three seats,

Here is a sample ballot. And and here are additional voting details, including new polling locations for Districts 2 and 4 …

• Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
• First District voters vote at Divine Mercy School, 695 College Ave.
• Starting with this election, Second District voters vote at the Divine Mercy Gathering Room, 800 Marquette Ave.
• Third District voters vote at City Hall, 2424 15th Ave.
• Fourth District voters vote at the Grobschmidt Senior Center, 2424 15th Ave.
• Not sure what district you live in? Here is a map.
• Please remember to bring photo ID.
• For information on voter registration, polling locations, and to request an absentee ballot for future elections, visit MyVote.

Check out more details on the city’s elections web page … and look for more information on local results from South Milwaukee Blog later tonight or Wednesday morning.

And while you’re out, please thank a pollworker. These dedicated citizens bring democracy to life through their too-often thankless work.

See you at the polls!

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From the South Milwaukee Police Department, posted on their Facebook page Sunday evening …

Alexus and Caleb were located together in South Milwaukee this evening. They are safe and unharmed. Thank you for your assistance in trying to help locate them.

This story initially broke on Thursday with the disappearance of Caleb, with police providing this additional information on Saturday …

South Milwaukee Police have continued to follow up of the case of Caleb Mueller and at this point it is likely the Caleb Mueller case is that of a juvenile runaway. There has also been information that Caleb Mueller may possibly be in the company of another juvenile who is also reported as a missing juvenile reported by the Milwaukee Police Department. This juvenile is also a possible runaway. She attends school at South Milwaukee Middle School and she did not return to her place of residence in the City of Milwaukee after school on 03/28/19. This juvenile female is 14 year old Alexus Muniz. She is described as 5’00, 115lbs, Brown hair and Brown eyes. If anyone has knowledge of the whereabouts of either of these juveniles, please contact the South Milwaukee Police Department or the Milwaukee Police Department at 414-768-8060. Thank you.

Thanks to everyone who helped bring home these kids safely!

From the South Milwaukee Police Department …

The SMPD is asking the public’s help in locating missing 13yr old Caleb Mueller from South Milwaukee. Mueller is described as a male white, 5’08”, 135lbs, black hair/brown eyes. Caleb was last seen on Thursday March 28th at his residence wearing a black zippered hoodie, gray sweat pants, and green camouflage shoes. Anyone having information on the whereabouts of Caleb are asked to contact the SMPD at 414-768-8060. Thank you.

It’s time for another Coffee with the Mayor! And this time I’m bringing the police chief.

Join me and South Milwaukee Police Chief William Jessup from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, April 11, at Avenue Coffeehouse, 911 Milwaukee Ave. for an open discussion on what’s happening in South Milwaukee. There is no set agenda, and pretty much anything is fair game. So bring your questions, comments or concerns for either the chief or me, or both, and grab a drink while you’re there.

Thanks to Sara and Aaron for hosting, and for Chief Jessup in joining me!