County staff outline Act 12 innovation-grant opportunities and limits with city partnership

Jeremy Lucas, policy director in the Milwaukee County Office of Strategy, Budget and Performance, briefed the Intergovernmental Relations Committee on April 7 about opportunities and constraints tied to the Act 12 innovation grants and a Wisconsin Policy Forum study of service-sharing with the City of Milwaukee.

Lucas said the Act 12 innovation grants are intended to subsidize transfers of services among counties, municipalities, tribes, nonprofits or private entities and that eligible projects must realize at least 10% cost savings fully realized within 36 months. He said the planning-grant phase is limited to municipalities with populations under 5,000, which means Milwaukee County itself is not eligible for the planning grant though smaller municipalities inside the county — such as Bayside and West Milwaukee — may qualify. Lucas said the statewide planning-grant window received 72 applications as of March, with 16 approved and nine denied, and that the planning-grant deadline was extended into April with the larger implementation grant expected to open in July.

Lucas described an ongoing parallel effort to pursue service-sharing ideas identified in the Wisconsin Policy Forum report "Partnering Up," which singled out six areas for further analysis: payroll, procurement/purchasing, facilities management, fleet operations, mowing and purchasing/procurement. County and city staff have been meeting to cross-check potential ideas for eligibility under Act 12 and operational feasibility. Lucas described a mowing analysis using parcel data in the county GIS that found fewer than 200 parcels within 200 feet of county parks, a result that made shared mowing operations less promising in that example.

Lucas said county staff have met with departmental leaders, including the Office of Emergency Management, and have identified internal ideas but that meeting Act 12's transfer-of-service threshold can be difficult for some functions. He said staff have reviewed four departments so far and plan to expand outreach across the organization to collect ideas from front-line employees.

Supervisors asked about lessons from small municipalities that had applied and whether the county is pursuing service-sharing that may not qualify for Act 12 but still makes operational sense. Lucas said accepted applications statewide tended to involve fire or EMS service-sharing and noted Bayside submitted a study on assessment practices as an example of an unusual, potentially replicable idea. He said county staff will continue brainstorming with city counterparts and validate promising ideas with data before pursuing planning or implementation grants. "We're looking forward to finding some projects to apply for in July," Lucas said.