Report: Milwaukee city and county buildings need costly repairs and replacement

Buildings owned by the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County face "substantial and expensive" repair and replacement needs, according to a Public Policy Forum report to be released Monday.

The nonpartisan watchdog group concluded there is hope that the city's building needs "will be manageable going forward."

But Milwaukee County "is facing a far more dire set of circumstances that currently appear unmanageable," the report said.

The Public Policy Forum is trying to assess the area's building blocks. Previous studies focused on local roads, bridges and buses, as well as water, sewer and wastewater treatment infrastructure.

In the latest report, "Cracks In the Foundation," the group focused on 19 county and 20 city buildings that administer and provide public services such as the County Courthouse and City Hall, along with maintenance facilities.

The report zeroed in on what it called Milwaukee County's "mission-critical buildings," the Safety Building, Mental Health Complex and medical examiner's office. It said those buildings "should be fully replaced as soon as possible."

The replacement of the Safety Building with a 10-story criminal courthouse facility has an anticipated cost of $220 million, the report said.

The need to replace the three buildings has long been known, the report said, but plans have been put on hold amid financial constraints. Decisions also have to be made on ways to get services to people.

"In the meantime, necessary repair work on those buildings has been deferred pending decisions on replacement, thus creating an even more urgent need to act," the report said.

The report said the county "lacks the capacity to finance the capital needs of its buildings if it wishes to stay within its self-imposed bonding and cash financing limits."

The report suggested that based on requests submitted to update and repair buildings, the county "should more than double its spending on building-related projects in 2018," from $12 million to $24 million.

By 2019, the county should spend $45 million on building-related projects, based on the requests.

The report said "city buildings are in acceptable condition overall," with major foundation repair underway at City Hall in a $60 million project. The Police Administration Building is in the middle of renovations.

"If big new needs don't emerge, the hope is once these projects are taken care of, the city will catch up with on what's being deferred," said Rob Henken, president of the Public Policy Forum.

Henken said the challenges faced by the city and county "are exacerbated because the general capital finance environment is getting more difficult for both."

The report also noted that both governments face operating budget challenges in the face of stagnant revenues and rising pension and retiree health care costs.

Henken said the cost of replacing the Safety Building "is a very daunting number."

"Boy, how in the world is that going to be affordable? But we're very early in the game with that project," he said.

"Clearly, the county is going to need to look at innovative financing, whether there is some private-public model to extend the debt service, whether there might be some access to state grants given the public safety function is a state-mandated function," he said.

"I don't want to sound too alarmist," he added. "We're so early in the game."