Jeramey Jannene

Milwaukee Building New Cruise Ship Dock

Funding secured, dock to be completed by 2024, to help maintain, grow city's cruise ship business.

By - Nov 7th, 2022 04:10 pm

Funding secured, dock to be completed by 2024, to help maintain, grow city's cruise ship business. Back to the full article.

Photos - Page 4

Categories: Transportation, Weekly

2 thoughts on “Milwaukee Building New Cruise Ship Dock”

  1. NickR says:

    How much will the air pollution from the cruise ships impact the nearby communities?

    Cruise ship engines are a major point source of air pollution.

  2. Wardt01 says:

    Jeramey, any specific details regarding the statement “Milwaukee area to gain a $2.25 million regional economic impact” ?

    …. as in, how much $ PROFIT does the City of Milwaukee expect to generate that will go directly into our piggybank to help cover city services or help address the Pension problem?

    The Port is and has been for many years a well run business that generates huge & consistent profits for the City. (prob close to $800 mill PROFIT in the annum before covid)

    Their Board is great with financials, evidenced by their ability to get over 1/2 this project built using Other People’s Money!

    ….. However, I’m more curious as to how in depth our Common Council/ Finance Committee analyzed these numbers before happily borrowing $2mill for a “Field of Dreams” project, that gives us another page in the “Wow, Milwaukee ‘s Great Brochure”.

    Especially & specifically because last week the Common Council was debating on which libraries to close & City services to cut because “we’re broke”.

    And those are city services for tax paying residents, not typically used by 1 night guests before they take a cruise.

    If the Port is charging a $4500 fee to dock ($150k revenue /33 ships).. .. that’s REVENUE not profit.

    Did the Common Council/ Finance Committee presentation include the net profit after accounting for dockworkers, sewage treatment costs, refilling the H2O, trash/recycling, & security personnel, and cost of the $2 mill bond?

    $4500 charge per vessel, subtract…
    $500 for 100k gal MWW H2O/60k gal MMSD sewage
    $500 for DPW trash collection for 400 cruisers
    $3000 for 6 workers x 8 hrs to do the dockwork
    $1000 for 2 security x 8 hrs for screening
    =$4000 overhead cost using rough est

    leaves $500 profit per vessel…. and that’s before any borrowing costs.

    The City’s interest cost on $2mill bond assuming 4% rate is $80k year. that is $2400 for each of the 33 cruise ship visits…. and that is just the interest if we don’t pay down principal..

    Alternatively if we pay down the $2 mill of bonds over 20 years, we need $100k to cover principal each year.

    $100k Principal = $3000 per cruise ship (assuming 33 vessels again) … plus some declining interest amount that begins w $80k in year #1 and drops to $4k at year #20 that I’m too tired to calculate.

    Using rough estimates… The Port/City appears to lose quite alot for each vessel that arrives,…. and there was not much discussion about this from our Common Council /Finance Committee?

    The Port obviously manages their business & finances using a long term capital investment strategy, however the City has an immense current cash flow problem to address if they refuse to fix the pension problem.

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