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Parking enforcement. Photo: Michael Horn.
The Department of Public Works (DPW) intends to boost city revenues in 2025 by issuing more certificates, increasing citation costs and extending meter usage hours.
This would be years away if the city wants to continue using transportation funds as a source to fund other departments. The 2025 budget calls for raising $6 million in the general fund. The fund’s financial health has been compromised since the city’s parking revenue has plummeted due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the city has continued to withdraw funds.
Most of the revenue growth in 2025 will come from issuing more citations. After issuing 463,098 citations in 2023 and budgeting for 455,000 citations in 2024, the city expects to issue 500,000 citations next year.
Department of Public Works officials believe they can accomplish that goal by finding violators who are currently overlooked, rather than creating new violations.
“Our hope and goal is to have a fully staffed parking enforcement force in 2025,” Thomas Woznick, manager of parking services at the Department of Public Works, said at the Finance and Human Resources Committee on Oct. 10. Ta. The ministry said there was a shortage of 10 people. Although membership has increased to 15 members in recent years, the gap has recently closed. The city has increased wages, switched to mailing some tickets to avoid conflicts, and begun an ongoing hiring process.
The average cost of a citation increases by $12. The city hasn’t raised most of its citation fees since 2009, with an inflation rate of 43% since then, he said. Towing vehicle numbers and overnight parking permit sales are expected to remain stable in 2025.
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Additional revenue is expected to be $2.5 million due to increased citation costs. However, the city expects the net increase to be only $2 million, increasing annual collections to $17 million.
“Parking sales are trending pretty low this year,” budget analyst Sarah Osborne said. He said the city would have to cut its budget by $500,000 in 2025 without increasing the citation costs.
Council members expressed concerns about the impact on the overall strategy. One member expressed concern that the public would see it as a means of financing streetcars.
“These are people who are actually breaking the law,” Public Works Commissioner Jerrell Kruschke said, citing safety concerns about illegal parking. He said the city also expects people to choose alternative transportation options to get to downtown and other busy areas.
“Has a stock analysis been done?” asked city councilor Marina Dimitrijevic. “Are there any unintended consequences?”
“Parking is there for access and sales,” Kruschke said. “We want someone to park there, do their business and move on.”
However, Dimitrijevic asked about people who need to park for more than two hours.
“One of the things we don’t emphasize enough is the amount of parking available downtown aside from street parking,” Kruschke said.
“Downtown has 50,000 spots, 5,000 of which are streets [parking spots]” interjected budget director Nick Kovach, who previously hosted a walking tour of the parking structure design.
“I would much rather use the site for other uses,” Kruschke said. Several pending street reconfiguration projects will reduce car and parking spaces in favor of wider sidewalks, protected bike lanes, and plazas.
Regarding fairness concerns, Woznick said the city will not use its authority to suspend driver’s license renewals for unpaid licenses, and licenses will not be subject to criminal charges.
Are parking tickets a source of funding for hops?
There are also questions about who is paying for the tickets and what the money is being used for. Although not directly related to the money that goes into the general fund, the operation of the city’s streetcar, The Hop, is included in the transportation fund.
Aldo. Scott Spiker, a vocal streetcar skeptic, said the city was exposing itself to charges of charging poor people to run streetcars used by wealthy people, and he said the city was exposing itself to attacks for charging poor people to run streetcars used by wealthy people. I asked for an offer.
“Are you paying these fines on the Gold Coast or across the city?” the councilor asked. He said he would like to see a map showing who is paying the citation fees and where citations are being issued. “I feel like the dots don’t line up.”
“We’ve never done an analysis like that before,” Woznick said of receiving the citation.
But we do have data on where they are published. Mainly includes downtown and surrounding areas. Osborn said 11 percent of overnight parking violations were caught in District 3, which includes the East Side, River West and the north end of downtown, with the rest evenly spread among the city’s other 14 neighborhoods. More than 50% of safety violations were issued in Districts 3, 4 and 12, which include Downtown, Riverwest, East Side, Near West Side and Walker’s Point. Most of the city’s 6,200 meters are located downtown.
Hop’s operating costs for 2025 are budgeted at $5.1 million, which will be partially offset by $1.7 million in sponsorship and federal operating grants.
“That means the $4 million transfer to the general fund will not happen as long as we keep the streetcar running,” Spiker said. He caused the ghost of the farebox. Hop rides are currently free.
Regarding the cost of installing and enforcing a fare system, Kruschke said, “Right now, if you introduce fare boxes, you can break even or even go into the red.” He said other cities have made the system even more useful by keeping it free. Cincinnati, which has a similar system to Milwaukee, has seen record ridership since eliminating fares in 2020 and now exceeds pre-pandemic ridership.
While Milwaukee’s totals are on the rise, they are still not back to pre-pandemic totals. Tram ridership, tracked by automatic counters on vehicle doors, increased by about 8% year-on-year to 1,516 people per day. This is the first year that the L Line lakefront extension will be completed year-round, and ridership has spiked during the lakeside festival.
“We’re not going to see any revenue growth in the foreseeable future,” Spiker said.
But the system’s administrator at the time pointed out that it wasn’t just used by the wealthy, as Spiker suggested.
“About 50% of our passengers make less than $50,000 [income] Streetcar Service Manager Andrew Davis Lockward said, citing a Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission passenger survey. As revealed at the Oct. 23 Public Works Commission meeting, Davis-Lockward is no longer employed by the city.
The city is working to save money on operating The Hop. The budget proposes bringing key marketing roles in-house. A $350,000 marketing contract with 2-Story will be replaced with a new DPW job with an estimated annual savings of $219,000. The marketing position is responsible for not only promoting the system, but also recruiting private sponsors. Kohl’s, Harley-Davidson, Everstream and several other companies have purchased vehicle wraps in recent years. Although Kruschke promised a “greater effort than we have previously proposed” in terms of sponsorship, the budget calls for only $50,000 in revenue other than the Potawatomi Hotel & Casino’s title sponsorship.
Aldo. Peter Vergelis asked what had happened to property values along the line.
“It’s a significant increase in the $1 billion range,” Kruschke said. He also cited two development projects, one of which received public funds to install a tram station on the base. “The 333 building just came up on Water Street, and they specifically wanted it to be on the actual streetcar tracks, so that was the impetus for the development, and so was Couture,” Kruschke said. .
Vergelis said increased property tax revenue could help pay for The Hop’s operating costs.
“Well, I’d like to see that analysis,” Spiker said. “That may be true, but it would require an economic analysis that goes far beyond DPW.”
Kruschke said the city continues to look for ways to expand The Hop despite the restrictions imposed by Act 12. “We are working on plans,” he said.
Extending meter time
Kruschke said previously approved policy changes are also about to be implemented.
In March 2023, the council approved extending the meter installation period from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and allowing more meters to be installed on Saturdays. But Kruschke told the commission the city is working with affected business improvement districts on a rollout strategy because it doesn’t want to surprise anyone. “We plan to start that by the end of the year,” Kruschke said. He said that increasing the number of citations also contributes to policy success.
“We found that in some areas of the city where parking is difficult to find, people are willing to take the risk of getting a ticket because it’s cheaper than getting a ticket,” he said. Yes,” the chief said. The city has already extended meter hours and increased fees in 212 spaces around Fiserv Forum. Maximum rate is $5 per hour.
Since 2018, DPW has not implemented a fully market-based strategy that raises rates in certain areas and lowers rates in others based on usage.
They are also not requiring meters to be installed on Sundays as they are currently reducing staff. “You could probably make $200,000 to $300,000 in profit, but then you have back-end costs and the overall profit is zero,” Kruschke said. Woznick said employees will have to work in two shifts.
The city, which has previously drawn more than $10 million a year from its transportation fund, needs its parking strategy to work or it will have to make cuts elsewhere. The 2024 budget, bolstered by spend-it-or-lose federal aid, included no general fund transfers. But the city’s internal accounts still reflect a negative balance of about $40 million in unrestricted funds in the fund, according to budget slides.
The fund’s unrestricted balance went negative in 2018, but plummeted in 2020 with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the city suspending most parking regulations. In the years that followed, faced with a looming fiscal cliff, the city continued to withdraw more money than it generated. “We want to make more conservative revenue assumptions to get our transportation fund back on track,” Osborne said.
In addition to issuing more tickets, citations will be issued to different vehicles next year. With support from a $1.68 million federal Congestion Relief and Air Quality Program grant, the city will begin transitioning its parked fleet to an all-electric fleet. The project is estimated to cost $2.1 million and could last until 2030.
The proposal must be approved by the Common Council as part of the 2025 budget.
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2025 City of Milwaukee Budget Details
Milwaukee to issue more expensive parking tickets in 2025 – Jeramy Janen – October 30, 2024 Despite mayor’s opposition, council reallocates more than $4 million – Jeramy Janen – October 2024 25th Milwaukee cruise ship dock costs more than twice as much, is it worth it? – Jeramie Janen – October 23, 2024 Amendment would shift funding from home demolition to home repair – Jeramie Janen – October 23, 2024 City Council members to hire Milwaukee’s fiscal health Skeptical of – Jeramy Jannen – October 18, 2024 Policy Forum Says Milwaukee’s Financial Future Is ‘Unstable’ – Jeramy Jannen – October 4, 2024 Mayor Johnson’s Budget, Fees, Taxes in 2025 increase, maintain services – Jeramy Janen – September 24, 2024
Learn more about the 2025 City of Milwaukee budget here.
