Finance & Personnel Committee - Regular Meeting

We will now begin the Finance and Personnel Committee. I'm Alderman Marina Dimitrijevich, the Chairwoman. I'm joined by Vice Chairperson Alderman Peter Bergelis. Virtually, have Alderman Scott Spiker, Alderman Miele Lake Hoggs, and we're also joined by Alderman Charlyn Moore. That provides us a quorum we need to move forward today.

Today is kind of a unique scheduling day. We had zoning at nine and this committee a little bit later on a Friday when also there's no Milwaukee public schools, so there's all kinds of fun stuff at once. And I say that to remind us all that we're going to try to get through what is a pretty lengthy agenda as best as we can and as fast as we can, but still doing the people's business. We'll start with Item number one, and we do have some time slots that we'll really try very hard to abide by. So what I'm saying is please work with me, people here.

Item number one, two hundred fifty thousand and two, substitute resolution to ratify and confirm the final agreement between the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee Police Supervisors Organization. It looks like we do need to go into closed session. We do not.

Not unless questions would lead us there. Otherwise we do not.

Okay. And I understand Department of Employee Relations, have Ms. Fleck here. Remember your name one more time.

Bob Sanders.

Bob Sanders. Okay. I know I spoke to you on the phone too. Oh, Bob Sanders here from Department of Employee Relations as well, right? And you got that for your notes. Have From

assistant to the attorney's office.

Assistant city attorney. I was thinking that but I said the other thing. Thank you. So, yes. So, we have the city attorney's office and Department of Employee Relations and Labor. Miss Fleck, I think you were able to brief everyone on the committee. Is that

I was able to catch up with everyone but Alder Woman Cox. Okay.

Okay. Well, I guess the question is, if I mean, if we need to go into closed session, we have it. I'd want to see what the body thinks.

It is okay. So remind me, if we're at this point where we're

going to ratify and confirm, what do you feel comfortable sharing in public now?

I will basically go over the summary of wage infringement benefits. And then if you all have any questions, we'll address those questions. Then if it needs to go in a closed session based on those questions,

then we Yes, can questions answer or strategy. Okay. Let's do that then. I'm sorry, I just needed a little refresher myself because I felt that I had the briefing. So why don't you go ahead, Ms. Fleck, and give us the update here.

Sure. So this would be a three year term and that would cover 01/01/2025 through 12/31/2027. For base salary, there would be pay period January 2025, a 2% increase pay period 2025, a 2% increase. That will include retro pay. I want to make that clear.

In pay period January 2026, there would be a three point two five percent increase and then there would also be the implementation of a 1% residency incentive that would be a prospective implementation. There would be no retro on the 1%. And then in pay period one of 2027, there is a 3% increase. There is a change to Article seven which is a contract enforcement procedure. It adds a timeframe that a meeting with the chief needs to be scheduled within.

For overtime, it will reduce the court overtime minimum of two point five hours at time and a half to two hours at time and a half for funeral leave. Again, this is a prospective implementation. It increases the leave from three to four days. And then it allows the use of those days in a different way than it had previously. So you can use it immediately following the date of death, proceeding or following the services memorial funeral or split between either one of those things.

Uniform and equipment effective for this calendar year, it would increase from $375 to $500 Tuition and textbook reimbursement, there is a limit on a $150 limit on what the members can use for membership dues. Now that is not union dues. It's membership dues professional organizations. We are going to be eliminating that cap. And then contract administration is that police liaison officer.

Language is being added that says that they will get an MPD ID badge that will give them also building access that may be required and then allow them to attend the in service that is required to maintain their LESB certification, which they already do. The union just asked to have that codified. And then there is a new article for longevity pay. This would be for this calendar year and it would start with fifteen years of service but less than 20 employees would get a $550 payment, twenty years of service but less than $25 would be a $900 payment and then twenty five plus years of service would be a $1,500 payment. Then we have one other piece tied into this agreement, which is a settlement of a wage re opener that we had with this group in their 'twenty three-'twenty four contract.

What that would be is for current members in active service who were represented by the union

upon implementation of this agreement

would receive were a retroactive lump sum payment, which would be for 2023, of 1.875% in pay period of pay period one. That would be so it would be for pay period one of 'thirteen to 'thirteen in 2023. And then they would receive a 1.875% lump sum for pay periods 'fourteen through 'twenty six of 2023. So overall, it's an increase of 3.75%. And I shouldn't say increase, it's a lump sum payment.

It's not an increase. And it wouldn't so it would not apply, though, to anyone who has retired, who has left the union either through resignation or promotion into a higher rank that is outside the union. And then it would also not apply to a subset of members who supervise detectives who have their current rates of pay determined based off of the detective rank, and therefore, they've already received a retro because of the MPA settlement previously. So for those three groups of people, they are not part of this settlement. And that concludes the Okay.

Do you know off the top of your head what is the average salary of a police supervisor? I just want for the public listening that this is like a very different set of people with a different set of experience. You know, not necessarily the one on like a proactive patrol. It's a little bit different. Roughly what would that be?

I do not, Brian. Okay.

Well, while you're in that same spreadsheet, the reason I'm asking that is also like Alderman Berglaus was mentioning, how many people. But furthermore, I'm specifically questioning about the 3.75% per the wage opener on the Milwaukee Police Association contract. I wanted to know the fiscal note on that because that's weighing heavily on my own decision. And while you're looking for that, I was not able to support the Milwaukee Police Association contract and this is because 7 of

112,000.

712,000?

Yes. That's to settle to close the reopener language from the prior contract to match the retro pay NPA got. Yes. But with the restrictions Nicole outlined.

Right. So thank you. So my point is I was not able to support the Milwaukee Police Association contract this last one and this is directly related to that, that they had the opener and then were able to obtain the 3.75% retro, which is now from 2023 and we're in 2026, costing the taxpayers $712,000 means a fact. So like for me, if I didn't like one, it's kind of hard for me to support the opener that's part of that for this group. How many individuals does this impact? Like roughly?

So there's about two sixty nine members in the MPSO. There's about between thirty and forty that this would the reopener would not apply to.

To Okay. Give 3.75% to about 200 people, is that what I am understanding, it's going cost us three quarters of a million dollars.

Potentially, yes. We played this out and ended up arbitration over this and the arbitrator awarded the full 4% that was in the MPSO agreement for 2023, that would bring the cost up to about $1,400,000

So it's about half of our total risk.

And now this raises with this wage opener, wouldn't it raise the floor for the future negotiations? No. Because this is, again, it's lump sum

payment, it's not a base building increase. What

Ms. Fleck in this agreement did the MPSO not get that they wanted?

That goes back a long way.

Like just a big ticket item, just want to know. Something I get that it's a product of a lot of negotiations, but like what would be the one large thing that they wanted that was modified? Are you not? Is that more of a closed session question? Yes. Okay.

We do

have an answer to your this is for all union members. Base wage, no overtime, not fringe up, is 114,000 average member of this union and Milwaukee Police Supervisors organization.

Okay. So let me say that again. Roughly 200 people that do not mostly live in the city of Milwaukee per the data. I only speak the data here. That's correct. Then the average salary average is a 6 figure over $100,000 For those couple 100 people, majority not city Of Milwaukee, that would be a three quarter roughly three quarters of a million dollar on top of everything else we talked about, retro lump sum. Okay. My last thing and then I want to pass it is remind me of this process. Did they already ratify this?

They did. They ratified, I believe, last week, Weinstein. Okay.

I just wanted to make sure because I think we talked before that happened. Yes. Okay. Great. All right. Let me open it up for any other questions. All member Doss?

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Something unique in this contract that we haven't seen, I don't think, is the residency incentive, 1%. Correct. What's the fiscal impact of that? How many people does it impact? Is residency a problem for the police supervisors?

There are 81 individuals that this would impact that live within the city of that are members of the MPSO.

Out of two sixty nine? Correct. So not even a third? So not even a third of the police supervisors in the city of Milwaukee live in the city of Milwaukee? Correct. Sounds like 1% is a nice start, but why wasn't bigger why wasn't more attention given to residency at 1%? I guess the fiscal note might say something around $155,000 a year, but why wasn't more considered?

I think since this was our first soiree into doing any type of residency incentive with the unions.

For

any kind of union contract?

Correct. Thought it was just a good place to start and that we can build off of that as well as looking at other incentives that may not be a base building payment.

Madam Chair, just for clarification, the finance committee doesn't have a line item veto, correct? We can't pick and choose what we want to support and what we don't want to support. It's either a yes or a no on the entire agreement.

Well, right. I don't think we have the ability to amend these, but the essence of rejection has it going back to the drawing table, right? Yes. Yes. From what I understand.

And to be fair, this impacts two sixty nine people out of fifteen sixty nine sworn police officers?

Yes. This contract only affects the two sixty nine.

Okay. Does the 1% residency then start a precedent for other union contracts, two fifteen or whatever else is coming up next?

I am assuming it will certainly open the door to bigger discussions on residency with both of the other unions.

But those other unions don't have abysmal residency numbers like the police supervisors do? Not great. Their residency numbers are not great, but they're better than MPSO.

I mean, yes, but they're also larger unions.

So the impact would be more money?

Yes.

Well, with all the respect to solve for that, you look at a proportional percentage. So like also I think what's challenging about this is the it's a unique set of people because it's such a high income. There's no one else in the organization. I get you only get there for many, many years of experience, so I totally recognize that. But I think what the allerman is trying to say is that and I'm trying to remember these slides from budget time, we did ask that. We're going to ask it again this year. We looked at it. It does seem it did seem that MPSO is percentage wise on the least residency side. Percent and I'm not talking about people percentage. Like this is look, sounds like off the top of my napkin, it's like 26% or something?

That could be. I actually sent that.

If you

said it was 80 people, right? I'm sure you did the math to figure out what the 1% would cost.

Yes. 80 of two

seventy. And then I mean I don't have it in front of me but I even think that the city of Milwaukee police officers may have had a better percentage than that.

I know that all three unions are under 50. I don't know.

Right. I mean I guess the question is what is the sliding scale of abysmal?

MPA is 38% and MPSO is 30.

Okay. And you still have the floor, Alderman Bardellis.

Thank you. Just briefly, I kudos to Ms. Fleck for doing this. I think I would be a terrible budget or I think I would be a terrible labor negotiator because I would not add any increase that was not residency dependent. So although I may not agree with everything in this package, I think there's a strong start for a new precedent in the city. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Okay. Thank you. Alderman Moore did not have anything. I'm going to go to our two members that are on virtually in case they need anything. Alderman Scott Spiker or Alderman Miele Lake Hoggs, anything on item one, the contract of MPSO? No. Okay. Thank you Alderman. Alderman Spiker anything?

Thank you So Madam with respect to the residence see that had been I guess talked about in the past, what you know if giving somebody a 1% residency made them move into the city that would be one thing. Giving it to those as a reward who stayed put is a different matter. Is there any indication that this would make people who are advanced in their career suddenly move into Milwaukee?

Well, we haven't implemented it yet. So I guess we don't have any data. I think intuitively I could say probably not, but I do think the whole my whole thought process was it's a start to get to something that will encourage people to potentially move back or I think it's also a start to get to the new hires to get them to move in. Even though they're not members of this union, I think it's a place to start.

Is there any interest which I would hope there would be in testing intuitions with reality and seeing if this has any sort of impact on the percent that end up living in the city because of course the numbers may keep getting more abysmal. Right now I think 70% of captains live outside the city.

Yes. I think we'll now that we're implementing this we can begin to track and see what if any changes may happen.

So the amount of money that we're talking about for the what was it, 80 that live in the city? 81? Yes. So we just saw with the retro pay issue with MPSO wanting what MPA got for '23 that it's a copycat league and MPA, if 1% residency is offered for MPSO, you can bet that MPA will be looking for it. So and there you get into some pretty serious money.

So before we get I guess I would urge before we get too adventurous with the fact not going to

we're

that. We're people more likely to to become residents and we see that data where as it were putting money in folks' hands without achieving the intended effect. So I'm not entirely cured by the 1% residency bit and that I don't see at all how it makes a seasoned management level sworn move into the city. I doubt very much we'll see that. But even prospectively, if you look as I have as Chair of Public Safety in the past at police satisfaction surveys that pertain to the sworn themselves, their reasons for not living in the city, pay isn't, as I recall, even in the top five.

So I would just counsel and I know Ms. Fleck you heard the love of residency which I share as one of the two donor districts to the Burbs when residency was lifted. I know you hear the love for residency but I would counsel and urge that we not just do it to do it that we actually have some data to back up what we hope will happen especially given that the impact on MPA should that come to pass would be very financially significant. All right, thank you Madam Chair.

Okay thank you so much. Any other discussion by committee members on item one the MPSO Milwaukee Police Supervisor Organization contract before us Any other council members that are present that would like to speak on this matter? I see anyone else online? Okay. And then what is the pleasure of the body? What would be before us? Yeah, would be adoption. To move this forward, adoption has been moved by Alderman Peter Bergelis on item one. Discussion of adoption of item one. Questions on adoption? Okay. Hearing none, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.

On the motion for adoption, Auditor Roman Moore. Aye. Auditor Spiker.

Aye.

Auditor Roman Cox. Aye. Auditor Morales. Aye. Madam Chair. No. Prevails four to one.

Four to one, four to one and the contract now goes forward to Tuesday's council meeting. Okay. Thank you so much for your work on that. Thank you. We're now on Item two, two hundred thirty one thousand six hundred seventeen, an ordinance relating to employee wages, benefits and regulations. Okay, that goes along with Item three, so I'll read that in as well, sorry. 251,923, Communication from the Department of Employee Relations amending the salary ordinance relating to the rates of pay for battalion chief, fire deputy chief, fire, and assistant fire chief. Miss Fluck, are you speaking on that one too?

I am. Great. Please. It's me. Thank you.

So the salary or I'm sorry, the code changes in front of you are for those three ranks, battalion chief, deputy chief, and assistant chief in the fire department. And the changes to the code are in, I guess, reflection of the last local two fifteen fire fighters contract where some benefits were modified. And now I want to say that the changes proposed before you are for those individuals that are still working a 53 work week and who are promoted out of the rank and file to take on these leadership roles. So with that said, there are three changes to the code of ordinances. One is effective for calendar year 2026.

For paid time off in lieu of holiday, the hours that they would receive would increase to ninety six hours off per calendar year. And then it would be earned at eight hours per month. And if someone is off of payroll, then that amount is prorated based on time off payroll. Second is for sick leave control incentive pay. They receive again, is for fifty three hour employees.

They currently have there's a bank of hours that they can use for sick leave control incentive. That bank will be increased to one hundred and forty four hours and they will earn that at twenty four hour increments. And then what I do want to point out with that is that if they have a bank at time of retirement, that bank is not paid out. It has to be used or it is lost. The other and final change is a change to vacation accrual.

And what it does is it changes the max accrual rate is earned a year sooner than it is currently earned. So it's earned at eighteen years or more of service instead of nineteen. So those are the three changes to the code of ordinances. And then the change to the salary ordinance is to footnotes associated with those titles. And it's in reference to the EMT2 pay for their paramedic license.

Currently, the footnote is annual payment that is non pensionable. This would make that payment pensionable. So again, it's not a base building payment, it's a lump sum payment, but now it would be pensionable instead of non pensionable.

Okay. Why do we need to make all these changes?

Again, it was brought to my attention through the Chief Officers Association, which is a meeting group we have with these ranks. And it was brought to our attention because of the changes that were made to the Local two fifteen contract for the same items to bring them in line with those employees since they are being promoted out of that group. It disincentivizes people to some extent to take those promotions because they will be losing to some extent some of their benefits. Okay. So what let me just see here. What

oh, here, let me just pull this up. The fiscal impact. So is that the fiscal impact is $63,000 I'm looking at the fiscal impact now? Correct. Okay.

Okay. Make sure we're on the same page. Hello there. Okay. So we're on items two and three. Should we also take those together by the way?

Chris? Okay.

Took them together because they're related but they're separate. Both would need an oh, see, one Item two needs passage, Item three needs place on file. So I want make sure we understand what's going forward. I looked at the fiscal note of about approximately $63,779 We're on Item two. Any questions on two?

I'm sure.

Yes. Alderman Spyker?

Any of these changes relate to pensionable compensation?

Not for the code changes, the code of ordinance changes. The salary ordinance change does make something pensionable that was not previously.

And what is that again?

The 5% lump sum pay that they receive for maintaining their paramedic license.

Is there any indication that they would use that paramedic license to do paramedic things given their supervisory role?

I would throw that one to the fire department.

Sherwood, Chief Farris here, Milwaukee Fire Department. Sorry about that. Oh, there we go. Chief Lipsky is here. Apologies. Go ahead, sir.

Yeah, I would tell you thank you. Erin Lipsky, Fire Chief, Milwaukee Fire Department. I would say, no, they're not going to be typically kneeling out in the street providing paramedic services, but they have to supervise and manage and, you know, provide quality assurance and, in some cases provide training and direction for the people that do. And it is an extremely arduous set of training courses and certifications you have to go through to get this. So it's not something you can just walk in off the street and just speak the language.

Right. And so would you right now, are there any folks who have that paramedic training who acquired it once they reach supervisory rank as opposed to having it when they were as it were a regular member?

I can think of nobody that fits that.

So I would imagine that you would have the paramedic certification prior to ascending to the management rank. And so I guess the question is given that no new knowledge would be obtained by ascending, why there would be felt again, it's probably small potatoes in the grand financial scheme, but just wondering why there was felt the need to compensate for that when maybe the market wouldn't demand it?

Again, it was to allow for these members not to lose out on a benefit they had when they were represented by Local two fifteen when they moved into management.

Okay. And in general, just for members' edification, viewing audience, when you say there is the meet and confer requirement given by the class here, how does that differ, if at all, from what MPSO is able to demand via their collective bargaining rights?

Right. So with the meet and confer group, it's not as formal for one. There aren't actual contract negotiations. It's conversations, it's requests and so forth. And so the city takes those requests and conversations under advisement. And depending on what comes out of it, you will see these things come in front of you.

So is there a concern on the administration's part that people will not promote unless they're treated on par as it were with respect to some of these things that are looking to be changed from what they had when they were non management?

There is some concern to that. I also think there is a fairness that comes with it that we were looking at as well. I would ask Chief Lipsky or Assistant Chief Parish want to weigh in as far as how they feel the incentivizing or disincentive I

guess before we do kick it off to them just for the administration is the belief rooted in this is something we need from a point of view of we want to make sure people aren't reticent to promote when that opportunity arises or is it a fairness concern? Because those are two different ones. We've just I've discussed them ad nauseam at this committee. So just wondering what the administration's stance was on that.

I believe it's both. There's a concern of fairness and there's a concern that we won't get top notch applicants or people interested in moving out of the represented ranks.

Okay. My last attempt at sharpening the point. If the fairness were not a straw in the wind were not something you were considering at all because you didn't care about fairness, then would you say, oh, elders here on the finance and personnel committee, we've got to make this change to ensure that people will promote because they're just not going to do it unless you do that?

That's a hard one to answer because I we weren't looking at it like that, so I don't know. I don't really know. Okay.

Just trying to figure out again with the MPSO, just trying to poke and pull a little bit at the decision making that's going into this because this will affect potentially things in other contexts that are a little more financially weighty. So thank you.

Okay. Any other questions on Item two? Questions on Item two? So two would need passage as moved by Alderman Berglis. Item two is passage. Discussion of passage? Objections to passage? Hearing none, so ordered. And then Item three that we took up as well and discussed this in combination, Alderman Vergailis moves to place it on file. That is the appropriate motion to move it forward. Discussion of placing item three on file. Objections? Hearing none, so ordered. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. We're on our 02:00 agenda. 02:12 doing pretty good. Item four, two hundred fifty one thousand seven hundred sixty six, resolution approving an agreement between the Milwaukee Police Department and Milwaukee World Festival Incorporated regarding extra duty police services. We are joined virtually, I see, by Ms. Heather Huff. Okay. Hello. Hi there and I have you as the person to speak about that is that right? Yes. Okay. Do you want to take a minute or two to just give us an update on this item Ms. Huff?

Sure. So this is our annual world festival file that comes before the council and it is the extra duty agreement for officers to sign up to work overtime to cover the traffic control and stuff related to summer fest. So it is not us paying out money. It is instead us receiving monies and by ordinance anything over $50,000 needs to come before the council for approval. This particular contract agreement will be in excess of $176,834 for this summer fest season and I can answer any questions you might have.

Okay. Thank you. So is this budgeted overtime?

It's compensated overtime. It's in the it's listed in the budget.

Okay. So we do plan for this to cost over time?

Right.

But it has the revenue source

to cover.

Right. Okay. So it matches it pretty significantly. Yes, Alderman Bergalas. Thank you, Madam Chair.

And we held this last cycle to have a little have more discussions about the unreimbursed pension obligations that would be a result of officers getting overtime that are now part of the WRS system. We've had a couple of classes of newer officers. The most recent 180 or so officers are now part of WRS. As time moves forward, more and more of those officers will have pensionable overtime that in this contract at least is not reimbursed by Summerfest or any other similar smaller scale contract does not have a pension supplement or surcharge to it. I will introduce a file in new business for our next cycle asking for further definitions possible calculations for contracts moving forward.

I'm told now that although, yes, there is some there will be some sort of long term pension obligation that the city doesn't have to pay out right now, right? We're not paying anything now. But long term these wages will be will have some sort of pension impact for those particular officers that are in the WRS system, not the old police pension system.

Okay. I have another question. Or you guys have questions too? Go ahead. Okay. We can spread it around. Alder Woman Moore.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Just in regards to Alderman McGallis' question around the pensionable overtime, Does our system allow us to dissect the amount? So for example, if we said, you know what, yes, you can have the overtime, but it's not pensionable. Does our system allow for, oh, this is overtime but it's not pensionable. You know what I mean? It's not pensionable. Our do we have an infrastructure dissect that sort of information?

Yeah. It has to because we have we have most of our employees are on City Milwaukee Employers Retirement System, but every employee, you know, hired as of 01/01/2023, I believe. Or is it four? '24, sorry. And 2023 has made the switch. 01/01/2020 Anyone hired in the last two years and change is now on the WRS system. Correct. So in order to comply with the requirements of that system, we have to pay total salary including overtime percentage of that to the Wisconsin Retirement System.

Got it.

Now in terms of do we have the infrastructure to bill Summerfest for that as we go? That would be trickier, but we can explore the mechanism there.

Got it. Thank you.

And just for a direct answer, the it's it would be administratively not worth our while to track which particular officers are working this particular contract and this other particular contract for this particular shift today but not tomorrow and over here the next day. It's administratively burdensome to do that now. But so my new file asks for an average or a roundabout pension calculator that we could add to future contracts moving forward as this becomes more and more of an impact to the city's long term pension obligations.

Would this be with every entity that wants to request our officers to do overtime work? Yes. So it's not just Summerfest.

So Chief of Staff Huff can kind of explain why we have a 10% administrative surcharge on top of the maximum overtime rate in these obligations?

Yes. So we currently all of our extra duty agreements citywide are at max rate. So that's the maximum dollar amount for officers and because they're arranged right so depending on your qualifications and longevity you could be at the low end or the high end for extra duty agreements we already automatically charge the max rate and then we had added a 10% administrative fee to cover some of the overhead costs vehicle expenses etc so so that's the what's in place now And we're happy to have, and we think it'll be a helpful discussion to see some type of calculation and what it could look like to contemplate those pension costs as well.

Because currently nothing in the contract is a direct payment or a supplemental payment to the pension fund. So what I will be looking for is to have an enhancement to the contracts moving forward at some certain date with an increasing dollar amount as time goes on to be to not go to the police department's general fund or to an administrative overhead calculation, but directly to the pension fund for those long term liability costs that will be borne by taxpayers in the future.

Thank

you. Aldrin Zweigler?

Yes. Thank you. So again, I think I said it before, but I want to say it again, I commend Alder Berg Ellis for this insight because it hadn't struck me until he said it. So before, you didn't really care under the and budget office, feel free to correct me if I go astray, but you didn't really care if Summerfest was willing to pay the extra overtime at the highest overtime rate and then tack on a 10% administrative fee, well that's your business if you want to pay it and if those officers want to work it. But what Alder Bergelis' insight points out is over time, number of folks in SEMARS is going to go down, number of folks in WRS is going to go up and pretty soon it will be exactly opposite as it is now and it will keep going.

And it's cold comfort for future councils to be told, hey, back then it didn't cost the current council really anything because we signed you up for future budgetary hardship because someday if things stayed the way they were or the way they are right now, we would be subsidizing the folks who are working overtime in terms of their future pension benefits would accrue to us at the city, but they would not be that cost would not be relieved by those like Summerfest who would be benefiting from that overtime. So super important to flag, just wondering if the budget office now that they're aware of this maybe all were before and we're thinking deeply about it, but if you're in the process of developing a plan or developing a plan to develop a plan for as this progresses on, maybe we can safely ignore for the moment, but surely I think what Elder Brunberg Ellis has revealed to all of us is we're not going to be able to ignore it anywhere near forever. So is there is this top of mind for you all? It something you're going to work with the police department on? What's the plan?

Yes. No, I think you summarized it well. We appreciate the question. It's a valid concern that will grow in fiscal importance every year. And so we certainly think it's worth discussion and negotiation with with the well, it's not necessarily a negotiation.

I suppose it is a negotiation in the sense that they could just not sign the contract, not if we ask for terms that were truly egregious or in their opinion. So I mean I think there needs to be discussion with the stakeholders, make sure that they're going to have safe public events and they'll pay the bill. And it affects the three big ones, Bucks Brewers and Summerfest, lots of other smaller entities as well. So certainly, the more employees that are on versus Seamers and I mean it fluctuates year to year on normal cost, but it's 18.5% in 2026. So that's what we're that's how much multiply that by the payroll of what someone salary and overtime is getting and that's what we're paying.

Now the nice thing with WRS is we pay that and we're done with it. State is on the hook for any future unfunded liability. CMRS is a much more complicated calculation, but it didn't matter in the case since overtime wasn't pensionable for it. In the context of these contracts, it didn't matter. Now it does. So we're certainly happy to begin the exploration of what the appropriate adjustment in these contracts should be for. I don't think we want to go through administratively and track each comp and which system are they in. But as think as Vice Chair Berglis said, I'm sure there's a way to estimate it in a reasonable way.

Right.

Yes. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you.

Okay. Let's see. I had a couple of questions. Ms. So Huff, I guess what I'm wondering is why does it always have to be overtime?

Like I'm trying to understand the strategic decision. I mean, we have the school resource officers that during that time aren't in schools. Like I'm just I know that's an imminent chief in your decision, but like is there a way that with each one of these contracts, it could be more civilianized? I'm also still struggling with the fact that we need you know, fully sworn officers at a festival. Like, is there a way we could each time we negotiate this modify it so there's a percentage and a metric being met that it's, you know, less over time, less sworn officers?

I don't necessarily know that they can be staffed with civilians just given the nature of traffic control. And I wouldn't I don't think we have any qualified civilians on staff to do those tasks in terms of the overtime historically for these types of events we don't want to utilize the regular time officers who are policing than the rest of the city. So we are preferences that it is staffed with officers who volunteered to sign up for these events outside of their normal working hours. There's no shortages throughout the city in terms of coverage for anything else that's going on and typically the summer is busier for us. So you know I I don't know off the top of my head to what extent it's supplemented by our officers who are on regular time but that that's why we utilize the overtime model.

So we have volunteers sign up outside of their normal shifts.

And when the volunteers sign up for the shifts, are you selecting perhaps maybe a newer officer that's on a lower pay that will then bring down less overtime pay?

I don't believe that's the selection process. It's a first come first serve. You know, if you Oh,

it's truly first come first serve.

If you sign up for different overtime events, yes.

But wouldn't we want as an organization, the first come first serve sounds polite, but wouldn't we trying like won't we be more benefited by actually like selecting those that cost less? Just wondering if I'm the only one thinking that.

I don't know if we could do that. I think that may have legal implications and then other I'm not sure if you know there's a way to parcel them out and I would need to explore that further and wouldn't want to give you any response here.

I guess I'm just saying I don't you know, the way we've been doing things for many, many, many years in the city, whether it be a Brewers game, this, many other, you know, festivals, which we are in the city of festivals, even Summerfest itself has changed. It's now not even eleven or twelve consecutive days. It's like they've changed their model. Like, I just think that the the days of having over timed some sometimes expensive fully sworn officers, you know, is something they might want to reevaluate. Like, is that what we need for every festival?

Do we need that level of escalation? Is this a way where we could have people being trained like those community service officers? And I still want go back to my original question that wouldn't this be an opportune patrolling decision or deployment, excuse me, for the school resource officers, Ms. Huff? They're not in school at that time.

Yeah, we actually have a plan for the utilization of those officers during the summer and that is also inclusive of youth engagement, community engagement pieces but inclusive of patrol so going and supplementing the work of the districts to some extent is still focusing on that youth engagement piece I'm happy to share that plan with the And question. Ir

But okay. And then lastly, more of a technical thing. What was the percentage increase from their last contract to this one that they're paying us now? Maybe Bonnie knows that.

I apologize. I don't have that amount, but I'd be happy to look back and let you know what that cost is and get back to you.

Okay. Any other questions on item four, the resolution approving the agreement between the Milwaukee Police Department and Milwaukee World Festival regarding extra duty police services. Any other Alders? Okay. Motion for adoption? Sure. Alderman Bergalis moves adoption of item four. Any discussion of that adoption? Any objections? Hearing none, so ordered.

Thank you. Item number five, two hundred fifty one thousand eight hundred seventy six, resolution authorizing the Department of Employee Relations to extend the current three year contract with MetLife for the administration of the city's voluntary benefits for short term disability, accident and critical illness insurance for one additional year. And from our Department of Employee Relations, we have Ms. Molly King.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Finance Committee members. Molly King, Benefits Director. Well, this resolution is just asking us to asking you to allow us to extend the contract for one additional year. This contract with MetLife is for our voluntary benefits such as short term disability, critical illness and accident insurance. And so this will give us no disruption this year on that, keeping the same vendor throughout this process, especially with having a Workday deploying this year, too many changes happening at once.

But more importantly, what we're hoping to do is aligning this benefit with the other voluntary benefits we have with Sun Life such as long term disability, life insurance and make it the goal is to have a more intentional one big RFP package so we can be more competitive and have a more cohesive benefit plan for our employees going forward. So that is the goal why we're hoping to align all of these benefits together with the intent so we can have a more competitive RFP in 2027.

Okay.

Alderman Burgallis.

I mean, I get it's easier to have one vendor for all of these, but I'm not convinced ever that having a large one size fits all option for all of these different benefits is going to be fiscally the best option. So I'd caution against packaging everything across the board. But one year extension, I get it, move adoption.

Questions on this item?

Madam Chair. Yes. Elder Woman Moore. Yes. Thank you so much, Ms. King. Does the so I hear what my colleague is, you know, stating. Does it provide us it's like when you bundle, right? Does the same sort of thing apply in this case?

It does. It really does sometimes because you're leveraging one for the other. For example, the other contract we have is with Sun Life. And historically, I went back further and I can see that we either choose Sun Life when one contract is up or they won the bid one year or the other time, MetLife won the bid. And so it seems to go back and forth a little bit.

But as it relates to MetLife, in 2026 this year, our life insurance was supposed to go up 6%. Because of us having our long term disability insurance with Sun Life, we were able to negotiate it and be able to pay zero premium on that. So there are some opportunities, not all the time, but there are opportunities when we're able to use leverage these different agreements to work in our favor.

Awesome.

And I would Now I mean, I think Alderman Vergales is correct. Not all the time it may be a fiscal prudent, but this gives us the opportunity enough time to do those due diligence, have a thoughtful RFP and if it works, it works. If it doesn't, then we split it back up.

Yeah. And I would love to ask my colleague, Alderman Bergalis. I would love to move this approval if you can unapprove your approval.

Doctor, I've removed my motion.

These are good. See. Good fights to have here. Okay. Adoption is moved then by Alderwoman Moore. Any other discussion of adoption on item five? Any objection to adoption? Hearing none, so ordered.

Thank you all.

Thank you. Great. Item six, two hundred fifty one thousand nine hundred sixty two. Communication from the Department of Public Works relating to revenue received from the towing of vehicles owned by habitual parking violators. This is a communication file that I had asked for as you can see.

I'm so glad to have you all up here. Thank you for answering a lot of my questions. And I'll just start it off because I want to get some updates from you all. Let me look at my notes. When I first put this file together, I had it really focused on the habitual parking violators, but I've since then wanted to expand a little bit just within the way that it's noticed as well of towing of vehicles.

And Mr. Knox, first of all, thank you so much for being patient with my many inquiries and always getting back to me honestly within twenty four hours. I don't know about you all, but my district, including moments ago, got another email from another person who I feel I'm getting these anecdotal, that's why I'm trying to get some data too, that there seems to be a bit more of an aggressive towing lately, not just on habitual parking violators. But it seems to me anecdotally, I want to preface that. And perhaps it's because some of the e mails that I get are so emotional that it feels strong too.

Because when your car is towed, it is very life uprooting and very costly. And it's that it seems to be a theme of folks that have some lack of reregistration, which I understand that we don't want cars driving around on City Of Milwaukee streets that are not registered, let alone parking there. What I've been asking for though is, is there a way we could have a little bit of a waiting period? So this is where it's a little different from the habitual parking violator, and I will I'll have you go. And I'm having a learning moment too.

I don't really want to learn about all this stuff, to be honest. I wish it wasn't the way that it is. But I get that a habitual parking violator, we discuss that, gets the numerous letters and then there's the municipal court situation. I'm additionally talking about that it appears that there is a citation given and soon after a private tow company comes and you have to pay for the removal of the car from the tow lot and then that citation. And I do want to talk about it in terms of a revenue as well and I've asked about the possibility, I'm doing a communication file because I didn't want to just do the legislation, about a little bit of a twenty four hour waiting period.

And before you start, I'm going to summarize, hold on please, the e mail that I just got that I can't even believe from a gentleman named Ryan. I'm not going to say the whole thing. He says he's a proud Milwaukee native. This was an hour and a half ago. I had no idea that he was going send this to me. And this is probably my eleventh one in eight days. So I'm not sure if there's like a zone going on in my district. But he spent eleven years in the United States Army and he came home back and forth. He found it difficult to live here. He has some disability income.

I'm summarizing. He struggled, and he admits that he's had a little trouble paying his vehicle registration. He had to choose at times between $170 to eat or buy a sticker for his car. And the actual problem is, is that it's true. His registration has been expired and he's still trying to get to work to get ahead and pay the bills.

He was so close to saving the money for his reregistration. However, it appears last night, he's on Herman Street, that he had his car towed. So instead of the $170 for registration, he's up to $420 that he had to borrow from a family member. His children were late for school. And if he would have just had the original $45 ticket, he thinks he could have gotten things taken So care he's mentioning that he understands that there were some mistakes made, but he feels and I will forward this to you as I have been doing he has a 10 year old son that then was late to school and couldn't make it to baseball practice, etcetera, etcetera.

It seems to me that the punishment is not quite fitting the crime here. This is different than reckless driving where you're endangering people on the streets. But I think parking in particular, there needs to be, what I'm asking for, a time period where people can rectify their situation. They should be registered. They can pay that amount to be registered to avoid, whether it's, you know, depending on their situation, something over $100 is a lot better than $420 that they're speaking of. I've brought this up. I've sent the emails. They're not I don't think they're calling you. I don't think they're calling the commissioner. They're calling us.

And in the last two weeks, I am now up to 10 or 11. This one is very sad. And I just want to move forward. And I'm considering, I'm telling my colleagues, adding an extra waiting period here. So with that being said, that's the nature of me bringing this file up to have the discussion in public so that people know that we're talking about it. I asked for the data. I've also asked for the Office of Equity and Inclusion, which I believe is changing their names. I'm not going to be able to support a name change, so I'm probably going to be calling it the same thing, just so Ray knows, because I don't believe in changing that name. And there's ways that we all resist and that's the way it's going to be. So with that, that's going be going on.

I'm trying to look at the data, but I now want to turn it over to you all and I appreciate you for considering this item. So Commissioner?

Yes. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and committee members. So just to go to your point, have we been more aggressive on unregistered vehicles? The answer is yes. I'll be very clear. By Wisconsin State Statute 341,004, it is basically against the law to have an unregistered vehicle within the public right of way. With that being said, we don't tow like on day one, like if you have a registration that's expired. We do have a thirty one day grace period before we will even start towing a vehicle. So we talk about an extra day. This is where we get a little unedged because we're giving folks that didn't register a car another month or more.

And even at that thirty one days, we do not just go and tow someone. We're not out there trying to find unregistered vehicles. Our folks, our PEOs are just trying to do their job. Have LPR, which is reading and that will trigger in the system. Let's say, for example, that you have an expired registration right now and it's under thirty days, we will place a warning on there saying, hey, just as an FYI, you should probably register. So we're trying to do as much as we can at least relate to unregistered vehicles. And we are empathetic to situations like the one you had read. I mean, it does happen. Although like when does it stop? So a majority of our reckless drivers are unregistered vehicles, And so how we've been trying to tie this in is into that reckless driving vision zero mentality.

And it's not everyone by any means. We have situations like you have mentioned now. But we're trying to stick with one sort of set of rules. And unfortunately, we have a lot of people that have unregistered vehicles, a lot. Some without license plates and some in situations maybe somewhere a month or two that they've had expired. But if we keep on extending this out, then why does anybody register a vehicle? There's money that goes to the state tied to a registration vehicle. There's real tax implications besides operating or parking in the right of way that which you're not supposed to. It's basically a state statute that exists. So to start off, that's just a little background at least when we come to unregistered vehicles.

I mean, we do see some of the unfortunate situations that have occurred and it just happens that some of them are majority of them are there in your district, all women. But it's not we don't get a million of them that come in. I mean there has been a few more that have come in just lately because we have been more aggressive this year. And I'll kind of hand it off to Peter to kind of go through some of real statistics here. But I just want to be frank, we have increased this year, but there's a reason for it.

Are you sorry, Peter. Are you increasing immediately in all spots at once? Or did you start in my No,

it's everywhere.

It's everywhere. I mean I got to ask this. No, it's everywhere. Well, okay.

Yeah. So good afternoon everyone. Peter Knox, parking services manager. So just to kind of

Peter, put this a little closer.

Sorry, Mark.

Okay. Thank you.

Just to give you a little bit more information. So we do understand the hardships. At the toll lot, we try our goal ultimately is not to tow vehicles. And I've always said that I've spoken in front of all of saying that and we are very adamant about that. There's a couple of things about unregistered vehicles. Yes, there are the cases like you just mentioned and that it is tough. I will say just so we are everybody is aware as well though

is Bless

you. The DOT also does give notification, you know, ten weeks before via mail. They also can set up an e notify. Yes, we can tow at thirty one. It's not really happening at thirty one, but it's but you're much past that it will. One of the things that I like to say is that we do a good job, I feel, of educating people when they do get towed to give them appropriate resources. There's a lot of people that don't even know how to register a vehicle or it's complicated. They have a jump title. They bought it on Craigslist and so forth. And if they do get towed for it, they come to tow it.

We do work with them. We do work with them hand in hand. The other component of unregistered and this is the majority. This is unfortunate for the people that are trying to make their way is there's a lot of and I don't track this. I will just say this in my experience being at Total for thirteen years prior to this, there's probably about 30% to 40% of unregistered vehicles that come in that are not even in the person's name. They're not registered that person. You ask about the citations. That's required to be paid by statute. But also if we don't require it to be paid, it's never going be paid because these cars are the street and they're not going be fixed, it's not in their name. A vehicle is not in your name that can be very problematic on the city streets.

You also see a lot of vehicles that might have not legit plates, duplicate plates, stolen plates. Eventually those will get tracked down for unregistered. So it's a wide range but it is an issue with unregistered vehicles. To answer just kind of like some of the things that when it comes to towing, send somebody out to every single district. We are pretty uniform. We do have data on that. We'll be happy to provide you with some that stuff and I know we're working on that. So we're not targeting the areas whatsoever. We have we are very efficient. One of the things I brought in is using technology to guide things, to guide and ultimately to help the situation Chair,

this file is noticed for revenue pertaining to this. This sounds like a public safety file which we've So already to the extent it's going to be germane, to the extent we'll be following open meeting law, we can't talk about things that aren't noticed. So I mean Commissioner, I don't know. This sounds like a public safety discussion we've had which is fine. I'm happy if the Chair of this committee would like to hear that file before my committee, happy to do it. But given that it's noticed for revenue, what does any of this have to do with the subject of what we've been noticed?

Isn't this whole thing about revenue? I mean my whole nature of my questions are about revenue. The charge of the citation,

the charge of the entire operations.

Okay. So I guess just sticking to

order revenue. Ultimately, it's about compliance. But if you go back to the original file, I've been prepared to speak to all the updates on the HPV revenue and so forth. I can speak to some of the registration revenue as well. Yes. Have specific questions on that. Okay. Yes. So I just want to just kind of just give a I'm going switch gears a little bit. Okay?

I'm gonna do a little backdrop just just to kinda give a quick refresher on the potential parking violator ordinance which would was adopted 11/01/2025. During that time, we did issue a sixty day moratorium. The intent of this was try to encourage citizens to make arrangements for citations by either paying them on, you know, paying them the lines of a payment plan instead of a court date. During that time frame, yes, we had 455 individuals pay a total of eighteen seventy two citations totaling $102,558 This is before Wait,

say that number again, I'm sorry. Was Sorry. Really fast,

dollars 102,558, okay? That was collected during our moratorium phase. Okay. We are first towed January 1 went into effect that we actively towed for habitual parking violators. Our first tow is January 3. As of this data from revenue is going to be going to March 17, so a few days ago. We have towed a total of thirteen thirteen vehicles, okay? So when an individual is towed, they do have an option. They have an option to either pay citations at the toll lot or they can set up a court date and be heard that way. So there are scenarios.

Out of the so far as of March 17, we've had six sixty seven people elect to pay citations at the toll lot. A total of 5,470 citations were paid, totaling $285,382 So those are the ones that elected to pay at the toll lot. We've had five zero two individuals representing 6,306 citations for a total amount of $345,300 elected to schedule a court date. Okay. So that's kind of the numbers on that part.

Now as we've gotten farther in, I'm able to provide more data. We've of worked with our vendors so we can kind of track stuff better. So what I've also was able to get a hold of was taking anybody that has five or more citations that is identified as a habitual parking violator who has elected not getting towed, just go online, go to a kiosk and just make pay their tickets. And out of that we've had a total of six sixty people or plates make those payments for a total of 2,693 citations for an amount of $151,000 $302 Additionally, the tax season trip, our tax intercept program did intercept a total of 116,463 for virtual parking violators.

What was that last number?

100 I'll be happy to share this with you as So $116,463,000 dollars

That you took from people's incomes?

Yes. Well, for tax.

So if

you want to look at collected revenue for March 17, this is what we physically have has been paid, you're a little over $05,000,000 Now there is, I think, a bright spot in all of this is do go back to goal of educating people and trying to get people to be proactive and have assistance for that. We have seen since January 1, two eighty five people over 2,446 citations, they have elected a set of payment plans to avoid the whole toll process. So I think that is positive. One more time. We've had two eighty five individual set of payment plans. So they wouldn't get towed and they address their citations to that.

Many people went to municipal court to have an alternative payment? Five zero two. Five zero two people went to municipal court in total, but how many of those five zero two are doing something like community service or something other than payment?

So that data, a lot of the cases are scheduled, not all been heard yet. Question and the longer we go, you'll have some very good valid data from the courts to see what decided. But that we are, I meet weekly, the Tolowa leadership team, myself, we meet with all the leaders at the court and we have weekly meetings to discuss things, make sure things are going well, but we will be able to provide that data more If thoroughly in the you look at the breakdown, right now we have about 57.1% of citizens elect to pay their citations right off the bat versus 42.9% elected to schedule a court case. Okay. That's kind of where

going go.

Even a pause there. So this is the very reason I wanted this item and we'll probably have it more often, maybe quarterly or whatnot. This is outstanding information. Whether I like it or not, it's still data. We're going to be we're going to add it to the file. It's a lot of revenue, a lot of money. Certainly people can see things differently. Some people will see, oh, wow, this is exactly how we wanted it to go. We wanted to get behavioral change and we wanted to have some new revenue. So I'm personally not convinced that, but I'm still looking at the data.

The data will be added to the file. On the data though, I am also interested in a data point that I think would be very important, which is the address of many of these people. And I know it's tough because of registration, but like we certainly, if they're being towed, we know where we towed them from, but the registration could say it, etcetera. And I would like those addresses and possibly sorted by Aldermanic District.

Yes, I do have for the Mitchell parking lot address, I do have it broken down by Aldermanic District.

Oh, fantastic. Okay. Yes, let's have that. I guess I want to get back to my other question about revenue. The revenue that's created by the citation that someone gets right before they're towed, that is the part that I think is a bit of a misuse of revenue.

I'm keeping it revenue centric because I that's the case that I sent to you and something's not adding up right for me. Like you're having to pay not a HPV, but it's in the category of parking violators for towing is, and that's the one that I sent you with the mother with the newborn children situation where she had to actually hire childcare to go get her own car out of towing. She had to pay to remove the tow but then also like why are we why is there even a citation before an hour before the tow?

So anytime a vehicle is towed, a citation is required. Certain Certain citations are required to be paid when a vehicle is towed. An unregistered vehicle citation is one of those. There are other ones as well. If you are, know, no parking, blocking an alley, emergency. So there's a list of citations that, you know, that will generate total right away and there's a list of citations that need to be paid. Those will get paid. So the $100 citation from register is required by statute ordinance to be paid upon release of the vehicle. If you don't, as I mentioned before, another caveat is if you were to say, hey, you shouldn't have to pay that citation. As I mentioned, there's a lot of vehicles out there that are being driven by people that are not the owners.

That citation will never get paid and that's significant loss of revenue to the city. If you look at last year, we towed a little over 8,000 unregistered vehicles, dollars 100 in citation, that's about 3 quarters of $1,000,000, right? So there's a revenue stream with it that goes with that. I also just want to add and I know when I say finances, but you know the data has shown historically when individuals get towed they're not likely to be repeat offenders of getting towed again. And the reason for that is I think we do a good job educating.

So you know and I'd be happy to dive in that a little bit deeper on because I think you know towing is not fun. Isn't and that's why we do proto things. But is there a compliance need to do so? Yes. Does it generate revenue? Yes, that is associated with it as well. But it does come down to public safety. It does comes down to do we have to have places to park and we just can't have people just doing whatever they want. And yes, want to start hard to get to cases. We do. We work a lot closely. We do help help when we can. There are certain things we can do, certain things we can't do unfortunately.

Yes. And some of us will have to save for public safety too because I almost feel like we're adding to the hardship. And when it's somebody who is not a habitual parking violator who their error is that it's unregistered and the woman that I'm talking about with the newborn children was forty four days registered. So she had to pay the $100 citation and then whatever the hundreds of dollars were to remove it from tow. I still think there needs to be a point in between there where we're allowing for a slight waiting period and the revenue collection I guess what you're saying is that would possibly disrupt the $100 revenue for unregistered vehicles.

Another thing I want to make sure I say is you made a good point that many reckless drivers are unregistered. I don't know if the data goes back that many unregistered drivers are reckless drivers. The numbers you're telling me don't even make like, this this woman was not a reckless driver. This veteran that I just read into the file was not a on reckless

finance. We we are strictly violation of open meetings because we're talking about something that does not relate to revenue. This is a public safety discussion which I'm happy to have in public safety. It does not relate to revenue.

I feel like all we've been talking about is revenue and this entire system is based on revenue and the commissioner himself has said that and Peter Knox has said that they're aggressively doing it to meet revenue numbers and that I thought you told me that if I thought well, hang on. I thought if he's going to say it twice now, I'm going to say my thing twice, is that if you told me you just told me that if I was to change the item, it would negatively impact revenue on the citations. So I'm trying to do things right, not have a one on one private meeting. I'm trying to have it in the open so everybody knows what I'm talking about, so I'm not withholding data in the light of the day. So maybe next time I should just do the legislation and not even have a communication file and do it at finance. So go ahead, Commissioner.

Yes. So just to be clear, this is not a money grab. This is nothing. All we're trying to do is really go through is making people accountable for violations they have made previously. So HPV is a habitual parking violator file, which means if you have five citations or more, these folks are the ones that continually are not following parking regulations.

And so it's the only teeth that the parking operations have is to recoup the dollars of people that are continuing to do this. We just had an individual that we had finally towed that has over 169 violations. These folks are basically just breaking the law and this is not providing access or turnover to these parking spots for residents or businesses. So I mean there's $14,000,000 sitting there in these every majority of our folks pay their tickets and they pay them on time. And so these folks that don't, I mean this is where this comes from. It's not a money grab. We're not doing anything different. It's just we're trying to make people accountable for the actions that had occurred previously.

Who gets the revenue? Asking about revenue when the citation comes and an hour after the citation because you all document your data very good. We had the screenshots and everything. Isn't it a private tow company that gets that immediate

We revenue from have a city tow contractor that you know is contracted but

it's A private contractor.

Yeah. Private towing. But they they get a they obviously negotiate a rate on what they get per tow,

but so

that's how that works.

The citation goes to the city. The tow fee goes to the tow Okay.

Do you know how much revenue we got from the site revenue we got from the citation of the unregistered vehicles? That's the one that I'm still having an issue with that one. Is it $100 The $100 an hour before they got towed.

Yes. So obviously have the citation revenue. If your vehicle is towed right now, don't quote me on this, it's about $117 we pay the tow contractor, which leaves about $33 The tow fee is $150 to get your vehicle out. Storage fees are $25 and there's a relocation fee of $50 if the individual does not have insurance. So that depends on that.

I just I want to add, this is still kind of unrelated, but just we're just what the commissioner was saying is that we look at citation remittance rates and one of the things that we've seen as a trend is that they've gotten lower and lower, right? So we have seen that back in 2023, we were about 71 of citations were paid, okay? 2024, it was 70.3%. Now in the basically in the ten weeks we've had, we're seeing those numbers go up because we are collecting old debts. We've gone from 71.1% to 72.2% for 2023 past due citations.

2024, we've gone from 70.3% remittance rate up to 72.9%. And this is kind of some change in behaviors a little bit for those that don't address their citations.

Okay. Any other revenue questions on Item six? Item six, Alderman Spiker. Please move it to revenue please.

Yes. Okay. So the city gets the money. That money goes where? Transportation fund. The transportation fund. So what is the transportation fund fund?

So transportation funds, all parking operations, parking structures, surface parking lots, streetcar, it's all conglomerate in that group.

Okay. So a portion so if we were not to be so much in the hole with the streetcar, it would be to our advantage to have more money of this sort in our coffers if we were not so inclined to go deeply right and just go

are some operational costs that go into this fund, correct.

Okay. So I guess if one is a fan of the streetcar for free, which I'm not, one needs money for it. And I guess then one should be very cheered by the extra revenue brought in here. And to one at the extent one is not, it appears there might be some harboring some sort of inconsistency. But thank you for that clarification on the revenue question.

Any other questions or comments on Item six? Madam Chair.

Alderman Moore. Just really quick. Revenue related. When a citation is written for does that trigger a vehicle to then be towed? Because I'm sure our vendors aren't roaming the city looking for vehicles to pick up. Right? A citation is written by one of our parking enforcement officers. They then call it in? How does that work

really Yes, that's so. So no, the tow company is not driving around. It is our POs doing just general patrols. We take a passive approach to towing. We talked about HBB. We're not them if they're legally parked. Just only patrol we run across it. No, not every citation will result in a tow. You could be So the ones that do? So the ones that do are going to be if you are a bit so parking violator. So that would do it. And then unregistered would require a tow. I do have a list. If you are a snow emergency, third offense. So if you're we give citations.

If you're not moving for snow emergencies, third offense would be eligible for a tow right away. Tow away zones, blocking driveways, blocking traffic, right of way street sweeping, if you know we've got signage up for street sweeping. If you're on private property, snowbound vehicles can be automatically towed. So there is some that, yes, would trigger tow because it needs to move. If you are receiving a citation just for being on the wrong side of the street or no permit, you're not going get towed unless you become a Mitchell parking violator and if you're illegally you know, so that that would take a while. So it it kind of depends. It varies.

Thank you. And madam chair, based on some of the notion that my colleague referenced, it, do you think that it would be important to move this back to public safety safety to have a deeper discussion about because I know that you know you're. Really think I mean my heart breaks for those constituents right. And as we look at the list, I think you are 4% and just like myself, hey, we're twinning, that are impacted by the HPV. Would you find it necessary to move some of this more intense conversation back to public safety?

Possibly. And this is why this is like good to have these communication files because I actually started this discussion thinking the folks that were being told were HPV. And I'm finding out that it seems, again, anecdotally that they're not even HPV, they're unregistered folks that are not HPV, but they're still getting a citation and towed. So I'm like trying that's

something that we've always done, though, right? We I don't think that's

anything So he just started his entire presentation saying they're being more aggressive about Yes.

So we've always done it. She's correct. We have always done it. We are just being more aggressive in catching more people than have unregistered vehicles. That is true.

Yes. And I and again, you know, I used to get a lot of e mails and calls in reference to the reckless driving and trying to figure out how to curtail a lot of the behavior, right? When we and I'll try to stick to this. You know, the more we reduced our sworn officers, you know, people, you know, with no license plate and just it just run amok. Right?

And so there's so behavior shifted because there was no oversight. Because I remember back in the day I would get pulled over for just about anything. You know because there was that oversight. Right. So I'm trying to you know I want us to be able to figure out that that that thin and it's hard to do that with legislation because you can't pull out those nuances like, oh, yeah. We know that this person is you know what I mean? We it's hard to pull out those sort of nuances. So it's hard to make legislative draft legislation that isn't going to, you know, benefit everyone. So that so I would love to have a deeper Okay. I would love to just have a deeper conversation if the time if you choose for the time to come to that.

I think that the what I'm going to continue to discuss is and figure out is that the city of Milwaukee I'm not even I'll take a second like off of the HPV thing. I'm still waiting for the data and I'm really glad that we got it. And it's having these conversations and putting them on the agenda where you sometimes get more information and people are able to talk about it publicly and you sharpen your pencil a little bit. And that I think that's the wise way to do to make policy. I don't want to just think I'm the only one with an idea or overly respond, I get that, or overcorrect.

But I think the city needs to come to terms with there's something going on where the behavioral changes of why aren't people able or why are they forgetting to pay the registration or why are they unable. Like I think I had one that forgot and one that could not pay. And I don't know that either one should have ended up in the toll lot and they're not HPV. So like we I just want to figure out what the right size situation is. I mean, there's a big difference between $100 of revenue and five costing almost $500 for like at $400 some dollars. So all I'm saying and I will conclude now is that I want us we're going have to figure out what the right fit is. Yeah. So And

can I and madam chair, if I can just say really quick, you know, I'm just gonna oust myself because, you know, I was in that that boat with unregistered vehicles and not because I didn't have the funds to pay for it? It was a stupid emissions test. Every time I went to the list, they were like and then I go would, you know, call the place. They were like, we don't do emission testing anymore. And so we get that's another piece that we really have to figure out because if folks are not open on the weekends, if they're not woke open in the evenings, you know, there's a small amount, then, oh, you gotta make an appointment.

Like, it was so difficult that it's not that I didn't wanna pay it. I did. Every time I went, I was like, oh, yeah, I got, you know, the error sign would come up. You know, you gotta get an emissions test done. And every time I started looking it was just like no we don't do it anymore places I used to go to back in the day we don't do it anymore we don't do it anymore so we have to figure out. That piece to be able to provide. Accurate information to residents so that that's another education piece to what it is that we're talking about.

We do see it. I know Peter's got something. We do see the emissions. I mean, that's why I think the DOT puts this out like ten weeks before. And then they also give a thirty day grace period after. So it's basically giving folks that own cars three months to try to figure out. Sometimes there's challenges, but there is three months where they can actually try to get an emissions test. It happens. It's happened to my family as well.

It happens to everybody.

FYI, my vehicle is registered.

Right. Anything else that hasn't been discussed?

I do have a finance, But just to answer your question, do have kiosks now twenty four hours that you can just, you know, if you get an appointment, you just go to plug it in. There's one up at twenty seventh Street which

I use. What?

They do exist. So just FYI.

Know that.

Yes. You can also get an extension from DOT for emissions if you have emission issues on your I want to go back just to what you said and just I know because it would be when you mentioned like a pause or whether it's a warning process in holding off towing. That does have revenue implications.

Right. That's why I made this revenue file.

Yeah. So if you were to say, hey, this car as we towed don't tow for twenty four hours, the reality is we would not be able to tow that car. We have no idea of knowing where vehicles are parked, where they're at, we don't target vehicles, we can't I couldn't find your car right now if I had to. So if you have an unregistered vehicle and we say okay here's your citation, we don't tow it, the reality is we wouldn't tow any unregistered vehicles because we'd never find them. Or if we said you have to give a warning first because it's just luck of the draw, a city this size, all these vehicles that we'll actually happen to come across it.

So if you go to that standpoint, if I'm looking at the tow lot, if you look at revenue, yes. So now it's two folds. We would not be able to tow because we wouldn't be able to find the cars. We already if you get a citation you're going get towed and you move your car, we don't tow it but we wouldn't be to find them first off. Then the other where it would trickle down is that when you lose those compliance measures like towing, then people why should I pay my citations? Why should I follow the rules? Why not should park in front of this person's driveway? So it just goes down a very dark path. Yes, other people, I agree, sometimes that, yeah, there's hardships and we do what we can. We try to.

We try to educate. We make exceptions on stuff in the tow lot. But if you were to say, hey, we want to put a pause in towing, delay it, it's not a feasible thing. Nor do we have the technology to do it which would actually be a developmental cost as well because we have multiple vendors that are technology involved into the towing of a vehicle. So just wanted to kind of just share that as you guys are having conversations but that would be

Yeah. Okay.

Okay. That's helpful. Anything else? I just want to make an informational request so that it's formal and everybody the same this is very helpful. We have the same thing year to date on the unregistered so not a HPV and unregistered vehicle tow, the one that I seem to be having a lot of lately. That would be helpful to see and I bet Alders would like to know that. Especially because of the new more aggressive nature, it would be good to know where we're at. I would hope that you all will be doing that too just to kind of know that would be really helpful. Anything else on Item six, Ulmer's Biker?

I guess on the revenue question, so you indicated that if there were the twenty four hour delay, then folks would they're not going park necessarily in the same spot and so they're lost to arm of justice or what have you. Could this counsel direct you, I think we probably can, just to not enforce the parking laws in a district or a particular number of the parking laws? Like don't tow unregistered folks in my district. Not saying we should, but

I don't know if that's the I attorney's

thought Alderman Baumann had less parking restrictions in his district.

That's different. So what we're doing from an enforcement standpoint and an exception street which you're talking about, two different topics

here. But I don't think So you're certainly collecting less revenue from Alderman Baumann's district?

Not necessarily.

If there's less restrictions, there's

probably less Yes. Lose the alternate site parking. That's one avenue where we're talking about citations. That's the one that's lost there, but all the other things are still into effect. Unrestricted vehicles, that still is existing.

I mean as one of the people who pushed that when I was on that side of the table, that was the conversation I had with Public Works is, are you going to oppose this because it will lose you revenue? And the answer I got at the time and the answer you are still getting is no because we will just be busy writing other tickets. You know what I mean? It's a question of how many checkers you have and

I guess to Alder Moore's question, there is an open file which three of the members here have heard before on habitual parking violators which we heard what was it January. Happy to hear that again. That focus on habitual parking violators. Somebody could submit another file that's focused on what seems to have been a lot of the discussion today, which was not relating to habitual parking violators per se, but those who have unregistered vehicles and are towing practices there, that would be a public safety file, I assume. All right. Thanks.

Okay. Anything else on Item six? This is a great amount of information. Thank you. Just checking is Alderman Cogs on here still? I don't think so. No. She can be excused then for the rest of the meeting if need be unless she has told us something different. Alderman Moore will then move to place this on file, leaves it on file for further discussion if needed. No, does not but that's fine.

Any other discussion, objections to placing it on file? Hearing none, so ordered. Item 7,251,819, communication from the Department of Administration, Information Technology Management Division relating to a summary of the cybersecurity training program. We're joined by Mr. David Henke and this is sponsored by Alderman Scott Spiker. I'll go to Alderman Scott Spiker first.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So this relates to a resolution we passed basically directing the departments and correct my memory, Mr. Henke, I straight, but we directed the department to basically come up with a plan and implement it for cybersecurity training. This kind of came out of a discussion we had at CIMC, City Information Management Committee, which I chair where it was felt like unless folks are going to have their email privileges and such or their access privileges denied, they don't necessarily get with the program until very late and then there's quite a bit of work ITMD has to do with respect to catch up. But there was also a feeling I had that I would like to know from department to department who is complying and how much.

So this is was intended at least to be kind of a catch up how we're doing, are there any departments that are lagging, are there any ones that are excelling, so that then we as a committee can pursue those conversations with department heads and say, hey, what's going on? Everybody else is at 75% within next many days, you all are way down. Are you not taking this seriously? And although as a cabinet level member of the Department of Administration, Mr. Henke has pulled, there's also understandably a desire to get along with everybody.

But then that's where our role is more important to make sure that the things we say we want to have done and cybersecurity training is something very important to the city as we've seen to make sure that things we say we want to have done are actually carried out by the department heads. So anyway, that's a long way of saying this is the first in a series of reports to show how well we've been doing with implementing the training that we say we all want. Thanks.

Okay. Director Henke, did you wish to speak to that then?

Yes, thank you.

Okay, please.

David Henke, the Chief Information Officer with the Department of Administration, Information and Technology Management Division. I think Alderman Spiker described well the background of this program. At the CIMC meetings last fall, it was discussed also that what other agencies were doing and how other areas held this and one of the topics was that we should be doing more frequent trainings on different topics, more frequent fishing simulations that would have potentially better impact on participation, better impact on ultimately the results of those fishing simulation should be improving over time. And so we have just started that. The plan is in place attached to this file.

There is a list of like monthly trainings on a variety of topics phishing, malware, physical security, AID and deepfake, social engineering, multifactor authentication, ransomware, removable media insider threats, data privacy and security, business email compromise and password security. That was one per month. We did start one month late as we worked through this plan, but we do have a one year plan to put this into action. There are some tentative sorry, before I continue with the tentative results, we do have quarterly fishing simulations planned for March, June, September and December of this year. So first one will be upcoming shortly.

In terms of the training, we do have results from the February phishing training and partial results for the malware training in March since that's still open. We're still in March. I will say I have results from ITMD as well as the entire city. Results for each department, I don't have at the moment. Our information security manager is currently on an extended leave. I hope that she'll be back very soon so we can get some of those more detailed results and hopefully see over time how those are improving. For February, the Madam Chair?

Yes, Solomon Spiker.

So those department level results are not in the file. Why did we bother wanting to come to the table to present it if it's not answering the intents of the resolution, which is to find out how we're doing, not just as a city as a whole, to but see any outliers. We're not going to be able to go in and play any sort of oversight function if we don't know the even somewhat more granular level data than that half the city is not finishing their malware training in a month.

Okay. Were you getting to that in your presentation?

I can address that now, absolutely. So I have some basic information. It's what has been able to be teased out in the absence of our information security manager. Wanted to be

able That is provide as much as I I could. We can have that. This gives us virtually no information then without that granular stuff

which was

the whole point of the resolution.

Well, I can understand that. As frustrating as a sponsor, why don't you at least finish your attempt at that question and then I want you to be able to finish your sentence, but I understand the sponsor's frustration. Could you finish your sentence, please?

Okay. Yes. So we have numbers from the general city for February, which was approximately 70% overall. I did include ITMDs because I have visibility into my own department. That's listed as approximately 95%. That has to do with some staff that have retired. It's essentially 100%. Obviously, I'm very self interested and aware. Hopefully, other departments will be too as we present this at a future date on the individual departments.

Okay. So does it seem clear what the sponsor is asking for maybe for the next time then?

Yes. Okay. That can be provided and will Okay. Be Final

Hold to the call of the chair then has been offered by Alderman Spiker. Any discussion of hold to the call of the chair? Any objection? Hearing unsoldered. And then we'll see you next time with a little bit more information there. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Okay.

I need to take a small break so I'm going to have you handle eight and nine. If they go fast then vacancy is number 10.

Ms. Chambers here?

I'm not sure.

You see Alderwoman Taylor on the Board as Alderman Chambers here. I thought he was wrong. I guess we can read in. Okay. Moving on. Item eight on our agenda today. Item 551444, Resolution Directing the Comptroller's Office to provide a quarterly expenditure report for all departmental accounts, including special funds and special purpose accounts to the common counsel by Alderman Chambers. Alderman Chambers will defer to the comptroller for the report. Is that in? Or this is a resolution asking for the report.

Is that something that the comptroller can prepare?

Yeah. I mean, I think it's a good idea. It's a best practice to provide such reports. I think there's a lot of given the language of the resolution,

there's

a couple of different ways we can approach it. So it might be a, you know, we'll try a few different things, see if it meets the needs of the sponsor and the rest of the council. I guess the question that I had and it might be the sponsor or the chair is whether the expectation is that the results are presented to this committee each cycle or if I'm just going to be sending it to you, emailing it to you, you know, or both.

Mr. Chair, that's typically why we don't hear files without the sponsor present because we can't get their intent if they are not

Yes.

And just reading the title, prepare a quarterly expenditure report to the common counsel. It could be an email. It could be a binder.

Yes. So I think we can start by sending an email. If the chair wants to schedule a file, I'd be happy to

Let's speak stay efficient with our meeting today. My only question for you right now would be, is there a benefit to knowing what your year to date budget is going to be in March or how your what your budget performance is in March after the first quarter?

I think it's pretty early to draw conclusions about how things are going to be looking year end based on just first quarter results.

What about at the halfway point?

I think halfway point, starts becoming more

That's June. So when would you have the June report ready?

I would say

Before August?

Mid July. Mid July. Maybe let's call it the July just to be safe.

And when is our Finance Committee meeting in July, just for a quick calendar? Someone else is There's one on the twenty eighth. Twenty ninth, I'm sorry. Twenty ninth, right before. So conceivably, we could have a relevant report before the August recess?

I would think so.

All right. Any discussion on this item?

Mr. Chair, I move that we hold this to the call of the Chair. If the sponsor has communications with the Comptroller's Office, he can always pull it out at counsel. But would not feel comfortable passing something without the sponsors and what he was looking for.

All right. And any other discussion on the motion? No. Alderman Spiker moves to hold. Hearing no objections, ordered. Thank you very much. Moving on to item number nine, file 251,845 substitute resolution relative to the acceptance and funding of the 2026 STD infertility prevention grant from the State of Wisconsin Department of Health Services. From the health department, do we have Deputy Commissioner? Nope. Anybody? There we someone I can't see your name. I'm sorry. Please introduce yourself.

Lindsay O'Connor, HR administrator. I'm pitching for Eric Chukinski, our budget director.

Thank you, Ms. Lindsay. Would you like to give a summary?

Let

me see.

This is accepting a grant.

The infertility budget or the

STD infertility prevention grant from the state of Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

Okay. Hold on one second. Aaron didn't think you'd have questions on this one, if I'm being totally transparent.

Can you just tell us what it

is? I

cannot. All

right. Any discussion? Have the D.

It was referred by public safety. So move approval.

So, Alderman Spiker moves adoption of item nine. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you very much. Thanks for the

Thank you.

Pitching in. Item 10, file 251,891. Communication from the Department of Administration, Budget Management and Analysis Division regarding vacancy requests, fund transfers and equipment requests. Welcome, Director Kovac.

Good afternoon.

We the have no Schedule B.

Correct.

So appreciate that efficiency. But Schedule A, we'll just read down the list starting with tax levy supported positions department of and if there are any questions, concerns, please speak up during the list. Department Department of Administration Information Technology Management Division Systems Analyst Senior. Assessor's Office, Commercial Property Appraisers three. City Clerk, Business Outreach Specialist, that's in licensing. I asked about that earlier. Comptroller, Assistant Accounting Manager, Audit Manager, Accounting Supervisor. Mr. Chair. Alderman Spiker.

The Comptroller isn't here, but I did want to acknowledge that the Audit Manager position is vacant because I understand Ms. Molina is leaving. So just wanted to commend her on our service. She was always terrific to work with and will be sad to see her go. So thank you.

And she will be presenting shortly.

Oh, so I have

to You can tell her.

That's right.

We have an hour.

Moving on. Is there anything else, Inspector?

Hold on, Inspector.

That's fine for comptroller.

Fire Department EMS Technical resource specialist, EMS supervisor, Milwaukee Overdose Response Lead Assistant. We'll say that's Assistant Milwaukee Overdose Response Practitioner and firefighter. Mr. Chair? Alden Spiker.

With respect to the EMS technical resource specialist and the EMS supervisor, I guess, for the department, are those just general EMS leadership managerial positions or do they relate to the MORI program?

I see someone with their hand raised but I can't see your name.

Chief Parish from Milwaukee Fire Department.

Parish, please.

Absolutely. Yep. So these are both specialist positions. The technical resource specialist is the person that manages a lot of our control drugs, all of our order, all of our inventory. And then they also do the maintenance and repair on our defibrillators and so on and so forth. Then the EMS Can say

that last part again? I didn't understand it.

Sure. Yep. They do the continuing maintenance and preventative maintenance on all of our defibrillators. So our EKG machines, all that ordering. So we actually send them out for specialized training to be able to maintain FDA approved and licensed equipment.

Got it.

And then the EMS supervisor is our twenty four hour staff person that supports the EMS supervision for the entirety of the field. Most notably, they are one of our responders that also deploy whole blood if we have penetrating traumas in the community.

Very good. I guess, Mr. Chair, I'd ask that we hold the two moire positions. There's a meeting I'm supposed to be having with health and fire. There's a big discussion about plans for the future to the tune of multi, multi million dollars. So I'd like to have that discussion before we move on that.

Alderman Spiker asks to hold the two more positions. That's Milwaukee Overdose Response Lead Assistant, Milwaukee Overdose Response Practitioner. Chief Parish, what kind of an impact would that kind of a hold? Is something here time sensitive or can it wait three weeks?

Mr. Chair?

Chief, welcome.

Yes. Sorry. I'll jump in here. So there is no intent to foundationally change the format with which we are delivering the life saving services through the Mori program. And the meeting on Monday is simply a representative of a greater coordination between the health department and the fire department as we both function in separate areas of attempting to push back on the opioid scourge.

This comes up nearly every time a Maury position comes before this body. And we simply have people that have moved around or promoted out or have retired. We simply need to fill the spot so that we can continue working. And I would ask that it not be held and that we continue to do the work.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that insight. Chief Lipsky. On the motion? Alderman Spiker?

Yes. So mean part of why it keeps getting discussed is there's a discussion to be had. So with respect to the positions in the fire department that are now funded by the opioid settlement, those are funds that back when Alder Murphy advocated for a funding source, given the discussions that happened then, it was intended for before the settlement funds we had grant funding for it. So now that we've switched to the opioid settlement funds, it's a reasonable discussion to have even when we're talking about, I think it's $18,000,000 over years, whether the results we're getting warrants deepening and continuing of that structure because there's also a supervisory structure that's in place over the folks on the ground. And it's in a department where we have funding source due to Act 12 that can only be spent on basically pensions and public safety.

So just want to make sure that that before we spend funds that can be spent on other opioid related items. So those are my reasons for holding. I just would like to have that fuller discussion. There's a live issue here. Happy to have it at public safety where it's more appropriate, but would not like us to move forward until we've had the opportunity to review what we're doing when we're thinking about spending $18,000,000 Thanks.

All right. Mr. Chair.

Chief, we're going to call the roll on this and move on with our agenda. But thank you very much for having continued offline conversations so that we're ready in committee. Please call the roll. On the motion to hold the Maury positions, Honorable Member Moore? No. Honorable Spiker? Aye. Honorable Member Gullis? No. Motion fails, one to two vote and two excused. All right. Anything else on the fire department? All right. Moving on to Department of Neighborhood Services. Program Assistant three, Commercial Code Enforcement Inspector four, Office Assistant two.

Police Department, Captain of Police, Inspector of Police, Crime Scene Supervisor. DPW Infrastructure Division, Bridge Operator, DOT Projects Inspector, three positions. DPW operations division, sanitation supervisor, vehicle service writer, urban forestry district manager, landscape and irrigation specialist. Anything else on property tax levy supported positions? Moving on.

Non property tax levy supported positions. Employees Retirement System, Benefits Services Specialist. Health Department, Program Assistant III, WIC Client Services Assistant III, Scales Neighborhood Nursing Program Manager Program Assistant three Public Health Assistant Lab Director Community Health Administration Specialist three Emergency Response Planning Coordinator. Police Department, Intelligence Analyst. Transportation Fund, Marketing and Communications Officer.

Those are our Mr. Chair? Yes. The Marketing and Communications Officer, what are they marketing and communicating about?

Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. Chuck Schumacher, Operations Administration Manager. The Transportation Funds Marketing and Communications Officer will be part of the broader communications team within DPW. This person will be focused on communications with Alders the public relative to things like snow operations, other DPW operations specific communications. This position will also be working on soliciting streetcar sponsorships. So it's a mix of communications and sponsorship grant seeking for the streetcar.

And who was in this role?

This is a new position in the 2026 budget.

Okay. I would like to be recorded as a no on that one.

Alderman Spiker asked to be recorded as a no for marketing communications officer in the non property tax levy support position 12251. Okay. Any other comments on this item? Alderwoman Moore moves approval of file 251891. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you all very much. Moving on to our agenda item number 11, file 251,790, an ordinance related to city wage requirements for service contracts. Welcome our Purchasing Director, Rhonda Kelsey.

Good afternoon. Vice chair, committee members, Rhonda Kelsey, city purchasing director. The file before you is in regard to approving the current wage rate for service contracts that are executed by the Department of Administration purchasing division. This particular wage rate applies to non professional service contracts such as oil change services, lead abatement services, HVAC repairs, and things of that nature. Just as a way of background, the wage rate was increased to $15 per hour back in 2022.

It was around a little over $12 or so to be consistent with the city's minimum wage rate which was increased in 2021 to $15 per hour. So through this particular file, I am seeking to continue to hold our contractors accountable by requiring them to also pay a minimum wage to its employees that mirrors the city's minimum wage.

Dollars 15 an hour doesn't seem like very much anymore. And it was changed in 2022, right? Have there been any has there been any change to the minimum wage at the city since 2022?

According to information that I received from Doctor, the minimum is still $15 per hour. That doesn't include, of course, across the board increases. So, there are employees that would.

Like a residency incentive.

That might earn more than that but that is the most recent information that I've received from DER about the minimum wage rate for city employees.

And that and the the minimum now 16 something, $16.00 an hour, would it also if that's a full time employee, that includes benefits, right?

I can't speak to that. DER

can So speak to this is just so this item in front of us right now is just for DOA service contracts. DPW does their own service contracts? Correct. And the city clerk calculation is a formula. It's an ordinance.

Which is lower than Okay. $50 per So the thinking was, you may recall, that was before this body in the fall of last year. Similar conversations were had. And the thought was, you know, at some point, there may be some value in just making city ordinances well, there is one city ordinance, but making the wage rates consistent across the board at some point. Okay.

Any discussion on this item? We did have a discussion previously about changing the minimum wage rate to $18 an hour earlier today, but that would functionally, this ordinance right now takes effect a couple of weeks ago, right? So March 1, so we can't really change something in the past. And it would likely be difficult to negotiate or to have to change your wage rate for contracts that are coming up in April or May or June. Right.

Right? Departments have budgeted for this $15 an hour wage rate already. When is the right time of the year so that there's enough time for proper budgeting to correct this?

Pretty soon we'll be in the 2027 budget process. So through that process, we could consider it, making a new wage rate change effective March 2027 or in Q4 of, I would say 2027 frankly, right? I think it would be cleaner and smoother to make a change in the subsequent year so that contractors could plan accordingly as well as, you know, city departments could account for any increases in their respective budgets.

Why was March chosen as the effective date back in 2022?

It's it's codified in city ordinance.

Right. But why did they pick March and not January 1?

It's been that way for as long as I can remember, frankly and I know that the analysis that the city clerk 's office conducts annually is tied to federal poverty guidelines. So it may be tied to the timing or release of that data.

And your end data is available. All right. So this may just be a short exercise, but I will move to put proposed substitute in front of us that has been circulated. And I don't know if Alderman Morse still wanted her name on it, but my substitute would or this substitute would change the effective date for an increase to $18 an hour starting 11/01/2026 so that the last quarter of this contract last four months of this ordinance's period would be increased to 18. Any discussion on that motion to put that sub before us? Mr. Chair. Alder Woman Moore.

Thank you so much. I know and Rhonda, thank you so much for connecting with us earlier today to just get some details around this. For me, to continue to co sign this is really centered around more information. And so the information that we've received today in regards to the percentage of individuals that we will be impacted or even the contractors that will be impacted, I wanted to sort of get a little bit more information to hear from them just to make sure that we're not making it unjustly impossible or just difficult for some of our small. You know, this is our more so probably our smaller contracts, contractors.

So I just want to put a pause for me to be able to gather some information that we talked about at our meeting earlier this morning.

So do you want this up before us?

I would recommend that we hold it until we are able to get provided a little bit more information, but that would hold it a cycle.

In of

us or

hold the entire the original file? So we have to put this up before us first. Well,

parliamentary question. If we put the sub before us, it's defeated, can we roll back? Or so

far,

the sub is not before us yet. There needs to be a motion by a non chair member to put the sub before us. Okay. And then if and then it replaces the original. So if the and if subsequently the file fails, then it fails.

Then there's no retrieving the original that was it was a sub four?

Unless you revert back, yeah. So I think what we so we are still on the motion to put this up before us. Question for Ms. Rhonda, Ms. Kelsey. Does this ordinance need so this ordinance last year passed in September. Do we need to pass it today?

Mr. Chair, there is no motion for the sub to be before us.

Well, I was asking for a motion.

You don't have it.

You didn't have one.

No. Oh, you were asking for a motion.

Okay. But is imperative that this file be Approved. Dispensed with

today? To yes, it is important that the original file before you is approved so that we can codify that $15 an hour wage rate.

The this this wasn't even brought up in 2023. It wasn't brought up in 2024. It wasn't brought up in 2025 until September.

Mister chair?

So, yes.

Actually, there has been an ordinance that has come before the body every year every year since the $15 rate was put into effect because the original rate, it sunsetted and so we have done it every year. Last year, the file was did come before this body late and that was an oversight. But it really should it really does need to go now.

So I looked for it in Legislature. I did not find it in 2324.

The files are all listed under if you look at the proposed sub, the reference files, those are all of the uncodified ordinances that were put before the body.

Right. And I'm just saying I looked for them in 'twenty three and 'twenty four. There was nothing left to start for them. We have a proposed sub that we could consider or is there any other discussion amongst the members remaining?

So just so that I'm clear, the sub would override what you're requesting, miss Kelsey as far as just codifying the $15. That's correct. Would this preclude us from revisiting we could we can always come back and revisit the $15. Can we come back and amend it?

Yes, I would. My answer to that question was yes. Hope we could.

Hope that came across. Yes. No, I'm sorry. Yes.

Yes. Okay. It sounded like a Jamo question.

I was

like, alright.

I don't know. I I would make a motion to move forward with the original request.

Women more moves forward for $15 an hour for now, I guess. Certainly more discussion to be had and I think we can also encapsulate other service contract minimum rates elsewhere in the city Absolutely. Moving Any further discussion on Elderwoman Moore's motion? Hearing none, let's do a roll call, please. Passage of the file. Audrow Woman Moore? Aye. Audrow M. Spiker? Aye.

Mr. Chair? No. Prevails, two ayes, one no and two excused. Prevails two-one-two. Thank you very much for that. Moving on to Item Number 12, file 251,892, communication from the Department of Administration relating to approval of changes to certain single or sole source contracts or contract amendments. Welcome back.

Thank you. There

are three contracts that require your approval this morning. One for this afternoon. I'm sorry. Is Good evening. Adjusting to the change, to the PM change. Three contracts. One for the police department, one for the Department of Employee Relations, and one contract for the fire department. All three of these contracts have

Well, I guess we're in recess because we have no one we lost our quorum. Apologies. I don't know how long. Sorry.

You.

Chairwoman, we were in the middle of item 11. I in the middle of item 12.

Okay. Do you want me

They're right.

To take it back or you're good?

Take it back. Oh, okay.

Let me just scooch this over.

Is that your phone?

Alright. Okay. So we're still on twelve you said, right?

Was eleven?

Yes. Ms. Kelsey was in the middle of her presentation.

Okay. All right. Sorry that we had to break quorum there for a second. We'll just continue where we left

off. Okay.

Thank you. You. So I'll just quickly and briefly provide the description of the contracts that we have here. So one for the police department, one for the Department of Employee Relations, and one contract for the fire department. All three contracts have come before this body in the past.

They're all contract amendments. The first contract is with First Responders Psychological Services LLC to provide psychology services to police officers. An additional funding amount of roughly $855,000 has been added to the current contract amount, which is the same for a total contract amount of $1,700,000 So this is really a correction. They intended to add this amount last time around. So this is a fix here for that.

The second contract is with care.com. This is the unlimited access care.com services that city employees can utilize. We are seeking to add $25,000 to the current contract amount of roughly $199,000 for a total contract amount of approximately $224,000 and we are seeking to extend it through the end of this year, 12/31/2026. The third contract and final contract in this file is for the fire department with WizHOPE Incorporated doing business as project with Hope. A little bit of discussion about the Moray program, Milwaukee Overdose Response Initiative program that the fire department administers.

So this funding will allow the department to continue to support funding for one peer support specialist. So we have added approximately or we have or will be adding, excuse me, $78,500 to the current contract amount of roughly $108,000 for a total contract amount of roughly $187,000 and extending the contract through May 2027.

Okay.

Madam chair.

Okay. Alder Woman Moore.

Really quick, Kelsey. In regards to the first contract for psychological services, the date where it begins or the original begin date, I'm assuming, that's typically on here. I'm just trying to get a sense of what, you know, the original sort of con I'm assuming that line item is for maybe the original contract begin date.

The original start date of this contract was January 2024. And so if you look at that chart in the body of document Yes.

It has the detail. Perfect. Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Any other questions then? Any other questions? Did you get you got through everything or am I missing one?

Okay. She got through.

Okay. That's what came in kind of mid thing on item 11, right? Yes. Okay. Well, then Alderman Moore moves passage of 11.