The recent history of transit in Milwaukee County is one marked by desperation and false hope. Simply put, public funding sources have not kept pace with growth in operating costs. While warning about the consequences, transit officials have averted disaster - and perhaps inadvertently delayed a solution - by spending down reserves, deferring needed capital expenditures and implementing gradual service cuts and fare increases.
The hope was that elected officials would heed the warnings and provide a dedicated funding source - one that would be sizable enough to both restore and enhance service, including the types of improvements that would attract new riders and provide for steady revenue growth. That hope, of course, has not materialized. And now, the hole that has been dug is so deep that there are few practicable solutions.
A recent survey of 430 parents in southeastern Wisconsin finds the vast majority are satisfied with the quality of their child care arrangements and their options for child care. In fact, most say they would not change anything about their child care arrangement if they had the chance, and nearly two-thirds report a willingness to pay more for their current child care.
The high rates of satisfaction may contradict other research on child care quality in the region which, using more empirical methods, has found that the majority of child care providers are of mediocre quality. Parents' general satisfaction with the quality of their child care providers also may explain why legislative efforts to improve child care quality in Wisconsin have found little grass roots support. Parents may be satisfied with what experts may deem lower quality child care either because they are not aware the quality is not optimal, or because they value different aspects of quality than do researchers and policymakers.
Property values in southeastern Wisconsin counties grew last year at the slowest rate since at least 2004, and for some counties, the past decade. This slowdown is not unexpected given the national downturn in property values. Of significance, however, is the particularly sharp slowdown in growth in Milwaukee and Waukesha counties, especially at the residential level.
Southeastern Wisconsin's overall property values grew 6% from 2006 to 2007, a relatively healthy rate but the lowest since 1999. Property values in the State of Wisconsin as a whole grew by 6.2%, representing a reversal from 2005-2006, when the State's growth rate of 9.6% trailed the region's 10.7%. In fact, 2007 was the first year since 2002 in which the State's growth in property values outpaced that of the region. Related materials: Table 1: 2007 equalized property values Table 2: 2007 per-capita property values
Tax Increment Financing (TIF) is southeastern Wisconsin's largest economic development tool. With 176 TIF districts and $8.4 billion in property value, the collective tax base devoted to TIF districts in our region ranks behind only the city of Milwaukee among our region's largest tax bases. Despite the impressive scale of TIF in the seven-county area, the tool is used less here than in the rest of the state. Whether that's due to reluctance or lack of need is unclear. What is clear is that if the region decides that it can become more aggressive with TIF, it has sufficient capacity. It's critical that we know where this capacity exists and how best TIF can be deployed to shape the region's future growth. After all, economic development needs finance.
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