Thursday night, Captain Meister gave a very good presentation of all the services that the CPPD currently provides. The City website has the presentation posted in an embedded player on the CPPD page. For those of you who would prefer, I have a PDF1.9MB.

There has been some debate in another thread on the number of people in attendance on Thursday who were relatives and friends of members of the department. I will admit, there were officers there with their spouses, parents and friends. I think that is great. I also know there were people there who simply wanted to get more information and to state their opinion. That is just as great.

We should not forget that we are dealing with a very important decision with long term impact on every citizen of the City and every taxpayer of the City, not to mention the members of the CPPD. We should also not forget that taxpayer does not equal citizen. A significant amount of tax is paid by the businesses in the City and are users of the police services. If this issue were to go to a referendum, much of that tax base would not get a vote.

This is an important decision that should not be made strictly by emotion, nor should it be made strictly by numbers. We need to gather enough information to make a fiscally responsible decision that will ensure every citizen and taxpayer receives the best bang for the tax dollar.

That is, after all, what the members of the Common Council was hired to do, wasn't it?

A second special Common Council meeting has been scheduled for Thur Sep 10th at the Pewaukee High School Auditorium. The Agenda has been posted on the City's website.

The CPPD will present the services they currently provide and offer a response to the proposal by the Waukesha County Sheriff Department. There will also be a public comment and question period.

The City website has posted the presentation(9.5Mb) in PowerPoint(R) format. For those of you who prefer more open formats, I have created a PDF(6Mb) version.

Because of a problem with the posting of the notice for tonight's meeting, it has been postponed. The date has not been set yet. I will let you know when the date and time has been set.

UPDATE: The meeting has been rescheduled for Tuesday Sept 1st at 6:00pm in the Common Council chambers.

By now pretty much everyone has gotten word about the special Common Council meeting at 6:00pm Thursday August 27th. At that meeting, Waukesha County Sheriff Daniel Tarwicki will be presenting information on the policing services provided by the Waukesha County Sheriff's Office. While I cannot speak for the entire Common Council, I can express my view on the issue.

How did we get to this point? Well, quite frankly, it has been mentioned for the last couple of years during the budget process. This year it comes up again. As I am sure you know, times are tough right now. As individuals our pocket books are being squeezed tighter every day. As a municipality we have services we need to provide for the tax payers and the cost of those services keep going up. I hear all the time from people who don't want their taxes to go up. I also do not want taxes to go up, mine or yours. However, here we are in 2009 in Pewaukee. Development is down from the last several year, revenues have fallen short of the projections and bonding is not favorable at the moment. All these factors have a dramatic impact on the operations of the City and the budget. In the 2009 budget we already tapped into the undesignated fund to cover some of the costs and planned on borrowing for some capital outlays. The budget shortfall makes thing a bit tighter than expected. Will 2010 be better? I cannot say.

So what do we do? There are two answers to that. The second answer is to raise taxes. I call it the second answer because it is not the first thing I would plan on doing. I don't think that hard economic times are in any way, shape or form a good time to increase taxes.

The first answer then is to cut costs. The question is... where? The answer to that is... everywhere we can. In the past, even when times were better and development was bringing in healthy amounts of development to increase the tax base of the City, things were done to keep the City's tax rate low. The term Lowest tax rate of all the Cities in Wisconsin comes to mind. So instead of spending money on infrastructure such as roads, many of those projects were cut to hold down the tax rate. For several years, the increase in personnel in the Fire Department was put off in order to keep the tax rate low. How often have capital equipment purchases been put off to get another year out of it? How long can that type of budgeting continue before it bites you in the hind end? Sure we can plow the snow with a single plow and a single driver, but how long would it take to clear the streets? How much overtime would we spend? Then again, if we do not repair the roads, what will there be to plow. Think about it, there is a level of service that we, as taxpayers, expect and demand. And these things, including police services all cost money. Money from taxes.

So that brings me back to the subject at hand. The Sheriff has prepared a presentation on providing police services via the WSD. That presentation may include a proposal that could potentially save taxpayer money. Would we not be remiss if we did not listen to an opportunity to save money? How much money? That remains to be seen.

I know this will be hard for some to do, but this really should not be looked at as a lack of confidence in the CPPD. I feel that we have very dedicated professionals working in the department. Rest assured that they are forefront of my mind as we move forward in the budget cycle. Yet, I cannot overlook the citizens and visitors. Nor can I forget every tax payer in the City either.

Due to the lack of a quorum, the regularly scheduled Common Council Meeting for July 6th 2009 has been canceled.

My apologies for the late posting on this, I was away for the weekend and I simply ran out of time.

The agenda for the May 18th Common Council Meeting is available on the City's website. It is a fairly light agenda and the Council packet really does not have a lot to offer on any of the agenda items.

Judge Glojek has three items, two relating to forfeiture fines, one to increase the amount and another to hire a collection agency. The third item has to do with an Illegal Alien ordinance. I do not have any additional information on any of these items.

Item 7 on the agenda is the recommendation from the HR Committee to create three Lieutenant positions within the department. The positions would be staffed by existing personnel so there would be no increase in full time positions. The positions would free the Division Chiefs of some of the direct supervision as well as providing for accountability on the fire grounds.

As with many areas around the lake, there are parking issues. Item 8 on the agenda is specifically about issues that have arisen on Parkside Drive. We have received a number of complaints about illegally parked vehicles, many of them customers of Doc's Dry Dock which is a business in the middle of a residential area. The traffic ordinance currently has both the north and south side of Parkside as no parking, however it appears that in 2001, the Council ordered the signs removed, yet the ordinance was not changed. I have been in discussions with the Acting Police Chief and the Acting Fire Chief, and both are in agreement that because the road is narrow, a 30' right of way instead of the usual 66', street parking is a concern from a Public Safety point of view. I also understand the desire for residents to have places for guests to park. Alderman Enters and I met with both Chiefs last week and took a road trip to evaluate the situation and we have come up with a compromise. We will be proposing a staggered parking arrangement on the north side of the street. The south side is to remain no parking.

For the last open session item there is an informational update on the possibility of a renewed attempt at the state level to amend the State Constitution to allow for different tax rates for a merged municipality. It appears that Representative Scott Newcomer will be working with Representative Gordon Hintz to reintroduce a bipartisan bill for such a Constitutional amendment. If the effort was successful, the earliest it could be effective would be 2011 as it would need to pass two sessions of the legislature and a statewide referendum.

The agenda for the April 20th Common Council meeting is posted on the City website. I will not be able to attend the meeting, however I wanted to post the information about it.

There has been a lot of press lately relating to the mandatory Sick Leave Ordnance that was recently passed in the City of Milwaukee. There are many that feel the Milwaukee ordinance is very overreaching and inhibits employers from negotiating the terms of their own union and employee contracts. The ordinance impacts more than just companies that are based within the City of Milwaukee but extend to those that do business within the city. This then crosses municipal boundaries. The Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce has issued a resolution in opposition to the mandatory Sick Leave Policy. Item 6 on the agenda is discussion about the consideration of the adoption of a resolution of the city's opposing the mandatory sick leave policy.

Item 8 is consideration of claims be two residents along Bluemound Rd. When the sanitary sewer lateral was installed, the contractor took down some trees. The residents claim there were trees removed from their property, although the contractor believes the trees were in the right of way. I do not know who is correct and now that the trees are gone, it is hard to prove either side as correct.

Possibly the most interesting thing on the agenda is the swearing in of the Elected officials. We have another new face on the Council. Welcome aboard Cheri. Farewell Kathy. Remember next year the three other Aldermanic seats, one in each district, plus the Mayor will be on the ballot.

The unofficial results are in for the City of Pewaukee.

District 1

District 3

Congratulations Cheri and Doug!

Today is election day! I urge every one got get out to the polls today and cast your vote. Besides that state wide races for Justice and School Superintendent, we have the local aldermanic, trustee elections and schoolboard races. The Village will be selecting a new Village President as well.

I don't know how the races will turn out, but given the fact the in the primary election, there was a single vote between incumbent Kathy Novack and challenger Cheri Enters, I suspect this will be a nail biter in District 1. I have no idea how the race between incumbent Doug Kiser and challenger Fermin Rivera will turn out.

As far as the Pewaukee School District goes, there are four people running for three seats. The three incumbents are Frank Goodwin, Ann Wells and Jim Huismann. The challenger is Chris Durski. I don't even know if I would say I was surprised that I have heard pretty much nothing from any of the candidates in that race.

This election is predicted to have a low turnout. Every vote counts I hope everyone gets out and casts your vote, it is important. Just in case you are not familiar with the polling places in the City and Village, you can find information on my Where to Vote page.