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Parks Department budget cut slashes maintenance funding

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The Parks Department would slash its major maintenance funding by 72%, from $918,000 to $252,500, under the department’s budget request for 2009.

The department uses the fund to pay for small or mid-size unexpected repairs, said County Supervisor Lynne DeBruin, who represents Story Hill and other portions of the city’s west side on the County Board.

A good size for that budget is $400,000 to $500,000, though it has varied over the years.

“Every year you go on with less and less in there you end up with more of those (large repair) issues,” she said.

Cutting the budget by $665,500 would be a problem even if the Parks Department gets a generous capital budget.

“You can’t capitalize redoing a single window,” she said. There also are legal restrictions on using capital budgets for maintenance, she said. “You just can’t flip that money back and forth,” she said.

The requested maintenance budget would be a “true impact,” she said. “There’s still a hole and it’s not getting fixed.”


Conditions in the parks have been deteriorating for years as the
Parks Department budgets have been squeezed. This picture was taken
last week in a restroom along the Menomonee River Parkway.

The Parks Department’s request also includes:

  • Closing the Martin Luther King and Kosciuszko Community Centers, which would save $735,000.
  • Eliminating 50 park worker positions for salary savings of $2 million, and adding about $1 million in seasonal labor.
  • Creating a Security, Safety and Training Section to oversee the Park Ranger program and coordinate with the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department, municipal police departments and internal staff. This section also would manage training.
  • A proposal to contract out the parking concession at O’Donnell Park. “Based on similar parking structures in the area and on information provided by the Department ofAdministrative Services, this proposal could provide the Department approximately $200,000 in additional revenues that are built into the base budget,” according to the request.
  • Additional proposals to privatize some golf course concession stands and to find businesses, such as day care centers, that may want to operate in Parks Department facilities.
  • 10 new dog parks across the county. The sites of the dog parks are not identified.