Also on this page: Library budget would end "holds" on electronic media. $70 million not enough: phase 2 of restoration project seen. Barrett open to lower street assessments.

Multi-million dollar City Hall foundation project isn't news because they knew about it, officials say

Oct. 29, 2007 -- The city's multi-million dollar project to repair City Hall's foundation should not be considered news because city officials new about it, according to two city officials.

"I'm not sure even where they pulled that out of," Department of Public Works Commissioner Jeff Mantes said of a storyhill.net story on the project. "They may have pulled that out of the budget...It was in there. It's been there for a number of years."

Ald. Willie Wade also was critical of the volunteer-run site for covering the story.

'"I understand how the media works," he said. "It seems as if the media wanted to portray this as some major discovery or so on and so forth. And that's not necessarily the case -- that's something we already knew about -- that was out there, now all of a sudden the Journal Sentinel or just world-renowned reporters and gettin' credit for some major discovery."

"Just a slow news day," Wade said.

"I guess," Mantes agreed during a meeting of the Common Council's Public Works Committee this month.

Since storyhill.net first reported on the foundation issue Sept. 26, it also has received considerable attention from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, television stations and other local media outlets.

Mantes, in his comments, did not inform the committee that the scope of the foundation project was significantly changed and expanded for 2008 and that the estimated price of the project had more than doubled in just four years.

The project previously was described largely as an effort to repair sidewalks around City Hall; it is now described as a foundation repair project with a sidewalk fixing component. The project originally was estimated to cost $6 million; it now is estimated to cost more than $12 million.

Mantes' description of the foundation problems did not always match public documents.

"You've got some settlement occuring on the north, northeast side of the building. It's not a lot of settlement, but it is causing some cracking, so that's something we should certianly look at," he told the committee.

The city's 2008 proposed budget, though, said that "significant foundation settling has occurred, particularly on the three
sides of the northern half of the building....Some of the pilings have been deteriorating, a substantial contributor to the settling that has occurred. Work to repair and underpin the existing pile caps and install monitoring wells is necessary to correct this condition. In conjunction with the foundation work, the sidewalks, hollow sidewalk areas, and the
associated interior walls will be repaired and restored....Considerable
project risk exists due to the large portion of the foundation that is buried and not directly observable."

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Library budget would end "holds" on electronic media

Oct. 1, 2007 -- The Milwaukee Public Library would no longer allow patrons to reserve electronic media items such as DVDs and CDs, under the proposed 2008 budget.

Library patrons also would be unable to request that those items be shipped from more distant city branches to ones closer to their homes, a service available now.

The restrictions would not apply to books.

The priority is on maintaining library hours under tight fiscal constraints, City Librarian Paula A. Kiely said.

"Over a number of years we've lost positions and we've rarely, if ever, cut services," she said in an interview. "For us the priority is library hours."

City residents have long been able to reserve both electronic and printed library items. Ending those services for electronic media items has been discussed for at least a few years as a way to reduce the staff time dedicated to shipping, receiving and otherwise servicing "hold" requests.

Not all the details of the proposed change have been worked out, Kiely said. She said, for example, that how to serve people with handicaps who may have difficulty getting to more distant libraries has not determined.

"Certainly we will provide reasonable accommodations as needed," she said.

Mayor Tom Barrett has proposed a 2008 Milwaukee Public Library budget of $22.3 million, just a tad higher than this year's budget of $22 million.

More than $200,000 of next year's budget, though, is more uncertain than usual -- Barrett is counting on an increase in the city snow and ice fee to allow the library to spend $98,000 to buy electronic databases.

The mayor also is banking on a state budget that sends more shared revenue to Milwaukee. He is earmarking $125,000 of that increase to be used to hire interns to staff some library positions and allow library hours citywide to increase about 1%.

Under Barrett's proposal:

• Funding for new materials would be cut by $209,932.
• The periodicals and business desks would be consolidated so less staff is necessary. Services in the Media Room would rely more on paraprofessional staff.
• The service hours at many branch libraries would be changed. "The Library will make adjustments in order to standardize opening times, moving the opening of some libraries from 10:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. More standardized and predictable hours are expected to improve service," according to the proposed budget.
• The library would stop binding most periodicals, allowing it to cut its bindery staff from three to two.
• A staff person would focus on the libary's early childhood "Books to Go" program, Kiely said. That program, in the past, has relied on outside funding, not general library resources. "We're going to be stabilizing that program," Kiely said. "We know reaching children early is critical."

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$70 million not enough
City Hall needs more work -- foundation problems cited

Sept. 26 -- The City Hall restoration project will require a second phase that could significantly boost the $70 million price tag property taxpayers have been told they will pay, according to city budget documents.

The building's foundation has undergone "significant settling, particularly on three sides of the norther nalf of the building," according to Mayor Tom Barrett's proposed 2008 budget.

The building was constructed on wood pilings and some of those are deteriorating. That contributed significantly to the settling, according to the budget.

Barrett's budget referred to the foundation work as "the next phase of restoring city hall."

City officials previously have said they believed the building's foundation was in decent shape. Now, however, Barrett is proposing to spend $1.2 million to determine the extent of its problems.

"Considerable project risk exists due to the large portion of the foundation that is buried and not directly observable," according to the budget.

The project also includes repair and restoration of sidewalks, hollow sidewalk areas and associated interior walls, according to the documents.

The 2008 allocation is just the beginning. The foundation and hollow walk project will be a "multi-year effort," according to the documents.

Next year's work, if funding is approved by the Common Council, will include selecting a design firm, getting a second opinion of work and project cost estimate, and completing of the design and contract documents to allow the project to be bid out, according to budget documents.

"This process will better determine the project's ultimate scope and cost," according to the documents.

Barrett proposed repairing existing pile caps and installing monitoring wells.

A Circuit Court jury found last month that settling of a building owned by E.J. Enterprises was due, in part, to construction by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District in the 1980s of a new sewer that drained water away from the wood pilings, exposing them to air and possible rot.

The district maintained that the lower groundwater level was a natural occurrence.

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Barrett open to lower street repair assessments
Stiff costs lead to resident rejection of projects; potholes priority for aldermen

July 23, 2007 -- Mayor Tom Barrett is willing to consider lowering street repair assessments to increase the number of proposed repair projects that are accepted by property owners who must help pay for them, according to city Budget Director Mark Nicolini

The assessments were doubled in 2002, and a typical resurfacing job that cost a abutting property owner $1,250 in special assessments before the change now costs $2,500, according to information presented last week to the Common Council's Public Works Committee.

Resistance to the stiff charges from property owners has led aldermen to delete many needed repair projects from project schedules.

The city may lose some money with lower special assessments, Nicolini told the committee, but the city now is spending too much of its street maintenance budget on streets that are in suchbad condition that they cannot be fixed with the patching and filling the maintenance budget is supposed to fund.

Lowering the special assessment rate means "you'd gain something in not having so many poor segments escape preservation work and that, in turn, would also enhance the maintenance budget," he said.

Barrett is planning to propose a $4.3 million increase in street repair funding for 2008 -- a jump of 74% -- but much of the new money would come through a $2.4 million increase in the amount of assessments collected.

Committee Chair Ald. Robert Bauman expressed skepticism that residents would suddenly embrace projects that carry special assessment charges.

"They're making some huge assumptions about past history changing...I don't necessarily see that happening," he said.

Department of Public Works officials also said the city would try to maintain current levels of staffing for pothole repair and crack filling.

Mantes acknowledged that street maintenance was reduced when budget cuts were required because the Department of Public Works couldn't cut more critical functions like snow plowing.

"Ultimately it comes down to maintenance, paving and boulevard maintenance and trees," he said."Those are the areas that have consistently taken the cuts over the years."

Ald. Terry Witkowski made clear that aldermen might insist on restoring street maintenance services.

"There was a time when we filled cracks on a regular basis," he said. "I'm getting complaints from people that streets are falling apart... when the budget comes to us, if it takes cuts in some other parts of DPW to put back people that are going to maintain the streets, that's where we're going."

Nicolini said the mayor's plan depended on the city's overall fiscal condition for 2008.

That will depend in part on whether Gov. Doyle's "Milwaukee Package" survives state budget deliberations. The package would provide additional financial aid to the city.

"Just to keep things going as they're going, given what the estimated debt service has been, requires about $35 million of new revenue in the city for 2008, he said. "Thirty-five million is a big rock to push up the hill."