The Milwaukee County Board approved the $1.1 billion 2018 budget, which will increase property taxes.
The board adopted the 2018 budget on a 15-3 vote after hours of debate over amendments.
County board rejected wheel tax increase, adopted budget that cuts each county dept by 0.75%. County Exec Chris Abele says he will not veto.
— Rikki Mitchell (@RikkiMitchell) November 6, 2017
With cuts coming to many county departments, several supervisors suggested individual departments should choose how to cut their budget, not the county board.
"I know there’s been a lot of advertisements about what cuts we're making," said Board Chairman Theo Lipscomb. "We have not specified any of those cuts, those are not my proposals. I’ve even had children come up to me asking me after seeing those commercials and say is it true you’re closing our parks? No."
Lipscomb is referring to commercials paid for by County Executive Chris Abele lobbying for his budget plan.
All county departments face a 0.75 percent cut under this adopted budget plan, including the zoo, the Parks Department and the Sheriff's Office.
"We will do the same, we’ll take our own medicine," said Lipscomb. "The county board will cut our expenditures by the same amount."
The budget does include restoring $200,000 for senior centers and new funding to combat sex trafficking.
Although Abele has the power to veto parts of the budget plan adopted Monday, he says he's not going to.
"Obviously I have big concerns, but vetoing isn’t going to change this," he said. "There’s a huge majority they will override it, I’m just going to get to the work of trying to implement this as responsibly as possible. Your viewers should know as we have been saying for months, the cuts that we’re talking about here are significant and I think they’re bigger than people think."
However, Abele said in a news release he would not sign the budget because of his concerns about cuts to parks, transit, public safety and social services.
The adopted budget calls for a property tax levy that will increase about $1.8 million from last year. That's a tax rate of $5.04 per $1,000.
In a last minute addition, supervisors approved a $1 increase in admission fees at the Mitchell Park Domes for non-county residents, in order to raise a little more than $50,000 in revenue.
The County Board also rejected Abele’s recommendation for a $60 wheel tax.
