This week in City Hall
Budget planning, new parks, civic engagement, and a request from a resident that the next Tosa Bike Classic have more porta potties so people stop peeing in her yard.
First, a quick correction to Thursday’s article on school financing. I had stated that the school’s spending of approximately $130M was much larger than the City’s spending of $70M, but this isn’t accurate. The City spends $70M from its General Fund, but it has many other funds as well that when added together come out to around $120-140M—similar in size to the school district’s spending.
→ Financial Affairs: The Finance Director, John Ruggini, gave a presentation on the city’s process for passing next year’s budget. He does this, because several years before, multiple alders voted against the budget not because they disagreed with what the City wanted to spend money on but because they felt they didn’t have enough time to provide input.
In brief, the process begins when the heads of various city departments take about 6 weeks to put together a budget request. These requests are then reviewed by the Finance Department and aggregated by the City Administrator and Mayor into an Executive Budget over the next 4 weeks as they decide how much they’ll receive from property taxes, the state, and other revenue sources. Then the Financial Affairs committee has a month to make amendments and recommend to the Common Council for approval. The entire Common Council will then consider amendments on October 25, hear public comment on November 1 and approve the budget by November 15.
The Finance Director kindly asked alders to keep in mind:
That the budget is for things that have to do with money and that he recommends they not use it to advance non-financial policies. By all means, “set forth how much the city is going to spend on crossing guard. But it’s probably not appropriate within the budget document to dictate what intersections those crossing guards are at.”
That if they want something included in the Executive Budget, don’t call a Department Head and tell him to stick it in there. Instead, do it through committee before July 30 and remember that anything they agree to during committee is just advisory and that the Mayor can ignore them. If they really feel strongly about it, they can propose an amendment when it goes to the Common Council to try to get it added in again before final approval.
Recognize that there’s not a ton of extra money. If they want something added, he says, they’ll be more successful if they identify a way to pay for it. And that large changes are easier to incorporate into a budget that is 2 or more years away than the one right around the corner, because so much has solidified at that point.
Also during the Financial Affairs meeting, the committee recommended spending the $4M in ARPA funds set aside for two park projects:
A renovation of the Hart Park Muellner Building, home of the Wauwatosa Curling Club, meetings of the Senior Center, and rentable event space. Renovations would include both interior and exterior repairs, and the City intends to work with the Curling Club and other source to raise additional funds that might be required to realize the full scope of the renovation.
A new park at West Gilbert Avenue and North 116th Street that would include walking trails, a playground, BMX trail, sledding hill, picnic area, and…solar panels, powering something. This will also cost more than the $2M available through ARPA funds but the City hopes it can obtain additional grants and donations to cover the full $3.8M expected price tag.
These two recommendations came out of meetings between city staff and the Board of Parks and Forestry. They were selected because they meet many of the goals and recommendations of the Active Tosa Plan, have already been designed, and can be completed before deadlines set in the ARPA funding grant.
→ Government Affairs: Members of the Government Affairs committee approved two special event permits for:
The Cafe Hollander Tosa Village Classic Bike Race that will occur on June 26 and involve street closures for most of the day near the intersection of Harmonee and Underwood, Wauwatosa and Harwood, W. State St. and Harwood, and N. 72nd and W. State St. During public comment, one resident asked the organizers of the event to please not overserve alcohol and perhaps add additional restrooms, because she "ended up with people highly inebriated in our yards. I had someone urinating on my home.”
Jax Fest at Jackson’s Blue Ribbon Pub on 11302 W. Bluemound Rd. on June 18 from 5-10pm. Ald. Meagan O’Reilly, after mentioning some of the previous noise and trash complaints the city has received about the restaurant from nearby residents, told the restaurant manager: “Show us you can do an event that afterward the neighbors aren't calling us, and we will be thrilled.”
→ Community Affairs: One vision of democracy is where citizens are continually engaged in local politics, take turns serving their communities in various official and unofficial capacities, and in general are highly invested in the day-to-day operations, goals, and maintenance of local government. Maybe you could call this the Classical Athens around Lake Wobegon vision. Where all the citizens are virtuous, their hearts pure, and wealth is only a means and never an end.
Another vision of democracy is where citizens spend most of their time commuting, working, and maybe watching Netflix or carting their kids to swim class, and they’re pretty content to let whoever’s doing government this year keep doing it as long as the trash gets picked up on Tuesdays, the potholes aren’t too deep, and their water bill mostly makes sense. If they’re engaged, it’s because they’re angry that government has stopped working transparently that day and would like it to go back to being invisible again. I’ll show my hand about which of these two visions I think is more accurate and just call this one Reality. In Reality, a lack of engagement is, counterintuitively, a sign that people are pretty satisfied with the job you are doing.
One piece of evidence I’ll offer in support is that in the 1990s everyone would talk about how democracy was dying because voter turnout was so low, everybody thought both political parties were mostly the same, and it was hard to get anyone excited about this year’s candidate. Well, none of those things are true anymore, and I wouldn’t say most people find democracy particularly spry these days.
I think most people in government who pine for more civic engagement mostly pine because they have the first vision. I’ll admit that I am also drawn to this vision and would prefer for it to be a reality (as opposed to Reality) and that I’m generally in favor of slightly idealistic and high-minded elected officials.
This is all just lead-in to say that this week the Community Affairs committee approved a recommendation to the Common Council to organize a Civic Engagement Summit in May, 2023, with progress reports from city staff by October. Ald. O’Reilly suggested that given “the reduction of council size, the desire to fill our commissions with leadership from around the city, and the divisiveness that is being found in other areas of civic life, it seems worthwhile to offer opportunities to demystify the work of the Council and staff and encourage sunlight and participation.”
All committee members generally agreed that it would be great for the community to understand how local government works and how they can get involved and that such a summit might improve engagement.
Of course, residents have to be engaged enough to attend the summit in the first place. Ald. Meindl, describing similar efforts in Waukesha, Wichita, and other cities, said, “I don’t want to scare anyone listening, but… 8 sessions, 3 hours in length on Wednesday evenings? That would be something I recommend against. Also, I’d recommend…is people—you can probably get about half an hour out of people and then they kind of start to wander and then you have to give them more coffee or whatever—but keep these sessions reasonably timed as well.”
I think this is the right idea. We must approach Lake Wobegon with baby steps.
I like the idea of the "Summit". Would information about when/where be found on the City website? Love your newsletter! Well-researched and full of important content as well as your educated comments.