Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

you Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning. I'd like to call this Public Works Committee meeting to order. I am Alderwoman Chairwoman Milele A. Cox. We are joined to my left by Alderwoman Larissa Taylor. To her right, we are joined by Alderman Alex Brower. We are joined by Staff Assistant Carmen Roman. We are also joined on the board by Vice Chair Alderman Lamont Westmoreland. We will soon be joined by Alderman Baumann. We also are joined by DPW Infrastructure. And we have a guest of all the women, Van Maripa is with us here today. Item number one, file number 260662. Resolution relating to approving the levying of assessments and construction of accessible public improvement projects at various locations and appropriating funds for these purposes.

Good morning, Holly Ruttenbeck with DPW. I will be advising on the special assessment process and project details. For those projects approved this morning, a bill will be sent to each property owner sometime after completion of the work. Within 45 days upon receipt of the bill, the full amount may be paid without interest. If the bill is not paid within the 45-day grace period, a charge of 8.5% simple interest per year will be added. If the assessment is at least $125, the assessment can be paid over a period of 10 years on the tax roll at the 8.5% interest. For those projects approved with late billing, a bill will not be sent before January 1st, 2029. As part of this public hearing, an official notice was sent to all impacted property owners and we will go in the order that is listed on the official notice. Once I have read your project location, you're welcome to come up and provide testimony. In the 6th Aldermanic District, North 7th Street between West Abert Place to West Malvina Street, installed traffic calming speed humps. Is anyone here to provide testimony on this item? There are 12 impacted properties. There was a petition received in 2025 and there were no responses to the Aldermanic Survey.

This is in the Sixth Automatic District. I have no objection to it. Auditwoman Taylor would move approval. Hearing no objection, so order.

North Port Washington Avenue from West Keith Avenue to West Vienna Avenue, install traffic calming speed table. If anyone's here to provide testimony, you're welcome to come forward.

Good morning everyone, my name is Jonathan Cherry and I live on Port Washington Avenue. I've been a resident in that area probably since 1978 on and off.

Mr. Sims, did you want to give your?

My name is Samuel Sims. I live on North 6th Street in the area and been in the area since 19, I shouldn't tell you, but 63. So I've seen a lot of things there and we're here. I'm here in support of Johnny and his family. that we both are working together on this project and this event. So I'm in here in full support along with Five Points Neighborhood Association.

All right. Mr. Cherry, did you want to say a little more before we view some of the videos that you have submitted for us?

Yes. What initiated this request was back on May 11th last year in the early mornings of hours of Mother's Day. Over 50 cars took over Port Washington Avenue. They entered from the Keith Avenue. north side of the south side of the street and they raced over a hundred miles per hour all the way to Capitol Drive on Port Washington Avenue going north called 9-1-1 three times talked to the UTC's not one police officer responded out of three phone calls to 9-1-1 So I contacted Alderman Cox. She gave me instructions on how to get signatures for the traffic calming. That took place last year, which brings us to today. Just over the past 30 days, I was able to get video recordings of all of the reckless driving that's taken place on Port Washington Avenue. Some of the cars that you see will be doing over 100 miles per hour. They're driving in the bicycle lanes. They're passing cars on the right shoulder. Some of the cars you'll see, they stay there on Port Washington Avenue for a couple hours, racing north and south from Keefe Avenue all the way down to Abert. And they come in pairs, two cars at a time, racing at the same time. Some of them come by theyself. Some of them, they come regularly on different days. So if you're ready to see some of the videos,

all right channel 25 if you could play a few of the videos for us it's my understanding they're really brief so

That was a guy in a Jeep, racist Jeep, back and forth three times on Port Washington Avenue. It seems like the media player is not working that well. That truck right there was doing 100 miles per hour going southbound on Port Washington Avenue. That was another vehicle going southbound northbound on Port Washington Avenue doing 100. That vehicle right there pulled over because of this four by four blazer that's doing 100 miles per hour. So you saw that vehicle pull over to the right because it's scary. See how fast that is? That was probably the best. This is the Jeep. This driver goes to Keefe, turn around, race again. Goes down to Averitt, turn around, races back up to Keefe. He also drove in the... Look at the time at the top These two individuals here in the Challenger and the Black Import, they stayed on Port Washington Avenue for two hours. This was the video of them turning around on Vienna Avenue, and then they go down through the alley to Abert, and then they race back south on Port Washington Avenue all the way to Keith. They do that about six times. And they do it at about that same time on the weekends regularly.

I think we're good. Thank you for bringing the videos and showing us what you have to experience on a regular basis. Thank you for going to get the signatures and going through the whole process and for being here today. I forget, Holly, did you speak to what the response was?

Yes, so we had received a signed petition, so we had the 50% signature requirement back in July of 2025. Out of 68 impacted properties, there were two in favor and seven opposed of the official responses provided to your office.

This is in the 6th Automatic District. I will also say that this strip of Port Washington is probably just a few blocks prior to where a school is. So you can imagine not just the residents going through the speeding right there, but that speeding continuing up Port Washington towards Hope 40 School. is huge. The safety of those young people is critically important as well. I do go down Port Washington myself quite often. I have seen and witnessed some of the speeding as well. Mr. Cherry, I think we've talked directly out in the community about your concern about this speed and like again I just want to thank you for following up and doing the work and I would I support the effort to try to get traffic to slow down there. And I think that this is one piece, but it's probably more work that has to continue to be done to help control that traffic over there. And I stand as a partner with the neighbors and the neighborhood group to continue to work on it. But I think this is an important piece to help move us towards a little bit safer streets. So if it's okay with you, Alderman Brower, I will have you... If there are no questions, are there any questions from committee? I will have you, Alderman Brower, move approval. Are there any objections to that motion? Hearing none, so ordered. I have a question.

Have you ever connected with MPD TSU? And that's a traffic safety unit where you can alert them.

Three times and here's the police officer's names.

Okay.

As well as calling, you have Officer Hernandez, Tyrion, and you have Officer Lindstrom. They ever, um, fifth district police station.

You ever follow up with them to see what the result of the enforcement was? I've actually seen it. Okay. I've seen them. So they have responded. Yes.

I actually seen a, uh, uh, police, uh, patrol car for the first time monitor, uh, the traffic on Vienna Avenue yesterday for a whole hour. They stayed there. That was, that's never happened. Okay, good. So I have been seeing changes. Uh, Um, Part of the issue, Officer Hernandez said, is there are a few of these violators that come regularly at the same time, like the Challenger and the black import, and there's also two other black imports that show up between 11 at night and 1.30 in the morning, and they just stay there, racing back and forth. But the other ones are hard to nail down because they're at four in the afternoon, three in the morning, So, you know, with the police department's limited patrols, you know, they are doing more than what they've done. Okay. Since I've been talking to them.

Okay. That's good to hear. I just want to make sure they knew about it and they've responded.

Yes, they have responded. And they, you know, I'm just crossing my fingers that one of these times that they're in the right place at the right time. Sure. That's really what it boils down to.

Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Alderman Westmoreland, who is physically with us now, would move adoption of the file. Hearing no objections, so order item number two, file number two, 60663, resolution determining it necessary to make various accessible public improvements at various locations and appropriating funds for these purposes with the city engineering cost estimated to be $40,000 for a total estimated cost of these projects being $350,000.

Good morning. This resolution is setting up engineering for future accessible paving projects.

Are there any questions from committee? Hearing none, Alderwoman Taylor would move adoption. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Item number three, file number 260664, resolution determining it necessary to make various non-accessible public improvements at various locations and appropriating funds for these purposes with the city engineering cost estimated to be $235,000 for a total estimated cost of these projects being $4,677,000.

Good morning, this is setting up engineering for various future non-accessible DPW projects.

Any questions from committee? Hearing none, Alderman Brower would move adoption. Hearing no objections, so order. Next up, item number four. We have file number 260665, resolution approving construction of non-accessible public improvements at various locations and appropriating funds for these purposes with the city construction cost estimated to be $4,375,000 for a total estimated cost of these projects being $6,690,040.17. Good morning.

I have a proposed substitute on this item.

It's

Alderman Westmoreland will move to make proposed substitute A in front of us. Are there any objections to that motion? Hearing none, so ordered. Could you let us know what the difference is with this up?

Yes, we had one project that we needed to set up some additional funding based off of the bids that we recently received so that construction can occur before winter.

Are there any questions from committee? Hearing none, Alderwoman Taylor would move adoption of the file as substituted. Are there any objections? Hearing none, so ordered. Item number five. File number 260510. Thank you. Communication from the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District and the Department of Public Works relating to the recently discovered blockage in a sewage district discharge pipe. And this is sponsored by Alderwoman Demetria Rich.

Is that number five?

Yeah.

She's asking if you can please hold it.

Oh, the sponsor has asked that we hold this to the call of the chair. So, Alderman Brower will move to hold to the call of the chair. Are there any objections to that motion? Hearing none, so ordered. Next up, we have item number six, file number 260562, communication from the Department of Public Works relating to the modification of the city's built environment to be more accommodating to neurodivergent individuals. This is sponsored by Alderman Perez. This is up here over here. President Perez, did you want to speak first before we have the department speak about the file?

No, I'm good. All right.

Good morning, Chairwoman Coggs and committee members. Obviously this file is very important to the city. We understand the meaning of this, but I guess I'm gonna ask President Perez on some clarifications of what we're trying to accomplish for a city. A lot of this relates to like the vertical construction type of mentality, not necessarily in the built environment and public works. So I'm just trying to get some clarity.

So, I mean, this, I had some notes that I left in my office, but as you know, we wanna make sure that we are as accommodating as we can to the community. We wanna make sure that the front-facing employees have what they need. And when we talk about built environments, whether we have space, accommodation, sections of any of the departments that come in and work with them, we wanna do that. And most importantly, what we really wanna do is get everyone through the certification process to then better understand how we accommodate the neurodivergent community on that. So that's very important to that.

Yeah, absolutely. I think the department's willing to work with anybody that wants to communicate with us. Obviously, our priority is every citizen of the city of Milwaukee. So the department's open as we kind of move forward.

Are there things that you all are already currently doing to accommodate the neurodivergent individual?

Sure. Chairwoman, members of the committee, Kevin Muse, City Engineer, Department of Public Works. Probably the most visible thing the public would see is that we do as we do with other types of disabilities, offer the opportunity for parents to contact us and ask that a sign be put up for anyone under 18. In this case, it would say autistic child, just a standard yellow diamond sign. We have deaf child and other similar signs. things we've done for a while. So we do have that option and have been doing that for at least a few years now. So those do exist in the city. If a parent feels that that would be helpful given, again, the specifics of their child's situation for drivers to be aware of that, we can put those signs up. So that's probably the primary one that the public sees. I think there's opportunity for us to, as the sponsor noted, as we improve training across staff, and there is active training right now that's assigned to everybody related to this item. As we improve training, I think there will also be opportunities for us to learn and grow in how we have public facilities that are accommodating the public buildings that DPW manages. It is challenging, obviously, with the various types of stimulus, as I understand it, that can trigger a reaction that may not be positive for the individual who is diagnosed with a condition on the spectrum that There are a lot of activities we do, construction and maintenance, that cause those light and sound challenges. So that's also something I think we're interested in learning more about and seeing what other communities are doing and how we can adapt and improve that going forward.

Madam Chair. Yes, Mr. President.

Part of how this discussion started is because there are signs now that might say autistic child on a street because we get a request and then when we inquired about if the child, or by age, they go beyond 18, then there's no accommodating sign for someone above 18. or that the sign be more inclusive because we know even though someone becomes an adult with neurodivergent issues, it doesn't necessarily mean their capacity is at that point and vehicles and other things and so it's like we needed some creativity around, okay, let's add, let's change the verbiage on the sign or let's make it more inclusive and this is just what we do and how we do it. So part of it is that built environment of how we're gonna get creative to accommodate neighborhoods. We have individuals or children that in a moment that you take your eyes off a child, they could easily wander into the street and do things that are just difficult to manage at time and communities and streets and neighbors need to know where they're driving and what they're doing. So part of the communication is how are we gonna get better at being more inclusive in that sense. I got a couple questions that we can ask to get some better answers to on some of these things when appropriate.

So I would like to hear your answer on that, on what the president just asked.

Sure. So as of yet, the department has not done any types of advisory signage for individuals that are 18 and older. We can explore what that would look like. I think our greatest concern is just the potential for proliferation of the signage and then therefore what the driver is expected to do in response to that signage. I think the reason that we've historically focused on children with this type of signage is because As actually President Perez just said, a child may run into the street or somehow be interacting in front of a vehicle such that if a driver's to honk or something like that, the child may not respond to that type of stimulus and therefore or not respond in the way that's expected, again, depending on the condition. And so that's an awareness for the driver to hopefully be more cautious in that circumstance. I think our challenge when we go beyond 18 is, again, just recognizing how common some conditions are and whether or not this information then is useful to the driver when they're encountering someone who's not responding the way they would expect. So we put up this advisory signage because we want drivers to be more cautious in these locations. So that's the primary purpose. I don't think we're hard fast opposed to moving beyond an 18 year old into adulthood. We just want to, I think think through and talk to peers about the benefits of that and what information we're actually communicating to the driver that would be helpful to the individual who has the condition.

Are there some best practices that you've seen other cities do as we try to accommodate neurodivergent residents?

So I'm aware of, again, in a discussion with Alderman Perez on Mesa, Arizona, being a leader in this area, we are reaching out to them to determine what they're doing. Again, most of what we were able to research was oriented towards public event venues, stadiums, concerts, those types of things, museums, and other areas where things can be adapted, again, to consider any of the needs that a neurodivergent individual may have. And so there wasn't a lot out there on the built environment, but that we are reaching out to our peers to learn more and see what they are doing there.

If I'm a parent of a neurodivergent child and I want one of the signs, what's the process? Walk me through the process.

The quickest way to, so sometimes they come through an aldermanic office. So if you contact your alder, they'll pass it on to us. Otherwise, you can email trafficengineering at milwaukee.gov, and we will generally just collect some information from the parent and then put the sign up.

It's just putting the sign up all we do. Is there any notification to neighbors or any advertisement of why the sign is going up and what's anticipated for the person reading the sign? Like you said, for the kids and maybe if they see it, they'll be more cognizant if a kid comes out. Is there any work that your department does to

um to make sure that those seeing it get that yeah um i think no not directly to what you're you're alluding to there i think that's a challenge we have across transportation planning and engineering that you know and this can broaden out and i'll try to run it out too much but obviously we make changes to something in the right of way whether it's signage or physical infrastructure and how to communicate with the traveling public why we're doing what we're doing and what we're hoping they do in response to it is a challenge we have. We are actually working on growing our communication abilities in that, but as far as notifying neighbors, the way we would have now to be able to do that would primarily be paper via either notices in the door or mail. We could explore that. There's of course a cost to that, but we could explore that, and I know this has come up in other realms, We don't have everybody's cell phones. We don't have everybody's emails. We can't digitally contact folks on a block in a comprehensive way.

I have so many ideas on how you guys could do that better. And Mr. President, I think it's great that you've taken the lead on this issue. And even after this file today, I would love to sit down and talk to you about some of the ideas that I do think we could be doing.

Yeah, I thought of some too about how do you connect with nearby schools and our students that are on the spectrum? How do they connect to nearby neighborhoods if they're walking to and the signage from schools to residential properties? And you kind of beat me to the punch on asking about process. So do you get a number of requests for these signs? And as you explain the process, is it just that you... Is the application process step visible, whether it's on the website or anything else that you need specifically this type of sign and that you can apply for it? And then you also mentioned one of your responses to me about cost and what does that look like with cost?

Yeah, so it would depend on the scope of what we're speaking of. Obviously, the chair just broadened it a little bit to include communications. So I think we could do a better job of making this obvious to the public how to request one. So that is something we'll work to improve, including making it more prominent or even visible on the website. I think that that's a fairly easy thing we could do. The cost for an additional sign, ballpark 150 to $200 per sign put up is roughly what it is. And that's a general signage cost. So there may be a reason it's different here, but that would be the ballpark. If we wanna broaden it out to include some of the communication initiatives you're talking about, which again, I think are great, that does add cost and staff capacity challenges. We have that challenge across almost everything we do.

um but uh that is to have something i guess is it that high to consider it as a cost the way you make it sound as of right now no it's not okay um you know so i think that that's something we'd have to keep your department even pursued potential grants or connected with organizations that is this even things that that that Departments of Transportation, whether state, federal offer any help with any grants at all?

I don't think we would want to pursue any federal or state grants related to this because of the strings that come with that. Yeah, not that I'm aware of. I think we're a little unusual in the degree to which we put out these types of signs for just disabilities in general. I think that we go beyond several peer communities on that, and so this is not something that I'm not even sure there's much federal guidance on.

Even the options that are available now for any physical challenges or physical disabilities, We know that for the seeing impaired, there's actual speakers and things, and there's nothing more directed toward the neurodivergent in that space?

Not yet, and I think that's something that needs to grow and be developed and determine industry standards and how we grow and improve on that. Is there a vehicle to voice that? At the federal level?

Any level, anything you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think, so obviously Intergovernmental Relations Division is the way that we advocate at either the state or federal level. We certainly do talk with our peers across the country, and so we are doing that and going to do that as part of this file and this discussion. I've not heard of those discussions happening within DOTs or departments of public works at the city level as of yet.

And along the chairwoman's comments about even being creative and, in my opinion, including even more technology in this exploration, who does that in your department for this specific type of issue?

We don't have staff that are, we don't have staff assigned to this type of thing. This would be something that leadership and individual managers would have to take on as part of their roles and responsibilities.

But you do have someone in charge of the other physical?

That is just our regular sign shop process. So any signage change we make to anything from parking regulations to stop signs, that all goes through the same group of folks, including this advisory signage.

Okay. All right, so this, I mean, you know, the real purpose of this was the, this communication was to make sure that we have this conversation out in public, that people are hearing it. I can't tell you from the moment we started leading on this with Culture City and the amount of just city employees that have reached out and said hey i have someone in my family newer version we appreciate you thinking about that even as a city employee and what they see the interaction being has been just a really positive response and so we i want to make this very front and center around um that we're paying attention and that we need to improve and how we're going to get there yeah

and additionally i think if if that type of community knows of things that are done in other municipalities across the country please forward that to us i mean we're always willing to change and adapt because they're probably more aware than we are you know i have islands of brilliance i have ignite in my community i have several organizations that are

serving families and young people, and I think that'd be an awesome place to start. Talking to them about what their parents and their families are dealing with. We have lots of resources to add suggestions and to have some input.

Auderman, before you go, Auderman Brower, There is a park that is being designed in my district that is designed for neurodivergent and special needs children. While I understand the request for if you're in a neighborhood and your child happens to be special needs in this case, and we're assisting with the designable part that's totally geared towards people to bring kids. Have you all given some thought to signage and other things in that area that we're designing to attract children who aren't neurodivergent?

Yeah, that's a very good point, all the women. Obviously, we're working closely with that group. It is on city land. Yep, on Stella's playground, yep. And it is on city land. We're very excited about that effort. And we are taking a look at the public right away around the park to talk about accessibility and see what we can do to improve safety, vehicle speeds, accessibility. So this is a great idea to include that element of accessibility into the conversation as well.

definitely ottoman brown yeah thank you so much just wanted to um thank the president for you know introducing this conversation dpw for all the work you guys have done i'm available i would love to help and support any work that we can do on this as well i'm fully committed to supporting neurodivergent communities here in milwaukee

Thank you. Any other questions or comments from committee? Madam Chair.

I was just thinking about how the sign would read because sometimes you see the signs now they say autistic child. So would the signs then read person with autism so that it includes adults or just be mindful about how that sign reads because we don't want to put the... disability before the person.

That is something that I plan to explore a little bit more as I was thinking about this file, this item coming up. We use within the transportation engineering industry the shortest words possible to communicate the information to the driver and that is not consistent with I would say latest standards on how you should talk about disabilities. and the individuals experiencing them. And so that is something we'll have to look at and see what we can do. The sign says blind child, deaf child. Those are not the phrases you use these days when you're talking about those items. And so it does, We have to think about that versus just communicating to the driver the quickest, shortest piece of information they need to absorb. We'll have to think about that.

Thank you. Madam Chair, I just wanted to add to the conversation too that you mentioned. are lead and intergovernmental, they are working and talking to, it's part of our ledge package around how a vehicle, if the police department pulled over a vehicle, how it could be identified to potentially have someone, a passenger, family member inside the vehicle so as anyone who's trained can approach a vehicle. So there are discussions, so I think sharing they can share what they're hearing at the state versus potentially some new strategies and objectives to go down that road. So we are talking at the state level about specifically that issue, but we're looking for any other suggestions to help broaden the conversation as we move forward on that. And just to be clear, you have You don't have an ADA point person with DPW or a division or team?

That is part of the Department of Compliance and Engagement.

Okay, all right. And so is there any, cross-communication with them?

Yeah, actually, yeah. James could probably speak to that. James Washington, Public Works Coordination Manager. So we do work closely with the Office of Compliance and Engagement. We haven't had a lot of conversations regarding neurodivergent individuals. We do meet with them quarterly. In fact, we had a meeting yesterday regarding accessibility in the public right-of-way and other areas of the city. We also meet with Independence First and other members of that community. on a quarterly basis, discussing adding accessible parking and reaching out and doing more as far as bringing accessibility to the public right-of-way.

So Independence First has never brought up the neurodivergent communication about this?

This hasn't been a conversation in the past, and now that we're bringing this up, yes, we're definitely gonna start having those conversations. We can admit that there hasn't been many conversations regarding this topic with OEI.

Okay. Well, I'll reach out to the office And also, if you can give me a point person that is part of these quarterly meetings, I wanna reach out to them too, to make sure that we can, Get this on the agenda to talk about.

Yes, we can certainly do that. Please also note that we work closely with Ramona Ramos. She's wonderful, but they don't have an ADA coordinator right now, Jason Ostrowski, who was in that department. He did leave a few months ago. We're still working with them, but there's not a point person that's there.

Is that position going to get filled?

Yes, it's being filled. I'm just saying there's not that actual coordinator there, but we have been working with Ramona. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions from committee? Mr. President, would you like this to be placed on file or held to the call?

Hold to the call, Chair, so we can follow up.

The motion by Alderman Ballman is to hold to the call of the chair. Are there any objections to the motion? Hearing none, so ordered.

Thank you.

Thank you. Item number seven, file number 260399, resolution authorizing execution of Department of Natural Resources Principal Forgiven Financial Assistance Agreement.

Good morning. My name is Jesse Hagan from the comptroller's office senior financial analyst there I'm just here to represent the water department You know on the financial side of this agreement with the state of Wisconsin Just to tell you about this agreement. It's helping to fund approximately 4600 lead service line replacements basically coming in from the curb stop into the house right right by the water meter replacing that to avoid any lead contamination. This grant is $19,338,000. Technically, it's a loan, but it's gonna be instantly forgiven by the state of Wisconsin through their clean water program. We have other loans that are partially forgiven or otherwise have subsidized interest rates that we take advantage of, but this is a really good deal for the city, and if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

Any questions from committee? Hearing none, Audubon Westmoreland would move adoption. Are there any objections to that motion? Hearing none, so ordered.

Thank you all.

We're going to pull up item 8 and item 16 together. We'll vote on them separately, but we'll pull them up together for conversation's sake. Item number 8 is file number 260556, a substitute ordinance relating to the notification to be provided for the closure of public right-of-ways and increasing fines of constituents are not, if constituents are not properly notified, as sponsored by Alderman Zamarripa. And item number 16, file number 260554, a substitute ordinance relating to the unauthorized closure of public rights away for non-emergency construction, and that is sponsored by Alderman Bergalis. Alderman Zamarripa, did you want to speak first? Yes, I think so. Before we have you all begin, there are proposed substitutes for each item. Proposed substitute for item number eight, Alderman Brower would move to have that in front of us. Are there any objections to that? Hearing no, so ordered. A proposed substitute for item 16, Alderwoman Tyler would move to have that before us. Are there any objections to that?

hearing uh so ordered thank you madam chair um and you do have hard copies of the proposed substitute um before you and i know i was able to give one copy to commissioner kruski if you'll all share dpw um Good morning, colleagues, and thank you to Chairwoman Coggs and members of the Public Works Committee for hearing this file. This summer in June, and then again just a few weeks later in July, WE Energies violated our local ordinances in the 8th Aldermanic District when they started major construction work on main arterial streets like National Avenue and Lincoln Avenue without notifying constituents in the area, nor myself as a local alder, nor the Department of Public Works. The city of Milwaukee has existing laws in place that requires utilities to notify our constituents of closures they are doing in our communities and neighborhoods. But as I reviewed the ordinances, I see that the fines for failure to notify is a mere pittance for giants like WeEnergies. It's just at 25 to possibly $250. This file will increase the fines to between $1,000 and $5,000. Additionally, this file will require our utilities to give a schedule of upcoming planned construction projects in our city to the Department of Public Works on an annual basis, excluding emergency work of course. Colleagues, I think you've probably also felt my pain this summer in your own districts. But I want to let you know that the eighth district has had a very challenging construction season this year. with the National Avenue project beginning in the Silver City neighborhood to the lead line replacement program that's been ongoing on side streets to main arterial roads, not to mention the 27th Street Vidoc that is completely closed until next year. Half of the 16th Street Vidoc is closed until later this year. South 43rd Street in the Jackson Park neighborhood all the way through and past Alverno is enduring major long-term construction. And all of this theoretically is good work. And in the end, the community benefits should be huge. But for now, as you can imagine, people are at their wits end trying to navigate their very own communities. And when a utility like WeEnergies then adds insult to injury and shuts down entrances to businesses and main thoroughfares without letting the alder or the constituents know, it can be devastating as Milwaukeeans try to get to work and school and then as they try to ensure that their businesses not only survive but thrive in our city. This is why I come before you today with this legislation, to ask that you pass this file and try to give some relief to the people of the city of Milwaukee, to our people, and to the people who come to visit us. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair? Yes, Alderman Bauman.

How many fines have we issued under the current law?

Well, can I speak to it before you give it to DPW? Okay. Because I pushed for this, yes. I just wanted to say I pushed really hard for this because when WeEnergies did this in June on 16th and National, I pushed for them to be cited for this infraction. And so it was the first time ever, apparently, that we decided to cite a utility for doing this, for not notifying our constituents the way that we ordered them to do by ordinance. And so I know that I've been working with James Washington. They have sent a letter to We Energies notifying them that we will be citing them for at least two days. But the citation, I'm told, is still being created because it's the first time that we are following through with holding somebody accountable for doing this. Is that correct, James Washington?

True. We've never issued a fine up until we're complaining about it. for notification.

James Washington, Public Works Coordination Manager. So what we have done is when there is work that begins in the right of way, Chapter 115 allows us to double the fees. So they're still required to get permits and we double the fees. But as far as the actual notification, this is something that is relatively a newer thing that the council has addressed that we have started working on. Typically, that has not been a problem in the past. We typically have reached out to a lot of the utilities, a lot of the other plumbers and other entities to work in the public right of way. We've told them, hey, you have to provide notice before you begin this work. And for the most part, they have done so. Over the last year and a half, it has gotten progressively worse. And that is the feedback that we've received from this council, and we've began to take action where we actually have

um the mechanism where we can reach out and i'm sorry not reach out but we have the mechanism where we can actually um finding these uh violators and find them more appropriately for what they're doing i think the notification requirement with the fine was enacted by the council in 2023 i believe off the top of my head roughly that time period so it is a relatively recent change to the ordinance three years that you've issued no fines up until

that's correct correct outside of the double fees runs roughshod over the city of milwaukee and its citizens they do what they please they show up they open the manhole they start digging up the street and oops sorry streets the streets dug up now it's excavated nothing we can do about it we got to finish your work oh we ran out of parts so we'll close off the street temporarily while the parts arrive right i mean it they're they're arrogant well they just run roughshod over it

So for clarity, just any emergency work that We Energies does, they pull a permit afterwards because obviously we want our citizens to have access to power and gas.

All of those emergencies? No, no.

So I'm just, the two types of things that they actually do within the public right of way. So that's one. So then they'll get a permit afterwards. What we're trying to talk about right now is We Energies does pull a legitimate permit related to their work. The problem that we're having is this is how they communicate to the citizens per chapter 115 that there's gonna be a long-term closure of roadways and the impact to that neighborhood. And so this is where the disconnect is. So it's not like they're not getting a valid permit. They're putting in proper traffic control requirements as they submit to us. It's the notification that is the issue that we're dealing with right now.

Madam Chair. Is the notification, is it a reason that that's not part of the permit?

It is, so I worked with this with Alderman Dimitrievich in 2023 when I was the coordination manager, and a lot of it was is how do we get more information to citizens that are gonna see the impact of a closure from any type of construction from a utility? So Department of Public Works, we communicate a lot, so we're trying to get that effort out to the utilities, and so what it says in Chapter 115 is if you're going to do work within the public right-of-way that's gonna have road closures that extends past 96 hours, so four days, then you're supposed to actually have some sort of photographic evidence hangar, letter, et cetera, showing that you have notified people along that corridor, and that has not been happening. And so that's the problem that we're having now. I mean, even the situation that we had over on Lincoln Avenue, I know WE Energies did send a letter to folks, but that was actually to shut down a particular, you're gonna have a service interruption for a gas line, not the construction itself, which is two separate things. So when you have a service interruption, that's fine. Hey, your gas is gonna be out for, extended period of time because we're gonna replace your line, but it's not the construction itself. So there's two different things going on here. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to get utility companies to basically communicate with the public going, we're going to impact your daily travel and commute around the city and notify the neighborhood that this is going to happen. And so the issues that had occurred in St. Reepa's district is what had occurred. We had a major arterial roadway, which is National Avenue, go down. We had a separate project going on on 16th that they shut down a particular business. And so all we're trying to do is just, it's communication. It's one word and all we're trying to do is give our citizens that live in the city of Milwaukee the opportunity to basically pivot their daily commute in the morning, knowing, hey, you're gonna be shut down for four weeks. And fortunately we live on a grid, which is fantastic, so their commute is different, but when someone wakes up in the morning, on a Monday morning, a road shut down, they don't know where to go and there's a panic, they could be late for work, et cetera. So all we're asking for is every utility company just to communicate. And so that's kind of where this is coming from.

Is this the limit of what we can, and maybe all of them review might know through your work on this, is the one to $5,000 penalty the maximum of what we're allowed to penalize them?

It's a daily, my understanding is that it's a daily fine. So for instance, as I said, we're able to, we're going to be citing Way Energies for two days, so theoretically, if this were in place, that fine would be anywhere from two to $10,000, because this would be a daily fine. Whereas right now, it's 25 to $250 daily. It doesn't say that.

No, it doesn't say that. I think that's a important point that you may need to amend it to say that.

Okay. I thought it was referenced perhaps in the original ordinance, but I will. Yes, I know. And I know also DPW wants me to make a small tweak as well. So perhaps I can do that before council day.

Yeah, and the one thing we're looking to ask is just define what major roadway closure is. So when a utility shuts down, and we'll talk about local road, it's not as impactful to the community, so you might impact some of the residents that live on that block. But when we're shutting down things like Lincoln Avenue, National Avenue, your main arterial streets and collectors, that is a huge impact to the entire city of Milwaukee. So when they're shutting down, we're still gonna have the information related to the permit. But really, when you're gonna shut down a major thoroughfare and basically restrict traffic in one direction, that's where we need more input. From these utility companies. So we just want to define what actually a major roadway is which we can work with before I'll work with you before council day Of course, thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, I would like to be Added Are there any other questions from committee? Yes

I see the range, like currently it's between 25 and 250 and it's proposed to go to between 1,000 and 5,000. For this specific instance in your district, what would that fine be?

Well, for instance, just using that example on National Avenue where I was able to make sure that we can cite them for two days. Again, it could have and should have been longer, by the way, but we had to have pictorial photographic evidence, so we ended up being able to have the evidence to do two days. So I believe the citation, it's not gone out yet, but it's gonna be roughly 500, I think a little under 500, I was told. Under this legislation, and again, I don't know how we would determine whether it's $1,000 a day or $5,000 a day, but even if it were the minimum, it would be $2,000.

How was it determined between? How do you know where it falls?

So there's something that we have to discuss with the city attorney. Like right now in Chapter 11548, Ms. Day said it's up to $250. What we've been told is there's a judicial schedule that determines exactly what that amount is. So the actual fee currently for that type of violation is $157. With this amount that's being proposed between 1,000 and 5,000, that's something that we would have to discuss. I know there's additional legal requirements that could tell you what it can be, so we don't know, or at least we can't tell you exactly right now what that amount is. Okay, thank you.

I would like to know that prior to council, what he just said. President Price.

Yeah, clarifying, is there a reason that instead of just providing the permit that you don't provide it until you have a copy of the flyer, and in my district should be Spanish and English, a map of where you've actually, whether it's a spreadsheet of the addresses and the sheets, that it'd be part of the application for the permit, and I get that you can't do that maybe for an emergency work order for restoring power, but why not have all of that in the file before the permit's even issued?

So what we currently do now is an applicant will apply for a permit and then obviously our team reviews it. We have thousands of permits that we do on an annual basis. We refer just basically to the ordinance. So we'll say you're bound by chapter 115 and then if somehow some citizen calls it out like you did not provide me notification, this is what we'll follow up. So that's how it's been in the past. Now it doesn't mean that we can't as part of the permit process say what are you going to supply to the resident? I think that's something we'd like to modify as we kind of move forward.

I guess my question's pretty simple. Why not require that before you hand out the permit versus, hey, you're supposed to do this, and you do that knowing that you've never, even with the complaints, because I got, I mean, you mentioned a bunch of districts. I got several complaints, even about our own departments not notifying people, Water Works and other folks, which, I mean, it's, I think everyone's got to get better at talking to people and doing it in different language and having some cultural competence in the case. But why not, before you get a permit, did you do everything in the ordinance?

Sure. And that's something we can definitely look at. What we want to make sure we're also not doing is creating kind of a chicken-egg situation. ideally if someone's doing the permanent work properly and they have to work planned out there probably going to have a permit submitted months even several months before the work begins uh... if we're required them to say hey here's a picture of the documentation that we shown that we've uh... reached out to individuals is a photo of the uh... the door knocker on the person's door We know that a lot of times when people are notified, if it's two, three months ahead, they're not gonna remember that several months down the road. It's certainly something that we can look at, but we also wanna make sure that if we provided a notification, that the notification is actually gonna be effective, that we're not doing it too early. But it is something that we can definitely do and we can definitely discuss exactly how that should look.

Yeah, I think we should be careful about pointing them to an ordinance to follow that no one's enforcing.

Any other questions?

I just wanted to give some closing comments. If one of the committee members want to go before me, that's fine.

Thank you so much. Yeah, so just to quickly touch on, and thank you, President Perez, for those thoughts. That is a good idea, but I can see what James Washington is bringing up here. I mean, if we require as a precondition for the permit that notification be put out, well, what if we deny the permit? Then notification went out for something we denied. It is kind of a chicken and egg situation. This is precisely why I think this legislation is a good idea. We need to increase the penalty for that and that we can show that. I'm glad we're doing this. Let's talk to the city attorney. Let's go into our chartered territory as far as how we can hold WeEnergies accountable. for what they're doing i mean in the end this is all coming down to the fact that we energies um is completely unaccountable to the people of milwaukee in every single way let this be another we've already had so many lessons so far this year in public works about why we energies is completely unfit to serve the citizens of milwaukee but here is another example about everything that they're doing and why this entity along with other utilities needs to be under public ownership thank you manager they'll raise the rates

Yeah.

Madam Chair, just for clarity, I don't want to target one utility company. I know we keep on talking about WeEnergies, but there are many utility companies that do work within the public right-of-way, so I just don't want to focus on one. We have a lot of infrastructure that's done by multiple facets, so I just want to be clear. It's not just one utility that's in the right-of-way. There's many, and it's going to be a blanket across all of them. So just for a little bit of clarity, I just don't want to attack one.

I do, before we get to you, I do want to say, consistent with what President Perez was suggesting, I do think there, and I did hear the concerns of the department, I do think there is an in-between because we do it in licensing all the time, where on that permit stage, what you could have is, It is granted but not issued until there is proof that notification has occurred. So I do think there is a middle ground there that could be achieved. Alderman Taylor, before we get to you. Oh, I'd just like to be added as a co-sponsor. All right. Is it on the member ground?

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And please add me as a co-sponsor for this item as well. interruptions of our residents and constituents daily lives is impactful. And I want to applaud Alderperson Zamarripa for taking the initiative to hold utilities accountable for interrupting our days. But this isn't it. When a road is closed and getting gas lit by WeEnergies about the Lincoln Avenue closure, where they claim, we had a permit for 27th Street in Lincoln, not 43rd Street in Lincoln. In fact, the traffic control barriers for that intended project, the variable messages, were listed on, were sitting on the side of the road on 27th Street. That's a mile away. but they had a permit. They just had the wrong address on it. That's a problem. And for the interruptions, not just for District 8 residents trying to get to the tow lot or the self-help center or DPW crews going out to collect sanitation needs for the city, but that impacted West Milwaukee residents and West Allis residents and District 11 residents trying to get to work and trying to get to where they need to be. When that road was closed, it reminded me of what had happened just a few months earlier from a different utility on 43rd Street, where 43rd Street is the only arterial between 60th and 35th Street to get to the fabulous 11th Aldermanic District. And that utility company, ATC, took it upon themselves to shut the road down that day, not provide a detour, not provide any kind of notice. And frankly, it was a forestry crew that called me and said, hey, did we get a permit? Did they get a permit to close 43rd Street? Absolutely not. That's the only way you can get through. The fire trucks can't get through where they need to go. The closest fire station is over on Burnham. That's why my companion resolution to Alderperson Zamarripa is so important. And when we wrote this, there were so many interruptions and so many delays that $1,000 per lane per hour to me seemed fully appropriate. But I do have a substitute and appreciate you bringing substitute A forward that would modify the fee for closing a public roadway without authorization except for emergency work to $1,000 a day. That's reviewed by the city attorney and the language was approved and the fine was approved as well.

With that as well, is that the maximum of what we could be charging?

Again, that's something that we need to verify with the city attorney's office.

And just so you know, part of the reason I ask that of both pieces of legislation is I think not notifying people when the work is being done and affecting businesses and residents is heinous. And I think closing off public right-of-ways um the proper permits and permission is is wrong too and generally speaking as utility companies all the stuff that we're talking about um so when i think of that i think for them a thousand or five thousand is not a whole lot um So if there are ways to ramp it up as much as we can, and I know that the sponsors have done their due diligence in increasing it far beyond what we were doing anyway. So I appreciate that. But if that's not the limit, then maybe we should go to the limit. That's why I'm asking those questions to send as big a signal as we are legally allowed to these companies to do things the proper way with residents. If you could check into that and let me know what those maximums are.

Yeah, we can do that, absolutely. And I think that we do want the public to know, even the utility companies, is, you know, when we give notification, a lot of that notification goes to the people on the block, but there's many more folks that utilize these roadways than just the people that live on these blocks. So it's great that we're notifying 10 people that they're gonna see it outside their front window, but there's thousands of other people that commute around the city, and that's what we're just trying to get the message out to, is just, you know, if there's a detour that folks have to know, they just have to know ahead of time so they can get to work.

I just, on that point, that's why in my file we have the digital signs for major road closures, because Commissioner Kruski is absolutely right. So many more people than just the folks on that street are utilizing Lincoln Avenue. I mean, again, and although Commissioner Kruski is right, this is addressing all utilities. not just one, but it must be noted on Lincoln Avenue when they closed it with no notice to us, guess who the biggest constituent was on Lincoln Avenue that was affected? It was the Department of Public Works, it was the yard, it was the tow lot, the city drop-off center. None of them were notified, so they didn't know, and you know how busy the drop-off center is? I mean, we have a line of folks waiting to utilize that service. We have city workers that are trying to get to work, and we were given no notice. The Department of Public Works, who's supposed to be working in tandem with this utility, failed to notice them, and then when they negotiated, just to give you a little bit more tea, Madam Chair, when they negotiated and said, fine, give us a couple days, let us get ready, because you don't even have this planned out safely, they still went ahead and defied that agreement. Remember James Washington? They were supposed to give us one or two days, and they still said, We don't care. And they still kept the road shut down after they had negotiated giving us 24 or 48 hours to put together a safe plan to close the roadway. So it's just, so we have that referenced in my file. And I did want to just give some closing remarks too, but I know you're discussing Peters as well. So whenever that's appropriate, Madam Chair.

Yes, I would like to be added as the co-sponsor to honor member galley legislation as well I'll turn please Are there any other questions about item 16 or concerns or comments I

I just wanted to give some brief thank yous. I didn't also thank, of course, Commissioner Krushke, as well as our city engineer, Kevin Mews, and James Washington, who I know has been dealing with me so much this summer. Thank you so much for your hard work and for being real diplomats. As you can tell from my remarks, Madam Chair, it's been a rough construction season, as I said, for the south side of the city of Milwaukee, dare I say the entire city. And so they've really tried to work well with all entities, including the utility that was mentioned a lot today. But speaking of utilities that weren't mentioned much today, I do wanna also thank Kevin Schaffer of MMSD, who's been in the audience. Alderman Bergelis and I invited him to just listen in as also somebody in charge of utility, lest you have any notes for us as well. So I want to thank him for his presence today. And thank you to Commissioner Krushkin for reminding us this is affecting all utilities, not just one. And he's absolutely right of that. Thank you.

All right. For item eight, file 260556, Alderman Baumann would move for passage. Are there any objections to that motion? Hearing none, so ordered. For item 16, file 260554, Alderman Westmoreland would move for passage. Are there any objects?

Yes. Can I be added as a co-sponsor to Alderman Bergelis' file as well?

Yeah. Thank you. That's a record reflect.

Alderman, do we want to have Alderman Bregalis just clarify 16 just for, I think, the committee? Because I know we talked a lot about eight, but just what the Alderman actually had in there, because I think that's going to be beneficial. Oh, I thought that's what he needs. Just what was in there, what we're trying to do. So, I mean, obviously the one was actually fines related to, but just notification, just for clarity.

I'll give it to LRB to give us the details. Yeah, just for clarity. Gunnar Rasch from the Legislative Reference Bureau. I drafted both files so I can just quickly clarify the difference as well. So Alderman Bergelis' file would increase the penalty for companies or utilities conducting work in the public right-of-way without a permit. Whereas Alderperson Zamarripa's is for failure. In non-emergency situations. In non-emergency situations. And Alderperson Zamarripa's file is for companies that fail to notify. So if a company conducts work in the public right of way without a permit, they are presumably also going to fail to notify and they would be subject to both penalties. If they get a permit, they would not be subject to the penalty under Alderman Bergelis' ordinance. But if they fail to notify, then they would still be caught by the other ordinance.

I just want to make sure it was clear because there's two different things, but just so the public is clear and everyone here.

Are there any questions from committee? All right. Alderman Westmoreland will move. Passage of order member, file number 260554. Hearing no objection, go ahead. Substitute, of the substitute. Hearing no objections, so order. Thank you both. Thank you. The amendment was in front of us, so that's what they were voting on. I didn't say it in the final, but because we already did the motion, I have it in front of us. Um. File number nine, I mean, item number nine, file number 260643, resolution authorizing the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to convert, access, and utilize portions of one city-owned property for the West Silver Spring Drive project intersection with North 64th Street in the 2nd Old Dramatic District.

Good morning, David Tapia, Major Projects Manager. So this file is to just obtain a TLE from a Hackam owned property at 64th and Silver Spring for an intersection improvement project.

Thank you. Are there any questions from committee? Hearing none, Auderman Brower would move for adoption. Are there any objections to that motion? Hearing none, so ordered. Item number 10, file number 260651, resolution directing the Commissioner of Public Works to execute a document titled Third Revision State Municipal Agreement for a State-Led Highway Project with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation for the programming, design, real estate acquisition and construction of North Green Bay Road, STH 57, from West Capitol Drive to West Silver Spring Drive and to set up additional funds for design engineering at an estimated total cost of $800,000 with an estimated city share of $200,000 and a grantor share of $600,000.

So this file is to obtain additional design funding as we now move from the scoping process into preliminary design.

Are there any questions from committee? Hearing none, Auditor Warman-Taylor will move adoption. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Item number 11, file number 260552, communication from the Department of Public Works and the Milwaukee Water Works relating to the implementation of dust control provisions and the execution of their contracts.

Good morning, Patrick Pauley, Milwaukee Water Works Superintendent.

Carla Rohrbach, Engineering in Charge, Water Works.

So I anticipated Alderman Bergelis would be joining us for this conversation.

This is sponsored by Alderman Bergelis. Alderman Bergelis, did you want to speak first?

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. You guys are rolling quickly along today, so thank you. Sorry for the delay. Alderman Brayles, 11th Aldermanic District. I submitted this on behalf of my constituents because we've had a number of projects throughout the district and water infrastructure is absolutely needed and we need to have that done, but in the Wedgwood Park neighborhood, that project was completed at the end of May, in the beginning of June. And in the meantime, those cutouts had been temporarily filled with gravel. We had no rain for May, June, most of July, and it created a very dusty neighborhood, not just for a day or two or even a week or two, but it was for the entire summer. So my question to the department is, what kind of timelines do our contracts require for contractors to minimize inconvenience, minimize impact to neighborhoods? This is a very quiet neighborhood, very low traffic counts on the streets. It's mostly kids on bikes and people walking their dogs and pushing a stroller. but they had this negative impact from the city water infrastructure project all summer long throughout the neighborhood. So my question is what can we do moving forward to minimize negative impacts on projects? Is there a timeframe from opening the road, completing the work, and putting asphalt in and doing final restoration that isn't three or four months long?

Yes, there is a little bit to unpack. I guess, let me not bury the lead and start with the most important thing. For years, there have been concerns brought forward about the length of water main replacement projects, primarily because of the delay after the pipe goes in the brown ground while testing is performed on the new pipe to make sure that the pipe can be connected to our distribution system and the pro project can move forward and then after the pipe is in the ground and fully connected to our distribution system the delay between that and and pavement restoration and so we we did look take a much closer look based on your Alderman Spiker had similar inquiries. There's been some projects on the north side with similar inquiries. There has been a much longer than typical period between final pipe connection and pavement restoration. And so to your question, there are, so your item is regarding dust control, but I think your primary concern, which you've laid out is more related to project duration. And we do have, our contracts include assigned working days for each project site. There is a completion date for the complete contract, all projects. We certainly, the contractual requirements require the contractor to maintain a safe and clean project work site. I would say that in your instance, we, the utility, could have done a better job of checking on that project site and making sure that the contractor was proceeding. So we do have... We do have tools to encourage and enforce and require more prompt work progress on projects. And one of the things we've learned in conversation with our contractor, and I have to say there's a number of things going on here. We have a 14 mile requirement that the PSC has ordered us to replace in a given year. That's about 80 plus project sites. We have a somewhat small bidding pool. We have one contractor that won the majority of our work this year. they sub out the pavement restoration. So what tends to happen is the prime contractor moves very quickly on pipe installation, the connections, and then when they have to coordinate the pavement restoration, they're somewhat at the mercy of their subcontractors. And so in this instance, they had one sub working for them. they clearly weren't keeping up they have since engaged a second subcontractor to help them catch up with their work but they still are you you are correct there have been construction projects our water main replacement projects have taken longer than typical this year

Well, and not to beat a dead horse, but in this particular Wedgwood Park neighborhood, once the asphalt was done, which was done three weeks ago, so mid August, the no parking signs and barricades that were throughout the neighborhood where parking was shut down on our roads for that asphalt restoration, those signs stayed up for two weeks.

yes even even after we engaged the contractor they still left them up for another week right and i i think you're absolutely right and as we discussed we are supposed to be sending a technician out to review that project work site create a punch list of items that need to be taken care of to to finish the project and one of those is removal of the no parks any barricades that are remaining the no parking signs i don't know in that instance if those were placed by the contractor carl can weigh in on this. In some instances, we are actually placing those no parking signs. So I don't know the contractors to blame for that those no parking, or we are but you're right, we are supposed to be out there after payment restoration, and checking, creating a punch list, letting the contractor know these things need to be cleaned up in a timely manner.

And I appreciate all of that, because it's very difficult for me to answer to my constituents where they say, yeah, the crews were working for three days, but the construction site was activated and interrupted our neighborhood for three months. That's the problem that I have as a representative for that neighborhood. I don't have a good answer for them.

and you're right and the construction is disruptive and the the time frame in in that neighborhood specifically was was too long um we anticipate six six weeks at minimum for a water main replacement project if it's a standalone one block in that neighborhood when we've got multiple projects sites and we try to we try for efficiency and to this is going to be ironic to minimize disruption to the neighborhood we tried to do multiple projects in the same neighborhood in the same construction year so that we're not coming one block one year what next block so that we're doing everything we think needs to be done for the next you know five-plus years in one construction season that does lengthen the overall time period for the projects to be completed and the other thing it does is we typically have been accommodating of the contractor when they do want to do restoration that they not restore one site and then two weeks later restore a second site we allow them to finish up pipe installation on all the sites and then ask their restoration contractor to come which means that some project sites sit longer than the last one and so there's a balancing act that i think we need to evaluate whether that's the most efficient and what the cost associated would be to try to compress that.

So specifically for this project in Audubon Burgalus' district, why did it take three months? I'm sorry you might have said it, but why did it take so long?

I think that A number of factors, but the most, the factor that contributed the most is our paving, the paving restoration subcontractor did not get out to the site in a timely manner after the last project was completed with pipe installation.

And what was the reason for that?

I think backlog of locations, and that's what we discussed. We have a prime contractor that has the great majority of our replacement projects, and they use a subcontractor to do pavement restoration. They had one subcontractor engaged. That subcontractor was not able to keep up. They have since retained a second subcontractor, and I think we've had additional conversations with them about even potentially engaging a third, or when when their capacity allows using one of their crews for some of the pavement restoration pre-work.

What's the current penalty for leaving your signage or barricades or whatever for a contractor to do that? What's the current penalty for that?

Each of the contracts includes a per diem charge that can be assessed Carl, do you have any experience with us assessing it for punch? We can.

We can assess the per diem charge for failure to meet the completion date and excessive working days on a project. There is a balancing act to be had in our contracts and the work and the volume of work that the contractors have at any given time. So we do monitor that. We do have technicians on site.

So what you're saying sounds separate and apart from the question I'm asking. What I think Alderman Burgales also hit on was even when the work is done, you still got these signs up. So people don't know it's done because it feels like it's still going on because the signs are up or the barricades are up or whatever. And so my question is, what's the current penalty for contractors who leave behind those things?

Well, we would have to issue the per diem.

When he mentioned per diem, that's not what you were speaking to, but the per diem also affects that?

Per diem is exceeding the working days and the completion dates. There would have to be other negotiated... There is not contractually an item to charge for leaving barricades out. It's a punch list item. We work with the contractor to clean up the job site. The per diem penalties are schedule based.

Today, that's some legislation I want to create. Oh, yes.

The piggyback on that, and we've talked about this in the past, and I've been working with LRB on something that I've still got to meet with you on. Mm-hmm. So the wills are in motion to create a penalty for contractors that leave their signage behind because I've had several projects throughout my district where the signs remain. I mean, on Lisbon Avenue, phases one and two have been done for almost, November would be a year, and there's still signage that's left and people complain about it. So the problem is is A, there's no penalty, B, there's no oversight. You talked about a punch list. I don't know who has the punch list, but they're not punching it. Just being honest. And that's not only frustrating to the constituents, it's frustrating to me because I always get the run around. I mean, I've drove to certain places to move barricades to open the road up myself because I can't get contractors to respond. So we are going to put that legislation in. Further, I've had issues in, I'll use Lisbon Avenue for an example. Again, they are putting the bare minimum signage up when they're blocking roads off. For example, at one point in time during the phase three of the project, both travel lanes were on one side of Lisbon. and that was about four or five months. They've since shifted, but there was no signage letting people know what was going on. So that's another thing, another piece of legislation I'm working on to further hold these contractors accountable for putting the proper signage up. And I mean, I've even had DPW go out and they've told me themselves that, Yeah, they didn't put the proper signage up. So that's an issue as well. Not only are people confused, but it's dangerous when you have cars that are traveling head on in some instances.

I would agree with that. I have to call DPW because myself ended up going down gravel roads because it was not clear that you weren't supposed to go on a certain way. I think it's been an uptick in that in the last couple of years. I don't know if it's new companies or what, but the poor signage for the public to know how to handle the construction as it's coming. With waterworks in particular in my district, I've had the leftover signage or barricades or whatever for months at a time. Even times when I've called it in and then I get calls three months, four months later and residents are still in there. Then I talk to staff and they're like, It's not a hundred percent complete. Well now we're talking almost a year that this stuff has been out there and the residency, no worker is coming. Why is this barricade there? I've even done walks and seen it and found out it was a waterworks project. And then I've talked to public works staff about removing the barricades or whatever. And they're like, we don't want to remove because that's waterworks. And then some of them have been honest and said, waterworks does this a lot. So what I think, you said the lack of oversight, you have inspectors for every project. Don't they expect it at the end? And then part of that inspection should be, is all of the signage and the barricades gone? So I don't understand right now why that's even happening. Because based on an inspector being assigned to the project, one of the pieces of their sign off of their whatever should be, has it been cleaned up? Has all of the stuff been removed? So I don't understand. I could take you on a ride around my district right now, and it may not be all Water Works projects, it might be other DPW projects, where there's tons of stuff left behind. And a lot of it is the contractors, because a lot of contractors will put their name spray painted on the stuff. So you see it sitting there. So how did an inspector ever approve it as being completed with all that stuff still there?

Well there's probably multiple things going on here. We're talking about water main replacement projects specifically but I think you may be describing situations related to emergency work that gets performed throughout the winter and then potentially maintenance activities performed by a distribution crews because to your point about barricades being left behind, we have had, and we are, obviously we have more going on with water work than ever before because we're going to be at 5,000 locations replacing lead service lines. We have, six hundred main breaks plus another probably double double that in maintenance activities each year plus the eighty-plus water main project so there have been instances where we go out and make a main break with where we could pick and leave the barricades replace the temporary restoration and we have not been good about which are our crews as well as private contractors have not been good about retrieving those barricades it's disappointing to hear and i guess In those instances, we make a temporary patch, put temporary pavement down, and then we refer that location to street maintenance for permanent restoration. I'm disappointed to hear that there wouldn't be more coordination between DPW Street. I mean, they know how to reach us. We will get out there and get those barricades up. If the temporary restoration hasn't been placed properly, we will improve the temporary restoration, get the barricades up, make sure that the location is forwarded to DPW Street maintenance for their work. You're not wrong because most, I believe most of those cross my email system when there are requests to get barricades and we have, there have been instances where barricades have been We have not been good about retrieving them even when we are doing the work. To your question about water main replacements and the punch list, that is something that we've had a lot of conversations about. We are on a water main replacement project and quite honestly on lead service line, the neighborhood, the lead service line replacements going on in neighborhoods, we should have a technician on site throughout the project and someone should be going out and checking the project site at the end to make sure, to check what needs to be done, making that list, referring that list to the contractor. And then the contractor should be cleaning up whatever items of theirs there are. And that's on us to enforce that. I'm sure.

So moving forward. What do you think you guys could do differently to be more effective with the cleanup piece after the work is done?

Well, I think we've already started with a re-emphasis, for lack of a better word, to the contractor that has the majority of work of the necessity to make sure that the project site is clean throughout work or throughout the active construction. And then they are fully aware that the timeframe between pipe and restoration is too long. And then we have to, our staff has to get out there and do the punch list.

Thank you. Any other questions? Yeah.

I reached out to you recently about the house with the hole in it. They were doing some water stuff. And the constituent said that there's just been a hole in the public right-of-way part near the street. And she said she's reached out and complained over the last six months. numerous times where those complaints go in this is and maybe another answer but is this like pothole related or somebody reports a pothole uh... now If there are damages that happen and someone files a claim and the city had notice before the damage, we're liable. So if somebody gets hurt in a hole that water has worked on and has been reported for six months and there is no action, if somebody gets hurt, now is the city liable? That's another thing that I'm always concerned about.

Potentially. I mean, a citizen has a right to submit a claim and then that gets heard by Judd Legg and the investigation performs.

I mean, that alone seems like that will create some type of urgency to, you know, get those situations corrected. Now, I haven't followed up on you and maybe you don't have the information, maybe you delegate to someone else, but... I've got a feeling that that is still there today.

Well, so is this the resident who called because their flow and pressure problems in the house? So that was a lead service line replacement project. The public side was replaced to her property. My understanding is that we've made a number of attempts to get inside and change out her meter because we think that the clog to her plumbing is at the meter. And We had spoken to her after you contacted me and I related on. I've asked her distribution. So we would like to exchange the meter to confirm that that is the cause of her flow and pressure.

I'm mainly concerned about the hole that's outside.

Yes. We need to remediate or improve the temporary restoration because I think we put down temporary pavement in that location.

No, this is in the grass area.

Oh, you're okay. But we're, we also worked in the pavement right next to the curb and the grass and it looked like it was depressed. So what I had, I, what I had asked our distribution crews was to go out and to improve the ass, the temporary asphalt, make sure the street maintenance was aware of this location. But I can also, um, ask them to do the landscaping work as well in the median. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions for from committee? I remember guys with any last things you want to say on this file.

No, thank you very much for having for hearing.

Thank you. Alderwoman Taylor would move to place on file. Are there any objections? Hearing not so ordered. Thank you. Next up, item number 12, file number 260660, resolution relating to the application, acceptance, and execution of funding of a Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District green solutions grant for the installation of bioswales along West Lapham Boulevard from South 6th Street to South 16th Street and authorizing entry into a post-installation maintenance covenant with MMSD in the 12th Automatic District.

Yeah, good morning. Tony Jozek, DPW Environmental Engineering. Yeah, this is our standard file that we go through frequently accepting MMSD grant funding. On this one, we're accepting it to install green infrastructure on a joint paving multimodal NGI project on Lapham Boulevard from 6th to 16th.

Any questions from committee? All right, Alderman Bauman would move adoption. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Item number 13, file number 260668, resolution authorizing the proper city officials to execute a sewer easement for the city of Milwaukee sanitary sewer located between approximately 210 feet east of South Kansas Avenue and East Howard Avenue and St. Francis municipal boundaries and the Milwaukee city limits. Oh, and this has been asked to be held to the call of the chair. So Audubon Westmoreland will move to hold to the call of the chair. Hearing no objections, so order... Item 14, file number 251, 421, substitute resolution directing the Department of Public Works to identify a location and develop cost estimates for a third self-help drop-off center. And this is sponsored by Alderman Chambers. We'll hold this to the call of the Uh, Chair. Um, Alderman Brower will help to the call of the Chair. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Next up, item 15, file number 26055. five resolution directing the commissioner of public works to execute a document titled cost-sharing memo of understanding between the city of milwaukee and the cities of greenfield and west alice for the design of the south power line trail project and this is sponsored by auto member gailis

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a request from Public Works and from DPW infrastructure to help expand our shared bike lanes, shared bike infrastructure off the street, coordinating with nearby municipalities. The power line trail currently goes from 35th Street out to 894 on the far southwest side of the city and south and west of the city. And this is an expansion of that project to bring that further north near 894. And we have the department here to share more.

Hi, Zach Roeder, Senior Transportation Planner with Department of Public Works. Happy to answer any questions. Alderman shared the gist of this. We have funding, Rails to Trails Conservancy, a nonprofit, had a major donation and was looking for projects in their route of the Badger that could move forward quickly because of the South Power Line Trail Feasibility Study that Milwaukee conducted with Greenfield, West Allis, and St. Francis. We identified this corridor as one that We could move forward with quickly here. And so we have construction funding. The cities are locally funding design. And this is just setting up that agreement to split the share of the cost proportionally between the municipalities.

Are there any questions on committee? Hearing none. Alderwoman Tyler would move adoption. Hearing no objection, so ordered. Next up, we have Item number 17, file number 260699, a substitute resolution directing the Commissioner of Public Works to expedite concrete panel replacement on local roads and maintenance and alleys prior to the end of 2026 construction season. And this is sponsored by Auditor Member Gavis.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. This has been a record-breaking year for the city of Milwaukee for potholes. We've had more than 23,000 potholes reported in the city as of the end of August, and city crews, to their credit, have had a record-breaking response to fill those potholes. Just over 15,000 were filled by the end of August, but that still leaves 8,000 The capacity is the problem. Crews have worked overtime all spring, all summer, some voluntary overtime, some mandatory overtime, and we've had a record-breaking response already. But I want to make sure that we're doing everything possible to get the maximum impact to our residents, to our communities. We haven't even touched alleys yet. And I was able to send out a survey looking at and trying to evaluate which alleys will we get to put in the 2027 budget and replace in the 11th Aldermanic District. And I have 14 alleys that the office gets the most calls and complaints for. So I sent a survey to 338 nearby residents asking them, should this be expedited? Would you pay a little bit more in your assessment to get your alley done faster? Or do you wanna wait the normal timeframe? And we're still collecting those results, but as I took a closer look at those 14 alleys, a lot of them, a majority of the alleys in my district were completely gone and need full replacement, no doubt. but a number of them, more than I expected, had one bad spot or just the center line needed to be replaced. The rest of the alley was fine or around the low spot drain was a lot of concrete deterioration that needed to be replaced. But our response right now, because alleys are the lowest priority when we're fixing potholes, is to throw in some patch, pave it over, and let that pop out next year and come back again next year and maintain the same problem over and over again. So talking with the department, looking at a more permanent solution, not just for alleys, but for other parts of the city, we identified that there is an opportunity to not just focus on potholes but to do some concrete work and concrete panel replacement and that's a lot of what this funding could be used for which would eliminate a lot of our long-term year-over-year maintenance in alleys and other roadways the department will tell you that it's hard to get contractors to fill potholes because they want to close the road they want to have a safe work environment city crews have a different comfort level than private contractors do when they're working in the roadway. So closing down an alley is a lot easier for a contractor to do and a lot more efficient for them than to focus on potholes. However, we have a limited number of contractors in the market. We have a limited number of resources at the city. but I wanna make sure that we're looking at every possible solution to help move the needle even slightly more and improve the quality of our roads. We know we have multiples of hundreds of millions of dollars of backlogs on city roads and local roads and we've talked about that funding coming from the state disproportionately under investing in our community. compared to the rest of the state of Wisconsin, where Milwaukee contributes 10% of vehicle registration fees and gas taxes to the state and gets 5% of the pot of local road funding back. However, we've had a number of efficiencies and contracts that came in under bid this summer for local road maintenance. And instead of waiting for those budgeted funds to drop to the tax stabilization fund at the end of next year, so that's available for the 2028 or 2029 budget, Those dollars need to be put to use today, this year before winter, where possible, so that we can make an impact in our community and not just wait to use those funds when they cycle through the tax stabilization fund in 2028 or 2029. So we've had great conversations with the departments on what the opportunities are and I'm glad they're at the table and they can share those.

Before we go on to that, there is a substitute. So Alderman Bauman will move to have the substitute before us. Hearing no objections, so order. Alderman Bauman.

Yes, is it fair to say that, so that memo that was sent out by one of your subordinates, interesting it came from him and not from either of you, I found that noteworthy. In any event, there are 8,000 unfilled unaddressed potholes currently?

Approximately, yep.

So what about 90 days left before the hot asphalt plant shuts down and winter sets in? Is it fair to say we will not fill all those potholes yet this season and they will continue into winter? Because I did the math, that's 88 a day.

That is, if no additional service requests came in, we would be able to accomplish that. I think the question is how many more service requests will come in. We're always chasing that, right?

And if we're not even addressing all the backlog for the winter and it rolls into the next winter, we basically have an expanding problem here that we will never get ahead of.

So I realized I forgot to introduce myself. City Engineer Kevin Mews, Chair, members of the committee. To your question, Alderman, I guess I don't agree with that. I think that we have a very atypical year this year, right? As the sponsor of this item noted, we've got 24,000-ish requests right now. A typical year at this time would have about 8,600 requests. So we're at about 3x of a typical year. do think, you know, there is a risk, as you're noting, that we head into winter with outstanding requests, which would be very unusual, but I don't think that's necessarily something that we could expect to occur every single year.

Don't you think that's kind of a problem that we need to address with some sense of urgency?

I feel like the department is being extremely urgent in addressing this issue.

Not in the eyes of our constituents.

Agreed, understood.

They complain to us and I don't control pothole filling crews, I don't control dump trucks, I don't drive dump trucks, I don't fill, I have access to the asphalt plant, the south side seems to be getting short shrift because it takes so long to drive from the northwest side to the south side, so out of hell with the south side. Let's just get the asphalt two blocks away or six miles away rather than across town because by the time they get there and come back, day's over. I mean, I think... People are out there seeing this problem, and they think this city is falling apart. And that's under the administration's control, not the council's control. We appropriate money. We set policy, as Alderman Gales is attempting to do here. But we don't execute. We don't have the authority to direct anybody to do anything other than through resolution. And I'm told there's some in the administration that figure we don't have the power to issue resolutions. that we don't have the power to direct DPW or DNS to do anything. That that's beyond our authority under the strong mayor form of government. Okay, that the city attorney has been asked to issue an opinion on that subject and that he has responded, yeah, maybe you're right, but then the council can enact hundreds and hundreds of ordinances every year to accomplish the same thing and the city code would go from three volumes to 10 volumes because it would be hundreds of pages of ordinances that are project specific issue specific and directly directing somebody to do something so i i see a complete breakdown here breakdown and when you combine this with the sign issue and nobody collects barricades and nobody collects signs and nobody seems to be monitoring these projects nobody's doing the simplest thing but just driving through the city and saying oh there's an errand barricade Call the office, get a hold of that contractor. We want this out of here in 24 hours. Or what? Or nothing. They still get the contracts. I see a complete breakdown in the maintenance of our surface transportation infrastructure.

If you're observing that we have a city that is under significant fiscal duress, that is accurate. And that is impacting our public infrastructure substantially.

That should be acknowledged. And so we, the council, can tell our constituents, call the mayor's office if you want a solution to these problems. We can only appropriate money as requested through the budgetary process. We can only issue policy directives. We don't execute. And if the execution isn't there, it's not our fault because we don't have the power.

Respectfully, Alderman, I think if the council wishes to be helpful in this, I would suggest calling the state legislature. It is a resource question. Oh, no, no, no, no.

We have a chief executive officer in this city. Oh, no, no, sirree. I raised this issue two and a half years ago. In March, I think, of 2024 about pothole problems then. And I was critical of the subject matter. And you know what that earned me? Removal from the sewage commission. direct retaliation for telling the truth and for urging departments of this city to get off the dime and find solutions and move forward. I mean, blaming the legislature may sound good and may, in a way, be technically correct, but Ma and Pa Kettle, who can't even get down their street or their alley is so torn up that they're worried about damage to their vehicle, are saying no, too bad, find a solution. Maybe one solution is we just start paying all these claims. Open the floodgates. Everybody gets reimbursed for the damage. That's one solution.

Along the lines of solution, being solution oriented, I think in finding a solution, you gotta know the problem, right? So I guess my question is, this increase, this three times increase that we are seeing this year in reports of the potholes, what do you attribute that to?

Yeah, great question, Chairwoman. So I think there's a struggle to identify that the big picture challenge for all of our potholes in any year is overall just several decade at this point issue, at least a few decade issue of the level of investment in roads. We've talked about this in the past going back to the 1990s. And so that is a challenge that has come home to roost. Specifically this year, what we saw was a very unique set of circumstances, at least we hope they're unique, in April. So specifically the mid-April storms that saturated the soil and then added more water seems to have caused a fair amount of essentially delamination between the layers of many of our roads, especially those with asphalt laid over concrete. And so that has led to a surge in pothole requests basically from mid-April through the end of May. After that point, excuse me, after that point, I don't think we've seen anything that's too out of whack from a typical year, but that surge was extremely significant. And so that's what we've been catching up on all summer is working through that piece.

So if that surge is part of the biggest part, you think, of the increase, one could argue, and constituents have, at least to me at least, that even if it is because of the flooding or the weather, you said just three times it's not likely to be the norm. It's the outlier. Mm-hmm. One could argue that the flooding and all that, we're about to see more of that. So if we are seeing more of that than what we've experienced, if it's a result of that having happened this year, then maybe this year is not an outlier. Maybe it becomes. that baseline. And if that is the case, which it could be, what are the ways that we could be better addressing the situation with this new norm?

If I may, we can continually increase street maintenance and put band-aids on roadways but as a city engineer said the way to fix a pothole problem is to invest in our roads and so we have not seen the investment from the state government in decades and so if you replace a road you don't see potholes, and that's what we try to do on an annual basis. Obviously every year I think this council and even the administration has continued to invest in a local status, but the state government does not invest in local roads. We see arterials going through, you see National Avenue, you see Lisbon, all these roads that are great that you see high traffic volumes that are getting replaced, which is a great investment from the state government, but we don't see that in local roads, and that's what people see out their front doors. So we can continue to sit here and fill potholes on a regular basis, but the roads need to be replaced. And so you fix your pothole problem by investing in infrastructure, not by just putting band-aids on it. Because even if we do a permanent patch, I mean, it could deteriorate around that patch, and so it's gonna continue to happen. So we have been up here many a times over the past few years talking about how do we continue to increase paving in our city. And it's a struggle. I mean, we are a cash-strapped city, We cannot do it. We can use our entire capital budget on roadways and we still won't catch up. So we need help from obviously our state and federal government to get to a point where it's serviceable for our street maintenance folks to actually keep up with potholes on a regular basis. I mean, this year isn't an only, and all our colleagues, I think you're right. Do we know what the future looks like from climate change? We don't. Is it something that keeps us up at night? Absolutely. We're hoping that obviously it subsides and maybe we have a year off we can catch up to a certain, but that doesn't mean 28, 29 is not gonna occur. We are trying to think of creative ways. We've reached out to contractors in the past. Obviously I think the sponsor has mentioned that we don't have folks that wanna do it. i will say i've had a private contract as a contractor class yeah i did my staff has been putting in numerous hours around the clock to try to do this and then they do want to credit to the sponsor because you did mention that uh... they're working ten twelve or days during the week they're working at weekends we have volunteers coming from our sewers department for operations the perfect to try to help this uh... my fears as we go into snow and ice that's gonna transition and they're going to continue to work so uh... we're trying to do everything we can The source of the problem is to continue to invest in our local roads, and that's gonna stop your pothole problem.

Can I interrupt briefly? You mentioned overtime crews and a limited amount of contractors that are available that would want to bid on this work that could do it. Would we be able to hire Milwaukee County and pay their or crews overtime rates to come work for the city and fill potholes and do road maintenance work. Could the county be a contractor for the city?

That's a great question. I think we talked about it before this committee. The county did reach out to me right as the committee was going on, so I will be touching base with the county. The one thing I do wanna stress is we don't have unlimited funds. So as we go through the budget season, we're gonna see what our operating budgets and capital budgets are related to how much money can get spent. But it is an option I'm going to explore and I'll be touching base with the county after this later this afternoon.

we did we reached out to them there was some discussion of this in april and may at this committee and we did reach out to them at that point and they were dealing with a similar challenge but we did not check back in with them recently so let's we'll explore that i did want to ask about we have a the new modern pothole filling machine i don't know what the name of it is we have four of them

are those four pothole filling machines working 24 hours a day, seven days a week to do the work? Because it's only one person who operates that, right? Instead of a full crew and two trucks and four people?

Yep, yep. So there are three road patchers that are with street maintenance. One is here but still being certified to operate on the road. So that's a brand new one with fleet and transitioning into street maintenance. So up to four. We don't have those out right now in the way that we would like. That is actually one long-term solution to this problem, but we need to grow, essentially we need to grow into a better process into using those machines. We're very excited to have them. There have been challenges both in sourcing the emulsion, which is a different type of material than our standard hot mix. We actually did solve that challenge earlier this year, which is good news. The challenge we are now working through is training staff to use those efficiently and effectively. it's been difficult to do that training in the middle of this surge of potholes. And so we do have a little bit of a catch 22 issue with that, but we expect to be able to do better at that going forward. So that is one piece of hope for the future is those machines do We know from experience in other communities that those machines are about as efficient or slightly more efficient than a pothole crew. So one person as efficient as four when we get those underway fully. So that is on the list.

So see if you can follow me here. I think whether it is the training for our own staff or whether it is encouraging more private contractors to want to do this work. I think sometimes we look at the couple of companies that historically would have done this work and how they may have moved on or may no longer want to contract with us. But I think In construction and y'all's type of work in general, there is a historically not included whole population of folks who, if they were introduced, if they were exposed, and if they knew the pathway to it, would definitely be willing to do it. And especially if this, because of climate change, becomes our regular way of doing stuff, I think that it's going to be incumbent upon you all, incumbent upon us, to think completely outside the box. So accepting that, oh, no one wants to. No, the regular people might not want to do it. But it's a whole bunch of people that, if they saw the pathway to it and could get introduced to it, with a little bit of nudging would definitely want to be able to get contracting from the city. That might take a little more effort and a little more work, but if this becomes our normal, that may be work we need to put in just to be able to have that as an option. And also the training for our staff, looking at what are the obstacles aside from time that we may be having with that training. And maybe it's, we're not supposed to do the training. Maybe it's some outside entity that trains up folks on a specific work. You get what I'm saying? That's the kind of thinking that I think we need to be having to deal with this huge issue, or else we could end up, like Alderman Bauman is alluding to, with losses. So it's like one way or other, we're going to pay for it because we know the problem is there. And are we doing everything we can to try to address it?

So that's, yeah. I appreciate both those points. And to the latter one, that's exactly what needs to happen on the training side. And that's what we're working through. Madam Chair.

Madam Chair. Audubon Westmoreland and Audubon Winter.

We talked about this earlier in relation to, I think Alderman Bauman brought it up, about potholes that are unaddressed, if we'll get to them or not. And we talk about these record number of potholes. Do we know at the end of the season, pothole filling season of 2025, how many unaddressed potholes that were carryovers until this year? Yeah, we have those numbers.

Okay. So when we transitioned from 25 to 26, those numbers were low. So you're talking about a few hundred. So the seasonality of potholes usually starts to spike when you get out of the winter season. So it's a transition of weather. And so like we had mentioned earlier, April, this is where we always see a surge. It just happens the surge was three, four times what we normally see. So we do have carryover every year because, I mean, if a pothole is requested before the holidays, It might be there, so we'll address it when we go into January. But there's always a carryover annually.

And I'm mainly talking about the hot patch season.

Well. I think we can get those numbers. So when asphalt plants shut down and how many we have in the queue, yeah, we can get those numbers.

Yeah. So like September of 25, how many were unaddressed? Right.

Okay. So usually the asphalt plants, I mean, here's the best kind of rule of thumb. Asphalt plants usually open up around tax season. So April 15th, plus or minus, and it depends on weather. And they usually shut down about November 15th. So that's kind of what you think of. Sometimes the extent of weather keeps warmer, so they'll stay open. But that's kind of your timeframe if you want to look at hot asphalt versus cold patch.

Alderman Baumann hit the nail right on the head. When it comes to potholes, I mean daily. It's not a weekly thing for me. It's not a monthly thing for me. It's daily when I have constituents that are reaching out in frustration saying, what the hell is going on? I reported this pothole in May eight times. And that's my frustration. And I further get frustrated when they may enter the complaint online or they've entered the complaint with my office and we enter the ASR online and they're reaching out for an update. And the frustrating part is, As you said, we don't drive the dump trucks, we don't fill the potholes, so we reach out to the department. We reach out to staff, to management. And quite frankly, some of them don't prioritize responding to our inquiries. So I think it's important that residents know that your representative is fighting on your behalf and it's frustrating when we go to the department seeking an update and we get no response or it takes us reaching out four or five, six times to get a response. And sometimes they say, hey, well, sorry, we'll get to that today or we'll get to it tomorrow. And the resident reaches out two weeks later and it still isn't done. I mean, most people aren't looking at the department. They're looking at us. And they're saying, what are you here for? So my question is, what do we need to do to get adequate responses from management? I mean, whatever. There's potholes all over the city. I understand that. The response time is the response time. I get all of that. But we need updates to relate to the constituents. In the email that I got yesterday, it said that the average response time right now is 25 days. Earlier in May, we were told something similar. People were complaining about alleys and we were promised that by the time we got to August, after all the main roads were taken care of, alleys would be addressed. There was not one update from anybody telling me that, sorry, more pothole complaints have come in on main roads. We cannot get to the alleys. There's no communication. So how is that effective? for us communicating to the constituents. I think half of this, I think most people with a brain understand the root of this back in the 90s, right? However, when they can't get simple communication because they're reaching out to us and we reach out to you, and nobody's responding? I mean, how do we fix that? Is it emails communication? Is it phone communication? Like, I've asked that question. I can't even get an answer on what the preference of communication is. Nobody's responding. I get everybody's overwhelmed. But it's not acceptable to not respond to the ones that are elected to represent all of these people screaming at us.

Yeah, thank you, Alderman. So kind of two points on that. So one, which is that we are overwhelmed, right? And so that is a challenge on our end too. And the staff you're contacting are overwhelmed. That being said, I'm aware of some of the communications and not to your office. And that also is not to the standard we want. And so we have had discussions around that. The challenge when it comes to, so there's, individual contacts that we need to do a better job on and we will work on improving that. There's also how do we communicate to update the alders what's going on. And I think we misstepped and specifically I misstepped on that this year because The situation did not improve as quickly as we had hoped when we were talking about this in May and June, because although we didn't see another surge, we saw continued requests. And so we didn't catch up as quickly as we had hoped we were going to. We should have touched back and provided an update, essentially an update saying nothing has changed, but that would have been a helpful update, which is why we sent what we did yesterday. And I guess to... not to Alderman Baumann's earlier point, the reason that was sent by the individual it was sent by is because the street maintenance manager position is currently vacant. And so that's the supervisor of the street maintenance manager position. So that's why that was sent, because typically that communication would come from the street maintenance manager in the past. So we are filling that position right now, but it is vacant. So, We need to do a better job on the proactive communications, and I will work to make sure that that is happening from me. We're also going to work with the management staff to make sure they're being responsive to inquiries, even if the response is, there's not good news here, but here's the response.

For sure. And another reoccurring theme has been when people go online to report these potholes, and they go and they check for a status, and it says completed. 100 times out of 101 times. No, this sounds bad. 99 times out of 100 times, constituents are saying, hey, this is marked as completed. It's not done. I'm looking at it right now. So when they go online and they see completed, what does that mean?

That means we believe we've addressed the problem. So if that is, if that is, yep.

So this has come up like so many times. I think it's something with the computer system where what the complete, and we've talked about this on so many committees. When it says completed, I believe that's where it has been forwarded to the department and the department is addressing it. It's not that the whole thing is done. There has to be some way in whatever computer system to word it differently about the state that the request is in. um because it does give the belief to all of us that to your point what you just said is factually what has happened but that is not what continuously um happens with um with the way residents are informed about it that's what i found through the years and that's what's been discussed so Somebody needs to look into the system and how that wording and at which point it is entered in so that there is an actual, an honest telling of what the state of requests are at for us and for residents when they make those requests.

I should have caveated what I just said there. So several different things can happen. Specific to potholes. So potholes are now native in the system that is running the service request system. So what you're talking about is an issue that can happen when the Acela system, which is the click for action system, talks to DPW work orders and what our crews can and can't communicate back through work orders, sending it back to Acela. So there are many request types where that's a challenge. Specific to potholes though, the biggest issue we run into is, especially this year, our crews finding the right pothole. So they completed may mean they have patched a pothole near that address, but they may not, you know, the resident, I believe the resident's saying it's not done, right? You know, I'm not saying the resident is wrong about that. Of course, the system is parcel based. And so if you are particularly in the far southern portions of the city and most of the, I don't wanna say far north, but ninth district is actually a great example of this. There are parcels that are so large that if you're giving an address and the system gives our staff an address, right? That address may have adjacent to it three blocks of city streets.

and so we may not know where the resident actually intended to send our crews for a pothole so that that is a challenge there's a great feature there's a great feature in the mobile action app where you can take a picture of the potholes and i've gotten not many but a handful of photos back to those same uh complaints in a cella where the crews take a photo of the completed pothole which is very, very helpful because then we know that the problem has been fixed or we know that they didn't fix the one that we had reported, right? Are crews asked to do that or are they required to take photos and how many crews do that? Is that something that we can increase to increase the confidence that we're actually doing what we need to be doing?

Yes, yes. So the taking pre and post photos of the work by our crews is a practice we're actively implementing. Hopefully not in the near, not in the too distant future that will become standard across everything. So we are working on that. I will say that a little bit less of it happened this year because of the help that the commissioner mentioned coming from other parts of the department. They may not have the standard practices that street maintenance has. So that is something we work to refine as well. But yes, we are working to get to the point where 100% of service requests that are addressed have that after photo. That's what we want.

Just two more things. In relation to pothole filling crews, do those crews each have a lead, like a lead person that's been there for a while that says, hey, you're not doing that right. You need to do better. And if we do, what is the average years of service of those crew leaders?

Yeah, this is a great question because obviously these are probably our entry-level positions that come in more of a labor force, so these positions turn over a lot more than any of the others. Sometimes they just get promoted through the system. I can get you the average number of years, but every pothole crew does not have a basically person that has been seasoned for like a decade.

So most of our pothole fillers are? They're relatively new. They're new. Yeah. What do the vacancy numbers look like?

Across street maintenance, it's a little under 11% right now.

So what does that equate to? How many roughly?

Roughly 10 positions vacant.

Okay. And my last thing is, and we've talked about this, it's not a you guys thing, it's probably IT, what is that called? ITMD. When we ask people to go online to report those potholes, When you report those potholes online, you have to give a specific address. And there is a map that you can go in there and you can click where you think it is. Now, if they're not familiar with the area, but they know that pothole was somewhere on that block, and they just click the middle of that block, it assigns it some random address. The crew goes to that random address. Did they investigate or did they go to that random address specifically and say, oh, we don't see anything? Or did they look, you know, 50 yards away? Yeah.

They should be looking 50 feet away.

In that case, and I could be wrong in assuming, I don't like to assume, it seems like some of the potholes that are being marked as complete are really not seen or they didn't dig deep enough and investigate the area more to see if that pothole was really there before marking it as complete. I Honestly, I think that we have these numbers of potholes that are not filled. I think it's higher because I think we have a lot of potholes that have been reported that have been marked complete that are not being taken into account. And I've talked to some people that have just given up. Every time I mark it, they say that it's been marked complete. They don't know what else to do.

Okay. Yeah, I think to your question there. So yes, they should be looking within a reasonable range. It is a challenge as I was talking about earlier when the chairwoman made her correct point. It is a challenge when the parcel adjacent to the street is very large and that is a technology limitation with the current system. My understanding is that we may, at some point in the next year or so, have a better approach to that that is not parcel-based. That's what I'm hearing, so I hope that's true. I've gotta investigate that. I just found that out yesterday. But that is a real challenge when you're working the public right away, to have a parcel-based backend for your service system. Yeah. Yep.

Thank you.

Alderman Taylor?

Just to piggyback off of that right quick, You said a specific address, but when you take pictures, do pictures give you an exact location? How does that work?

No, the picture would just be helpful for our crews. They can see it. They've got tablets, so they can see it on their tablet with the request. So if, and again, it depends on the angle the picture is taken, whether we've got the surrounding context, all of that, right? I mean, I think sometimes the public thinks a zoom in on the pothole is really helpful, but what is actually helpful is a back out so we can see like a house or a building in the background, right? Some sort of context.

um uh that's more helpful for our crews so the picture is not geo tagged or anything like that on our end it's just a visual confirmation of like this is the one i want you to do okay and then the next thing is are your is your system sophisticated enough that when those calls are coming in that they can group them or they just come in and just just as they come in, then they just try to get addressed, but then you have two or three potholes in the same area, but they just come in back and forth instead of getting them all at one time.

Right, and this is one of the reasons, thank you, Altar Woman, so this is one of the reasons that we, a year or two ago now, actually switched to this native Acela-based system for our cruise work because of exactly that. So it allows us to do, our supervisors and our managers, to do a lot more work to group potholes, create efficient routes, send our crews in a way that's most efficient. One of the things that the public has seen this year that is leading, I think, to some of the complaints I know that Alderman Westmoreland's talking about and maybe others as well is because we now have that capability to group things more efficiently, and we have so many requests, we are not, we're still not operating under our first come first serve protocol, which is our typical protocol in service delivery. And that was in that message that was sent out yesterday. We did mention it at the committee earlier this year, but it was clear with some conversations with others over the past two weeks that it wasn't clear enough. We didn't do a good job of re-communicating and emphasizing that. So what we're doing right now is we're grouping requests in a way that is most efficient so our crews can address the most requests at once each day. So that may mean we have, I shouldn't say it may mean, it means we have some very old requests that have not been addressed because they are isolated. And so that does occur, yeah.

Okay, but you are putting them together now.

We're grouping them, yeah, for crew efficiency, yeah.

Okay, and then that goes to, and the final question is it sounds like we're constantly trying to patch the problem and patching problems is never a really good solution, but replacing it. And so it sounds that we are not getting enough funding for our roadways, but other areas are getting a lot of funding. So how do we compare to other areas that we're not getting enough to take care of our roadways, but when we drive on the outskirts of Milwaukee, We see that those roadways are always replaced, not patched.

Yeah, I think that's more of a, gotta zoom way out for that because that's really more about the relative need in those communities for services compared to the property tax base. And so, I mean, on average, Milwaukee's per capita, one of the poorest communities in the state, right? And so that doesn't mean there's not wealthy areas and things like that, but they're, the resources available to some of the adjacent suburban communities per person are just a lot higher than what we have. saying that i will say that the people who have my job or equivalent jobs in our suburban peers will also say they are struggling right now to meet their residents expectations for road quality because of the way we are choosing to prioritize roadway dollars within the state of wisconsin it is going to the big roads and it's going to the big projects it is not going to local roads across the state no matter the community and so that's That's a challenge no matter what. I mean, as an example, I won't use an example I don't wanna pick on another community. There is another community that is quite wealthy within Milwaukee County that has potholes that are very equivalent to what you would see in some of the worst roads in the city of Milwaukee. So it is not, there is a difference in their available resources per capita, but there's also just a challenge with how the state is interacting with local governments.

I would think our roads are worse also just due to us being the largest city in the state. So travel, just amount of people and amount of cars. Yep. Volumes. Yeah, the volume. I would think. I'll have a moment. Tyler, anything else?

just seems like because we are the largest that somehow that should balance out with the other counties being a little bit smaller they may have more funding in that respect according to the tax base but because we are such a larger city that it would balance out more and you're saying that that's no way to do that because

Not with the degree of disparity between, particularly the value of the property. This is property tax based and so the value of the property, there's a pretty big disparity.

All right, thank you so much. Alderman Brower.

Yeah, thank you so much, Madam Chair. I mean, I really appreciate what you've brought up, Alderman Taylor, about, you know, what's going on with the suburbs. I get that as well from residents over on the east side. Why is Shorewood have better roads? I mean, Shorewood is potentially driving some businesses out of business on Oakland right now, too. So they're making similar decisions, you know, right with the reconstruct on Oakland. But, you know, the suburbs, by the very political history of their existence, have built a wall around themselves to... keep out the poverty in Milwaukee and prevent them from having to interact with us people in the city and then keep all of their money so that they can have their thing nice and the rest of us can suffer. I mean, that is literally Mayor Zeidler fought the suburbs for years to prevent this from happening now. And unfortunately he lost. And now we're dealing with the consequence of having the iron ring of suburbs around Milwaukee that has walled themselves off from the rest of Milwaukee. So that's unfortunately what's going on. I mean, look at the Also look at the budget priorities of the city of Wisconsin. We are rebuilding and expanding an interstate, whether it's questionable whether it needs to be expanded or not. And we're spending billions of dollars on that. That is multiple, I don't know what the exact price tag for interstate 94 reconstruction is. Yeah, there you go. Yep, $1.8 billion. We could use every single one of those dollars here. You know, the DOT, state DOT would say, oh, well, that's... Milwaukeeans using that road. Well, Milwaukeeans and people from all over Wisconsin use our local roads all the time when they come down here to work and play here in Milwaukee. I really do want to emphasize that this is an issue. We do have several wealthy people. I represent one of the wealthier districts in the city of Milwaukee. We can't even levy an income tax against those wealthy individuals. It's only the regressive property tax. State statutes prohibit cities like Milwaukee from levying income taxes on the highest income earners here in Milwaukee so that we can literally, as we would like to, make the millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share. We're prohibited from doing that. The state has prohibited that since the turn of the last century. you know the bargain there is that okay well we'll charge the income taxes we won't let you cities we won't let you charge the income taxes we'll charge the income taxes but we'll share our revenue with you and um according to frank zeidler's autobiography um the liberal and city government um back in the 1950s this state of wisconsin was giving back out of every $2 they collected in income taxes, they were giving $1 back to the municipalities. Fully half of the gross revenue for the state of Wisconsin was returned to municipalities. And now we are, you know, we get, I mean, just only a few hundred million dollars from the state of Wisconsin every year. in shared revenue and maybe some grant every once in a while that we have to spend a bunch of staff time like begging state DOT to give us a grant for some road. I mean, they should just give us that money rather than all this rigmarole that we're having to deal with, you know, hear from them. So I do want to say that I think the problem does fall at the state government and then the millionaires and billionaires through their political leverage have been able to manufacture a tax scheme where they get as many breaks as possible. and where the rest of us are left with the scraps. And that's what we're dealing with right now. It's coming to a head. We have a fascist administration in Washington DC that's just the icing on the cake of the problems that we've been dealing with for years and decades of neoliberalism going on. But specifically to this file, I would be curious, we did talk a little bit about the gap, the staffing gap that we have at DPW. Let me ask two questions about that. I'd be curious if you do know, Commissioner, or anybody up there, what the gap is in our streets crew right now. How many staff do we have, and what is our gap that we're budgeted for, or approximately? And then my other question would be, what is the historic gap? We are dealing with a streets crew in DPW that is significantly smaller as far as staff, than years past. Do we have numbers? I have further questions too Madam Chair, but do we have numbers or roughly on those statuses?

Yeah, just a moment.

Yeah, so while city engineer Kevin's looking at the actual numbers itself, street maintenance has continually been reduced over a number of years just based on fiscal restraints that we do have as the local government. I think I remember years ago I was the street maintenance manager in 2018 and I think I have nearly 120 folks that were there and I think now we're down to 80 something now if I'm not mistaken.

For these duties, yeah.

So we've been reduced by over 40 people just since 2018. Correct. And that's not even including the entire neoliberal property tax freeze regime that began under Governor Doyle and previous administrations. Correct. Okay.

Yeah, so currently across all of street maintenance, which includes other duties like inventory and things that are unrelated to potholes, we have 102 funded positions and 11 of those are vacant, including the street maintenance manager.

Okay. I mean, I think moving as expeditiously as possible. I'm willing to help with recruitment. I'll send out an e-notify. I ask people to apply for city jobs. I mean, for any constituent that's listening, we want you to work here to serve the city of Milwaukee. I think, let's see here. As far as communication issues, you know, our concern with DPW, you know, our office is willing to help, you know, communicate to the east side and river west about what's going on with DPW. You know, we also, I would challenge every resident to be as engaged as possible too. I mean, communication is a two way street here as well with, with the city of Milwaukee. We, um, and we are the, we're the leaders, the alders, we are the leaders and other, other elected official. There's 19 elected officials here at the city of Milwaukee. All of us are the leaders of the 577,000 people that live in this city. We've got to encourage engagement. That means we got to follow. I mean, we have, you know, the, the, um, social media director for DPW is in the room right here. They're putting stuff out. People need to follow those pages. They need to check back on those pages too as well. That doesn't eliminate any of our communication obligations. We always can be doing better, but I would challenge every resident to be engaged in communication and then the level of engagement needs to go even beyond that too. Obviously people need to report things correctly. I'm really glad that we talked about like that the pictures that people are taking in click for action you know i tell residents to you know take a picture before they even upload it you know go into the edit function on their phone and put a little yellow arrow or something you know like literally give us as much context as we possibly can get so that there's so that there's that but beyond that you know people here in milwaukee we've got we've got to rise up against what we're facing you know we've we dealt with from 2011 to the spring of 2011 to spring of 2019 with scott walker as our governor and that has you know, completely devastated what's going on here in Milwaukee. They passed act 10 and the budget repair bill to prepare communities for the massive cuts. This is literally Walker said, I'm not even being political. Literally Walker said, we are going to give them the tools to adjust their budgets for it, to anticipate the cuts that we're going to give in shared revenue. And that was back in 2011 that that was passed, so that's been 15 years of that at least. And it goes back even deeper. It was Doyle who signed one of the first laws to cap the property tax increases that we could levy as well without going to referendum. All those things have come back here to haunt what's going on, and we're facing it. And then on top of all that, we have climate change. We talked about our utility bills. earlier. WeEnergies is not innocent in all this. They're the ones that continue to put carbon pollution into the atmosphere, and the bankers, and the mining companies, and every other interest in the oil companies that's out there collectively destroying this planet. And we're sitting here dealing as the local unit of government with the results of things that we don't have control over in that respect. So as the leaders in this city, and I'm committed to doing this as a leader in the city to continue organizing and mobilizing constituents so that we can not only win a state government that will work for us and a city government as well, then then subsequently a city government, but to, you know, frankly, I mean, it'll end this system that we're in. I mean, this is, this is all, and I know I'm going to get some snickers when I say this, that's fine. Um, but this is, this is a system, let's call it capitalism that continues to exploit, um, and, um, and, and, um, exploit and control and profiteer and put all the externalities on local government and the people instead of the profiteers and it needs to go. It's got to be replaced by a system that works for people where all of our roads are pristine and we're not going to get that as long as we continue to have Wall Street manipulating our political environment so that they do not have to pay the taxes that they should be paying and that's a I think at the heart of the issue here, I've been out with the DPW crews, I've patched roads, I've been out with parking enforcement, I've been out with all of them, nowhere do I see employees who aren't 100% committed to the cause of the city of Milwaukee. Every single one of them, even if we disagree with minor specifics about how they're operating, I do not see a single employee who's not fully dedicated And we need more of them. We need thousands more of them working for us to make this community what it deserves. And so I would encourage colleagues to think about the bigger picture when we're looking at all this stuff and the implications and the political ramifications of what we're doing as well. I am concerned that this particular piece of legislation, I really appreciate Alderman McGillis leading on this and looking for every single solution. I'm concerned that this piece of legislation would contribute to even more outsourcing of the work that I want to be done by city workers. So I guess I have a couple questions about that. Do we, with this piece of legislation, with this allocation of money for contractors, do we have contractors ready to go? Do we have just a few months before it's going to be cold again? Do we have contractors ready to go to perform this and expend every single dollar that we want to do? Do we have the contractors ready? Otherwise, is there any way we could potentially staff up in the coming weeks here at DPW? you know, to accommodate this and accomplish this instead. I just, I am concerned that this is opening the door further to more contracting. And overall, I think city government operates more efficiently when we do all of this work in house and not through contractors.

Before you, before you get into that, but to pick you back up for that, I do want to ask you this. Um, last year, um, or last year or the year before, you all did, as a result of some budget actions, you all did a feasibility study about the singular replacement for sidewalk stuff and the ability for us to set up our own and I remember speaking with you all, because I did that legislation, that you all were willing to do it, wanted to do it, thought long term it could help get us back on track instead of having such a backlog. But you all asked us last year to, still allow you to contract out so that you didn't get further behind while you took the year to train, set up that internal team. And I did speak to the sponsor about this, but as I look at this and see that concrete piece, it would make me think, well, if we're already standing up a team that is gonna do the little sidewalk blocks, and I don't know none about construction like this, so maybe it's totally different, but could they not also do the alley piece? So I guess I will first let you answer Alderman Breyer's question, but my immediate follow-up would be, where are we at with the buildup of that internal team, and could that internal team do this work? I know this specific legislation is to use some funds and stuff for this year, so I don't know how far we are with the team, but that would be my immediate follow-up question to Auderman Brower.

Go ahead. So I think in some of this is, when we talk about these panel replacements and alleys, we're just trying to supplement what we have right now, so we're trying to attack a problem today. I mean, long-term, looking at what the overall workforce looks like is a different discussion as we kind of go through budget, you know, increasing the number of street maintenance employees we have, just like we're trying to upstart the sidewalk program, and I'll let Kevin kind of go into details there. But I do want to say one thing related to the vacancies. So yes, the city has continued to cut street maintenance, but that doesn't mean they haven't become more efficient. And so I just want to put that in the table as well. So we have used technology to route people faster. So the amount of potholes crews are attacking and completing in a daily basis is way higher than it was then. And so, Throwing a bunch of people out does not mean that you're going to have a bunch of service requests at the same time. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to use technology as a piece to how we route our folks. Additionally, doing the work at the same time. So I don't want to take away from the effort that street maintenance has done over the past few years of basically addressing more potholes. I mean, the numbers came up earlier in the beginning of this file that they've addressed nearly 16,000 potholes this year, which has never been done in that short of a period of time, even with a workforce that is not what it was in the past. So they're doing a better job of doing efficiency because I think government needs efficiency. So it's not just people, but it is how we get the work done at the same time. So I just wanted to put that through because street maintenance has spent a lot of time how they route people. They've been using methodologies that they do in a private world. You think of Amazon, what's the fastest route you can deliver a package to someone's house? That's what they're trying to do with basically street maintenance as well. So I just want to give them a little bit of praise related to this because it's not just the number of people, but it's how they're doing the work.

Thank you. Specific to kind of both questions there. So related, and this is related to the discussion of sidewalk replacement crews. So we are... I think we're within a few weeks actually of starting that work, actually physically seeing some sidewalk panels replaced, which is great. We're very excited about that. That took some work to get that done from when the budget amendment occurred last November until September into October of this year, right? So I think the reason to think about contractors for this work is, as the commissioner said, to supplement our current efforts and our current staff. It's a short-term thing to grow our ability to do this type of work. The other element of this is the 300,000 in existing DPW funds that the resolution talks about. is capital funding, which our crews can tap into, but we can't just create positions with only capital funding. And so we need, capital funding can be contracted out much more efficiently and quickly as well. So that's a reason to focus on contractors during this, for this effort specific to concrete panel replacement. The department has actually been exploring concrete panel replacement for about a year now, not on alleys, that was a more recent thing, but exploring, trying to figure out what it could do for us, what the benefit could be. The target for panel replacement are those pads of concrete that I'm sure everybody could recognize what a single panel of concrete looks like in a road where we have a cluster of one to 10 panels in an area that have failed. in an accelerated rate compared to the panels around them, right? So we can't really justify the whole road or we can't afford to redo the whole road. And similarly with the sponsors leadership, we can't, we don't want to necessarily or can't afford to replace the whole alley, but we have one, two, three, four panels in an alley that have failed. So that's the concept behind this. That is work that our staff have the skills to do. We just don't have the capacity to do it right now. And so that would be the reason to do a contractor approach. But contractors can do this as well. It's concrete work, which is a little bit different than contracted pothole filling.

Madam Chair, I think the question was, are you prepared? Do you have contractors standing by, ready to sign contracts?

Thank you, Alderman, I did forget that part. So this takes time, so there will be a little bit of buildup. We did talk with the sponsor. We have the capacity to get this contract out this year. Whether or not a significant amount of work is doable is limited by the weather and the contractor capacity. In general, contractors have limited capacity across the region right now. There's a lot of transportation work going on. So that is the challenge with this. And that's another reason, frankly, to use capital dollars, because those can roll over without challenge. So we are ready to move. It still takes a little bit of time to get a contract out the door. And then our concrete contractor capacity is limited.

So Madam Chair, if I could continue real slow. First of all, in reading this resolution over closely, it looks like it primarily deals with the financial side of coming up with $1.3 million. Nothing in here explicitly directs the department to hire anybody. That's the intent. That's what the analysis says. But the body of the resolutions do not actually say that, number one. Number two, what I think you're telling us is it's entirely possible that... none of these contract work, none of the contract work will be available to address the 15,000 backlog because by the time we get to December, it's unlikely you will have any contracts in place and whatever work they do will be rolled over into 2027. 8,000.

So I guess just to clarify, I think, Alderman, you're largely correct in what you said there. The intent of this was to identify areas where potholes repeatedly occur and cause challenges, and both on our roads and in our alleys. And so my understanding of the sponsor's intention was to identify a long-term solution that would prevent us, in particular to alleys, coming back to the same alley every year in the exact same spot, putting asphalt down on that alley. That would be the intent of this and this would accomplish that as far as dealing with a significant backlog of service requests I Would yes, I don't think that this would meet that and I don't think we have a contractor Avenue to meet that so

Very good, and as to the budget question, you lamented the fact that your street maintenance forces have declined through budget action. Those were executive budget actions, correct? I don't think there's ever been a council amendment that reduced authorized positions for street maintenance, ever. We've introduced amendments to increase capital spending on local roads and on sidewalks and on alleys. I've made some of those, but I don't ever believe a council amendment has reduced the appropriation for street maintenance operations. Those reductions have all come at the initiative of the mayor. And the previous mayor.

I was gonna say, as long as you're including more than one administration, that's probably accurate.

I just want that very clear. The council is not the one responsible for your declining personnel. Now then the argument would be, but we're more efficient. Well then declining personnel is not a problem. It can't be a problem on one hand, but no, we're more efficient, so it's not a problem. It's either a problem or it isn't a problem. You're saying you're fully staffed to maintain the roads of the city of Milwaukee? The statistics that your person sent out yesterday would suggest the contrary.

Sure, I think Alderman, I guess, I'm not sure if you're looking for feedback on that. If you're looking for feedback on that, I guess I would say that that's primarily, again, a capital budget challenge because we are facing roads that are in such poor condition.

2027 budget, what is the department's request for street maintenance operations? Increasing over 2026 or decreasing?

We're not decreasing. Yeah, not decreasing, no.

The same as 2026.

Yeah, status quo.

Okay, very good.

All right, any other questions? With that, we have a substitute before us. Adam Kerr. Yes, Adam and Spiker.

Just two real quick questions. First, it was mentioned that we might have some potholes that have been out there forever because they were isolated. So if there's a series of potholes in an area, then it's more likely to get done sooner. What about requests that we get where it's multiple stretches, blocks, maybe sometimes multiple streets that are all coalesced in one area? My impression from the past is that those would get bumped down to the bottom because they were so massive in terms of the response we did from DPW. So are we marking a change in that now? If we put in more areas, is it more likely to get addressed because now it can be addressed efficiently?

Alderman, I think your understanding of what was done in the past is accurate, given the situation we're in this year, we would be more likely to respond to that request, yes, to be able to prioritize that one because it would represent a concentration of service requests, yeah.

Okay. And then secondly, you said the street maintenance manager left. How long ago was that?

So just about a month ago. So Tom Wenger, who was the street services manager, has been promoted to the director of operations, which was the vacancy by Daniel Rodriguez. And so we're currently finalizing filling the street maintenance position. So it's been about a few weeks. Okay.

So then did anybody fill in, backfill that role? Or, I mean, I've been getting responses from the folks working under Tom. But has there, like, has, you know, the engineer in charge, Chad Christbaum, you know, taken on those duties? Or were those duties not taken? not fulfilled.

The duties were distributed, essentially. So partially on to me, across on to Chad Crisbaum, the engineer in charge for that section, and then also obviously the two district managers that, and you're familiar with Alderman with the South District Manager, had to take on additional leadership because of that, yep.

And was there a communication given when the street maintenance position went vacant that these roles are going to be distributed now, so we should contact Mr. Christbaum or yourself?

I think the direction for Alders to contact hasn't changed, which is the dpwstreetmaintenance at milwaukee.gov email. That is the one that Alders should utilize.

Yeah, and I just mean sometimes when there's a problem, you go higher up the chain, as it were. And if we don't know there's nobody up that chain, then we're going to the wrong people or we're going to somebody who's not there. So it'd be helpful, I guess, if there is a shift change in the future, just send out an email, let folks know about it, maybe reach out. And just so we're clear about that communication. I've worked with Mr. Christbaum extensively over the years. I would have no trouble reaching out with him, but I didn't know That was one of part of one of his new jobs.

Yeah, and Alderman, I think as we hire the new street maintenance manager, we'll have that connect with each Aldermanic office so there is a direct connection to that individual.

Yeah, I'm just saying when there's, when somebody leaves, tell us and then, so tell us who to, who we should be contacting then. I mean, that's pretty basic stuff.

Madam Chair, if I could follow up. Hold on one second. Alderman Spiker, are you done?

That's all I have, thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Alderman Bauman.

This generic email that you just gave us, who answers that email? To whom does that go?

That goes to the group of supervisors and managers in street maintenance, yep.

I, in 24 years, am very reluctant and try never to use group emails because I have no idea who is going to. I have no way to follow up with a particular person. We want to send it to a person so they can respond back or not, but if they don't, then we know who didn't, rather than a generic email that goes to a wise assortment of people and most likely is answered by no one. because no one's particularly responsible. Or they all respond, and then it's a waste of time to have five people respond to a generic email. So who is the person we should now be directing these calls to, you? I have no problem sending you the complaints, correct?

You can always send me complaints, several offices do.

I go to the top. That's the only way you get action is to go to the top.

Yes, you can email Chad, of course, or call him if you've got questions. The other thing is with the way that DPW Street Maintenance is structured, it is structured into districts and service areas. So based on where the service request is located, manager or supervisor is responsible for answering and responding to that request.

We had a constituent who has an alley in the 2900 block of West Juneau, and he'd been complaining about an alley pothole since March, And he keeps calling, he keeps accusing us of ignoring him, my office of ignoring him. We tell him we forward the requests repeatedly. The last time I forwarded the request, I got an email back from someone who I didn't recognize basically saying, we are not addressing alleys until we're better positioned to handle the potholes. And I emailed back, when do you anticipate that date be happening? Never heard of it. Radio silence, forever thereafter. So there is just not communication. The job is not being done by the Mayor's Department of Public Works. That, to me, is the bottom line message. Yes, we can be more efficient. Yes, we can do these tweaky things. There's been double talk today. There's been excuse making. And to the citizens of this city, it's not acceptable. And it's coming from the 14, 15 people that represent the citizens of this. We are getting accused of not doing our job. And what's your purpose sitting down there? if I can't get an alley pothole filled since March. Probably a 15 minute job.

i'd i'd i will defend the department as we are filling potholes or not sitting on our hands to a jobs have we deep prioritize alleys over major to roadways and local roads yes uh... the amount of vehicles that come across and liability to the city the priority is in a bit and uh... roadway that handles fifteen thousand three thousand vehicles we have prioritize does that mean we're not going to get the alleys no we will get to them uh... to give an actual date on when we're going to address the road i think is unknown because if the number of complaints continually come in, how can I give you a date? I'm gonna be there by Friday and I get 25 more that are on an arterial roadway. So to give an actual date is a tough. Now, has there been promises by some of our staff? Yes, and I think how we address that and I've had some conversations with Alderman Westmoreland and how we communicate and I think that's where we do a better job as a department. But the department hasn't failed. I mean, these folks are out there filling potholes Every single day and then the amount they have filled is way higher than we've ever done in the past. The volume has changed. So I just, it's not that we have failed, it's just that we have an infrastructure problem and we are gonna continue I think as a administration, as a department, and I think as a local government to try to fix all of our roads and not just worry about single potholes but just the entire infrastructure itself.

Ask the public what they think next time you interact with them.

I do think two things can be true. The staff could be working at an exceptional level beyond what they've ever had to do before, and it can still feel to our constituents that it is not enough. Yep, absolutely. That's just, both things could be true. But accepting that it's not enough is something that I think I and we as representatives, that's why you're hearing the level of advocacy that you're hearing, because we'll never accept that. So I think it's fair to acknowledge the work that staff is doing and to take nothing away from that, but it's just not enough. So we have to figure out the ways that we have control over. I understand the state funding issue as well, but the ways that we have control over to continue to just do better. I think that's what you're hearing from all of us. And I would also encourage this, because we have several other files that we gotta get to, but I think what you're hearing from this file and several others, I know you've already done this, Commissioner, months ago, but in this moment, you may wanna do it or have your department do it or whatever, but start having more specific conversations with each office, with each alder about what their DPW issues are. Because I think you're hearing a whole bunch of overlapping issues and specific examples and experiences that you might be better prepared to collectively address. not at this table, but having heard from me in other ways. So that's what I would suggest. Is there any more comments on this particular file?

Madam Chair, Mason Levy, Budget Office. I did want to address the contingent borrowing on this file. I just want to remind everyone that If we do condition your borrow for that, we will eventually, the bill will come due and we'll have to pay for it. Debt service is a significant burden on their overall general city budget. As we spend more money in borrowing, we have to pay for that debt and there's less money available for general city purposes like O&M pothole filling. So I just wanted to make sure that everyone's aware that it does increase the overall debt and it can affect our overall borrowing grade, which can cost more to borrow too. So that is looked at.

And then the substitute is how much borrowing?

So it's 300 from funds that have already been budgeted and up to 300 from funds that have already been budgeted and up to 800,000 in new borrowing.

And the administration is not in agreement with contingent borrowing for this?

How many alleys could you do with just the 300?

So we think that it really depends on the conditions in each alley, right? So if we pick four panels as a typical sub repair that needs to be done here, because we're not doing a full alley replacement, right? So if we pick four panels, it's probably about 15,000 or so per group, if that's four panels, so we could do several with the 300,000. I do think that, obviously, hearing what the budget office is saying and the administration's perspective in general, and also what Alderman Baumann raised, I think, It may make sense to start smaller and use the money we have allocated to us already on this effort so that we can prove positive this concept and have any discussions about the 800 or whatever number it is as part of the 2027 budget since we're not gonna be getting that out the door before December 31st as Alderman Baumann did note.

To the sponsor, is there a reason you chose the 1.1 million?

What I looked at was seven $10,000 repairs in every aldermanic district that would translate to about $1.1 million. So that was my back of the napkin math on what might be accomplishable. what the department might be able to get out before the end of the year. Clearly, some repairs will be less, many will be more than that dollar amount, but we have to start with a budget appropriation before the department can look and see what's available, what the capacity is, what contractors respond to the to the RFPs and what those dollar amounts will be. So if we don't start with a number, we're not gonna have one. And if we don't start compiling these RFPs together, we won't be able to get them out until maybe fall of 2027. So I would much rather have the department put together these RFP packages and have them available so we know what the dollar amounts will be. Knowing full well they won't all get completed before the end of the year.

This panel approach or the cement panel approach, have you done this before?

Not in recent history, not as far as I'm aware.

Would the sponsor be open to the $300,000 being used as a pilot program to see how it works before it's expanded to more or additional borrowing?

Yeah, absolutely, and that's why the legislation is all written as up to 800. So if we don't have $800,000 worth of additional projects that we have a capacity either from contractors or from in-house needs, then yeah, they wouldn't spend it.

Part of the reason I'm trying to avoid a veto and I'm trying to override a veto and all that kind of thing, because I think in principle, I think most members probably would want to see something be addressed. So I think what's at question is just the authorization for the additional borrowing at this point, particularly because it's some work that they have not done. that they're not used to doing on the regular. So this is a new approach to it, which I give you great credit for pushing them in this direction. But I guess as a committee, and I heard some trepidation with some of the members of this committee as well with the additional borrowing. I don't know. So my thinking would be, might it be something that we all could agree on if we'd say pilot program, 300,000 and everyone knows the intent is if this works, we'll do more of it in the future.

Yeah, Chairman, I think that's the plan we have in the back of our mind is to use the 300,000 that we do have in our accounts, figure out what the cost is, because then we can actually see what the impact will be future. I mean, we're going to go through budget within about a month from now and have the discussions going into 27. So we can get the ball rolling with the 300,000 we have, and then we can, as we set the table during the budget deliberations, okay, do we want to expand this? We might have a gauge by that time because the contract might be out that time and what costs are that makes the most sense. Madam Chair.

Just a quick technical question. Don't worry, this isn't long form. This isn't long form. Just a quick question. Can we just define real quick for everybody listening or maybe you did earlier, but for everybody's notification, I can imagine what a sidewalk panel is, alley panel, garage door to garage door.

Can you describe what an alley panel is, please? It's going to depend on the alley, but essentially the seams that the public sees within a concrete roadway or alley, the panel is the piece of concrete within those seams.

And how much is that per panel again, replacement?

It really depends because of how you're mobilizing each site, but I had used an example of around $15,000 for one site with four panels needing to be replaced.

Thank you. And as we bid out, we'll find out more specific answers on what this is and the cost. Okay.

Any other comments or questions from committee? So I guess would the, before we vote, just for my own vote to know, would the sponsor be willing to amend to the 300?

Yeah, we can take the 800 out if that's what the committee wants to do.

Is that okay with folks? Okay. Actually, if it's you, I remember I already got me thinking because of your line of questioning. So would you mind?

Well, you know, I mean, I also have an ideological hesitation regarding just continuing to outsource stuff. So that might be the source of objection for me, not necessarily the borrowing, although I do agree with the concerns about the borrowing. But I mean, we're stuck between a rock and a hard place. I hate putting anything on the credit card, frankly, but like we have to given our situation in some cases. So no, my objection.

And it should be clear that 300 is already authorized. We already have done it. So that hurdle is already there. It's just it wasn't used in the other way. This would just be redirecting it. But go ahead.

My objection would be related to contracting it out. Okay.

So, Alderman Tyler, would you do the motion to amend it to the 300 of the existing borrowing that we already have? Are you fine with that? Motion by Alderman Tyler is to amend the substitute to the 300 of the borrowing we already have. Okay. Are there any objections to that motion? hearing none, motion passes. I want to thank you, Alderman Burgales, for your leadership on this and for your willingness to adjust.

Madam Chair, was the call you just made for objections just for the amendment or for the motion itself?

That was just for the amendment. And now we're going to do the whole thing. The motion by Alderman Baumann is for adoption of the substitute as amended. Are there any objections to that motion? I object. Hearing one objection by Alderman Brower, the motion passes. Thank you. Thanks again. Next up, we have item number 18. Madam Chair. Oh, I'm sorry. Alderman Westmoreland will move reconsideration of item 14, file 251, 421, substitute resolution direct the Department of Public Works to identify location and develop cost estimates for a third self-help drop-off center. This is sponsored by Alderman Chambers. Is the department present? Do they have any update on this? Do you have the information?

Good morning, Tom Wengren, Director of Operations. So the self-help drop center, the study or the report that was done for the feasibility or costs, I believe the historic kind of list here is that it was started in 2021. There was one study. It was re... studied in 2025, and I believe the main feedback from that was that it didn't select an actual site, include cost for the actual site, so I believe that's just the direction we're moving now is updating that overall report and assessment to estimate and propose a general site for where it would be located.

And my apologies, this was sponsored by Alderman Chambers. Alderman Chambers, is there anything you wanted to say?

No. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members. I just want to know where we're at as far as the update. I think we met on this about roughly six months ago or probably the beginning of the year. And Tom is correct on some of his comments. tasks at hand of what we needed in order to see an actual path on possibly creating the third self-help center. So I just want to know if there any other updates or this something that I don't want to continue to kick this down the can because I feel a third one is needed.

I hear where you're going, Alderman Chambers, but let me tell you this, and Carmen, correct me if I'm wrong, as I look at this, this is just the resolution directing them to do it. They will report back via a communication file with the actual data. This is really just a formal way. The request they already know is there, but this is the formal way of getting it down. That's how I'm interpreting it. This resolution, am I not?

Yeah. But I thought we did this already, Madam Chair.

I think you did it as a footnote, if I'm not mistaken. And I think, you know, footnotes don't have an effect until you do the resolution.

Right, and I thought we did the resolution as well.

In front of us right now, it says resolution. So it's not the communication file. Thank you. But hear you loud and clear about what you're looking for from them. And I think they've already started the work, it sounds like. So I think we could probably rather quickly turn around with a communication file with what they find.

Yeah, just for clarity, Chairwoman, we do know the cost to operate a third drop-off center. I think the secondary comments, I think this was earlier in the year from Alderman Chambers, was to find a location. That's very difficult. I can find a property tomorrow. That doesn't mean it's going to be for sale the next day. So that makes it very challenging for the department to go, here's a parcel that I can use for this. It doesn't mean it's going to be available for the city to purchase in that rapid period of time.

Do we own any parcels that could be used?

That's a great question. Yes, potentially, no, depending on what we want and where the location is. I mean, there's been plenty of discussions on Century City, which obviously we know wants to get developed in a different format, with different uses there. Really what comes down to is costs. To operate another new service is something that costs the city money, and that has to be discussed during the budget seizing, because it's not like we get an upstart and I don't have a magic pot of money where I can just open up a third drop-off center. We are exploring alternative ideas, and we'll go through this in budget in the next month of what we can do, and maybe it's not a permanent third drop-off center, maybe it's a pop-up where I can do it once a month where we can have at least folks get rid of materials, and we've been discussing it in the back of the napkin type of discussions, but it's complicated, so it's just how much more do we add to another service in a cash-strapped city?

So Alderman Chambers, would you like to refine the request to be a recommendation or a suggestion of a possible third location that we already own? Absolutely. Is us telling you that verbally? Yeah, and I can work with the elder.

Yeah, I can work with Alderman Chambers.

Okay, thank you. The motion by Alderman Brower is adoption. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Madam Chair.

Congratulations.

Appreciate that. Thank you.

Would you congratulate them for the public's watching?

In case anybody hasn't been watching for the last three hours, congratulating Tom on his promotion to the Director of Operations.

Thank you. I hope you keep those emails up during the winter that we are able to share with the public what's going on. Those have been very useful through the years. So next item. We are on to item 18, file number 260652, resolution directing the Commissioner of Public Works to execute a document titled State Municipal Financial Agreement for a state-led highway project and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation for the programming, design, and construction of West Capitol Drive, STH 190 from STH 100 to North 35th Street to set up funds for design engineering at an estimated total cost of $855,000, with an estimated city share of $205,200 and a grantor share of $641,250 and remaining $8,550 of costs to be funded by the city of Wauwatosa.

Good afternoon, David Tapia, Major Projects Manager. So this is to set up the initial funding to start the scoping process with the Department of Transportation.

Any questions from committee? Hearing none, Alderwoman Taylor will move adoption. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Item number 19, file number 260-527, communication relating to the semiannual reporting to the Common Council by the Milwaukee Water Works and Department of Water Works regarding lead service line replacement.

Good afternoon, Patrick Pauley, Water Works Superintendent. Are we okay if we don't? to show the presentation. We can do this very, very quickly. It's the mid-year report. I'm putting Michelle in a difficult spot. I'm sorry, I didn't let you introduce yourself. Michelle, go ahead.

Michelle Natarajan, Water Quality Manager, Milwaukee Water Works.

I have four points to highlight.

Go ahead.

Or we can put the presentation on. Give us the highlights. Okay. So first point, when we reported in March, our costs were about $7,400 for a service replacement. I mentioned then that I thought that we had reached the bottom and things would come back up because bid pricing had been up, and that has been the case. Our cost, our five year average as of mid June, or end of June, excuse me, is $7,800. which is still very competitive nationally. Average costs, if you throw out some of the outliers like Chicago's costs are in the high $20,000 replacement range, average cost is still well over 10 and we're well under 10. Our goal this year is 5,000 replacements. We have replaced as of the end of August 3,464. All the contracts are in place. The production, the last, four to six weeks has been on pace to let us meet that goal. So we are optimistic that we will get to the 5,000. You, earlier in this meeting, approved the $20 million of principal forgiveness for private side replacements. That is to fund nearly all the private side replacements completed in 2026 and part of 2027. We made application for funding at the end of June and expect to receive an award for 2027 sometime in October. We are hopeful that the award will be similar or even a little higher than the one you approved at the meeting earlier today, and then we are already fully into preparation for 2027. Our overall goal is 5,500. The prioritization is expanding again to 4,300. We are assembling a list of 5,500 properties that we will be forwarding on for outreach activities to begin likely in October. We will start holding open houses virtual town halls, sending out the transmittals to try to obtain the consent to move forward with the program like we did this year right away in March. And I will turn it over to Michelle, who I did mention I'm putting her in a more difficult position than me because typically her slides have the graphics on them.

So between January and June of 2026, we tested 364 samples for lead. 252 properties are represented because some of them are three bottle testing sites. Of these 15, most of these are, post lead service line replacement to ensure that all of the construction debris is cleared and their water is safe to drink again. But we did test at 15 properties that currently have a lead service line. All of those tests were below 10 parts per billion, which is the proposed new action level. So that's a good thing. All the childcare testing was below three parts per billion, so very low. And also we continuously monitor our pH and orthophosphate throughout the system to ensure good corrosion control, preventing the lead from getting into the water. And those readings have all been stable throughout the distribution system between January and June as well. In addition, we've been doing our lead and copper rule compliance testing. This is testing that's required right now every three years. That will change when the LCRI goes into effect at the end of next year. But it requires testing 50 properties that have a lead service line and we have collected 50 kits. However, we learned after the fact that one of them had had their lead service line replaced kind of in the process of getting a kit and collecting the sample. So we do need to collect one more, but we are mostly on track. That's due by the end of September. And so far, based on the results that we have, our 90th percentile, which needs to be below 15 parts per billion, is looking to be below five based on what we have so far. So that's good news so far.

Any questions from committee? Hearing none, thank you for the update. Alderman Westmoreland will move adoption, well, place on file. I'm hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you. I will say item 23, my file, the communication file, I'm going to ask Alderman Vaughn to move to hold to the call of the chair so we don't have to discuss that today. Are there any objections to that motion? Hearing none, so ordered. Thanks. Item number 20, file number 260529, communication relating to the Milwaukee Water Works coordination of lead service line replacements with the Milwaukee Health Department, per file 251472.

Good afternoon, Patrick Pauley, Milwaukee Water Works Superintendent.

Tyler Weber, Deputy Commissioner of Environmental Health for the Health Department.

So this is a result of a budget footnote that you put forward, Chair Coggs. I think the most important collaboration that we do with the Health Department is that we have signed a business associates agreement to obtain the elevated blood lead level data for children below the age of six. we use that data in our prioritization model to determine which neighborhoods to replace lead services in. And right now the prioritization model is 70% area deprivation index, 25% EBLL, 5% lead service density, but for all practical purposes, the EBLL is the determinant because The ADI scores of every census block group that we're working on is a 10, unfortunately. So the EBLL data that we received from the health department is vital to our prioritization and is determining where we are prioritizing replacement. So we used the 24 and 25 data to develop the 27, well the 27 program right now, but we will also use that data for the 28 program as well because the undertaking to assemble these addresses with all the information has gotten so burdensome. Secondly, we have... Oh, I'm sorry, Tyler.

Yeah, I'll just add jumping in. As far as we're aware, we're one of the only municipalities in the country using that data in this way as well.

And then the second... Why is that? Why do you think that is?

I don't know.

Lead poison has a lot of attention in Milwaukee.

And so I think we've long had a partnership with Water Works. And so as the resources came forward for Water Works to increase lead service line replacement, we wanted to be at the table and help further emphasize removing lead no matter the source in Milwaukee. So this is just one opportunity that we seized on together.

And we meet monthly to talk through our program, our initiatives, the health department. I don't know that we can provide much assistance with the health department initiatives, but we'd like to know how things are proceeding on their end related to lead awareness, lead risks, their abatement programs, our marketing and comms. People are in regular communication. Our marketing and comms person actually worked at health department before she joined Water Works, so there's a... a synergy there, a collaboration there. So we do talk, we do meet regularly, Tyler's in the meetings, I'm in the meetings, our water quality manager Michelle is in the meetings, and we do talk through lead, uh... education materials are transmittals related to lead safe awareness certainly we have the health department's input on those uh... one of the things that we've done in the last couple of years is we are now offering lead and water testing to any location where with an e-b-l-l greater than ten and then if the results show that the water has elevated lead levels, then we will program that location for a lead service line replacement as well.

All right, so. You guys meet regularly. So the health department reports the EBL levels to Water Works and then you calculate based on the formula that you?

On an annual basis, yeah.

Your, I'm sorry, your nurses bring, offer the water testing kit

No, so you're talking about the data. So we have our data team, I think annually sends that over to Water Works and then every year they use that to see how to reprioritize where they target their lead server sign replacement.

What time of year do you share that information?

Over the winter. We requested it earlier this year, I think it was March that we requested the 24 and 25 data.

And then so then we can there's enough time then to make sure the data is cleaned up from the previous calendar year and

And this will be the way that you all operate moving forward? So next March you'll request the data again?

We've been doing it every other year because of the significant workload reprioritizing the census block groups and then assembling the addresses and getting them ready for outreach activities, which, as I mentioned, we're starting in October already. And we've been working on... We got the data from Health Department and then we have our... our GIS developer go through that data and run the prior in coordination with our engineering team, run that prioritization model. And then once the census box groups are selected, all the data for each of the ownerships is pulled out and reviewed and if they have a lead service, the ownership, the mailing address, whether or not there's any other infrastructure projects ongoing in those neighborhoods. And then finally, and that's a months long process, transmitted to our owner's rep to begin the outreach process, which is also months long. So we have, I think this is the third iteration of using the data, but we have been doing it every other year.

Okay. And the intention is to continue doing it for as long as you all have to take care of these lead pipes, right?

Oh, yes. We're very pleased with the prioritization model. And as Tyler mentioned, we don't know of anyone else who's using EBLO data this way. And we routinely hear compliments on the method we've chosen to prioritize replacements.

All right. Are there any other questions from committee? All right. Hearing none, Audubon Bama would move to place on file. Hearing no objections, so ordered. I'll pass the gavel. The Vice Chairman will respond for his file.

item number twenty one two five one five two eight a substitute ordinance relating to the maintenance of data on city-owned parking facilities this is sponsored by me and uh... it's pretty straightforward uh... this ordinance is aimed at there was a personal situation I had and after that situation talking to other city employees, which led to some questions that I asked of DPW and they did not readily have the information available. So with that said, should those questions be asked again, this ordinance is designed to have the department readily have this information at their fingertips and available, uh, should want to inquire. Any questions? Or I don't know if the department has any, anything to add or any questions on your end.

Nothing to add. No, I'll just agree that it's important data to keep. It's important to be compliant and, um, um, yeah, move forward with it and agree with it.

Okay. Uh, the motion by Alderman Bauman is, um, Passage. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you. Item 22, file 260684, ordinance relating to no more may. Alderman Brower.

Yeah, thank you so much, Mr. Chair. So this ordinance at the request of DPW, we are sponsoring this ordinance that basically what it'll do is for no more may will eliminate the registry for no more may and instead require a sign to be placed on the property instead. So that's... Yeah, that's basically it. For those that aren't familiar, no mow May is a practice that encourages pollinator habitat by not mowing your lawn for the May so that clover, other flowers can bloom and be pollinated by pollinating insects, bees, that sort of thing. And so, yeah, and it allows people to basically bypass our mowing ordinance, at least for that month. And so that's what, it's just a single section change under the exception section of our turf grass and weeds ordinance.

Thank you. You guys have anything to add?

I'm Erin Stoeckel, forestry section manager. Nothing to add, just it's a part of it and here to answer questions.

Any questions from the committee?

I'll just offer a hypothetical one because I know that mowing is mowing or lack thereof by some people who mismanage some of these unscrupulous landlords who don't mow their properties or people who are negligent in that respect. This is not going to in any way hinder enforcement by forestry of the mowing ordinance that we have in place currently, right?

No, just during the month of May, if you have a yard sign up that you provide, you won't get cited until June. You're not beholden to that ordinance for the month of May, but you have to have the sign there.

Okay.

Thanks. Any other questions or comments or concerns or recommendations? Mr. Chair, I would move adoption. The motion by Alderman Brower is adoption. Hearing no passage.

I am sorry. Excuse me. Yes, we adopt resolutions. We pass ordinances. Hearing no objections. Words in my head right now.

So ordered. Thank you.

Thank you. Item number 23 has been dealt with. So we are on to item number 24, file number 260463, motion relating to the recommendations of Public Works Committee related to licenses. Is city attorney and police department? All right, can we please have Jason Mayer come forward?

He is not going to be in attendance. Assistant City Attorney Travis Gresham appearing on behalf of the Office of the City Attorney. We can probably still hear that. Mr. Mayor informed us today in the hallway. He was unable to stay for the balance of the meeting. So we'll have to reschedule our hold again at the behest of the applicant.

Alderman Tyler will move to hold to the call of the chair. For Assistant City Attorney, could you move your name tag? Yes. Because that's the police name. There you go. Thanks. Next we have... Jacjeet Paul Sandhu, Taxi Cab License Renewal Application for Sandhu Taxi Service at 8505 South Golden Fields Drive.

Hello, yes.

Hello, are you Jacjeet Paul Sandhu? Yes, ma'am. All right, please raise your right hand to be sworn in.

Do you solemnly affirm under the penalties and sanctions of the Prejudice of the State of Wisconsin that the testimony that you are about to give is the truth and only the truth?

Yeah. I do.

All right.

I will have to get Faviola sworn in as well.

Right hand, please. Do you solemnly affirm under the penalties and sanctions of the Presidency of the State of Wisconsin that the testimony you're about to give is the truth and only the truth?

Yes. Are you in receipt of notice of today's meeting with the possibility that your application may be denied?

Yes, I'm for the meeting, yes, but...

But you didn't have a notice, okay. Please state your name and address for the record.

My name is Jagjit Pal Sandhu, and my address is 8505 South Goldenfield Drive Oak Creek, Wisconsin 53154.

Sergeant, is there a police report?

There are no police reports.

There's objections on file. There are. Okay. There's an objection. from one of our colleagues actually but it's not there's no please support there are objections on file but

I'm sure this is a commenter from Alderman Burke Ellis. Yeah. Yes. I think you wanted to come and testify on the matter I Think he might be in an interview currently, but he mentioned he'd coming back Did you see this objection

Yeah, I'm doing this service for 25 years, driving taxi in Milwaukee. So this is the first time I'm appearing here. I have never problem before. I had like four permits before and no problem with that before the Uber came in. I have four permits. I drive so long time, so I have not been called before. This is my first time, sir, for this reason.

If we could... take a small break of a couple of minutes so we can see what's going on with Audubon breakout. We're going to go back in session for this public works meeting, and I will leave it to the committee to decide. On one hand, it has to be testimony of folks present for us to consider action, any negative action.

What is he here for?

Peter's objection. Peter's complaint. What's the complaint? It's written, but we can't make a decision considering it. We can't make a decision considering that complaint if the person is not present. If the complaining person isn't here to testify and be cross-examined by the applicant. So that's the one hand. The other hand is I actually like to... Definitely, manager. This license doesn't expire until November. So it could be held and brought back next month. So I guess it's our decision what to do.

I would object to that because like I okay so the so according to complaint and I can you know it sounds like something the complaint is that there you know there was no use of turn signal or hazards I would I would just argue that having an individual sit here from you know for three and three-quarters hours it's about to be three and three-quarters hours once it's true you know that that is a significant punishment in my mind I would support approval don't do that again

Use your flashers.

I would argue that's a significant enough punishment. And I think we should approve.

All right, the motion has already been made, though, to hold. So is that? I'll withdraw the motion. Okay, he withdraws the motion. So Alderman Brower, what was your motion?

My motion is approval. Renewal.

The motion by Alderman Brower is for approval. Are there any objections to that motion? I agree with the motion too, but before I finalize it, I do want to say to you that you should take seriously the complaint that was given and make adjustments in the future. Hearing no objections, motion passes. Having no further business, we are adjourned.