On April 1, some Milwaukee voters will choose a new Common Council member. Alex Brower and Daniel Bauman are running for the third district seat.
It’s a special election to fill the post that was held by Jonathan Brostoff, who died by suicide last fall. The new alderperson will represent much of the east side, and part of the Riverwest neighborhood.
The council exercises all policymaking and legislative powers of the city, including the adoption of ordinances and resolutions, the approval of the city's annual budget, and the enactment of appropriation and tax levy ordinances. The council also has approval over the mayor's appointments of cabinet heads, who direct day-to-day operations of city departments. In addition to their powers as legislators, council members serve as district administrators and are responsible to the citizens in their districts for city services.
City Clerk Jim Owczarski detailes the job duties of the new alderperson.
What responsibilities do Common Council members have?
I've always been proud to serve at this level of government. I think it is the most important level of government and it's because of the proximity that alderpeople, council members have with their community. They are the most direct level of account. They are the most at touch. I say this all the time, the odds that you're going to see the president of the United States at your local grocery store is approaching none. The odds that you'll see a council member at the grocery store is pretty high. You're going to see them at the mall, going to see them at the movies, at church, wherever it may be, and as a result, they become this direct conduit for the concerns, the community, whether they be about development, whether they be about crime, whether they be about perhaps a new alcohol beverage establishment. They are intended to be the most direct representatives of the people that they represent.
How can residents communicate with their elected officials?
We have a website we maintain. Each one of them has a direct email contact that goes directly to their desks. We also have a phone directory that is right there that you can use. You can also write them a letter. We still accept mail on dead trees, so you can send that our way and we respond there.
I will say that a well-structured, simple, direct email is one of the most effective ways of communicating. Council members respond very directly to that. They take that, in my experience, very seriously.
How does policy making and passing legislation work?
It is one of those things that I struggle with. If you’ve ever seen the famous Schoolhouse Rock! I'm just a bill there's this idea that people just invent legislation and bring it to a body. They don't. They get in touch with people on their local representative governments. That’s where it starts — with an idea. That idea is very often brought to council members out in public, via email, via letter, whatever it may be. They go to them and they say, we have a staff here that I'm proud to work with in our Legislative Reference Bureau that researches [and] says, 'Can we do this? Is this legal? What are other communities doing?' They then put those things together in the form of legislation, whether it be a resolution or an ordinance, and then it's introduced to the Common Council.
The Common Council meets every three weeks. It takes in files at a council meeting and then sends it off to a committee. These committees meet during the middle two weeks of our cycle, make recommendations, they'll take public testimony, they'll make amendments. Then at the end of it, they send it back to council with a final decision. At that point, it's very often referred over to the mayor for his review and at that point it usually becomes law.
What district is up for election and what's at stake for that open seat?
It's the third Aldermanic District which is Milwaukee's east side, including portions of River West all the way to the lake. It starts at the northern part of downtown, right at the lake and makes its way well north. It's a difficult thing when we have a vacancy and not merely because this vacancy happened under such incredibly tragic circumstances.
There are so many things that statute and our local code requires an alderman to weigh in on as a representative. We hold a lot of things. We're waiting for a lot of things or they move through a more administrative process. People don't realize that having a council member in place can speed things up. We rely on the knowledge that council member to expedite matters, and we've not had that.
The staff is always on tenterhooks waiting for that new member on matters of licensing, on matters of zoning, and sometimes even as simple as streets. We never, ever want to build a street, reconstruct a street, without providing a level of public input and that public input is usually facilitated by the local Common Council member. There are a litany of things that will be piled up for our new representative, whoever he may be.
