Jeramey Jannene
City Hall

It’s City Budget Education Week

Why does Milwaukee face a fiscal crisis? What can be done? Virtual events will provide answers.

By - Aug 24th, 2022 05:19 pm
Jericho / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)

Jericho / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)

How much does the City of Milwaukee spend on libraries? Police? Trash pickup? Why don’t your property taxes cover all city services? Why might the city have to lay off one in four employees starting next year?

Those are all questions the city’s “Show Me the Money!” Budget Education Week event seeks to answer as the city enters what is likely to be the most difficult and controversial budget process in several decades, if not ever.

The three-event, virtual series comes before Mayor Cavalier Johnson introduces his budget proposal at the end of September and the Common Council approves the final budget in November.

The 2023 budget will be a substantial one for the city’s future. It’s both the first one introduced by Johnson and also the first where the city will need to deal with a substantially increased pension-contribution requirement that threatens to consume more than $50 million annually. It’s also the first under new budget director Nik Kovac.

Each of the events is being recorded, so if you are unable to participate live, you can watch the recorded version at your leisure (and fast forward).

Johnson has also recorded a brief video for city employees, encouraging them not to be demoralized. “As you likely have heard, the city is facing some unprecedented budget challenges in the coming year,” says Johnson in the video. “I am intensely focused on limiting the negative impacts, but it is clear the challenges will affect the services we provide.”

“We serve the common good. Each and every single one of us is making the city stronger,” says Johnson to the city’s several thousand employees.

You can read more about the city’s “calm before the storm” 2022 budget in our coverage from last year. More information on the city’s pension crisis and how the city is stockpiling federal funds to forestall the crisis are also available in our earlier coverage.

Event Schedule

Johnson’s Video

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Categories: City Hall, Politics, Weekly

One thought on “City Hall: It’s City Budget Education Week”

  1. RetiredResident says:
    August 25, 2022 at 11:22 am

    Here is the link to the 2023 proposed budget. They don’t make it easy to find.

    There are 6 columns total. In the 4th from the left is each Department and subdivisions within that department. The 3 of note are the previous year (ie 2022) in column 3. Column 5 is the funding requests from each department head after the mayor/budget director review them, and eventually the amounts approved after horse trading by the common council will appear in column 6.

    https://city.milwaukee.gov/ImageLibrary/User/crystali/Budget-Books/2023RequestedBudget-2.pdf

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