Milwaukee’s 2023 budget: Will city leaders listen?

Milwaukee Mayor Chevy Johnson and the city council’s recent budget hearing confirmed a few very clear things. First, it’s widely known that the Milwaukee Police Department is drastically overfunded, and our communities continue to suffer because of this. Second, our city leadership appears tone deaf around community demands, making a participatory budgeting process all the more vital for improving conditions in Milwaukee.

As always, the hearing began with a presentation that city leaders say they provide to explain decisions they’ve come up with. The presentation felt like city decision makers’ attempt to frame the state of our budget around limited options for identifying funding streams and an MPD decrease ruse. When Mayor Johnson mentioned a 1% decrease to the police force, he failed to name that it would come with a $20 million increase to their budget, taking it to a near monopolizing level of funding at over 50%.

For at least the fourth year in a row, the African American Roundtable’s LiberateMKE campaign along with allied partners and residents continued to say “no more / less money to police.” This year alone, 54 testifiers, an estimate of over 80%, asked for funding in housing, mental health, library services, and city workers’ paychecks. Because these were some of the same demands across the city when AART started our LiberateMKE campaign in 2019, I don’t feel confident that Milwaukee’s 2023 budget will reflect the community’s consistent needs. City leaders may roll back proposals to cut library services or hours. They may even decide that city workers deserve increased compensation. However, I would not be surprised if in 2023, Milwaukee’s Police Department receives more than $300,000,000 of the budget share, while city officials continue to drag their feet, lack creativity, and remain in the status quo around initiatives related to non-police response to mental health, participatory budgeting, and improving its public housing provisions.

I also am not surprised that now, when four of our 15 council seats are vacant, residents feel unheard and left out of decisions, despite public hearings. Coincidentally, most of the vacant aldermanic districts are on Milwaukee’s far Northwest Side, where residents feel as unrepresented as they are. Prior to vacancies, these residents felt like their electeds did not engage with them outside of election seasons. At this point, we feel like decisions are being made prior to hearings, which most of us are privileged if we receive notice of, making opportunities for public comment formalities at best.

For example, the youth prison slated to come to Aldermanic District 9, where Chantia Lewis served prior to her indictment and also where I live, has been a topic of conversation for over three years. While we’re told some community partners and local businesses were consulted, those working on the issue haven’t named those partners or business owners, though they have named that opinions have changed, and they know that most folks are not in support of the prison coming to Milwaukee. Ain’t it funny that when we say “no more money to police” (and simultaneously policing institutions), that when we have been saying “there’s nothing on the Northwest Side for young folks to do,” we get a new prison in a district that is barely afforded opportunities to speak for itself? Ain’t it funny that there is money for detaining our babies when their schools and communities have been divested from, but not money to address their recreational, educational or mental health needs – that there’s not enough money to keep their local libraries open and in full service to their communities?

Again, it’s clear that Milwaukee’s current budget process does not work for all of its residents. Our lives, and the decisions impacting them, are in the hands of an under-capacity city council with poor engagement processes, a lack of willingness to prioritize people’s needs and public input, and a desire to pull wool over our eyes whenever we say “no more police” and “put the money back into our communities.”

It’s also become increasingly clear that equity cannot be established through such a lopsided budget process orchestrated by the status quo. By no means are Milwaukee residents a monolith, meaning that solutions to safety, budget problems, and how issues themselves are defined will vary by the communities they impact. So nothing is more crystal clear than Milwaukee’s need to adopt a participatory budgeting process and give aldermanic districts the abilities to propose, vote on, and implement more local budgeting decisions with the trust funds that this process will provide them.

Four years of budget asks later, I can’t help but ask a new question of our city leaders: “Will you listen?” I think we’ll find out in November, when Milwaukee’s 2023 budget is signed, sealed, and delivered.

Ryeshia Farmer is the Community Programs Manager at the African American Roundtable.