Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

These homes are not part of a new suburban subdivision. They are part of the revitalization of the central city of Milwaukee. Twenty new homes, seven different styles, in the heart of the city, within the Park Lawn public housing development.

These homes are all four bedroom. They range either two, two and a half bathrooms, two and a half car garages, central air. These are modular homes. In other words, they were built in a factory and trucked down here and sit on a foundation that we did ourselves. They'll range in price between $130,000 to $155,000. they're available to any housing authority eligible resident.

Applicants don't have to currently live in public housing, but Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines say buyers should be families who would be eligible to live in public housing. A $10,000 grant is available to help out.

all the response has been excellent they love the houses uh you know some have some difficulty with the price you know 100 000 plus is a lot of money for anybody but when you go out and actually look in the marketplace it's it's difficult to find something good quality home for under a hundred thousand dollars at least this size and quality. They range from 1,500 to 2,000 square feet. We have four fully accessible units, handicap accessibility. All the units are visitable in terms of accessibility issues. These homes were built with accessibility in mind in terms of the stairwells, for example, are wide enough to accept chair lifts. These are full, complete package deals that we're offering. In other words, that a buyer would not have to incur any other cost in finishing the home. In most instances with new construction, a resident will have to do their own landscaping, for example, their own interior painting. All those things will be done for them.

The new homes add even more value to Park Lawn, which recently saw a two-year, $34 million renovation project. It's all an effort of the City of Milwaukee Housing Authority in partnership with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

It really speaks volumes about the success and the outstanding staff that the City of Milwaukee Housing Authority has, along with its board of commissioners who all work to provide quality housing for low-income individuals. The HOPE VI grant, what that sought to do was to reintegrate parkland subdivision into the neighborhood.

Information is available on the Housing Authority website at HACM.org or by calling 286-5126. And there's more.

In addition to that, we've bought 20 homes in a radius around Park Lawn and have rehabbed those homes and sold them to eligible residents. Many of those homes were boarded up ISOR structures that were currently off the tax roll. We came and bought them, rehabbed them. We got a viable resident to buy them, and it's back on a tax roll. It's no longer an eyesore for the neighborhood. By doing this and bringing in a mixed income population into the area will help to not only stabilize the neighborhood, but will indeed improve the neighborhood. We did receive a HOPE VI grant from Department of Housing and Urban Development that will allow us to demolish the entire Highland Park development, which includes two high-rise elderly buildings and 56 family units. In its place, we're going to build a low-rise apartment building again to house elderly and disabled individuals. And we're going to build, I believe, 26 single-family homes behind there, some of which will be rental replacement units for the units that we're demolishing for the families at Highland, and others will be for home ownership.

Reducing some of the density in that area, and at the same token, be able to provide qualitative housing for our public housing residents while simultaneously positively impacting the surrounding neighborhood.

In another section of the Park Lawn neighborhood, churches are increasing their revitalization efforts. Nearly 20 central city minority churches are working to spread the word to their congregations on a new home buying and affordable mortgage financing program. Fannie Mae, the nation's largest source of financing for home mortgages and North Milwaukee State Bank, announced a $10 million faith-based lending home ownership initiative to help low and moderate income home buyers. Stabilize your community.

Increase your wealth. Own a home. And that's what this is all about today.

Homeownership for as many as 150 families is the goal of this new program. Officials say many people could find themselves paying less per month for a mortgage payment than they're paying in rent.

And we know we have a lot of individuals in our community that is credit challenged. And so the programs that we are offering today will help resolve some of those issues. You can get in a home with no money down for some people, and as little as $500 down for other folks. And so we think we have a broad enough program that can reach deep into our community and make sure that we begin to turn around home ownership in our community.

For the longest time, I've been charged, amongst other things that Fannie Mae, with trying to increase minority home ownership. And one of the ways that we've been trying to do that is reaching out to the faith community. because we really feel that the faith community, as a trusted advisor, can really talk to folks about the value of owning a home. And the best place to deliver that message, I think, is from the pulpit, where you have an audience that trusts you and listens to what you say and knows that you're giving them good advice.

We applaud this effort that's being put forth today, and I can assure you that by December 31st, that this $10 million will be used.

So let me say what a joy it is to be here today and to indicate the support for this wonderful, wonderful project to empower community and to make our place a wonderful place to be.

North Milwaukee State Bank will originate the low down payment loans and Fannie Mae has agreed to purchase the eligible loans. You can call the bank at 466-2344 for information.

This is a good partnership and it involves good institutions in the community. The state of Wisconsin is proud that institutions that are important for building communities in milwaukee are coming together to build our neighborhoods which are the building blocks for great cities hopefully this initiative will act as a catalyst to bring back the central city housing market and encourage further positive economic development activity in the community

Put graffiti in its place was the theme for the annual anti-graffiti spring kickoff in Milwaukee. Students from St. Amelia and Lakeside and Prince of Peace School painted trash cans and created posters to promote the city's anti-graffiti efforts.

So we really appreciate your help in this. It helps to make Milwaukee an even more beautiful place than it would be otherwise if we keep it clean. Then the other thing I wanted to mention was don't let anybody ever confuse you to think of graffiti

as art we even have people coming from other countries and other states to view what we've done because we have been successful in fighting this and i want to thank most of all the children and the teachers from saint emilion's and prince of peace for being here today you are our hope for tomorrow and we need you to help us stamp out graffiti we have one of the best programs in the country

and so we have to make sure that we're diligent and go about keeping graffiti and and and marks and things that shouldn't be on buildings and on walls off of them and especially you boys and girls you're really one of the keys to it to keep graffiti off out of our neighborhoods so we can have a safe and clean city

This is where all those colorful and creative garbage cans were created in a classroom at St. Amelia and Lakeside on Milwaukee's west side. But this story begins a couple of months ago when the plans were taken to the city's anti-graffiti task force.

Like all children we believe that our students deserve very special opportunities to explore an opportunity to be able to increase their self-esteem and their self-worth and our opportunity to be involved in the spring kickoff is a wonderful chance for them to be able to do that. We believe that the project is a positive project that promotes giving to the community. It deters negative community-based behaviors such as graffiti and tagging, and we hope that it helps to foster community partnerships, which we feel is really important in continuing to build a stronger Milwaukee.

Alderman liked the idea, and the students' handiwork first appeared along Lincoln Avenue on March 26th. They presented six specially designed garbage cans to businesses in the area. The students had previously worked with the owners to come up with ideas that related to the business. Food for a trash can at a bakery, a party theme at a wellness center, flowers for one funeral home, candles and a church near another.

We did a survey with the Lincoln Avenue business owners and found out what some of the issues that they felt on the street were, and one of them is litter. So by creating garbage cans that are more user-friendly, we're hoping that pedestrians will use the garbage cans instead of throwing litter on the street.

I wanted to be in the garbage can project because it was It is very fun and I learned a lot. I chose the cars because cars represent transportation. The wheels are for destination. The colors are for happiness. I like art because it helps me learn and makes me feel better.

I chose hearts, flowers, people, and smiles because I think that it is joyful. A funeral home needs joyful pictures because I will make the families feel better.

I like art. It makes me happy. I am nine years old and I started this project because I loved art. I heard of this project from my friends and I thought I might enjoy doing it. So I asked a teacher and I got chosen. And I did like as I thought I would.

I'm excited. I think there's some real good things that are going to be happening in this neighborhood. And my hat's off to St. Emilians and their efforts in working with us and the Layton Boulevard West Neighbors Association for coordinating this effort. And getting these cans painted, I think it will be a wonderful thing for the neighborhood.

Thank you.

Again, that good job was the result of many hours of planning at St. Amelia and Lakeside, a multi-service provider of care to children with special needs and their families. About 15 youngsters worked on the project for several months. The cans were provided by the city.

It's very exciting because we are really invested in trying to help kids understand that there's different ways to do things, and that would include that you can get great pride and satisfaction from doing positive things in the community and contributing as much as you can, even as a child. So this was a great partnership that we did with the Waukee Common Council, and so they were able to see that you can beautify the neighborhood by painting the garbage cans

Like the cans on Lincoln Avenue, these additional garbage cans tell a story about the business the students have been working with. You'll see them at locations around the city. One will stay at the school where aquariums appeal to one youngster.

I'm doing it for Santa Maria's and when we think of Santa Maria's we think of the ocean. The ocean, so we made up like orcas, like fish, killer whales. And then on the other side, we made kissing fish and stuff. And we made seaweed with algae. I like the painting because when I'm angry, it slows me down and it keeps me on task. That's why I like to paint.

Our project specifically is called Service Learning and the Garbage Can Project is one example of how we've incorporated doing something for the community and bringing many aspects into the curriculum. There's just countless ways that it fit into art, it fit into academics, language arts, when they did their research, in terms of writing things down and coming up with their lists, brainstorming with each other. We have two students per can and they're partnered with one business. And they are drawing symbols on the cans that reflect the positive contributions that that business brings to the community.

This is what's going up here. This part right here. And then this is the original thing right here.

It's been really exciting. It's been a long process. But they've just done a wonderful job. A lot of commitment from these students.

You already knew what these trash cans are for. Now you know the rest of the story. And everyone involved in Milwaukee's anti-graffiti spring kickoff hopes they'll do the job of preventing unsightly graffiti and keeping our city cleaner. It's a topic these kids talked about long before the actual work began.

things that have happened in their neighborhoods, things that they've seen in their neighborhoods, and the effect that they feel graffiti has on their community. And then we looked at how our project is going to be bringing positive, is a positive contribution to the community, and also how the arts specifically can contribute to build a better and more beautiful city.

Saint Emelian is the patron saint of orphans and neglected boyhood. He was a young man who traveled through Italy in the 1500s, providing small homes which became orphanages for children whose parents had been involved or killed in the Civil War at that time. The statue that's in front of our current location was built and placed in front of the original orphanage on the seminary grounds many, many years ago. He's surrounded by all of the children, guiding them and caring for them in a very nurturing way. It's a wonderful piece of history.

The city-designated St. Emilian neighborhood is a compact one from 84th to 92nd streets from Lisbon Avenue to Capitol Drive. There are two distinct sections here. The east half almost entirely residential. Census data from 2000 would indicate this is a relatively elderly area. About one-third of the residents were 65 or older in 2000. It's likely many have lived in the area for a long time. people like Betty Reich, who's been here for 45 years.

When we moved in, there were no streets, no sidewalks. The alley was paved and that's about it. And of course there was nothing paved until you got down to Lisbon. So you walked in mud when it was rainy.

As homes filled the vacant lots, the neighborhood grew quickly and the streets were paved. But it was still quite different than the area Betty was accustomed to.

My husband and his mother had lived on 20th and Locust at that time, or before that, and that was always busy and well-built. Of course, it was very quiet out here, very few street lights and that sort of thing. After a while, they finally put a water booster on so that our water for the evening that we would wash dishes with was more than a trickle. It worked out pretty good.

This is a neighborhood built primarily in the 1950s. Most of the single-family homes in the St. Emilian neighborhood, 66% are owner-occupied, two-thirds of the duplexes. Homes have been a good investment, and many of them are now turning over to younger families. The west half of the St. Emilian neighborhood, once owned by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, has a very different makeup from the residential streets to the east. At the northeast corner, St. Amelia and Lakeside, a provider of care to children and families founded in the 1850s as an orphanage. Next door, the St. Rose Residence for Girls, the oldest social service agency in Wisconsin, also has its roots in the 1850s. At the northwest corner, St. Margaret Mary Parish Church, completed in 1957. A school followed in 1959. At the southwest corner, St. Anne's Home for the Elderly. And on the southeast corner, the largest single housing development in the neighborhood. Villa du Coeur is a seven-building, 236-unit condominium project built in the 1970s. Ken Metzger, the president of the Condo Association, has lived here for 23 years.

Things really haven't changed that much, except for the betterment, I would think, because all of the shrub and the beautification is that much more grown up. And I think there are two major reasons why I am here, and that is the location and the affordability. And if you look around the houses here, yes, there are some duplexes over on one side and single family on the other. but they're all very well maintained. The brick structures and just excellent housing and in all respects it's generally a quiet neighborhood except we have the firehouse right down here on Lisbon Avenue and North 88th Street is one of the main routes for answering calls but you get used to that but the general appearance is very fine plus the location I think is excellent because it's You've got your restaurants, you've got the shopping area, easy accessibility to the expressway, a variety of different churches. I mean, everything is in very close proximity and even some parks. In fact, we feel that we've got a park right here at Villa Decor.

This is a relatively new neighborhood compared to many in Milwaukee. The oldest homes here may be these two residences on North 86th Street, which date to 1938 and 1939. But otherwise, the 1950s was the decade of development in this neighborhood with a population of only about 2,000 people.

A lot of people don't even know that we exist. But I don't know. In some respects, we might like to keep it that way.

It's still fairly quiet and still fairly safe out here and street lights and everything is pretty good. We used to sit out a lot at night in the summertime. Other than that, it hasn't changed all that much except the grass is green and needs to be cut all the time. Overall, it's been a very good neighborhood.

When a business applies for a new license or renews its license from the City of Milwaukee License Division, its agent may have to appear before the Licenses Committee. In these cases, the License Division will send a notice of public hearing to the following persons. Residents within 250 feet of the business or the nearest 100 single-family residences, whichever is greater. residents who have requested to receive notice about the business's hearing, residents who have submitted an objection to the business application. The notice of public hearing includes information about the business that is scheduled to appear before the Licenses Committee, the license types that the Licenses Committee is considering at the hearing, the date, time, and location of the hearing, how to attend the meeting in person or virtually. The letter also includes information on how to provide testimony at the hearing. Review this information to ensure your testimony is relevant and permissible if you plan to testify at the hearing. Some key points to remember. Your testimony should only include your first-hand experience. The Licenses Committee cannot consider hearsay in its recommendations to the Common Council. Keep your testimony concise and relevant to the license applications listed on the notice. The Licenses Committee limits testimony to three minutes. It may be helpful to write down your testimony and rehearse it before the hearing to ensure you adhere to the time limit. Be prepared to answer questions about your testimony. After you testify, the licensee, committee members, and the local older person can ask you questions about your testimony. Please note that while the Licenses Committee does its best to stay on schedule, you may have to wait past the scheduled hearing time to provide testimony if other hearings run longer. If you have any questions about the Notice of Public Hearing or Licenses Committee hearings, contact the License Division at license at milwaukee dot gov or call us at 414-286-2238.

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Thank you.

Welcome to the Thursday, July 23rd meeting of the Public Safety and Health Committee. It is 9.08, so we'll get started, have a busy agenda. I'm chair of the committee, Alderman Scott Spiker, joined to my right by Vice Chair Alderman Bergelis, to his right by Alder Taylor. We'll be joined momentarily by Alder Moore, Alder Chambers is excused. Item, we're also joined by staff assistant Joanna Ortiz. Item one, file number 24260400. This is our ordinance relating to parking controls.

Yes, good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the committee, Scott Reinbacher with the Department of Public Works. We do have several changes to the city's parking regulations before you today. First is to install a no stopping zone from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. on the south side of Howard Avenue between 13th and 20th by Wilson Park. Second, we are proposing to install a no stopping 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. restriction within the cul-de-sac portion or the angled parking stalls in the 1600 block of South 24th Street. Third, we are proposing to eliminate a no parking from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. restriction on the west side of 20th between Layton and Barnard. uh and finally we are proposing to install no parking in the alley bounded by burnham rogers seventh and eighth uh all of these changes were coordinated with the local alders happy to answer any questions uh alder taylor oh so i'm just asking about the ones on mill road that were requested over a month ago for no parking signs yes sorry alder taylor when i said When I saw you this morning, I was like, shoot, I don't think we figured that out for Alderman Taylor. I will check in with the county on that. I know we have a solution that's drafted up. We'll check in with your office to make sure it's up to your standards and we'll get the signs out there ASAP.

Thanks. And with respect to the two in my district, I'm not sure we have the right side of the street. So the no stopping on Howard says the south side, but the north side of Howard is what's adjacent to the park.

Let me check on that, Alderman. I thought it was the south side of the park.

let's let's hold that one then okay um okay we'll hold that one and again with the 13th street this one i might be wrong about um or i'm not i'm sorry 20th street between layton and barnard on the west side. I'll check that again. We don't have to hold that one, but if we could revisit that one, I thought it was the east side. But the one adjacent to the park, positive, the Wilson Park is on the north side of that street, not the south side. No, it is on the south side.

It is on the south side.

Oh my gosh, well, that's gonna be one of those mornings. It is on the south side. When I look at it from my house, it's north. Okay, so we're good. We're all solid.

Mr. Chair. Yeah. I do have a question about the last one. No parking in an alley? I thought alley parking is not permitted already.

Just overnight, Alderman. You cannot park in any alley during the overnight hours. However, we are proposing to restrict parking all day in this particular alley. Got it.

okay thank you all right and with that alder taylor would move to recommend passage and hearing no objections so ordered item two we're joined by alder moore at the table welcome elder moore mr chair file number 260401 ordinance relating to traffic controls

Yes, only one change to regulatory intersection controls today, and that is to install stop signs for the north and southbound directions at 89th and hour. Similarly, this change was coordinated with the local alder. Happy to answer any questions.

Any questions? If not, Alderberg-Ellis would move to recommend passage and hearing no objections to order. Thank you very much. Thank you. Item three, file number 260450, appointment of Jordan Morales to the Board of Fire and Police Commissioners by the Mayor.

Director Todd, if you want to kick things off. Yes. Good morning, Mr. Chair, committee members, Leon Todd, Executive Director of the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, and it's my pleasure to introduce Jordan Morales, who Mayor Johnson has nominated to fill a vacancy on the Fire and Police Commission. If confirmed, Mr. Morales would fill the seat that was previously held by former Commissioner Bree Spencer, whose term expired on July 17th, I'm sorry, July 13th. I believe Mr. Morales is very well qualified to serve as a commissioner on the FPC board. He has a different type of professional background than the commissioners that currently sit on the Fire and Police Commission, which I believe would be very beneficial and useful to the commission, both in terms of his experience and the different type of perspective that he would bring to the board. He currently serves as an assistant superintendent for Mortenson Construction. He also chairs the Milwaukee Historic Preservation Commission and serves as a structural craftsman for the Wisconsin Air National Guard. And Mr. Morales previously served as an air traffic control watch supervisor for the US Air Force and as an air traffic controller for the US Department of Transportation. He's also been a fairly prominent voice on local issues, particularly related to public safety and reckless driving, traffic control. Again, that's another beneficial perspective and opinion that I believe would benefit the Fire and Police Commission. So I would respectfully request your approval of this nomination. And Mr. Chair, if it's all right, I will turn it over to Mr. Morales.

We'll see if the mayor's office has anything. Ms. Danius, anything to add?

Good morning, Amber Daniels, council liaison for Maya Johnson. I'm just here as going to introduce Mr. Jordan Morales. He had the opportunity to meet with a few of you guys today. So I'm just here for support.

Okay, very good. And I did have the opportunity to meet with Mr. Morales. Appreciate the time. One quick question. Ms. Spencer, who's leaving, thank you for her service. She was tremendous on the board. I didn't always agree with her, but she was always very thoughtful. Will she be staying on until the new person is seated or will there be a...

So her term ended on July 13th per 6250. Terms begin and end on the second Monday in July for FPC commissioners. And then unlike other board members and commissioners, Act 12 changed the statute to specifically say fire and police commissioners cannot continue past the end of their term. So she's no longer on the commission. Okay.

So there'll be a bit of a gap there. All right, Alder Burgos. Well, first of all, Mr. Morales, would you like to say a few words? And then Alder Burgos has some questions for you.

Sure, thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, members of the committee. My name is Jordan Morales. I grew up in Menominee Falls and moved to Milwaukee as an adult as soon as I graduated high school, enlisted in the Air Force as a air traffic controller, served four years active duty. deployed to the Middle East during that time. After that, I was hired by the FAA as an air traffic controller and continue to serve in the reserves on a part-time status with the Air National Guard. In 2022, I made a career change into construction management. and cross-trained also in the Air National Guard to civil engineering, and so now I'm NCO in charge of the structure shop in the civil engineer squadron at the 128th, and also, as Lee said, assistant superintendent for Mortenson Construction, and currently working on a freighter tower project, building a new hospital tower in Wauwatosa. With that said, my background now is in managing a construction workforce, which is a union workforce, dealing with union issues and efficiencies and productivities and material management and logistics. It's something I'm passionate about, looking into efficiently using a a union workforce and something that I spent a lot of time digging into and I've just as a hobby kind of looked into that with the police force as well. And just trying to find ways that the residents of the city of Milwaukee can get better police services for the amount of money that we spend. So that's my brief introduction on what brings me here and yeah, look forward to answering any questions you guys may have.

Okay, very good. We'll start with Alder Bergels.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Welcome to the table. There have been recent changes from Act 12 that fundamentally change how the Fire and Police Commission can operate and does operate. There have been some interesting recent files in the last few weeks, few months, on policy changes with the police department. What kind of perspective can you bring to the first, what's your opinion on how those processes worked out? Some were successful, some were not. Some didn't even go to the Fire and Police Commission. And then how do you think you can contribute and assist that process to be more effective, more efficient?

Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, as you all know, Act 12 changed the dynamic of how the Fire and Police Commission impacts police and fire policy, SOPs, et cetera. Now, post-Act 12, I believe the Fire and Police Commissioners still obviously play a role. We can send communication files to the Common Council regarding policy changes. And I believe, as... is the intention behind the Fire and Police Commission that the Common Council should heavily weigh the opinions of the Fire and Police Commission. That's my opinion. However, I believe that commissioners need to maintain open lines of communication with the alders. I think that's extremely important now more than ever. Obviously, certain bodies have taken an adversarial stance against the city of milwaukee in in you know state politics and now more than ever it's imperative that milwaukee stand together in lockstep against these forces or you know in favor of things that will benefit milwaukee uh... so it doesn't mean that we're not going to have disagreements between common council and farm police commission i think there should be real conversation honest conversation uh... an openness to changing our minds and it you know i've certain opinions about police policies that we just might not be ready for as a city. And so we have to take that into account also when advancing our positions. But my position on post-Act 12 is, we've got to be talking to each other as commissioners and common council members. I already have Alderwoman Moore's cell phone number. I have your cell phone number, sir. I look forward to getting the other two members of the committee's numbers. And I'd like to be in regular communication with all of you about issues related to the Fire and Police Commission and fire and policing issues so that we can work together and stand as a united front as much as possible on the issues.

Excellent. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Alder Moore.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. And Jordan, thank you for your ability to serve as well as thank you for taking time to connect with me and meet with me. Was that last week? So I would love for you to, there was, you know, during our conversation and even during the conversation that you all recently had at the community forum downtown, some of the things that you shared. If you can just share a little bit with us about just some of the interest areas. There were some things that you're like, you know what, it'd be, you know, these are some things that I'm passionate about or, you know, would love to focus on. If you can share, you know, just a few of those things with us so that our community knows what are some of the areas that you may have been personally impacted by, but some of the things you would like to focus on while your time, if appointed on the commission.

Absolutely. Thank you. As I said, I grew up in Menominee Falls. If you called the police in Menominee Falls, one, they'd respond almost immediately. But I When I first moved to the city of Milwaukee, my car was stolen when I lived in the Silver City neighborhood. And it was really my first occasion to interact with the police, and so I called 911, and they said, we don't even send a police officer to this. You have to go into the district to make a report. And, you know, being a new Milwaukeean, that certainly surprised me. If I was in Menominee Falls, they'd send the entire police force to a call like that. They'd hire more officers to solve the crime, I think, if a car was stolen in Menominee Falls. So I was surprised by that, but okay, you know, a lot of cars get stolen in this city. So I'll go into the district, start making a report, and... was having friendly small talk with the desk sergeant and in the course of that small talk I asked the sergeant if he lived in the city and he was obviously very comfortable to share with me that he hated the city that he did not wanna be in the city. He didn't live in the city and he would never live in the city. And I was just surprised to have that interaction with a police supervisor that was in a customer service facing role. It was really disheartening as a person who respects and appreciates the sacrifices that our officers make and what they're asked to do every day. I understand the level of jadedness from the position. Being a military man myself, I can't say we don't ever complain about stuff, but just the level of it to a resident that you don't really know was surprising to me. Then after that I moved to the Sherman Park neighborhood and I've had other occasions to call police and was disheartened by response times. We'd see, we had a burglary into our garage and the officers came way later than when we called and they sent two police officers to it and you know they really took like a few hours there and you know you know there there's not going to be really any investigation time and so i i question the use of the resources on the uh... on my garage burglary incident you know there's never any follow-up uh... we had a video of the suspects face and they said they'd follow up with us uh... to to receive that video and they never followed up and i'm just like it'd be a waste of time to even send it to him. Cause like I said, I didn't feel confident. I didn't have the trust that, uh, that, that this would be pursued as an investigation. So, um, and then lastly, my house was burglarized on, on grant Boulevard. And while the officers responded pretty quickly because we were home at the time, um, and the officer was very nice, uh, very respectful. Again, she offered some advice, uh, that was basically like, if I was you, I would move out of this city. I'd get out of the city, get to the suburbs, like take you and your family out to the city. And I just don't want our police department driving good families out of this city. You'll never drive me out of the city for one. But two, our police officers, I want them to be the best ambassadors of this city. When you interact with a Milwaukee City police officer, you should say, I want to live in this city. And that's not the impression I'm getting right now in the few anecdotal customer service interactions I've had with Milwaukee police officers. Now, I understand that's anecdotal. I understand this is not every police officer, but I do think it's indicative of a larger culture issue that possibly exists. We know that there's been a pullback on proactive policing since the ACLU Collins Agreement, and there might be a correlation there between how police are interacting with the public now and that agreement. Yeah, this has all driven me to wanna look into a few things like resource allocation. How are we utilizing especially the patrol force of MPD? How can we improve our response times to better serve the residents of the city of Milwaukee and the overall morale issue within the department?

Thank you so much for that. Just really quick, a few more questions. How do you weigh community views and input with your own personal views? Because obviously, the Fire and Police Commission do a really good job when there are issues. They have the public know about them so that they can come and testify or share their experiences and perspectives. One of the most recent things was around our police pursuit and video policy. And so they received... probably hundreds of testimony and hours of testimony. That's just sort of an example. But how do you sort of weigh that sort of community input? And it might be a perspective that may be a little different from your own.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think you have to heavily weigh public input on policing. Ultimately, it's not the Jordan Morales Police Department. Even though I have my opinions on things, you know, pursuits, facial recognition, flock cameras, et cetera. I've got my own personal opinions and I may think that something is the right move, but the city might not be ready for it. You know, the people might not be ready for it. And that might be because there's a trust issue with the police department. They might be ready if there was better trust. Okay, if there was more faith that officers would do the right thing or firefighters would do the right thing in this, that situation, I'd love to get to the place where the community has the type of trust where we can give, you know, the police department, the fire department, whatever tools that they say they need or want to more effectively do their job. In some cases, the community might be on board with that and we'll go with that. In some cases, even if I think like, yeah, this would be a force multiplier to the officers and make it better for them to do their job. You know, I'd want the police to have this evidence if it was a crime committed against me. Um, Ultimately, we're a free people in the city of Milwaukee. Police derives from the Greek word polis, which is the people. We're self-governing and so we have to respect that even if it might be a disagreement with what I ultimately believe. Not that I'm not gonna push my position. I'm gonna make my arguments. but I'm going to be open to being convinced by the counterpoint and also just thinking, is this the right time? Are the people ready for something like this? So that's how I would handle issues that I don't necessarily disagree or agree with. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Alder Taylor.

So, well, I think my questions were very similar to what Alder Moore just asked. What do you see was most important to residents revolving around the issue of service? But I am pleased to hear that you have focused on the response time proactive policing, which I think you'll be pleased with what some of the things that our officers are doing, our police department is focused on. But so I like that. The other question I had was just how were you made aware of this opening? So if you could just talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, I was made aware that Commissioner Spencer was going to be resigning from the commission and I had made known my interest after discussing with the mayor several issues that I've already spoken about to you guys. You know, the mayor knew about my burglary issue and, you know, my car being stolen and all things like that. And I just said, look, these are some things I'd really like to dig into. But I don't really have the time as a private citizen or the, you know, I think you might get better responsiveness from certain folks if you have a fire and police commissioner title than if I'm just Mr. Morales from the Lower East Side now, which is where I live now. So I wanted to be able to dig into these issues with... with some weight behind my back and the ability to bring residence issues to a venue like the Fire and Police Commission. When I talk to my neighbors on Grant Boulevard, they just want better response types they want a police force they don't want like no policing they don't want like you know they're not talking about uh... stop and frisk that much to be honest with you date they want when they call the police they want the police to show up they want confidence that the police will solve their crimes for quality of life issues stuff like that most of my resident most of my neighbors were not victims of like shootings or homicides and and things like that that's very few milwaukeans that are victims of these terrible crimes have to be investigated no way around it we got to dedicate resources to those violent crimes but most residents of the city of milwaukee what they want the police force for is quality of life issues you know illegal dumping which you guys are going to be talking about later today stuff like that and we hate to see these crimes go by the wayside and get all to us. Again, I'm going to get more perspective as a commissioner, but to us as residents, it seems like there's no consequences to things like this. So I just, I want to dig into stuff like that. And I think having the title of a fire and police commissioner will assist me in that endeavor.

Okay. But you do know there are consequences to those things. Yes. Some challenges in trying to enforce those. But one of the other challenges that we are having is encouraging others to apply for the police department. So any ideas on how you would assist in helping to encourage that?

yeah uh... nationwide problem right now almost nobody wants to become a police officer and that's that's an issue uh... that that uh... every municipality is having right now especially municipalities like milwaukee that are tightly strapped for cash uh... with regards to officer salaries Yeah, I think I've seen a strategy for recruitment from the Fire and Police Commission that looks good to me. I've seen some ads already that seem more professionally done, seem like they'll reach out to a greater audience, seem like encouraging people to apply, put a more human face to the officers. So that's the kind of thing that I like to see. I would like to, I think you just got to, we really have to advertise the profession to a bigger audience than what we have typically in the past for our officers. I mean, at the end of the day, it's a... fairly well-paying profession. I understand everybody wants to get paid more, but it's a fairly well-paying profession that you can go into with, you know, a high school education or some community college and have a great career in, and you can make a lot of impact for the city as a Milwaukee police officer. So, I mean, it's, There's people out there who are driven to community service, who just want to be part of something bigger than themselves. And that's what drove me to join the military. And that's what drives me into public service as well. There's people out there who, as long as you're paying their bills, they'd love to do that job. And we just got to find them. We got to uncover them and get them on the force. So I like the strategy that we've implemented recently on recruitment. I'd expand it. More, you know, we're going to need more funding for recruitment efforts and more ads. But I like the strategy so far that the newly implemented strategy on recruitment.

All right. Thank you so much for that. Thank you for your service. Thank you. I'm also a veteran.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

So stay in touch. Yes. So we do have some things that we do for veterans, like for you to be involved in that. Well, thank you. Thank you for your answers as well.

Absolutely.

Okay. Before we hit the second round, I'll ask a couple of questions. First of all, I always snag the cell phone numbers of fire and police commissioners, so I have something written down with my number, so let's make sure to exchange cells before we leave today. so what do you see the fire and police commissioner role though with respect to some issues such as recruiting how do you come up with policy ideas that might be fruitful do you see yourself leaning on the fire and police commission apparatus under director todd um Or are you doing independent research to bring ideas to the table because it's all well and good to say we need better response times, but we can't get any officers through the door. We can't get our three classes to 65. We can't get anywhere near that. And there's a... there's not gonna be an improvement one might think in response times unless we have adequate staffing. So what do you see your role as a fire and police commissioner? Are you evaluating things being brought to the table or are you bringing yourself to the table policy ideas? And if so, where do you get them?

Absolutely. So I'll be bringing my, I'll be evaluating ideas that are brought to the table, but I'm also going to be bringing ideas to the table and digging into all of this stuff. I'll be, I would love to get a working group formed with the police department, the FPC, the MPA together to put heads together and come up with strategies for several hot button issues, especially recruiting. I'm going to be someone who works outside of necessarily the four corners of the role, like more than just the two meetings a month or whatever it is, and digging into these issues and Yeah, I'll be doing my own independent research as well, as well as evaluating issues that the experts are bringing to us.

Mr. Chair, can I just chime in briefly? I've had a chance to speak with Mr. Morales on multiple occasions, somewhat lengthy, and I'll just say from my conversations with him, I have no doubt that he's going to be an active... commissioner on the board. So I just wanted to put that, my two cents in there. Thank you.

Yeah, and I mean, I do kind of judge fire and police commissioners. When I watch those meetings, I see who's active, who's asking really thoughtful questions. So that's... That's what we're looking for, not folks to just watch a meeting take place, but to engage, to ask questions that are tough, that raise some uncomfortable issues and push the discussion deeper. The response about community feedback, you gave what might be a little bit of a politician's response, which no offense there, because we're politicians over here. But when you say, well, we wanna do, on the one hand, I'm a fire and police commissioner, I do a tremendous amount of research, I have a set of knowledge that perhaps the community at large does not have, and so shouldn't I trust my own judgment in that? On the other hand, the winds of the committee room might be, if you watch the fire and police commission, it is not, the whole city that shows up to those meetings. And even though it's a night meeting and you think, oh, well, everybody, you know, it's after work, it's still a select group that shows up regularly. So what do you do as far as making the tough decisions in the room if you feel strongly about an issue, even if the room's against you, even if you don't have maybe an alder person's access to constituents on a daily basis telling you that things are maybe different

out there. You guys run into this all the time at your hearings. You get an issue and a lot of times the people who are in favor of the issue won't show up because people aren't excited about something when they're in favor of it. All the people who are against the issue show up. You only get that perspective. I've seen it. Every time I've watched the budget hearings here, you get I think one time it was like, you know, 20 people showed up to it and 100% of the comments were to defund the police, right? Well, we can't, we know obviously that that is not the city's perspective. That's a select group of the city's perspective. And, you know, not that it should be discounted or thrown away, but you have to take that under advisement. as the whole like we've we've got to look at the entire city so no i'm not going to necessarily be uh you know back down off of an issue or swayed by just what goes on uh in public comment that night uh i've got you know a fairly good pulse on the news media and kind of what's what the what the vibe is for city residents opinions on things but i'd like to expand the aperture of of public sentiment by making myself very available to the media, to residents, know that they can contact me about issues and try and get a better pulse on the issues from the city because as you stated, there's a very regular group that shows up to the Fire and Police Commission and I love that engagement and they make their voice known and they should be recognized for that and they should, that's a voice that needs to be heard. But, To your point, Alderman Spiker, that's not the whole city's sentiment. So yeah, we take the committee room, public comment under advisement and listen to that respectfully. But ultimately, I have to go with what I think is best for the city, what the city's ready for, and what I believe the public actually believes about the issue, not just, you know, the five or six people who are showing up to the public hearing.

And a final question, then I'll kick it over to Alderman Bergelis for a second round of questions. With respect to, so you came to my attention through your thoughtful comments relating to reckless driving years ago, back with Alderman Murphy and the Reckless Driving Carjacking Task Force. There's been discussion about police pursuit policies. We'll sort of treat this like Supreme Court and not ask you how you would vote on a particular issue, but do you think your experience with dealing with the issue of tackling the very difficult issue of reckless driving has influenced your opinions about how strongly we should restrict or not restrict the police pursuit policies?

uh... my personal opinion on the pursuit policy now and i'm open to being changed on it through data and good arguments uh... on on the commission and uh... obviously input from the police department as well as activists who have a different opinion on the issue is that it would be extremely demoralizing for me as a city resident to see someone commit a crime or or do something and all they have to do to get away with that crime is flee from the police and them not being able to pursue. uh... that'd be extremely demoralizing for me as someone who you know tries to follow the law as much as i can you know i mean i renew my license plates every year i try and follow the speed limit and you know put my blinker on and stuff like that and uh... and you know, it would just be, I think it's just demoralizes residents. And that's why, you know, the city of Milwaukee used to have a much more restrictive pursuit policy back in the day. And then residents, I believe use their voice and said like, no, this is getting a little out of hand. We got to have some pursuit. How I think there is, um, a good case to be made that pursuits are extremely dangerous and that a pursuit can actually make the issue more dangerous. Now a lot of times the pursuits are initiated because of a person who's reckless driving already, which is, obviously in and of itself dangerous. I believe it's an imminent danger to the public when someone's recklessly driving and it's something that needs to be stopped because I don't want to get smoked with my family as I'm crossing through an intersection by a reckless driver. I'd rather them be attempted to be pulled over or stopped. I think our current pursuit policy Puts residents in a tough position because obviously the policy as it stands now, police are not allowed to intervene or use force to bring the pursuit to an end. So there's no pit maneuver allowed. There's no roadblocks allowed. They're allowed to use spike strips. Um, but you know, those, those have varying levels of success. Um, but yeah, How the pursuits work now is you chase them around for 20 miles in a circle in the city going 90 miles an hour and maybe the suspect will wreck into an innocent person's car. Maybe they wreck into a building or a light pole. They get out, they bail and they run or they run out of gas. And so that's how pursuits are terminated now resulting in the arrest of the suspect. otherwise the officers have to call off the pursuit if it gets too risky. There's other jurisdictions within Milwaukee County that are allowed to use things like the pit maneuver to stop vehicles. And I've heard reports that officers will actually route the suspects into those jurisdictions so those jurisdictions can take the lead and bring those bring those uh... bring those chases to a to a quick end now i don't believe we should be having hollywood style pursuits where cars are being rammed by the police and and all this crazy stuff in in congested city streets uh... But I believe there are applications in an urban policing environment where you can use pit maneuver, roadblocks, things like that. Not every street is congested all the time in the city of Milwaukee, and some of them are wide open. And I'd rather have an officer attempt a pit maneuver on an empty street at 2 a.m. than have a pursuit go unnoticed. all around the city for three hours, 50 miles or whatever, all at high speeds until it hits someone eventually. So right now I think we almost have the worst of both worlds with the pursuit policy. We have a pursuit policy where we chase the suspect until the suspect decides to give up or makes a mistake where they wreck. which puts obviously residents in danger, but also we don't give the police officers the discretion to end the pursuit with force. And I don't know if that's necessarily a change that the city's ready for to implement pit maneuvers and stuff like that. I understand that. But I'd like to look into that a little bit more and see is there good best practices for urban police departments to implement forcible stops of pursuits and strategies to implement that so that we can bring pursuits to an end immediately when an officer has the opportunity to do so versus just watch, you know, chasing them around the city for forever until the suspect makes a mistake. Okay.

Well, I've asked enough questions for now. So Alderberg Ellis.

Thank you very much. Just a couple quick questions and I appreciate the chase pursuit policy because I can take that one off my list. Do you commit to reading the agenda prior to all the meetings?

Yes, I do. I read the Turner's report on the Fire and Police Commission, saw that that was an issue, probably with the previous commissioners. I don't know so much about today's commissioners, but absolutely, I'll be reading the agenda prior to the meetings, and I'll have formed opinions on the issues.

All right. Do flock cameras give MPD tools and resources to help solve crimes faster?

Simply yes.

All right. Has Collins run its course?

I don't necessarily. I personally wish that we didn't have the restrictions of the Collins Agreement. of the reporting requirements of the Collins Agreement. I believe the thrust of the Collins Agreement is essentially constitutional policing. The Supreme Court, it's basically the Supreme Court's ruling on the Collins Agreement, or on constitutional policing, stop and frisk. I believe there should still be reporting requirements. I would like to see the officers or the MPA work with MPD to maybe create a less ham-fisted report. So to say it's run its course, and maybe I misspoke a little bit earlier when I first started answering the question that I wouldn't like to see the reporting. I still want to see the reporting. I would like to see a more efficient report that the officers can have some buy-in into. Because if I was stopped by an MPD officer on reasonable suspicion, I think I would like a report on that. I think I'd like to be able to reference back to that. And if I felt I was mistreated, to be able to make a complaint and there be some sort of a report on that. I think the complaints about the reports are you know, on how time consuming they are, maybe a little bit overstated. I've seen some of the reports and they are a little clunky. Um, but I believe if an officer has a reasonable suspicion, they should be able to generate that report somewhat quickly because they should already kind of know why they stopped the individual, um, But I'm open to streamlining the report within the framework of the Collins Agreement, collaborating with the union to give them some buy-in into it, understanding that, to my knowledge, there's no plan to get rid of the Collins Agreement. It's the framework we have to work within. I'll leave it to the politicians, I guess, to decide whether or not to challenge the Collins Agreement and get it tossed out. But I'm committed to working within the Collins Agreement as it stands now.

Appreciate that. Does MPD need to follow every ordinance in the City of Milwaukee?

Yes, I would say generally.

Should all law enforcement follow ordinances in the City of Milwaukee? Yes. All right. Should MPD enforce that when other law enforcement agencies don't? Yes. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Other questions from committee members? I will ask about the incident that was reported in the media. When you were an air traffic controller about bringing the loaded weapon, leaving it in the bathroom, obviously that was a lapse in judgment. You communicated as much in our private conversation. What can you say to folks who worry that that lapse in judgment might be indicative of a larger issue? Can you just want to give me the opportunity to speak to that?

Yeah, absolutely, thank you. Yeah, I was super appreciative to Mr. O'Donnell for publishing one of my most embarrassing moments for everyone to read. From the club. So, yeah, that's okay, though, because it caused me to reflect on, you know, on the incident and where I am now and actually how, you know, it worked out for me and my family's good, and now I'm in a great spot where I've got better hours, better schedule, more time with my family, better work-life balance, et cetera. So thankful in the end that it happened. But I would say to folks, like, you know, who among us would want to be judged by our single most embarrassing or irresponsible moment that we've had in our lives? I wouldn't, I would ask for folks to look at my overall, you know, life and community service record to judge whether or not, you know, my judgment or, you know, responsibility is there. I think, I wouldn't point to that incident as a great example of my judgment, but I would point to that incident as a great example of my integrity. After I realized what had happened, I called my wife and I told her, I think I'm in some trouble here. This could be bad for me. And she said, Jordan, just be honest. And I was like, that's easy. if we're honest we don't have to make up a story we don't have to remember anything we just be honest and so i remember coming down out of the tower that day going out to the parking lot where the sheriff's deputies were and they approached me and said hey um are you jordan morales i said yeah and i said was this your gun i said it was and uh what do we need to do they said well would you mind coming and just answering some questions at the substation giving us a statement I went, answered their questions, told them everything, honestly. I believe the sheriff's report indicates as much, that I was honest, forthcoming, and cooperative immediately. Threw myself at the mercy of the sheriff's department to do whatever they wanted to do. Threw myself at the mercy of the FAA to do whatever they wanted to do. And I bore consequences. I bore real consequences. I lost my... air traffic control career through that. Now, again, I'm thankful for that looking back because now I'm in a much better field. But, yeah, I had to make a career change based on that. And I believe that it's an indication that I'll be accountable. I'll be honest. And I'll be someone that the public can trust to do the right thing, even when I'm exposed, when it could have personal consequences to me. So I'll leave it at that.

And the last question relating to that is, so you would be called on as a fire and police commissioner to be at disciplinary hearings with respect to officers, firefighters involved. and one question is how would your experience having gone through what you did where you were potentially subject to criminal penalties, how would that, if at all, influence your approach to those? Do you think it has colored in any way your approach to those sorts of hearings?

yeah i think it would influence it in the sense that i know what it's like to be on the other side of the table you know i know what it's like to be subject to work discipline um to you know be you know investigated for stuff like that and um i think i would be sympathetic with any person coming before me and you know i would i would still though uh even so i would take the facts of each individual case you know i got what i deserved i believe from the faa i don't think they treated me unfairly i don't uh there was an option to be more merciful to me and uh in that incident they chose not to not to use that but i wasn't unfairly treated and so i would take the whole officer firefighters record into account i would take their you know uh... any positive accolades they've received into account and then of course the seriousness of the offense and what the offense was was the first time offenses at a recurring issue uh... and make a judgment based on the facts of the case obviously taking into consideration what the police administration is recommended and uh... Yeah, I would still have to fairly judge the issue. I don't think I could use my experience to let anyone get a pass from policies that are in place and that we're all expected to abide by. But at the same time, I think I'd be able to look at things with grace and work within the frameworks of policy and table of penalties, et cetera, um, to give, give everybody, um, grace when, when it's so merited. So, okay.

Any other questions? Alder Taylor?

Yes. Uh, so looking at the situation that you just, um, talked about, um, and you talked about judgment and sometimes maybe not using great judgment in situations. Um, part of the Fire and Police Commission, you'll be looking at SOPs and changes that might need to be made. And so there's a situation recently where a victim felt revictimized, sexual assault victim revictimized by the officer that was asking questions. And the excuse may have been that maybe that officer was new. So just looking at that, is that a viable excuse in your opinion? for maybe not handling that victim well.

Right. I won't speak to the specific case, but just generally, sexual assault victims are a special case that I believe officers need to be exceptionally well prepared to respond to. There should be no question from the victim that the police department is on their side to receive their statement, to believe their basic complaint, and handle that with care. Now, I'm not saying everybody who accuses somebody else is correct, but I'm just saying a police officer... I've personally been involved with an issue, not with a Milwaukee police officer, but where a police officer responded pretty terribly to a sexual assault allegation. And it makes you sick. So I... I believe sexual assault victims need to be handled a special way. I think a buzzer should be going off in an officer's head when they need to be responding to a complaint from a sexual assault victim. So generally, no, I do not believe that it's an acceptable excuse to say that the officer is new. If an officer is so new, then they should not be the ones responding to that very sensitive situation. Maybe they need some more time with the training officer to watch how they do it. Because yeah, the worst thing you wanna do is put someone through that trauma again I understand that and no that would not be an acceptable excuse in my opinion again not knowing anything of the facts of that specific case I would have to see all the facts of that case to comment on that one specifically but just as a general statement with sexual assault victims thank you so much for your answer yes all right are there any other questions if not do we have a motion

I so move. All right, Alder Moore moves to recommend confirmation. Are there any objections? If not, then confirmation is recommended. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you.

Item four, file number 260496, an ordinance relating to penalties and liability for illegal dumping. This is sponsored by Alder Jackson. Alder Jackson, thank you for your patience while we went through a lengthy confirmation questioning. Would you like to kick things off?

Oh, sure. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I have to give Alderman Pratt her props for this came about during our research for the original illegal dumping file. Would you know that if I threw a bag of garbage into the river, my fine would only be up to $200? Did you know if I pushed any garbage car or anything into the lake, my fine would only be up to $500. So we took a deep look in that. I'm going to thank Max Strickey for helping us through this and my assistant, Nick Savage, for digging down into it and running it down. So he has the specifics, but we'll be increasing fines and also levying the city to go after their funds if the city has to go retrieve anything out of the water.

Alder Pratt is on the big board. Did you have anything you'd like to say, Alder Pratt?

we can wait thank you i just want to uh thank ottoman jackson for his leadership on this um i know everyone thinks the illegal dumpings are i'm not um but it is something that really affects my district heavily especially when it comes to tires i know that was the huge issue in my district but um just to thank uh ottoman jackson and max and nick for working on this and looking into this it was a loophole and a blind spot for us. So finding that has been great and another way that we can use enforcement to stop illegal dumping.

all right thank you very good lrb would you have anything you want to add toss up the numbers some of the numbers um sure so a couple of the specifics here that were mentioned increasing the penalties for dumping on Oh, I apologize. Max Dricky, Legislative Reference Bureau. Increasing the statutory penalties for dumping on public or private property on land, increasing it to a Class N fine or forfeiture, that would... increase the penalty uh to between 500 and five thousand dollars uh depending on this the severity of of the dumping there and then for uh the waterway dumping um going from a uh what our code currently says is a finer forfeiture of between um i believe five excuse me uh I mean, depending on the specific statute, between $5 and $50 to between $2,000 and $10,000, which would be the upper limit allowable under state law. There are a couple of other things to flag. The ordinance makes clear that the, as Alderman Jackson says, that the city will pursue cost recovery for any cost to the city for cleanup on private, excuse me, on public property and the waterways, particularly and especially something that's new here, any sort of ongoing monitoring if there was a, you know, someone was tipping hazardous substances that might, you know, necessitate ongoing monitoring, water quality assessment, things like that. The city could go after the violator and potentially the violator's employer if it was directed by, and larger organization for those costs. And then the final thing, as I mentioned, that sort of responsible corporate officer liability. So if you are hauling garbage for a living, whether that's waste hires, whether you're disposing of waste for your organization, for your job, your light industrial job or something like that, and you are directed to dispose or get rid of trash, and your employer knows that you're likely to bring that to a public park or a private lot or dump that at the water's edge, that those corporate officers who are responsible for giving that direction, they are also liable under these provisions. Any technical questions on the drafting, I'm happy to answer.

Okay. Mr. Chair.

Alder Moore.

Thank you so much. Thank you all so much for your work in regards to this. I know that we also received a letter in the file just sort of outlining how, you know, Landlords may be impacted. I wanted to ask a little bit because a lot of this depends on enforcement, right? Catching, you know, these folks are in the dead of night doing these sorts of acts, some in the dead of daylight. So my question is really centered around enforcement, and I don't know if there's anybody from DNS on the board, but it says here that Chief of Police, Commissioner of Neighborhood Services, Commissioner of Health, Commissioner of Public Works, Harbormaster, or their agent designees shall enforce this subchapter. Okay. Typically, and again, I don't know if you all can answer this question, but typically, who is responsible for sort of doing, it's like police work, right? It's like doing the legwork, finding out who, should be fined or feed. I think that's a big part of my question because that's the only way that we can, you know, appropriately fine or regulate this matter. It's finding, you know, and that's always a challenging part is finding who does it. Okay.

Good morning, Mike Mazzamini, Neighborhood Services. Thank you, Mike. So we have special enforcement inspectors that investigate reports of illegal dumping. We also work closely with the Milwaukee Police Department to try and investigate these incidences when they occur throughout the community.

And good morning, Alders. Evan Goyke, City Attorney. Just to build off of part of your question, I believe, in order for a citation to be valid, we actually have to name the violator. Otherwise, that citation couldn't be successfully prosecuted. So to your point, it is hard at times to catch folks. This is a longstanding enforcement dialogue that this committee and others have had. How do we catch folks running red lights? How do we catch folks illegally dumping? Department of Neighborhood Services has been creative and embarking on new strategies and certainly the plea has gone out to residents and from residents to identify these folks and we do need that. We do have to kind of catch who it is, whether that's on video or first person eyewitness that could testify and identify the individual, but we do have to know who they are.

Do we typically, and Mike, this question might go to you, do we typically fine an owner if someone, private property, someone illegally dumps on their private property, do we typically fine them or are they typically responsible for the cleanup costs associated with that illegal dumping?

So if we were unable to identify the individual that dumped on that property, the property owner would be responsible for the cleanup costs. We don't cite them. We don't penalize them. It's just the cost of the cleanup that gets passed on to that owner.

Got it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Alder Taylor?

just looking looking over the document it says any person persons or corporation is listed in here are we holding corporations to the same standard that we would a person as far as penalty so are they paying the same amount or are we would the penalty go up if it's a corporation dumping tires per se so

The simple answer to your question, Alderwoman, is no. There is not an additional penalty if the violator is an individual who is acting alone versus someone who has been directed by their supervisor, if that makes sense. Now, if you are dumping at the direction of your supervisor, what this ordinance is saying is that your supervisor is liable for the same penalties that you would be liable for. Does that make sense?

yes okay uh and then there is uh under penalties it says um two thousand dollars for each offense together with cost of uh cost of prosecution or shall be imprisoned in the house of corrections i mean is that

I believe that's the standard language that is a potential penalty if an individual is cited, found guilty of the forfeiture and fails to pay. That is not a policy that has been in effect for many years. We are not incarcerating individuals for their failure to pay their forfeitures. But I would defer to LRB, but I believe that's standard language that comes on any kind of penalty language that we add. It is, yes.

But it may not be in practice. But you're saying it may not be in practice.

It is not in practice. Last time Unicourt put somebody in jail for failure to pay a fine was. And Mr. Chair, just briefly, one of the reasons I came to the table, we are reviewing this file. Obviously we have... eight days before council meets uh... there i just wanted to flag for folks and and have uh... talked with the sponsor and the sponsor's office and understand the intent uh... in state law the public trust doctrine protects navigable waterways and holds them open to the public and and and that's a long-standing uh... tradition state wisconsin we are reviewing certain state statutes that provide enforcement jurisdiction by state law to the Department of Natural Resources of those navigable waterways. I'm not here at the table today to say that this file is not legal or enforceable. I did want to come forward and just tell the committee and tell the sponsor and be on record that the review is complicated and there may be a notification next week that we need additional time to sort out that kind of web of enforcement that has been created at state law. So I'm just, I'm kind of yellow lighting that there are complexities over enforcement in navigable waterways based on a patchwork of state statutes. We're working on that. Hopefully we'll have our review on time. and it's smooth sailing, but it's something that I wanted to flag for the committee.

Okay, thank you. Other questions from committee members? Yeah, some of these fine numbers were ridiculously low, $5, $10, so I don't know. I think Mr. Savage, you flagged some of these as maybe being from way back in the day. So appreciate the work of Team Jackson all around on this. And if there are no other questions, do we have a motion?

Move adoption.

Alderman Bergalis would move to recommend passage and hearing no. Mr. Chair.

Yes. My apologies, just a technical question. Yeah. So if we don't have the information by council, what is typically then the procedural just, it moves forward or is there an option to?

Well, if the city attorney doesn't sign off on legality and enforceability, then that's automatic, but we can also hold it. Hold it, okay. Okay.

Perfect, thank you.

Yep, so we're making a recommendation and I assume that it's under the understanding that the city attorney will sort things out. Okay, so Alder Burgels has moved to recommend passage and hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, item five, one of the sponsors wants to still hold that for now. Okay, so item five, file number 241547, Alderberg also moved to hold to the college chair, hopefully for a later point in the meeting. Then we'll move on to item six, file number 260. 219. Okay, well, then Alderberg-Galas intemperately suggested we hold it to the call of the chair. Now suggests that we move to reconsider and hearing no objection, so ordered. So before us is item five, file number 241547, substitute ordinance relating to short-term rentals. This is sponsored by Alder Coggs, Alder Chambers, and President Perez. The lead sponsor would like to say a few words to kick it off.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee, for hearing this file today. Members may recall that we've been working on short-term rental legislation. Many members have been for a few years now. And given the ever-changing legal landscape, in the state as to what's allowable, what isn't. We've gone down a lot of roads. And we've even had other files come before you asking the departments, DNS and DCD in particular, to weigh in on some suggestions and best practices for us. And ultimately, those legal challenges, although some cases have been decided, there are still many more being handled. With this piece of legislation, myself, Alderman Perez, and Alderman Chambers have worked really hard to try to figure out the majority of things that we can do internally that would least likely have the opportunity to be caught up in any legal issues. Things that we can do departmentally, things that we can do to increase the transparency with the ownership and operation of short-term rentals to address at least some of the concerns, not all. This is merely just one step of residents and neighbors that we all serve. So again, this is just the first step. There will be others to come, but we primarily wanted to focus on things that we have the ability to change and improve. That was our intention and we hope to have a robust discussion here today about it.

Very good.

President Perez, did you have anything to add?

President Perez, would you like to say a few words?

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. I'd like to thank Alderman Cox and Chambers for their co-sponsorship and I know that Alderman Dmitrievich has chimed in through emails on specific issues and we want to be very conscious of the rest of the council moving forward. Short-term rentals, Airbnbs, et cetera, I think have different meanings in different districts, different parts of the city. I know for the 12th district, a priority for us is to know what operators are out there so that if there are any issues, questions, concerns, accountability, we know exactly who to go to for what. And I think that this is, like all the women colleagues said, a step. our first step in the direction of helping manage and identify Airbnbs and to figure out how we better communicate with one another and having a robust registry. The other part of this process is that I think we have, as an agent of the state, which I think you'll hear from our experts later, we have several things on the books that we need to connect to this ordinance in order for us to have clarity and accountability through current state statute that would help us. I know that I have both a filing on zoning and potentially licensing these as we move forward. And as we flush this out and move forward, if and when needed, we will definitely be going in that direction to continue the steps as we connect with the community and the stakeholders in our neighborhoods that have something to say about the process and the management of Airbnbs in the community. My entire district has zero single family zoning and part of the accountability is is that in these in these stretches these blocks these areas where we do have single family zoning that we want to be able to manage what the commercial environment looks like in a single family neighborhood and understanding who our operators are and what they're doing is important to that process and i appreciate your time and look forward to the discussion today

Okay, very good. Does anybody want to give an overview of some of the changes? I know some of them are remarked upon by the RPA in their letter which came to us late about what the major changes are. I don't know if the LRB wants to summarize that for us.

Right seat. Good morning. Good morning. Mr. Chair, members of the committee, Christopher Hillard, Legislative Reference Bureau. So the major changes, it can really be broken down into sort of two main categories. There are things we are directing ourselves to do, and then there is a new requirement for owners and managers. So the things we are directing ourselves to do is incident reporting. So any citations that are issued for activity occurring at the property arising from its use as a short-term rental, they will then be reported by the city to whatever platforms are hosting that property. The next one is a notice requirement, which provides that notice has to be sent out to the office of whichever aldermanic district it is that the new proposed Airbnb is going to be, or excuse me, a short-term rental is going to be in, and then also to any residences within 250 feet of where the proposed short-term rental would be. And then finally, the last thing is the management requirements. And this requires that there's a posting one. So the owner or agent of any short-term rental must post and maintain official placards that would be issued by the Department of Neighborhood Services with contact information on the outside of the building. And then finally, the owner or agent must be a resident of the City of Milwaukee. And those are the changes.

Okay, thank you for that summary. So obvious questions here are going to be, is it legal and can DNS enforce it? So I don't know if DNS or the city attorney's office wants to ask that or wait till we ask questions and then take it as they... They may.

Mr. Chair, just broadly, in 2017, the state legislature passed a law that I think could generously be described as underwhelming and confusing that gives some landscape of regulatory authority to municipalities. It's a preemption statute, frankly. Not surprising, communities across the state have tried a whole patchwork of different regulatory schemes on short-term rentals. Many of them have been challenged. We've at times tracked the number of cases filed. There's probably somewhere between six to a dozen pending circuit court cases throughout the state challenging various different local government regulations on short-term rentals. There are two that we have tracked much closer as they're further along or more mature in their litigation. One was a challenge to the city of Nina's short-term regulatory scheme that was overturned by the Court of Appeals. and the other is a challenge to the town of Summit in Waukesha County, which was also overturned by the Court of Appeals. The state Supreme Court has accepted that case. The parties are briefing it. That means that they're still arguing in writing and that there hasn't been oral argument. We don't have, I can't provide to you a timeline of when the court may make its ruling. All of that is to say the landscape of the powers of local government is unsettled in Wisconsin and so we are here in part to advise levels of risk tolerance that policy makers have. It's less of a clear you can do this and you can't do that and more of a gray scale where we know there are some provisions that may be more likely to generate a challenge and harder to defend than others. But we're certainly here and have been working with the sponsors and other alders on this issue to try to figure something out because we certainly understand the community has weighed in to you all and publicly that some of these properties can pose a real quality of life challenge to the neighbors, especially if we don't know who they are or if they're not responsive to repeat problems. So it is a scenario in which I'm here and joined by ACA Travis Gresham who's been wading into the details and can handle some of the detailed questions better than I can that the committee members may have. I'll summarize, it is unsettled and uncertain and we would just provide guidance over where we think the city would be on the firmest ground. That said, it's hard for us to say black and white. There are provisions here that we think are far more defensible than others and we can weigh in that in a question and answer. Okay, very good.

Commissioner, would you like to say anything before we kick it over to questions?

Yes, hi, good morning. Jeza Mila-Rollovega, Commissioner with the Department of Neighborhood Services. Thank you for having us here today. I just wanted to just give an overall of what DNS have been doing for the last few years. If you remember in 2024, we did a communication file on short-term rentals and what we were doing from the enforcement side. So far at that moment, and just to give you a note, in 2022, we only have 25 registered license doing what it is to re-rooming housing. As you know, we are the agent, the delegated agent for the state to actually issue those licenses. Since then, and for private conversations that we had, we became aware of a software that actually could summarize all the listings open in the Milwaukee area. We did an effort and acquired the software as a pilot just to understand what were the actual numbers for the city of Milwaukee. In 2024, the rumors were that we have around 1300 to 1600 listings, open listings. That said, when we actually acquired the software, we did a cleanup and acquired the listings, that number dropped to 700 to 800. There might be some factors such as special events, at that time we have RNC, we have a lot of really large national events in the city. It could also be related that there were repetitive listings. There also include listings of hotels, motels, and you name it. So the reality is that so far we have 750 listings, open listings in Milwaukee. With that in mind, what we did, it's like we started with advisory orders first. Hey, we noticed that you have an active listing. So far we don't have, any evidence that you have that licensing that is required to operate as a two-rooming house. And we will say that as of today, we have currently listed 329 two-rooming house lists. So that's been an increase from the 25 that we have in 2022. We have a remainder of 422 that are right now The first step was an advisory order, 30 days. You don't comply, now we're sending you an order, and right now we are in the reviews of those orders, we're giving them 30 days to comply. Since then, those that haven't been complied after the 30 days in the first batch that we did, we have opened 17 orders, with some of them having re-inspection fees as well. What are we doing right now? We're reviewing those records twice a week to identify and process any new records that are coming into the listings. We're also reviewing complaints that are received through our lines just to match it to see if we have an existing licensing. If not, then we proceed with orders. and we have new unlicensed properties that are identifying to the software. We just created some new complaints and sending those as advisory orders. We do have a complete lease. Our efforts or our next steps or desires is to share that with all the common council members. That way you do have an idea of where are the locations of those short-term rentals, and providing enough data that could quantify what is gonna be the next steps for the city in implementing or enforcing more for them. I think that's pretty much the summary. If you have any questions, I think might be now the time for that.

Alder, or President Press?

And yeah, and I just, I appreciate the report, and just for the listening public, I wanna reiterate that what the commissioner is exercising is what's already on the books as a state agent that has i want people to know that i want them to think that now this is starting because of any legislation i appreciate the commissioner listening to the council members and exercising i think what's always been there she's taken the leadership to do that so i just want to be clear that this is exactly what's been on the books and it's and we appreciate the department's working with us to to move forward in that direction to really strengthen the list that's out there or reported to be out there and that we wanna continue to get people in compliance currently.

Mr.

Chair. Alder Cox.

Just for 100% clarity, right now the state requires already that short-term rentals are supposed to register with the municipality. And I think what the commissioner was speaking to is our efforts already to ensure that those who are on these platforms are actually registering with us, which is what the state requires. So I think just for absolute clarity, the state already requires them to be registered. And as you heard, the numbers as to how many are and aren't, that I think further pushes us to want to do some of the stuff in this legislation just to get more compliance. and more transparency. Thank you.

Thank you. I have one question, I guess, I think it's for the city attorney's office, maybe it's for DNS, but it ultimately lead to a question for the sponsors, which is, so with you're required to be licensed, a tourist rooming house license, part of this requires that within 30 days of receipt, written notice will be provided to the Alder's office and all residences within 250 feet for which property is applied for a tourist rooming house license, right? That's part of the legislation. Is the granting of this license basically kind of like our granting of cigarette license where we're kind of ministerial role where we kind of have to grant it, you can't just, because what I worry is 250 feet of neighbors being really mad that a rooming house is coming in and now you've just told them it's coming in but you can't do anything about it.

so it's a little bit more robust than the cigarette license so cigarette license as we all have become aware um is by route i mean you apply for it and you get it this does have some compliance mechanisms they're primarily sanitary in so much as having hot water having clean towels maintaining a you know regiment effectively assuring the public that this location is not a hazard so you know the the staircase can bear your weight um I think DNS can speak to the specifics as to the enforcement mechanisms there, but generally speaking, it's a low threshold, but there is more of a threshold there. It's not immediate.

But a resident can't say, hey, Alder, you should stop this because I've had a short-term rental come in in the past, or my relatives had one, and it was a disaster. So I really don't want this. They will be notified, but we won't have necessarily the power to...

Correct, and that's the limitation here is that the state license is much less discretionary. the state statute that was mentioned the right to rent statute um does identify that a municipal license could be created so there could be a parallel track for both a state license the tourist rooming housing license and then a municipal license the idea and the method through which municipal license is created is itself being challenged so that's part of the gray area is whether or not we can go forth with a municipal license at all or whether or not it should be kind of crafted as a zoning ordinance And so that's in debate. There are, again, cases that go both ways, but there is a certain trend that is leaning towards the Realtors Association or the landlords and for the unencumbered use of the property. So. Okay.

And yeah, and this isn't necessarily a criticism. I want the neighbors to know what's happening as well. And I guess we'll have to work out an explanation sort of like we do with CBRFs where we, can tell you they're coming in, but we've been sued and lost in the past. We can't necessarily stop it. So it's just something each aldermanic office will have to learn to accommodate. So anyway, that's my question. Alderman Moore, you had a question?

Yes, I had a question for the commissioner. When you all are reinspecting, so the 30 days notices provided come back in 30 days or so, what does the reinspection look like? Somebody's knocking at the door, they're viewing something. Talk to me a little bit just so I understand how that works.

Most of it is administrative. It's just looking at the records. You don't have already started an application, then we go and go directly to the sites, but it's more at the administrative side of reviewing and checking cross-reference records to see at minimum that have started.

Okay, and so if it has not, there's a fee applied, we give them another 30 days? Correct. Okay, and we come to that 30 days again, we check, there's nothing, we give them another fee? Correct. And then we just continue to do that?

Until we get into the point of, I don't know if we have done anything yet to taking them to court. It's almost like the same process that we have for enforcement in any other situations for orders.

Are fees gradient as far as do the fees go up every time there's a re-inspection?

Yeah, so it'd be two times the initial fee for subsequent inspections. So if it's 250 the first time, it's 500 for subsequent inspections if you're still not compliant.

Do we have data on sort of where we are in that reinspection process as, you know what, after 30 days, this percent usually complies. After 60 days, you know, we get more compliance. I'm just trying to understand if this process works so that, you know, just for, I think it's just helpful for us if you know, hey, can we up the fee or whatever, but I'm just trying to understand if that sort of process works.

I think that's a great question. We definitely have the data capacity to make those kind of reports, and I was actually mentioning before we joined here that By the end of the month, common council members are gonna be receiving our newsletter from DNS and part of that report, we're gonna be sharing a report just in short-term rentals so we can start all kind of like investigating or knowing the data that we have recollect so far. So I can definitely try to add that request as well.

And the other quick question that I have is if someone lives next door to someone that has a short-term rental and, you know, I don't know, they reach out to DNS, hey, this is a short-term rental, and, you know, we say, oh, they're not registered, is there a mechanism to report that property or no?

Yes, that's the complaint base.

Yeah, so it would be handled the same way another violation would. A different section of our team would handle the inspection and enforcement of that. It goes through our environmental team since it's the same as hotel, motel. They also enforce that same habitability standards. But yeah, same enforcement and inspection process. Perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you. Alderberg Ellis.

Thank you very much. And my first question was about, you know, is this an administrative approval that neighborhood notification? Wanted to ask the sponsors, what's the intent or the purpose if there's no neighborhood objection that could thwart a license or give neighbors a voice in the approval or disapproval of a new property right from the city, then what's the purpose of the neighborhood notification?

In my district, both Brewers Hill neighborhood and Howier Park neighborhood have had major incidences that were violent in nature, involved guns, and in one case, someone getting shot. And we had neighborhood meetings. with DNS as well as MPD. And one of the things that I've heard in those meetings and in conversations with residents was how it's so many Airbnbs, they don't even know where all of them are. Until you know incident happens or or things of that nature. So the goal of so we began to think about what other ways that we notify folks for other things and because we already do it for certain licenses for certain other things. The idea of well, they have to register because the state requires that so we know when they register I'm those who comply when they register Why can't we just do what we would do in other cases and just notify? notify the neighbors about that this Registration has occurred. So it really is for me, came from residents just really wanting to know what's in their neighborhood. And this is a simple way that, at least for those who comply, we would be able to notify them. That was the intention.

Absolutely. And the requirement, the new requirement in this file that requires posting of contact information, is that supposed to be like near the mailbox or the doorbell? so that neighbors can go figure out, oh sorry, I forgot the older woman's letter from three years ago, but they're making noise tonight. Go check the phone number and call the owner of the property.

That too was a request of neighbors. We just say prominent because different properties are built different, so to say where, but that's why, that was a request of neighbors.

Is the intent to eventually have a proper municipal license for Airbnbs? It's in the works.

We're going to examine the zoning, whether it's a special use and or if licensing or doing both is the route to go.

And we hope in time it'll be greater clarity legally on how to do that and what's allowable and what's not. And even if it's not, we may as a council have to decide what our appetite is for a legal challenge. But yeah, our intention is to...

because I'll concur that I had no idea that I received complaints that there is a problem Airbnb in my district, just a handful, I guess, but when there is a complaint, it's an arduous process because the noise complaint on Saturday night won't happen again. It's a different person. DNS doesn't get out there in time, so I applaud your leadership on regulating this. I would ask, Commissioner, if you would send us a list of whatever is already licensed and what you've uncovered may not have a license that may need one. So two separate reports. I was starting an email to send to you to ask for that, but I appreciate that you were volunteering it right after that. Is there a requirement anywhere in state law or any municipal ordinances that we've passed that would require the publishing of the municipal license number in any advertisement? so that it would be very clear when you go to the Airbnb website if a, and other municipalities do require something like this, but has Milwaukee considered doing that?

So the license that exists currently, again, is a state license that's issued by the municipality as state agent. What we've attempted to do to get compliance, and part of that compliance mechanism was reaching out to, these individual networks or platforms and having a screen come up that says please enter your license number and then if they don't have that route them to us to get that license. So there is at least that. I say at least because again that's the state license that is not necessarily discretionary and also doesn't have the compliance teeth that a municipally managed license would. Again, it's kind of as much as we can do currently with what is provided. So we have, again, tried to approach these companies. And I think for their image and for their sake as well, it's relevant, right? Habitability of the spaces that they advertise on their platforms is material to their image and the renters that they're trying to entice.

So is there any penalty for, or any thought to add a punitive penalty for these ride share, home share, car share network companies that allow an unlicensed agent to use their platform?

That's where we get into who wrote the law and who it serves. This was not a law written to incentivize or really allow for at least the interpretation by the courts currently has been to the benefit of the property owner. I guess the focus has not been on liability or the concerns of these network companies. I don't think so.

We certainly can look into your question, Alderman Bergelis. It's a theme that has come up in recent other files. Alderman Jackson's file on illegal dumping had corporate liability attached to it. I know the debate over scooter companies and it is a tricky legal question about whether we could attach liability to the host site for the participants non-compliance with our ordinance, we certainly will look into that. And I think what ACA Gresham was identifying, that was not through an ordinance requiring that type of compliance or collaboration from the platforms, but.

Not yet.

Not yet, but a step in the right direction. And I think that the bottom line and the kind of the economics of, or market forces have played out such that compliance is important to them. And I think that's a really, important provision in the file that reports up the food chain incidents that happen at the street level here in Milwaukee and the file does not attach corporate liability but certainly it creates notice and a bully pulpit that we are doing what we can now to put the platform host companies on notice that their participant property is causing disruption in the city of Milwaukee, and I think there's great value to that. Whether that's a cause of action in circuit court or not, it is a tool that I think will have a positive impact.

Excellent, thank you very much.

Mr. Chair?

Yes, Alder Cox.

It helps build the case that they knew or should have known about the problematic places if and when we pass this legislation. And also, I'll say something I've pushed for and will continue to push for is, I believe, the platform. The simplest thing would be, because it is state law that they have to register, to your point, Auderman Bergelis, would be that you just can't upload if you don't have the corresponding registration number.

Well, it's one thing to just type in EFG, right? Or actually verify that the license is issued and valid.

Yeah. If you are in the state of Wisconsin, you just can't do it if you don't have a registration. That would be the simplest thing to do and a thing that I think we're advocating with the platforms to do. But I think that's a continuous conversation and a continuous fight. But I'm in agreeance with you that Technology is so great now that you could just simply do that.

I'm assuming after today they'll be lobbying us.

Wonderful. In that spirit, I'll ask Mr. Chair, unanimous consent to be added as co-sponsor. Okay. Mr.

Chair, as long as we're on that, I'd ask the commissioner right now if that state certification is even listed on LMS when you pull up a property.

Yes.

Okay. That's good to know. Thank you.

Alder Taylor, then Aldermore.

Thank you. So I was thinking about those placards that you guys had mentioned, putting those outside of short-term rentals such as Airbnbs. It's a business, and we don't see those on daycares. or any other business where you have your contact information on the outside of a business. So I'm not quite sure that that would be appropriate if we're not going to require that of all businesses to do that. The other thing is the platform reporting. Do we have the manpower to report to all the various platforms that are out there for short-term rentals? Because there are many. And so that might require quite a bit of manpower and then My last question, I know you guys can answer, I guess, in that order if you have an answer, but it requires here, it says, in addition, the ordinance requires that owner or agent of any short-term rental within the city of Milwaukee be a resident, within the city be a resident. Can we legally require that when you're looking at investors of... investors invest all over. So they don't just invest.

We'll probably defer to a conversation in a closed session about that. Okay. So just to kind of foretell, that is a legal gray area, let's say.

Okay.

It's a regulatory scheme that other jurisdictions have advanced and sometimes have been met with a challenge and is one that we would like to work with the sponsors and the council on to... I understand and appreciate the intent. I think, you know, part of the goal is to make sure that someone that holds their property out has someone in responsive, you know, the area that can come and deal with the leaky bathtub or the problems that might arise with the problem renter. And we do have, those kind of geographic provisions elsewhere. Exactly what the final mechanics are, we certainly will work with all of you on, but just that is something that has been done in other places and I think kind of comes from this place of wanting to have a responsive party that can come and manage the property if things go sideways.

And that's exactly where I was going because you have management companies that are hired to take care of those things So requiring that the owner reside in that city Just doesn't seem like a real viable thing to do considering that and or yeah the file is a it has an or and includes a agent language, which I think is envisioning the property management type role, okay, okay and

and expand the LLCs. We want to make sure that's covered appropriately.

Okay, thank you.

And I guess picking up on that, so will you have by counsel an opinion about whether this is legal and enforceable or is this one of those things like with the previous file that we might have to hold off on?

And not to speak for the city attorney's office, but I think they would agree that it's legally not settled. And it probably won't be by council. But, you know, we truly want to move something forward because we've been talking about this for so long. So and I understand the concern about point four. What in talking to the co-sponsor, something we are willing to do is to take part. 0.4 of the legislation and and hold that part it and we may look at inclusion with zoning or a different way to bring it forward where or at a time maybe when we can be more legally certain of its enforceability. So we are we do have an amendment that takes away 0.4 to be able to move forward. Okay.

You have it ready for today? Yep. Okay. I can guarantee that the Wisconsin State Supreme Court will not issue its opinion on the matter by next Friday.

There is one other adjustment that you should also be aware of on this one, just for clarification. after continued talks with both DNS and the city department. For point two, where it talks about incident reporting, on the original version, it just says citation. This version also says orders or police reports that are issued. Because we know that police reports don't always end in a citation.

Oh, I see.

should be sent for notification purposes as well.

So it's broadening what's sent to... It broadens the definition and the Department of Neighborhood Services does not issue a citation for the initial complaint. They may eventually do that, but I think this would capture a broader set of...

incidents that happened at the property. So members understand that.

Go ahead.

You didn't get.

We didn't get an answer to that of whether or not they would be able to even do that reporting because that's a lot of reporting that requires a lot of man hours.

Yes, as part of the evaluation of the proposal, we do think there's gonna be some sort of fiscal impact through the proposal. We would be needing to think about mailing and maintaining the software as well because this was just a pilot for us to just try and see where we were. And also, we would require a full-time assistant, program assistant for solely dedicated to short-term rentals.

Okay, thank you.

But the fee's $300 for the initial inspection, $100 a year, 700, $100 a year, that's 70,000-ish. Yeah. So maybe the fee needs to be a little bit more to cover a salary.

Based on the numbers so far, very, very just ballparks. We were asking about mailing expenses around for 500 kind of licenses, around 6K, based on the densities of the neighborhoods. The software itself, we've been looking at other platforms that might be a little bit more economical, because at this point, the inversion was around 80,000 for this software itself, and then the full time is around roughly 60 to 70K. But yes, I fully agree that when we were breaking the numbers, it almost could be recouped by the fees, but this is just a number that we're gonna be exploring more and have more details in the next weeks.

So you're going to. Let's pause one second. We're doing something kind of naughty. We're discussing a sub that's not before us. So Alderman Burgels would move that the sub be before us, the proposal to amend it, and now we're discussing that. So Alder Burgels.

So. you're going to reevaluate the fees to make sure that they're in line with actual costs because we can recover actual costs with the initial or the subsequent license fee.

We'll be evaluating how we're going to be able to get through it.

Okay, so members are clear what the sub does. It removes four which relates to the owner or agent being resident Milwaukee and then it changes, broadens the incident reporting under sub section two to include a citation order or police report understanding that DNS doesn't initially issue a citation or anything. They might issue an order. and the police might issue a report without issuing a citation. Alder Moore. I'm sorry, Alder Taylor, were you done with your questions? Okay, yeah, we can come back. Alder Moore.

Just a couple quick question. Registration from the state, is that something that happens yearly?

Yes, one first-time application fee and then renewals fees in a yearly basis.

Perfect. And then I think this goes back to sort of maybe the incident reporting in reference to problematic properties. Like if a particular property continues to have calls or police reports, et cetera, within three months, six months, whatever it is, Is there any way that could impact their yearly registration or is there anything that we can do to impact that registration not moving forward?

So again, as acting, excuse me, I'm sorry. as we're acting as state agent that agency agreement is between the city and the department of health and human services or i think in this case the department of agriculture trade and consumer protection what we have to do in that agreement is codify certain requirements and laws and then what datcap has to do is review those laws and and those codifications what we do is adopt the entire administrative chapter that governs the tourist rooming housing and in part of that chapter and i believe in our ordinances there are penalties for non-compliance there are also identified instances that could be seen as kind of dovetailing with or akin to our own separate nuisance designation or other intersection by police so if you violate something there could be cause for us to deny, again, as state agent, that license. As far as how that would proceed, we haven't explored that. And so there would be, I think, the need to review both the agency agreement that we have and then also our operational statutes in that case. It is, again, kind of separate and apart from our municipal authority. So we're kind of operating under state authority. The state might kick it back to us and say, well, you deal with it. They might also take it on themselves and say, review it without our discretion. So that's kind of the issue when we act as agent for the state. there is a piece to your question directly that could theoretically kick the license based on that kind of nuisance adjacent or police reporting problem. We have not explored that. We have not enforced based on that. So I do wanna caution that it's currently untested, but it is a part of our agreement with DATCP or I think DHHS. includes the dad cap one but um in any case it is included it is something we have codified it's in ordinance already um but again it is there um whether or not it's you know fully fleshed out and we have not received any appeal nor have we received any citation in regard to that or gone through any denial process based on that

Got it. Thank you. And I know that obviously police does, you know, reporting when called to a property, particularly for DNS. We will also have the mechanism to, you know, if police isn't called for whatever reason, but a resident, a neighbor or whatnot is making a complaint, we have the ability to track that information.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Perfect, thank you. And please add me as a co-sponsor as well.

Thank you.

Okay, let the record reflect.

Mr. Chair.

Alder Taylor.

I just want to make sure that in looking at this proposed substitute that the issue of the placards doesn't appear to be in here and the issue of requiring the owner to reside in the city doesn't appear to be in here. So am I right in assuming that then those things are not going to be? Okay. Thank you. Which was removed.

All right. It is our intention, though, to figure out how we can bring that back down. Yeah.

So the placarding was also legally okay question something you want to discuss more. Okay, okay Okay Any other questions comments and I don't need to call I

Mr.

Chair, I do have a question for you. Yeah, just one second. MPD to the table. But a short-term rental is a unit that could be nuisance just like a single-family home. So if you have three or more incidents within a month or some more severe incidents, you know, gunfire and such in a year, that my understanding is that would be subject to the nuisance code just like any other place.

Correct, Mr. Chair, and I was gonna chime in to Alder Moore's question. The state license does not immunize the property owner from other interventions and tools that the city has. So 8010 could be applied. A nuisance designation, a circuit court action should there be chronic noncompliance with the building code. There isn't any protection that this designation gives them that different property.

And the 8010 applies to the property owner. It's not so if you have three different tenants that are

renters it doesn't matter you're still the property owner sorry alder cox oh i was just gonna ask because i know it's a resident here um is this open for a public testimony or no um not unless you're buying us lunch

but really long agenda, we have to get that.

I do on the record wanna say thank you to the residents who have not only met with me, but I'm sure many of us have met with and talked to and received emails and calls from residents with concern and suggestions about Airbnbs that have brought us to this point. And I just, again, wanna reinforce that this is just the first step that we are continuing to look at the legal ways that we can continue to ensure stability in our neighborhoods.

Yep, very good. Mr. Chair, I just want to not only take a second to thank all the folks who have chimed in to ask for assistance, but I have some very solid Airbnb operators, especially at this point, that have done an awesome job, and they're willing to come to the table and figure out how this is a fair and inclusive process. So I want to thank everyone involved.

Okay. Very good. Any other questions, comments? Mr.

Chair, I think my final comment would be, you know, as we're asking DNS to do more and more and more, that we also think about, you know, just how we advocate for staffing structures so that they can, because these are things that are so important, you know, whether it's the illegal dumping or, you know, you know, in reference to, you know, this case, Airbnbs, just, I want us to be conscious, animals, I want us to be conscious of what we're continuing to put on DNS and, you know, it, I guess, goes also back to policing, right? You know, people think about numbers to support some of the things that we need to get done. I really want us as a council to be able to advocate that they have the necessary staffing so that we can keep our community safe so our residents can live in peace and, you know, that they just have the people power to continue to do the necessary work that we need done. So I just want to, you know, push my colleagues.

We've been very conscious of that in all our conversations. How do we beef it up?

How do we pay for it? Yes, how we pay for it. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And three of us are on finance, so there'll be a discussion. You can lobby the mayor now. And if you don't like what he does, you can put in a budget amendment. Okay, I would also like to be added as a co-sponsor. Thank you for the discussion today. Any other questions or comments? If not, Alder Taylor would move to recommend passage and hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, item six, file number 260219, substitute ordinance relating to penalties for the sale of alcohol, tobacco, and cannabinoid products to minors. This is sponsored by Alder Burgels and Friends. Alder Burgels, would you like to kick things off?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is a comprehensive update to our city ordinances to change our penalties for selling these products to children to state maximum penalties. It also revises a few definitions regarding new marketplace products, but this also establishes a consistent pattern for repeat violations and fine escalations.

okay anything to add lrb uh no the only other thing that i would uh point out is it creates a new section in the code section 106-30.5-1 which would prohibit the straw purchase of cigarettes and tobacco and other nicotine products for miners which Strangely didn't exist and yeah, that was really strange.

I didn't know that didn't exist. So straw purchase of Interesting Alder Taylor.

I just like to be added as a co-sponsor on this.

Okay, very good One question I guess I had is I saw the fines went up so I not less than 200 changes to 500 if the person has committed a previous violation, but it changes the period from within 12 months to 30 months. So on the one hand, you're upping the fine, but on the other hand, I guess, well, no, that's doing the same thing. Because you're saying 30 month look back period is now gone two and a half times.

Correct. Correct. To state maximum allowances.

Okay. And so this would be enforced by whom? MPD as part of the License Investigation Unit or who would do this?

Correct, so LIU or frankly any district is able to issue a citation for a sale to underage, but LIU specifically has a task force that sends underage people and tests licensed businesses for tobacco and alcohol and THC purchases.

And just for my own edification, would the penalty attach to the person who makes the illegal sale, the business owner of that establishment?

I believe under state law it attaches to the person who makes the sale.

Okay, because one question, I guess, you know, I always bring up the littering case where we change the fine to 500 bucks, and I'm not sure if we're writing more tickets. Somebody can tell me that at some point. At some point, if the fine gets too great, maybe the officers are less likely to write it. If it's on the commercial business owner, I can understand why that. If it's at the person working for minimum wage behind the counter...

i don't know it's a that's a very good point uh mr chair i i would have to defer to the city attorney on this question i'm i'm just not an expert uh and the the enforcement and who this falls yeah okay any other questions comments passage oh alder taylor well yeah i just want to be sure because i think that it's important to make sure that it's um that the person

that does the sale is the person that is actually going to receive the fine. Did you just say that? Yes?

You said you'd want the city attorney to weigh in?

All I would say is the changes that this ordinance would make to the code doesn't change who's being assigned the penalty, if that makes sense. you know, to be honest, I'm not the expert on who this.

If I can answer directly, the fine goes to the person who makes the transaction. Certainly any of these transactions that happen in a licensed premises would be on the PA 33 on the license renewal application for any punitive measures that the license committee would want to do or thinks is appropriate when the business is up for license renewal.

Thank you.

Yep, and just having served on licenses, sometimes, quite often, somebody gets fired for making a mistake involving minors. Not always, but not uncommonly. Okay, any other questions, comments? If not, Alder Bergalis has moved to recommend passage. Are there any objections? Then so ordered. Thank you. Item seven, file number 260324, communication from the Milwaukee Police Department relating to the school resource officer program in the 25-26 school year. This has been sponsored by Alder Moore. Alder Moore.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I wanted to just have the team provide an opportunity to just tell us where we are. This opportunity or the service for officers going back into the school, it is so important that our public just, you know, we're transparent. How are things going? Are there any challenges? You know, what are the wins? That sort of thing. So I wanted to invite the team back and thank you all so much. for being willing to come in and just share where we are, especially now that we have some time under our hands and we can talk about, you know, things that have worked and things that might not have worked. So I'll kick it over to the team when appropriate.

Okay, very good. Would you like to introduce yourselves at the table?

Sitting at the table, Steve Johnson, Assistant Chief, Police Department.

and Captain Vanetta Norberg of CRD Community Resource Division, which holds the CART team, our Crisis Assessment Response Team, and also our bigger portion, the School Resource Officers.

Okay. Chief of Staff Huff, would you like to introduce yourself?

Yes, Chief Huff, Heather Huff.

And I understand there's a presentation. Would you like to preface it with anything or how would you all like to proceed?

Well, I'll just give you a short presentation on what we've done and how long we've been doing this. We have a full year now since about September 2nd, 2025 until the end of the school year, which ran to about June 15th. And then after that, the week after was graduation. So we went kind of far into the month of June of when school officially ended. uh... and i'll just start with our first slide here uh... says we have thirty three officers right now we have thirty two uh... one of them have gone on to be promoted uh... and is working at a dish different district uh... we basically deploy with uh... at least twenty five officers based on the level of support needed uh... within the school year We cover, out of the 12 schools that we're in, about 9,000 students total. NPS has about 180 days out of the school year and sometimes we do try to meet the needs of those charter or private schools as well. They may not be in or they may have more days. So our goals have been to build positive relationships with the students, the staff, and also families of the students that attend, promote a safe environment, learning environment for everyone, serve as mentors, and give students guidance, and also attempt to host prevention programs about bullying, drugs, digital safety when we're allowed to and when we can. And also the officers participate in school events by request of the administrators of the schools. Some of those events like they were requested by one of the principals to attend prom as the principal felt like they were really a part of the school community and it just would not be a gathering without those officers. Again, our deployment is 25 minimum, which is per the contract. During student attendance days, two officers are assigned per school normally. Three officers, the extra officer will more than likely be deployed at a school where they need a little bit more attention or safety presence from the officers or there's heightened security concerns at the school. We have additional officers if they are working. Rovers, they attempt to answer calls all over the cities from schools. NPS has about 150 schools. That doesn't include any charter or private, but we try to get to those calls as well and service schools during school hours. When officers are not assigned to SRO duties, that would be more of our early power. After about four, they are spread amongst the districts in the city to take calls for service. So here is just the analysis of what has happened during those years or I should say statistics that we keep. Some of our findings after speaking with our OMAP, there were 689 SRO dispatch calls. Those aren't calls that I guess go to the districts or within the districts, but the calls that SROs will have answered. 46% of those are trouble with juveniles, trouble with subjects within the school. Disorderly conduct, that's our largest arrest category. And 31 arrests have been made at the schools or the 12 schools which we are assigned to right now. At the bottom, you can see the 12 schools that we were in last school semester that could change based on us looking at calls for service and speaking with the director of security of MPS. So to answer some of the questions, why do students get citations or arrests? We've had a total of about 70 citations, which is less than 1% of the total body, 9,000 students that we reach Monday through Friday over a school year. Citations are normally a targeted response. It's not something that we do widespread. It's not something that the school administrators ask for every day, all day, for every situation. The principals normally will request the citation. It's not the officer who makes the decision to give out a citation. It comes from the school administration or whoever is in charge at that moment. Normally, it's after your more egregious fights, property damages, trespassing, and I think the principals do make the decision based on maintaining the school safety and enforcing accountability when they feel like they needed to take it to a step other than just their normal school discipline. A greater portion of the arrests occur because of outside crimes. It's not something that has occurred within the school. It could be related to warrants that a school child could have, armed robbery, reckless and dangerous safety, take and drive without owner's consent. Sometimes it's battery to school, officials or weapons charges. Many of them don't occur because of an incident that happened within the school. But it involves a student. It involves the student that more than likely attends the school. Yep. Just some examples of citation and arrest examples that someone might receive. A student jumped over the lunch table, dragged the student on the ground, and ripped four of her braids out. That is pretty egregious to a principal of the school to say we need something more than our school discipline. um... one a student attempted to bribe a teacher with a thousand dollars for an address of another student who had been a target of a crime outside of school hours um... another student jumped a desk in the office damaging property including pulling a secure metal cabinet off of the wall so that student had to be arrested and taken from school property for the safety of others. And this, like I said, is a small portion of a student threatened to slap a teacher in the face and told the teacher they were gonna wait for him after school. So that is, again, pretty egregious. A student punched a teacher in the face. Another student bought a gun to school, flashed it at another student trying to protect his girlfriend. And that was at like one of the middle schools that we had responded to a call. But those are just some of it. A student picked up a cleaning bucket and threw bleach in another student's eyes. So just these are egregious to us. It's not your school fight and it's over. We'll take you to the principal office. We've had about a total of six use of forces during the school year. One I can recall at the beginning, there was a large school fight at Tech. and as an officer was cuffing another student, another student came up to punch that student in the face and he had to be OC'd. Other officers came in. Another one, which has been one of our challenging schools, Vincent, they had a fight several fights of is about eighty students over three hours of time like within the schools where forty three students were suspended some was handled by central office And another one, a student physically fought with staff, security struggled with the student for about two minutes, and then the officer intervened and the student ended up falling in the doorway as they were trying to rush back into the school. But those are moments where the SROs, they kind of stand back until security asks them to intervene into the situation. SROs allow them to try to handle what they need and then step in when asked or when they're summoned through radio, then they will come. Another one, security took a student, disruptive student into a room. They were in there for about five minutes and then security runs out and they're like, oh, she hit me in the head with a bag of books. can you guys step in this is what but these are the instances where force has to be you know used or when there's outsiders outside students that come in and refuse to leave the school property so like i said we've had about six total that have been reported to us uh... some of the challenges uh... that we've come across uh... raw clarity expectations uh... what administrators want us to do within the school. Sometimes we have to keep a watchful eye or I and my supervisors as to things that officers shouldn't be doing versus what the principals are asking them to do. So we have to have a sit down and have an understanding with them. This is what we're here for. This is what we can do. This is what we do not want to necessarily be involved in. So just having clear definitions of duties, safety concerns, limited enforcement. Other challenges is answering other school calls for service, not just those 12 schools. So we wanna try to give the best service that we can as SROs, seeing that they are certified and trained to handle certain things, but it's just been a challenge for us. uh... schools needing SRO presence they're asking but although we may not be assigned for their school so we will try to give them a small snippet of okay well we can come walk around a little bit see if we can service you but based on the staffing needs we may not be able to do that call disposition expectations, where if a normal patrol responds, the school may be looking for something else or some other type of service asking, where's my SRO? Sorry, you don't have one assigned to you. They specifically, I don't know what has been passed around, but feel like they should have an SRO to respond to their call. rather than someone from regular patrol. Another challenge is the frequent altercations in the schools or outbreaks of other disturbances when schools probably should call a lock or hold. And we've had some discussions with those schools like, maybe you should do it here because the officers, SROs, will not do it. We had a very in-depth conversation with Vincent after their series of two large fights, which we came together, I'm sorry, collaborated, saying maybe you should do this versus this because we cannot... keep throwing resources or at one point I had five officers there because of the outbreak of fights and we needed the district assistance as well because so we came together with their security. Perhaps you should move them here. You need to get your administrator and also your teachers more involved with the students rather than having us to be your first, I guess, course of action when all these, you know, fights break out or keeping the students where they need to be. Um, we've, um, recently as a school year, um, has gone on, we started trying to reach out for partnerships. One is Bader, um, philanthropies. They reached out to us. They wanted to do something. We, um, had a meeting and took a listing of what they thought student needs would be, and the SROs were able to give that information, student needs or what type of things that wants. That could be not just school supplies, it could be financial literacy classes, it could be clothing, hygiene products, just some of those things that they can can give through us to the students. Another one is Palermo's Pizza. One of our SROs reached out to Palermo's Pizza and they were able to supply us with certificates and pizza to give to students of the month. One of the officers within the schools was like, well, principal, you don't have enough for the students to do. How about we do this for the students? When they do something good, can we come in and give them pizza parties and give them something for student of the month or being positive or doing good in school?

We want to make sure to get through the presentation so that we can have time for questions. Okay. So if you can just highlight some of the major. All right. I got you. Good stuff.

I appreciate that. One I just want to speak of at Milwaukee King, Rufus King, the officers actually helped the lady start a flag football team. and they became the coaches. Those are just some of the extra things we do within the schools. Students also, I'm sorry, SROs, they do a lot of referrals. They're not just there whether it's referring a student to a local job fair or the violence-free zone. I do want to get to the student surveys. We did do a student survey during the year just so we could see how we were doing. Some of the responses were shift from enforcement-focused roles to trauma-informed support. SROs are doing well. They would like for SROs to stop more fights and address safety concerns and prevent more conflict. Some of the students said they want SROs to help keep the kids in class and also engage with them more and have more assemblies and be highly visible in those crowded areas such as lunch. really quick how did you all conduct the survey um we basically compiled a form and if the students come into the office can you fill out a form well we did ask the administration is this okay for us to give out something like this and then some of the admin would give the surveys out and then return them back to us do you know how many were collected i don't know how but there were some collected from every school okay every school At the end of the year, we also do a survey or feedback from the administrators of how we're doing. And they ask that officers would be more intentional engagement during lunch periods and connect with the students during lunch playing games. Those were some of the things. But they do agree that there is a need for the student resource officers. Officers also participate in events. We've held four parent academies during the year, which is, I guess, an open forum to welcome parents, guardians, and students. We conducted four. We didn't get a large crowd even though we announced, but we did put that out there in case there were questions regarding... how the program works. And just to kind of end it right now, we are participating in Operation Summer Guardian, which I don't know if everyone's familiar with, but just engagement portion in those hot zones of the city. Officers enjoy doing that. and some of our goals basically is to increase positive student engagement and also we want to increase classroom presentations but that is dependent upon the school if they will allow us to do so. Some schools are receptive and some are not. But that's all I have or where we're at this year and what will be starting up soon. I believe school starts around September 2nd of this year.

Okay, very good. And yeah, I would encourage members to look at the student survey and administrative survey results. Those are interesting to get feedback from both the students and the administration on what's working and what challenges remain. Alder Moore, you're the sponsor. Did you want to start off with any questions?

Just a few quick questions. In regards to, you know, it was mentioned around effective student discipline. What would you consider, because it was a lack of effective school, excuse me, effective student discipline, what would you all consider so that it's not just solely dependent on SROs to create a culture of discipline in the school? expertise or opinion, what would you say that looks like?

Well, they do have a matrix. NPS has a matrix of discipline which is on their website which they use the number system one through four. It's more so going by the matrix that they have created. which four would be something more egregious. We just try to ask that those fit into that egregiousness rather than just asking so that we don't have to go back and forth with, no, I don't think you should give a citation here. Yes, I want a citation here, but I think it's more so them just going by their matrix, what they have, because that's what we want to do. We don't want to overstep in those disciplines. Just do what it says on their chart. That would be very, very helpful. to us. So go ahead.

And I would say one of those key components of that aspect with the discipline is knowing when to call us in versus their security staff. Yeah. So not, um, preemptively just getting our SROs involved in some, maybe a discipline issue. We're there for more of the, uh, the criminal aspect of things. But when it's disciplined, you deal with your, uh, security staff when it's that start involving the criminal aspect, then get my SROs involved and then we deal with that aspect. So it's just having that fine line of when to get the right people involved in some of these incidents.

Would you all, in regards to like the safety or security staff, you know, do you all feel that the schools were equipped with adequate safety staff? And maybe it depends from school to school.

Sometimes they're not, and we immediately discuss those issues when we have that with the director. So when there are times that it's not adequately staffed or they may be placed in the wrong area, we do discuss and NPS will come to the table. What can we do to make this better?

And I do just want to interject and say we have a robust partnership and ongoing communication with NPS leadership at all times. Sure. So when there are some of these issues where we're like, hey, we see a concern here, it is with a willing partner to work with us. And if there are some gaps where there's security is, we work through those on a regular basis. Yeah. I think the meetings are weekly. Yeah. Yeah.

Every Wednesday, the security director is at our building. So any issues or concerns that may be brought up, we can have those real-time meetings, especially on a weekly basis.

Got it. And lastly, it was mentioned that, okay, we service 156 schools. So it's not just these 25 officers in schools. X number of these 25 schools or whatever it is. Those same, just for clarity, those same officers are supporting all the schools throughout the city.

What we attempt to, we have an overage. There are the 25 that are in the school, but usually it's about five to six, depending on staffing that we have. We will attempt to service those all over the city or grab those calls up. Like dispatch will hold those calls for those roving SROs to go all over the city and attempt to get those. And if we can't, district will step in to take those calls. Got it. Okay.

thank you thank you mr chair thank you alder taylor actually i think you may have answered almost all of these questions i have one was the relationship building with the administrators but i think heather just answered that um so yeah that one's good and maybe developing a plan uh... like a checklist of what they should be doing prior to calling you but i think you answered that one uh... and and if you feel like you have more to answer then please please add worth more details uh... the other one was Just looking at your purpose of being there, whether the schools are seemingly safer for both teachers and students. I've seen a lot. So those things that you've mentioned, I've seen them firsthand. And so it's on both sides. The safety issue is whether teachers and students are safe. Because I've seen it on both sides where teachers have been abused and students as well. um... and so that and uh... and then the other one that you may not have really touched on is uh... whether this uh... has built a relationship between police and community and does it spill over into the community like uh... just looking at how you've built that relationship and whether students are seeing police officers in a different way uh... so changing their behavior outside of school?

It definitely spills over because say like those events that are outside of school hours, students have, when something goes on, students have become protective of the officers they know that have been in their schools. it does spill over. Um, simple story is that, um, a student, another student from a school came up to a different school to fight. And one of the administrators said, yeah, the student noticed there was an SRO vehicle that was parked outside and they turned around and there was no trying to get into, into the school. But, um, believe that it does even when they're out at Carmen Park the students recognize them or some instances on Water Street when they're down there an officer can they our SROs do work down there they're like oh I know you or the students are going the other way because they know that these officers know them and oh they can find their information or the officers simply you don't need to be down here why are you down here they know that they can seek information about them. So it does reach over into the areas, like I said, when officers aren't in the school, they're taking assignments. So they could come across one of their students where the students know them or a student may need something. A good one is, There was a student, and it's a funny story because I met this student at Obama. I check up on the schools and met him for the first time. Why are you in the hallway? And he said he was fighting. I go to visit Marshall a couple weeks later. He's there. And I'm like, oh, what happened? and he goes, I got kicked out. And he goes, I came over here to level up. I said, well, okay, I hope you will. And he, the officers there really worked with him. He was falling behind. He has some family issues where he just couldn't commit to school, but the officers made it their point to ensure that he got through all his classes and he ended up graduating from school he wasn't on like a path to graduate but he ended up graduating this year and they would help him with simple things as well he may not be able to make it to work because he doesn't have a ride but he can reach out to those officers and say okay this is what i need and they're very helpful with that because they have a concern or um he needs socks for the day they have a concern for them and they want to be helpful but i believe that it does reach out to the community even juneteenth all sros work juneteenth but we know we have the team zone but they were concentrated over there because it's like you will know these kids these kids will know you perhaps that will keep trouble down because they are familiar with officers and what they do in schools and what they don't do. So I do believe that it reaches over to the community.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you. Other questions? Sure. Alder Bergelis.

Thank you. And I think it's important to maintain the distinction between school policy and let the school administrators and school public safety discipline and why SROs are in schools. Can you talk a little bit about what your non-school day assignments look like? What part of the city, what districts are you in? Are you focused where kids might, like you mentioned, Water Street, that's a special duty. You're not there because you expect your students to be there. But what are your assignments

on a day where say there is no schools we uh... basically farm the officers out to each district uh... and we will past the district what do you need from us is their areas of concentration you would like us to be uh... there may be in events that the district wants us to attend last week there was trouble in carmel carmen park so District four specifically asked us, can we stay in Carmen Park for our eight hours of the day? And that's what the officers did to, I mean, engage with the students, the young people, it depends, but more so We are out at the districts when not taking calls for service. This summer we have been taking part in Summer Guardian, which is Thursday through Sunday between 11 and 7. So we do the community engagement portion of that on those days. So I try to fill their time in with definitely other things when we're not in school.

Yeah, on page five of your presentation, it looks like Marshall, Rufus King, and Hamilton have the three highest calls for service. Do you spend your time in districts proportional to what you experience? I mean, are you on the south side by Hamilton most often? You mean for calls for service or? I'm asking for your non-school day activity. Do you distribute resources appropriately based on where your calls for service are?

We try to. Not even the calls for service in the school, just... we just give that district more than likely every day that there is no school that they will be a squad in, you know, district six and more than likely if those officers are working, it would be those who are assigned to Hamilton or Pulaski. We try to keep them in the same areas, but we do have to deviate sometimes depending on staffing and the needs of the city where they might need an additional squad.

How carefully do you track where you're assigned on non-school days? Are you able to tell us we've had this many officers in District 6, this many in 4, this many in 1?

Well, normally, I'll tell you, it's normally about two a day that we at least have every day. We assign someone every day to a district, whether it be day shift hours or the early power. We do attempt to put a two-person squad in each district. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. With respect to the graph, you had 2025-26 analysis. It's early on in the presentation. Page 5. Page 5. All right. That one, I don't know. I don't know if you can pull it up or see it but it looks like there's some schools where there's a high number of calls for service but a relatively low number of citations and for others they're pretty similar. Is that just the seriousness of what they're being called for or some schools maybe call happy or what's going on there?

i would say the seriousness of the caucus every trouble with subject will not result in a citation that's uh... normal but you know calls for service not everything will result in a a citation and we carefully try to figure out with the administrator which this which incidents should have a citations like i said it's not a widespread thing so a call you could have a call and some of those calls are come out within the school, SRO may be assigned there, but they may have a trouble with subject in the school, which that's how we record these calls by putting those within our call system. If there is a trouble with subject where they're summoned, they will go over the air and say, I have a trouble with subject, but doesn't mean a citation will be issue. It's really hard to correlate the calls for service with the amount of citations that are issued.

And have you had more success over time with working with administration on being careful about what they're calling in SROs for versus a purely school disciplinary matter? I'm sure that changes from school to school.

It's harder with the schools that we're not assigned to. Okay. But we have had talks with the administrator of those schools that we are assigned like, please don't ask our officers to issue citations. This is not a citation moment. So the principals do adhere to that. We are in constant talks all the time. We have to be careful not to just go around giving out citations. And we adhere to that, we try.

We try and just kind of to tie a bow on it there. So years ago MPD was. basically kicked out, asked to leave the SROs, the schools. Act 12 put them back in. It'd be good to hear from MPS as well, but MPD's opinion, how successful has the SRO program been? Were there fears about what would happen that have been found to be misplaced? Basically what... kind of asking you to grade yourselves there. What do you think about the SRO experiments going back in schools that Act 12 initiated?

i think it's good i think that the students and staff they need the officers there in it i believe it gives the officers and the city a chance just to to bond in a place where they're seeing the officers every day is not just your your one-off call where today you're here there you can actually build relationships that carry over like she said into out of school

you know i i think it's a a a great thing at this point um and i would say uh you know even just as maybe a couple weeks ago two of our sros invited a student up to our seventh floor and he toured the seventh floor and he's a he's an artist and he loves drawing um and And he drew them in his little sketchbook. So he showed me his sketchbook. He came in my office and I had a conversation with him and explained to him about law enforcement and not every position has to be a sworn position. You're an artist. I told him about our graphic designer. So they took him over there to her office to just let him know not every aspect of law enforcement is the badge and gun. There's other aspects to the job. So just... you know, that mentoring aspect that the SROs are doing out there every day, that carries over to what this, this is summer school now. So they developed that relationship with that student and now they're, you know, checking up on this student over the summertime and still encouraging him to pursue his goals. So, and that's just happened, you know, just recently, so.

Okay. And that was one of the hoped for goals, I guess, is the building of relationships. And I'm hearing you saying that the SRO program has been facilitating that.

And the parent actually reached out to the officers to ask if they could do that for him.

Okay. Very good. Alder Tiller.

Thank you so much. I appreciate what you guys are doing. being in the schools and just seeing directions in which students are going and sometimes just really trying to just make that difference in one or two lives is important. So thank you. But looking at this chart, and I don't want to say but, just looking at this chart, would it be... Teachers may look, I don't know if it's public or not, but if a teacher was to look at this and say, maybe I won't go to Vincent, maybe I'll go to North Division, right? Because would it be safe to say that one school would be safer over the other or... Really you can't do that with this chart because of the nature of the calls that may have occurred At because I see Vincent has a high arrest rate in comparison to the others or high citation rate You know what? I mean?

So I I would say that this isn't telling of the safety of any particular school You know any caller can call for police service and sometimes people feel fear way quicker than other people feel fear And so based upon calls for service, I wouldn't say oh well Don't go to this school versus this one So, and then one thing I want to point out that was given prior in the presentation is this is just a very small fraction of the interactions and the students, 9,000 students and about 1% are individuals in these categories. So to any parent who has any concern about the safety of their student, just like crime anywhere else. It's a very, very small portion of the population, a very small portion of the population of even these schools. Okay, thank you.

And just to add on to that, with the perspective, you know, it's everyone's perspective, you know, whether it's the school or the neighborhood, you know, someone's perspective of where I may live, maybe it's completely different from mine. And I've been living there for over 26 years. So when and then when you look at the arrest data, and some of those incidents may not even occurred at the school. So it's hard to correlate, you know, the safety aspect as to what we're the response. So just want to make that, you know, that distinction, because, you know, it varies by perspective.

Okay. I just wanted to be sure considering that Vincent is in District 9.

And different schools have different amounts of students enrolled. Like Hamilton is a school that has, they started with like 1,300 students. And some schools have less of an enrollment of students. So there's many aspects to it, but I don't feel like this is telling whether one school is safer than the other.

Okay, thank you for this.

Thank you. Any other questions? Aldermore, anything in conclusion?

No, I just want to say thank you all so much. I know when I reached out, just your enthusiasm and willingness to share the work that the team has been doing. I can't thank you all enough for just the relationship building. I think for me is one of those sentiments that we have to do a much better job of making those connections with young people particularly. and our service men and women. And so I just want to thank you all for the support that you've provided. We'll do this again next year just so that we can have some comparison and get a little bit more data under our belt. And again, let us know here if there's anything that we can do to support. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate you. Mr. Chair, just one last thing, if I could. Yes. Vincent is in District 9, and if you're ever doing a talk with students and you would like for me to come out and talk with you, I would so much enjoy that. Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you. Will do.

and uh thank you again i think we've heard some success stories here so um people might have an impression fears of what would happen but it's good to have the um description of what actually has transpired so thank you for that yeah and i can attest uh you know i worked one night uh the cold red hours and seeing our sros out there and engaging those um

too young to be in the uh bars but old enough to be past curfew type thing and then you know some especially at the eight o'clock hours them engaging them seeing it with my own eyes so yeah thank you very good okay thank you thank you and with that alder moore would move that we place this item on file and hearing no objections uh so ordered thank you very much

Item eight, file number 260381, communication from the Milwaukee Fire Department relating to the feasibility of using light duty vehicles for medical runs. This is sponsored by Alderberg Ellis.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. This is a trailing resolution that follows our budget cycle for additional fire equipment in our 2026 budget. And I appreciate the thorough, very detailed, in-depth report and presentation from the department that I know we have all already read and digested. So I just ask for highlights and some time for questions.

very good uh if i if i can correct one thing it was recently added to the file okay uh as in today uh and i own that mistake uh appreciate you moving this from the previous meeting or holding it from the previous meeting to this meeting translation error i thought i had included the file previously but i hadn't All right, sounds good. Please proceed. Mr.

Chair, if you can refresh the iPads. I managed to put it in there while the committee's going at it.

Okay. Thank you. Good to go? Yeah. I'm Chief Lipsky, Milwaukee Fire Department, with me Assistant Chief Josh Parrish. We've spent a good deal of time on the Milwaukee Fire Department exploring this concept, and so I'm gonna give you the highlights. It's a 14 slide thing, but I'll, I don't wanna not give it its just due, but I'm gonna move it along pretty good. So we've done a number of things here. First off, We've done three different pilot phases on this all the way back to 2016. We're going to give you a brief summary of those. We've done a variety of different vehicle deployment models within those. We conducted a SWAT analysis of the entire concept, and then we think we've got an evidence-based path identified for moving forward. We can jump to the next one then. So in 2016, the first time we tried this, it was a cross-staff model. We essentially loaded up a Suburban with some EMS equipment, parked it next to a fire truck, and if it was a medical run, the crew had to grab all their stuff off the engine, jump on the... Suburban take that run this this was terminated after we were unable to respond to numerous fire calls while returning from EMS calls. And it's something we'll get into later in the presentation. 2019 we did a paramedic supplement program. through a lot of backend research, a number of call types that either did not result in transport at all and had low mobility or mortality. They were pretty low importance calls basically, but that might require paramedic intervention. We tried that, that showed some promise. And then we had a whole separate alternate response vehicle thing during the COVID epidemic that was very specialized only for that. So that went away as protocols evolved. So, a couple objectives. Obviously, everybody's interested in reducing apparatus maintenance costs. As run volumes continue to climb year over year, the rigs are out the door more frequently. We can jump to the next one. We'll hit that in more detail. the missing engine problem this is this is a problem created by the cross staff model uh... and so i i will not be an advocate for this model of having the cruise jump back and forth and back and forth all day long between their heavy apparatus and the lighter vehicle uh... the the delay in getting out the door with that model uh... on its own is It's just undesirable, but the fact that that engine now is not available for all of the other wide catalog of response types that it could respond to, most notably fire, it makes that extremely undesirable. If you look in the bottom right corner, we have 10 engine companies. That's roughly a third of our frontline engine companies on any given day are tied up on runs for at least 35 to 45% of the time. An ARV concept amplifies that. When we say, I'm talking specifically about the engine apparatus, that's unacceptable by any protective or risk management structure for a major urban city structure how we are. ARV would amplify that in a cross-staffing model. Three critical findings then. The operational risk of the cross-staffing, obviously the rapid growth of fire, the risk to life, the advanced property loss, that risk is not theoretical, that has already been experienced. Financial constraints, obviously having a SUV that we respond in is that in and of itself is not free and we have to then upfit that suburban or whatever light vehicle we'd be using so that we actually have all the things we need for all of the different EMS interventions we now provide. Maintenance savings by switching to that model Peer department's report is really not as substantial as one with, and then obviously infrastructure barriers. In order to add an SUV, we would have to have space in a fire station to do that. We'll get into why that's problematic in a second. So in the phase two model that we talked about before where we really, really isolated a specific set of runs, we were able to demonstrate that we could reduce responses on those specific types by about 7,000 plus annually. And what I mean by this is if we had two dedicated staffed light vehicles, alternative response vehicles, we're saving about just under 200 to about 330 runs a month where we're not sending an engine and a metric to that run. We were just sending that SUV. And that was a pilot phase, again, that was, was that 2019? I forgot the exact year. and that was really isolating only those eight call types. We estimate we'd need about four to eight of those for total citywide coverage. Again, this was just an isolated pilot program. We didn't wanna isolate any specific part of the city, and these vehicles did spend a lot of time driving. Obviously, that itself is not ideal, so we would wanna bulk this concept up. SWAT analysis then, and again, I'm really trying to rip here. I don't want to read all these to you. I'll give you some of the key points here. Strength is reducing the total call volume for heavy vehicles. It right-sizes responses to those lower acuity calls as demonstrated in that phase two. We already have tiered responses, so we could sandwich this in there. And it's very appropriate for treat no transport, that's what that TNT means. I lied, I said I was gonna give you highlights and I'm just reading it. I apologize. Weaknesses then, crews in an alternative response vehicle are not equipped nor capable to mount a fire attack, or support that in any real way to be honest with you coming back in an SUV. That per unit cost outfitted with all the EMS equipment is over $100,000 a copy. Priority stations, which would be our busiest stations, we know where those are. They're the same heat map as every other issue in the city of Milwaukee. Those are our older stations. They barely have room for the fire engine and or ambulance that are located in the buildings right now. So that's a very real problem. Our infrastructure would need to be changed. And then again, the concept of that we would have an enormous savings on maintenance by doing this is not substantiated by peer data. Opportunities, run reduction, that's always good. That's a, we're constantly, well not we, Assistant Chief Parrish is constantly working on that and he's had some success with it. It's an innovation tool. We're constantly attempting to be innovative and attempt to reduce the, not just the wear and tear on the rigs, but on the people themselves. Again, the future design of stations would certainly need to incorporate the ARV bays. And grant funding may be available for EMS innovation. We're always looking. Again, a lot of that has match funding requirements. Threats, the life safety exposure during fire events at the same time, depending on the model selected. Prolonged vehicle absence in high risk city areas, meaning if you get this thing in a loop, those people on that specific vehicle, while keeping those heavies less busy, they might themselves just suffer burnout. Again, a threat is... it'd be really great to just build a bunch of new firehouses that fit this model. That's a nice idea. That's a great idea, right? That also is not free. It's far from free. And then there is a, I think this is part theoretical and part fact, there'd be a budget competition between this and our much needed heavy apparatus that that fleet is itself in shambles, I'll just say it. So we've got, on a very specific call type, we've got a huge, huge, let me do this. These next couple slides are emphasizing the points I just made. Let me zip through these next four detailing the SWAT and I'm happy to go back to them. I'm just trying to move along here for you. So if we jump to addressing the original goal, apparatus maintenance, slide 12. so uh we've got a couple of different things we've got for the apparatus maintenance issue which is that's the original goal is how do we reduce that drag on apparatus maintenance uh and and the fact that those apparatus are very expensive and the maintenance is is complex increasing the replacement cycle obviously helps with that it's i don't want to forget about that part of it a predictive maintenance program also key we are very very near to being able to release a very very in-depth study we did on how we might be able to either stretch the life of apparatus by adding mechanics at our repair shop. Adding people is not in vogue right now, obviously, with the tightening budgets, but we think it might actually be a solution that could work out. What it would also do is keep the fleet that is presently parked in service we have a ton of our fleet that's just waiting in queue for repair part replacement damage damage that's been done through reckless driving etc the maintenance of regional partnerships again this is not going to turn into some big gold mine but we have grown with approval of the council the maintenance re repair partnerships with all the shared services fire departments and then the dispatch optimization We believe that we can also reduce the wear and tear on apparatus by constantly crystallizing what we are sending to what alarm types. And it's probably not buzz worthy or super hot topic for anybody's interest, but we've been doing this for years where we're trying to always send the bare minimum of what could be needed for the maximum worst case scenario. And we're doing this against folks that when calling 911 are not always excellent historians. They're not super accurate with what they're reporting, but they're doing the best they can and they're helping. They're trying to call so the dispatchers have to play this Plinko game with very limited information to land on the right response. We have been really starting to hammer some of those down. And the problem is as we're scooping out 1,000 runs here, 15 runs there, 2,000 runs there of reduced responses because of data-informed dispatching. And then the next year, the call volume just on its own goes up in all these other areas. And it's hard to realize or feel like you're really winning. You're just, you know, you're running to stand still, right? To quote my favorite band, U2. Okay.

So, Chief, really quick. So, for example, when I called for my own home, carbon monoxide detection, would it have made sense to have a different apparatus? Because, you know, the whole shebang came out, right? It's cool. And you all responded very quickly. I was really impressed. In that particular instance, would a different apparatus have been more appropriate?

So that's a weird one because that's both a service, a potential fire emergency, and a potential EMS emergency all in one.

Oh, I see.

Which is the beauty of an all-hazard response on a heavy piece of equipment. I see. In your case, if nobody was sick, okay, now it's not EMS. If it was not the result of something smoldering or burning, a piece of equipment rubbing inside or a leak from an appliance, well then it might not be a fire emergency. At the end of the day, it could be a bad CO detector. The fire engine responding on that particular one, or a ladder truck, quite frankly, can solve all of the problems, whatever is presented when we get there. So we just send the one. When I was younger on the job, you would have thought that it was the towering inferno with the amount of rigs we would send for a carbon monoxide leak. Now, if we get specific information that, hey, there's six people in the family, they're nauseous, and the dispatchers will coach, get out of the house, and we'll send additional resources. But that's a totally appropriate response, what was sent. Okay, thank you So if we jump to the next one the run reduction value is real but conditional there is potential to both reduce runs meaning Actually make some of the responses go away and focus those in front of those better but also The per heavy apparatus response numbers there is potential to bring that down so a couple things The apparatus redundancy, that's real. The missing fire engine problem, that is real. So the cross staffing is, I will not pursue that. So it would have to be dedicated staffing. And it would have to be for a very controlled call set as a result. The station infrastructure, we would love to put these in the high utilization areas. Those stations are not, they're presently not equipped to supply these, or rather support and house these. And then the fleet scale, obviously there's a cost to these vehicles and outfitting them all, that's four to eight vehicles. And... it this can't be something that we're doing then and then we're sitting here arguing about whether you know how do i say this it can't compete with the necessary fire protection that this department is also providing so if we're going to do this that's great but it i i can't deplete anymore and from the fire suppression side in fact i still need to add back fire suppression capability that is not that problem hasn't gone away fire runs are not getting any better for this city they're getting larger they're getting more complex whole different story but we need the fire suppression capability as well and the last slide then our conclusion is uh quite simply the cross-staffing model as i've said uh that's that's not something that we're going to pursue the supplement model that has some proven strategic value meaning if we're going to add some personnel and that's what they're going to do and we're going to focus this in on these specific run types which will draw down the drag on the individual companies in that area but also the math and the data behind it, if we can reduce the number of requests, that helps the entire system. So that's our information, and again, there's more in some of those slides I really ripped through. We would absolutely love to take questions, and I just wanna, as always, recognize Assistant Chief Parrish for Yeoman's work on doing this project.

Thank you very much, Chief. Just to start it off, You mentioned that to be effective you would need four to eight of these ARV units. How many positions or how many people staff each of those?

It would be two people per vehicle. There'd be two paramedics.

Per shift?

Per shift. So if we had one out of a station, that would be six for each day, six for all three shifts for that station.

So if you wanted to do four of them, it's four vehicles, maybe a spare, and then six new positions for each one. So 24 people. Five vehicles.

Yeah, and a couple of extra people in there for paid parental leave, sick leave, injuries, all those.

Do you think that firefighters would want to apply for that kind of a supplemental position? Or if you're a firefighter, you want to be first in line for a fire?

I think firefighters... If I can use the past five or six years as evidence, firefighters will jump in and help with whatever we need him to help with. but i don't think they i will tell you people typically don't join a fire department uh... and pursue the the title of firefighter with the soul emphasis of i'd just only want to do e m s work i think the logic of that it's flawed to suggest now there are plenty of people who just absolutely lovely ms and that's what they want to do this may be an ideal spot for that Don't know that I don't know I think we would be able to fill it if if that's the foundation of the question Okay.

Well, thank you bring it around for other questions comments from committee members No, I appreciate the in-depth

I guess the question is the finances to make those extra four or five units fly. So are there any, I'm not really sure. I mean, I know my predecessor was big on the, I forget what you call it here, the cross-staff replacement model. do you think the supplemental model can be made to work within, it just can't be made to work within your current budgetary constraints? Is that the? No, there's no way. Yeah. Okay.

All right. If I make a small point, it's four to eight units. It's not just four or six. And that kind of goes to your question before, like, would people do it? One of the things that we noticed when we did that first model is that they run a lot. You are, you know, it's a lot of driving, which is why we need more. So that call set that we would identify, we would identify how many units we would need, tend to that volume, because it does become a lot of work. Now it's rapid fire, high brain work. And then you also have to adjust that travel time for wherever they're coming from, wherever they're going to. So that's where that gradiation is between four to eight units. We need to nail down a specific number of how many we need and it'd be in that range.

Would it be worthwhile to start with one or two? Yeah, I was going to ask that.

No. So we did two last time. So we did one on the north side, one on the south side, and one like this all day. So what you had was two suburban running lights and sirens across 100 square miles of city for like 15 hours at a time. The report from them was it was useful. but it was just way too much like running, because you can only work them so hard before decision making starts to fall, before they get tired, they get exhausted. There's a 24-hour shift. So just two was not enough.

Instead of supporting an entire half of the city, could they just support those highest volume stations?

Now we're back to where we put them. The highest volume stations don't have any room to put the vehicles in.

Okay, all right. No, you you actually answered my question just in regards to the to the numbers So as far as the dedicated space I mean again another it would have to be sort of a built-out space Talk to me a little bit how that would work again with the dedicated space.

Sure. I'll jump into it. So our original inner ring, meaning near north side, near south side of fire stations were built in the mid late 1800s. They were built to support horse drawn steamers and horse drawn service ladders. So they're just not, they're not, we barely can fit the fire engines that we have assigned there in those buildings. We have to spec our vehicles a very specific way. There's not there's just not depth or width to You know winnow in another vehicle in most of those stations not we could figure something out at some of them, but this now We really prefer to not have stacked vehicles. It only works in certain spots where, for instance, if you had a battalion chief vehicle in front of a heavy vehicle, that battalion chief vehicle can be, you can start that and pull that out of the way right away so that heavy can get going on whatever they're going. And I suppose an SUV, I guess I'm defeating my own argument here. I guess an SUV, if we could fit it in there, same problem. If we can fit it in there, it works. We literally don't have the space to put in a VW bug in some of these stations in addition to what we have.

Yeah. So you're saying, Chief, we need to bring back the horses.

Well, I was gonna ask the Milwaukee Police Department if we could borrow some of theirs. That would be a great partnership.

I think Heather would like that. I appreciate that.

There's a very steep hill to get up into the stables, but anything else?

No, yeah, thank you for that.

Any other comments? All right, thank you very much. Alderman Spiker moves to place this communication file on file. Appreciate it. Any objections? So ordered. Thank you all.

Thank you.

Moving on to item number nine, file 260351. Oh, I thought that's your file you want to read. What are we on, nine? OK. Well, we'll pass back. OK, thanks.

Item nine, file number 260351, substitute resolution relating to acceptance and funding of Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development Fast Forward Grant. Sponsored by myself, but Department of Emergency Communications is the real author here. So if you wanna come to the table and say anything about this grant.

Yes.

Sorry, Tony Buono with the Department of Emergency Communications. The grant total is for $84,000. It's targeted to individuals who will develop specific specialized skills and it, We have that. We hire people directly off the street. We train them into the positions that we require, and they gain a marketable skill. So we're excited that we have this opportunity. Again, $84,000 is the total in, and that's all I have. Any questions? Happy to answer.

Any questions from committee members? If not, Alderberg-Ellis would move to recommend adoption. And hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you. Item 10, file number 260419, substitute resolution relative to acceptance and funding of the 26 through 27 HIV partner services grant from the State of Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

Morning, Mr. Chair, committee members, Aaron Schepinski, Milwaukee Health Department. This is annual funding we get from the Department of Health Services, part of a series of statutory appropriations. This one helps us support HIV testing, education, and not so much treatment, but coordination of care. It's part of our efforts in the SRH clinic at Kenan Health Center. So we're glad to have this funding again for 26, 27. And should you approve, this does need referral to finance for changes to the positions ordinance. Okay, questions?

Mr. Chair.

Alder Burgels.

Thank you for being here. And briefly, is this affected by any of the funding cuts, the federal funding cuts that were recently announced by the Trump regime?

No, it is not. I think you're probably referring to Title 10, which the health department doesn't get any Title 10. So we're spared those cuts. This is actually state funding, which there's not a lot of it that comes to us for health purposes. But this is one of the state funded grants. So this has not been affected by those cuts.

Thank you very much.

Move adoption.

Alder Burgels would move to recommend adoption and referral to finance and personnel and hearing no objections, so ordered. Item 11. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. File number 260421, resolution relating to acceptance and funding of a 2026 Milwaukee Metropolitan Drug Enforcement Group program grant.

Good afternoon, Petra Decker, MPD, budget and finance. This is a subaward by the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office for their Wisconsin Department of Justice award. The grant amount is $611,438 with $162,332 from the grantor. This is a long-standing relationship that we have and a good funding source for us. The grant will fund a portion of salary and wage benefits for three department members assigned to the Milwaukee Metropolitan Drug Enforcement Group Task Force to reduce controlled substances in the metro area through targeted interruption of large-scale drug trafficking.

Okay. Any questions about this long-standing grant? If not, Alder Moore would move to recommend adoption or referral to finance and personnel, and hearing no objections, so ordered. Item 12, file number 260422, resolution relating to acceptance and funding of a Homeland Security WEM stack analyst positions 2024 grant.

So this is a grant from Wisconsin Emergency Management in the amount of $210,755. The grant will fund seven and a half months of salary fringe benefits over time and travel and training for four staff in the stack, which is the Southeastern Wisconsin Threat Analysis Center. The stack provides a platform for collaboration among multiple federal, state, local, and tribal agencies and disciplines to exchange information and intelligence with the goal to improve the ability to detect, prevent, defer, and respond to crime and terrorism by analyzing data from various sources. Again, this is a grant we've received for many years in a row, so this is the newest iteration of that funding source.

Very good. Questions? Comments? If not, Alder Taylor would move to recommend adoption or referral to finance and personnel. And hearing no objections, so ordered. Item 13, file number 260423, resolution relating to acceptance and funding of Homeland Security Southeastern Wisconsin Threat Analysis Center Operations 2024 grant.

This is another grant from the WEM in the amount of $61,000 for STAC, which is the same entity that the last file was about, and the funding will support STAC training, equipment, supplies, and technology in order to ensure continuity of operations.

Okay, questions, comments? If not, Alderberg-Else would move to recommend adoption, and hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you very much. Thank you. Item 14, file number 260413, communication from the police chief fire chief and emergency communication director relating to the city's public safety response to the use of illegal fireworks in the beginning of July, 2026. This is sponsored by Alder Bergelis.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. This file came about after a I hate to call it a normally quite busy July 4th weekend. Fireworks proliferate throughout my district. I get calls from constituents complaining about their neighbor, complaining that they try to call 911 and they're put on hold. It seems that this has been continuing to escalate year after year. Last year, we lost a garage because of improper disposal of fireworks on South 37th Street. The risks and costs of public safety resources in the city because of fireworks should not be there. So today I wanna hear what kind of call time waits we had for 911 service. Was anything else critical impacted because of an abundance of calls for fireworks related disturbances? How many citations did the police department issue? And what kind of response did MPD and the fire department have for fireworks during the weekend?

Okay, very good. The table's been set. Who would you like to hear from first?

We can start at the beginning, Director Bueno. Okay.

Just jumping at the bit here. This is, I'm Tony Bueno, Department of Emergency Communications. I apologize, I didn't come prepared with some of the information that you requested. I wasn't aware of the entire scope of it. But I do, I can tell you that year over year, we've increased the call volume for the July 4th, July 5th time period by 1% or 2% in 911 calls, 2.6% in 10-digit emergencies, so combined, those are considered 911 calls. Overall, it's a 5% increase in call volume year over year. We had 775 specifically coded fireworks calls or firework-related calls. I don't have the specifics on the call wait times, however, An exception to our standard and required performance measurements wasn't noted during that time. We follow up on those every week to make sure that we've met our standards and expectations and that didn't happen. So you mentioned some hold times or some non-answered calls. There's an issue with the non-emergency line that people use to get in contact with the dispatch, and that's probably another discussion for another time, but we're working on ways to improve that service.

Well and frankly, had they been able to get to the dispatcher, it's unknown or unclear that MPD would have been able to respond to those calls anyway. But the concern is that dispatchers were overburdened with fireworks calls and something not fireworks related that is life safety was delayed because of influx of calls. But thank you for that.

Chief? Yeah, Chief Lipski, Milwaukee Fire Department. So we evaluated the 24-hour periods of July 3rd, which would go 8 a.m. on the 3rd to 8 a.m. on the 4th, and then July 4th, 8 a.m. on the 4th to 8 a.m. on the 5th. We had about, well, let me look up and make sure I get this right before I say the wrong thing. We had a lot of runs. Let me talk about the ones that were specific to fireworks. We know that on July 3rd, we had a garage fire that is very, very likely caused by fireworks. On July 4th, we had two garages that burned down very likely as a result of fireworks. We had a large number of responses for smoke in the area, explosion heard, right? People are... not a hundred percent uh... clear on what they're hearing or smelling so they call nine one one uh... we had three responses for specific that we can uh... isolate down that were directly related to injury from fireworks or people being struck by fireworks uh... in those ended up in uh... fairly minor injuries thank goodness and uh... there was There was a great deal of violence, not specifically related to fireworks, but it just seemed to be. A relatively uncontrolled environment for a few days and that extended well into. The evening of July 5th over to the morning of July 6th, which I haven't categorized here, but that's just my own personal experience driving around the city. And living in the city, it's it was. Bonkers.

Yeah.

Thank you, Chief. For the fires that did happen, so three this year over the weekend, are you aware of MPD's involvement in investigating the source of those fireworks, where they came from, were any citations issued?

I don't have that level. I can tell you that our fire investigation unit works extremely close with MPD's arson investigation folks that come out of their CIB. I don't know is the answer, and I'm sorry I'm not prepared for that right now.

Okay. Thank you.

MPD? Thank you, Heather Hough, MPD, and Assistant Chief Steve Johnson is here as Acting Chief. Just to give you a little perspective on MPD's role in responding to fireworks, My numbers, I asked our OMAP team to pull for July 4th specific, and our dispatch calls for service, so those calls that MPD actually were dispatched to and went out to respond to were 57, which is a significant amount for, and that's just on one day. We do have challenges when we respond. We can't issue any citations unless we know exactly who the individual is who lit off the firework and oftentimes a caller will call with just a general location versus a specific location and that makes it very difficult for our officers to do any. immediate response or even investigation of a citation down the road without knowing the identity of who lit off the fireworks specific. I'm sure you all saw on the news, we had our own officer who was a victim of a dangerous firework incident on Brady Street. And even for that, in investigating that, as our own officer who's injured, we are having difficulty tracking down who was the person, the suspect, who actually lit off the firework that injured our officer. So we do have challenges. Assistant Chief Johnson can speak to what happens on the 4th of July and the days before and to follow from a patrol perspective. But happy to answer any follow-up questions you might have.

No, just regarding the, you know, the response, like the chief of staff mentioned, you know, it was mentioned earlier, I live in the city, called the city of Milwaukee home for 45 years. You know, I just went on vacation during that period, but I was still in tune with, you know, because we not only had the 4th of July, but we also had the 250th celebration that we planned for in relations to not only the fireworks that some of the district's, increase personnel to try to respond to those type of calls for services and be proactive and advance. And one of those proactive steps that we were taking to try to eliminate, you know, the use of those fireworks where we put out on social media, you know, these are the, well, I have it right here, so. not only where we were, the county parks that was having the fireworks, the dangers of using these fireworks. Even my personal experience, fireworks are going off by my house. I didn't call the police, but I did follow up with that property manager just to let him know, listen, it's one o'clock in the morning. you know, can you at least, you know, speak with your tenants regarding this issue because my wife woke me up. So I understand the concerns of the residents. I live here too. It's just the problem that we encounter when we are trying to investigate, that's the problem. It's without that specific information as to who set it off and the person being that complainant to identify who that person is, Like Chief of Staff Huff said, you know, we're still trying to track down the person who injured one of our officers. And sometimes, you know, you can see the fireworks. You may hear it even from my house. I hear, you know, from downtown. But, you know, but the who, that's the problem when we're trying to investigate these incidents. But we did have a challenging weekend as far as, you know, the overall crime that may have been occurring over that weekend. with some shootings and homicides and all those other type of prior to one type calls for service that our squads were responding to as well.

How many citations were, thank you for that, how many citations were issued this year?

Sure. So I can tell you specific to a timeframe of July 1st through July 5th of this year, three citations were issued. Year to date, fireworks total, eight citations have been issued. How does three and eight compare to last year or the year before? Sure. So from July 1st through July 5th of 2025, 14 citations were issued in 2025. And then year to date 2025, 19 citations were issued in 2025. The year prior, in 2024, between July 1st and July 5th of 2024, seven citations were issued. And year to date, in 2024, seven citations were issued.

Okay. For... patrol or enforcement, have drones been used to help officers on the ground scope out where this is happening after a call for service?

I would like to follow up with our ATT team to see if they were deployed, but I don't have that information right now.

I understand it's difficult to be able to build a case that would withstand scrutiny from a judge on who is responsible. Has there ever been any discussion about... allowing the investigative process to realize the where and citing property owners for having a discharge of or spent fireworks in their driveway, in their grass, in the street right in front of their house. If they're having a party and people are congregating and there's a pile of spent fireworks in the public right-of-way 10 feet away from their driveway,

That would require a law change. And I'm not talking to lawmakers. Yeah, I'm not sure if it would be at the local ordinance level if there's some other state statute that would prevent it. But I, I would, I would say that would be something that would require that legal review.

And if there were a city ordinance that assigned responsibility to a homeowner or a property owner, is that still something that MPD would be able to enforce, or would that fall down to neighborhood services?

That I wouldn't know off the top of my head which department would be responsible for that enforcement, but that would be a discussion I'm sure we would all be involved in if that were pursued.

Are there any pending investigations from the three garage fires that are still active that haven't been charged or cited yet?

I don't have that information at the ready, but I'm happy to get that back to this committee.

Do you know if any of the three were investigated were charged?

Unfortunately did not bring that information with me today unless no These yeah It's not unusual even as you know far removed as a couple weeks out to not have something definitive yet There there it just takes a while It's a it's a it's a difficult process to it's one of the most difficult crimes to bring to conviction just based on evidence burning in the commission of the crime, but I We can dig on that tool and get back to you.

And then that kind of investigation, does that also go in to investigate the source of the fireworks where they purchased?

Yeah, if we're able to track back far enough to who made the purchase, if we can tie those things together. I mean, when we're talking... You know burning something to the ground and exposing all of the surrounding closely placed wood frame properties to the same risk Yeah, that's something that we will dig as far back as we can possibly go, but we can't we can't we can't Know what we don't know if we can't find the person right and and generally speaking fireworks that Explode or go up in the air are illegal in Wisconsin.

I

Yeah, anything open burning and fireworks are illegal, I can speak to the city limits, absolutely.

Right, well, there are other municipalities that don't restrict the sale. Oh, I see the sale, yes. Some other municipalities very close to the 11th Aldermanic District that frankly encourage tent sales and get a lot of money from permit fees by selling fireworks that are legal to sell but illegal to use in the city of Milwaukee.

Yeah, correct.

that's that's fair uh you hop on any freeway heading out of town yes oh yeah uh and you know head south on 94 north chicago they got their buildings built for this purpose 41 north um you know and that's the problem with the you know it's it's legal to sell it but um using it in our city obviously is illegal and when you can just step across a city border and you can sell it you know, we're now tasked with, you know, enforcing it and the enforcement aspect is the challenging part where we have to be able to produce a case to go either to the city attorney's office or the DA's office.

Yep. So my last question for the three citations that were issued this year, do we ask where those were purchased?

I would imagine they would, but we have to look at those narratives and see how that investigation went. trying to figure out where they may have been purchased. It may have been purchased legally outside our city limits. It's just now we're just investigating the aspect that you use it in our city.

Right, and I'll say that it is, I think, imperative that we understand where these fireworks are coming from because if they're coming from a neighboring adjacent municipality that allows the sale, and the city has an existing agreement with that same municipality to protect their citizens against fire risks, and the city of Milwaukee staffs a fire station in their municipality, and their internal municipal ordinances make our job, make the fire department's and the police department's job more difficult, then we have no business engaging in a reciprocal agreement to protect their citizens. And I'll leave it there. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Before going on to Alder Taylor, I had a question. So it looks like with three citations between July 1st and July 5th, if you played the fireworks lottery this year and lit off something you knew to be illegal, you were more than likely going to win. And that seems to be the case every year. And it's very frustrating for our constituents. And not putting the blame here, I understand proving your case is hard. But Are there any suggestions, anything MPD is exploring for maybe how other cities have looked at this, or is this just something where you have to suck it up and realize that a million people breaking the law at the same time is something that MPD is not able to really do anything about during those few days?

i would say we're in constant and regular communication with surrounding jurisdictions and including in the state of wisconsin some of the challenges that we see across the state fireworks is one of those challenges fireworks is one of those challenges across the nation during the fourth of july holidays not sure what other states laws are that being said uh... the there is uh... real issues with enforcement of citations because we have to know that who. Now, we are willing to work with our lawmakers and policymakers on other options that might make that easier, including the idea that Alderman Bergelis brought up of issuing a citation or some type of violation to a property owner. That seems to me a great idea. I wish the city attorney's office were here to get into the legalities of it, but things like that would make it easier for us. If you're asking if other municipalities have other solutions that we've explored, we're in communication with them. We're not aware of anything perhaps that is surrounding us that's any different. But we would welcome the opportunity to continue the conversation to figure out solutions as well, because these are things that do affect the quality of life of this community. It could bring harm to others, including our own employees.

And just checking in, how is the officer doing? Who's hurt?

She's still recovering, but she's doing fine. Okay. Alder Taylor, I interrupted. You had a question?

Can you add me to the queue?

Yep.

Thank you.

So just with these citations that were issued, were you able to issue those because of resident cameras catching the individual or what led to that?

That's a great question and I have actually while we're here texted our own map to pull those citation narratives for me. I'm happy to share what I can with this body to determine how we were able to get the identifying information that we needed and also to determine if the officers asked any follow up questions about where the fireworks came and I'll share that with you just as soon as I get that.

okay yeah I would greatly appreciate that I think that we do need to do something else I agree with my colleagues that it just it seems like there should be something that we can do to ensure that the residents are safe and just it's a disturbance in the in the night that and it goes on long after it should So I think we need to do something and I'm not quite sure what, but definitely willing to explore that a little bit more.

You know, the one aspect, like I said, when it happened by my house, when I went to the complex and spoke with the manager and I saw it when you were talking about the what is that the debris was in that parking lot. You know, I took a picture of it and I showed it to the manager. And it's more is like I told I'm just coming over as a homeowner. So I'm not wearing this uniform, just, you know, trying to police your tenants, trying to get that neighborly approach as a. another response and trying to hold them accountable per se, but it's one of those challenges. Still, I saw the debris out there, but I don't know who did it. Correct. I was in dead sleep.

Yeah, I'll leave the questions there. I'll leave my questions here. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Alder Moore. Thank you so much. I don't know necessarily if this is a question or just more so a comment because I went around the neighborhood as well and saw the debris. They're right in front of people's homes or multi-unit homes. Left in the streets, the area was sort of, in particular spaces, littered with fireworks. And when I was younger, I remember the sparklers and the little small little firecrackers that, hey, we would partake in, right? But I don't remember... you know, 11, 12, one o'clock at night, and I mean, you know, folks are purchasing the, I mean, these, I had professional fireworks going on in my neighborhood, and you know, again, you know, Folks are enjoying the festivities, but it just went on so late. It started before the 4th of July and then after the 4th of July. For me, when we talk about what we can do about it, it has to be an all-city approach. It can't just be on one entity. I did see the video that MPD did. around fireworks, but I think it's an approach that every aldermatic districts, neighborhood groups have to engage in, specifically around the education of it. I didn't hear anything much at all, aside from coming across the video, I didn't see any billboards. I didn't see any PSAs. I didn't see, I just didn't, you know, anything on the news to say, you know what, this is, you know, by the way, just so you know, fireworks are illegal in the city of Milwaukee because some people may think it's still, it's legal because you can get it so easily and everybody has it. So you're like, oh, you know, so I don't want to make assumptions that people know. I just don't think we did a really good job presenting Starting prior, so these are the things that need to happen in June leading up until the 4th of July, just the education piece. I just didn't see it as intensively. Again, there wasn't a lot of collaboration. It just wasn't a strategy to curb the behavior, to educate folks, to let them know that it's illegal. But I definitely think it just has to be a team approach because I got the calls, I got the emails. And it was just like there were other things that you all that MPD was, you know, tending to that was a higher priority. And folks were they were just upset because they're like, it's happening right now. And I'm just like, I get it. I'm so sorry. Right. So I think for next year, I think we need to have a strategy that we figure out what does that system-wide approach, you know, looks like. How can I, I'm going to use myself, how can I personally get it out to my residents, work with my neighborhood groups, right? And really getting the word out there to our constituents.

So it's in June, I think it was June 24th. You know, during one hour executive briefing, the chief made it a point to ensure that at my captain's meeting that we discussed this early on to try to get ahead of this, trying to put out those messages, even about the dangers of the fireworks, you know, I use myself as an example, you know, before all this, I unreal my hoses just to, you know, in case something does catch fire by my house. And that one particular time it did happen, it was the complex behind me, but it's, it's just, we have to, you know, let them know this is dangerous.

Yeah.

Um, and this is one of these, these briefings that we, you know, that we put out there from our, um, um, safety division, we try to put out this information to let them know, yes, if you want to enjoy the fireworks, go and see it by the professionals versus your neighborhood impromptu firework displays because you're not prepared to deal with if that incident goes and now it spreads to a fire. And now we have to call in our brothers over here to come and put out these fires. So, you know, yes, it's enjoyable to see it by professionals, believe it to the professionals. And that's the message we were trying to put out. And we put a video out and put these out. But I think, you know, us working together with our partners and talking to, you know, at our crime and safety meetings and just putting it out there that it is dangerous. That's what's forced me to stop playing with fireworks.

If I can comment, we did do some media spots and we did push out on social media and I believe we also pushed out on the Next Store app, which we have almost 180,000 unique recipients on the Next Store app that we're able to publish to. I would point out that just the same as you're receiving constituent complaints, it's very likely your constituents that are also just ignoring common sense and violating the law. And in my experience, driving around on the 3rd and the 4th in all areas of the city just to see what was going on, There is no amount of police you could have that could keep up with the amount of people that had the big box setups in the middle where it fires off 100 different. I mean, there's I don't care. You could have a police officer in every corner. You're not stopping it. We, frankly, we're completely outnumbered by people who, against their own self-interest and their own property interests, continue to take part in something that has long been established to be illegal in the city limits. It's not new information. And it's not, you know, so we, I would, I would, I would, petition hard to do exactly what you said and let's get in front of it in community meetings, in your newsletters, in anything we can do. But you have to have people receiving that and actually reading it and caring.

yeah um before we go to alder taylor i mean i've i've seen things for a while here and i know there used to be you know your standard press conference where um predecessor maybe alder murphy would go out and say you know even a sparkler is illegal in the city of milwaukee don't do but i think chief you hit on a critical point we can do a great deal of communication But there are plenty of folks out there who know full well it's illegal and just think it's no big deal in the context. So I think we should right-size our expectations. And I know we're in the business of promoting that we can solve all these problems. But there's some issues here that are pretty fundamental. And I'm all for the communication bit, but I want to be realistic too. You know, us... saying how terrible reckless driving is is very important but sometimes you're preaching to the choir and you're not getting to the folks who are really um at the root of the problem so anyway um alder taylor sorry kept you waiting oh no that's that's fine um just in hearing what you guys were just saying um

Thinking about the, so you're right, fireworks could be enjoyable if you can go and see the professionals do it. But when you're standing at your home and you're watching someone right down the street do it, it's pretty scary because you don't know what's going to happen with that, right? So if I'm standing there and I'm watching all these cars come down the street and they gotta be full of fireworks, right? So this is what actually happened. So I'm standing there, I'm thinking that, oh, okay, well maybe it'll settle down and then it gets quiet. And then I see three more cars come down and now I start seeing fireworks set off again, which says to me that these cars are bringing more and more as they're coming down the street. If you're finding that you find someone driving and they have a car load of fireworks, then that person is then held accountable if you stop them or if it's reported that, hey, here's a car, here's a plate.

that One of those things that you can do then or instilled that doesn't determine the person So I think that gets into the ability to search our vehicle and That can only occur in in very limited circumstances for an actual crime and not a municipal citation level offense, unfortunately, so that know sometimes it's frustrating because we get it we see things we know what's happening but to have the ability to do the actual things to find out what's going on or to gather the evidence um there are um obstacles with that um that just can't be overcome so um i don't know if there's any ability um to to figure out vehicles without being in consultation with the city attorney's office on what we can and can't do for municipal violations.

Okay, one more thing, then let's go to the home, right? So you see the home that they're operating out of, that they're right in front of in that yard, setting off the fireworks. It may or may not be the owner. but can you then at least report it and then it gets added to the nuisance properties or something where you can begin to say, okay, landlord or owner, you're going to be fined because you're now becoming a nuisance to the neighbors.

So that would require an ordinance allowing us to do that. And then also a change to the nuisance ordinance to include fireworks. We're all for it and we wanna work with this body. The citation part, I'd have to look at the enumerated list, it's been a while. But these citations that are, maybe or maybe not. I'm not going to speak to it because I just don't know offhand.

That was going to that point that I was trying to make earlier. If we can't determine the who, then how can we address the place? For my specific one, when I saw the pile in the backyard in that parking lot, I went to the management company to say, hey, listen, if because I don't know who, so far as law enforcement, we're kind of limited, but you as the property owner, manager, or whomever, you are in control of who you rent and allow to stay at your places. So now, They make an act on other things that law enforcement, we're limited on, but as a property owner and you're renting to certain places, how can you police your tenants or the people that live there?

Okay. Now, that's in a complex situation.

So complex and then single family homes, then it's that point where now, you know, who is that property owner? Is it owner-occupied? Is it renting? And if we go there and try to figure out, from what my experience of driving around, you know, if you're in the city, it's people that's lighting off these fireworks. They're not calling us. You know, the person that may live a few houses, blocks, even a mile away may be hearing it and they may be calling us. It's just that for my office to take that next step.

Yeah.

would be difficult yes and it is in the nuisance ordinance so 8010 dash c1 bb illegal sale discharge and use of fireworks as defined in another section of the code but the fact that we're not sure about that shows how often we're using that section of the nuisance thank you

So we can.

But along those lines, one thing I have found to be helpful and I've used in my own district through the good work of my captain and his team is the CLOs, the community liaison officers. There's certain chronic offenders every year. They light it up. And so we ask the CLOs kind of to do a preemptive knock and talk when it starts percolating. That's a staffing challenge, but I have met with some success then. So it's not that you can't do anything. What you can do is labor intensive and that still relies on people getting nervous that a visit from the police saying, hey, you've had a pattern here, the neighbors are, are very concerned. I've met with some success for that. So I don't wanna suggest that we can't do anything here. But.

I think that the steps of if we're meeting with these property owners and And that was my point to that complex is, you know, I'm from 80-10. If we're getting those constant complaints and whether or not I can't prove who set it off, but I know there's just a big display, but that's just a complex. But now if you're talking about at a residential location, if it's on the city streets, you know, I can't really say that came from this address unless there's someone telling us that. So using the 8010 in that sense, that could be a tool for us to proactively try to police the situation because absent the 8010 and us actually observing, my officers observing it, or someone giving us and being a complainant, that's the challenge that, you know, but we gotta find, you know, welcome to the 8010, especially if it's a chronic place that's occurring all the time, so.

The one issue we do have, and I think AC Johnson was alluding to it, is that the 8010 activity has to be substantiated. in order to substantiate that even if it is in close proximity to a property, actually tying it to that property would be an issue unless we had a personal observation or some type of proof that it belonged within that property owner's purview.

You could have somebody witness. I saw the guy come out of the house. I saw him go in his driveway. I saw him light up. You can use witnesses.

Correct, if they're willing to be witnesses and a non-anonymous complainant.

yeah because you know some may call us with the information that you know it but i'm not trying to do that uh... that listed witness so we can substantiate it absent my office is actually senate firm and which there are some of those instances where they have and they've confiscated uh... the fire the fireworks uh... and that's a whole nother you know people typically submit videos

I would assume that a resident may capture videos.

I actually just looked over the narratives that we have. All three were personal observations of our officers. Okay.

Alderberg-Ellis, would you like to bring us to a conclusion?

I would. Is there an opportunity in the future to have a crime tip or a firework tips hotline, text line, or some part of evidence.com where neighbors can make an anonymous complaint or submit video evidence that would be looked at or followed up with by MPD?

The challenge with that is it couldn't be anonymous because we would need a complainant and we would need somebody to lay the foundation for that video. To say here is, this is my Ring camera video and I testify that this is mine.

Okay, so not anonymous, but is there an opportunity to have a single place where people can make a complaint for this that would actually be looked at and followed up with by CID or... and PD in the future?

I don't have an answer for you at this moment. I would have to let you know.

I do want to bring this to a close. I think it's incredibly important to establish a public record or have citations for property owners that allow this kind of activity on their property. It's disturbing to their tenants, to other tenants, to neighbors a block away or much, much further away for the invasion of Kuwait level of bombs that are going off in our community. I think it's important to ensure that we have a repository or a place where insurance companies can see a violation of a potential insured that would determine that they would be a much higher risk. I would even go so far as that I would ask neighborhood services or MPD to provide and publish a insurance threat list of properties that have been cited for fireworks so that people that are a threat to public safety are held accountable by their own insurance companies. If this is something you don't wanna do, If you don't want your insurance premiums to go up, then don't light off fireworks in our community. There are a couple of incomplete data requests from all three departments, final disposition of investigations, the supplemental narratives for the tickets that were issued, there might be some pending tickets that haven't been issued yet, and then some data from the emergency call center. So I would ask that we hold this file to the call of the chair so that we can get that data compiled into the file and presented in September or October.

Okay, with that Alderman Burgels would move that this item be held to the call of the chair for further discussion. Thank you for the robust discussion today and thank you members for your diligence today. It was a long one, last one before the August break so we were trying to get in as many requests as possible so appreciate your patience and with that we are adjourned. Thank you everyone.