(The Center Square) – There’s a new request to let the city of Milwaukee
off the hook for The Hop.
Milwaukee Alderman Scott Spiker wrote a letter to
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to allow the city out of the grant that
paid for the streetcar.
“Mr. Secretary, we need your help. I ask the U.S. Department of Transportation to release the City of Milwaukee from the remainder of the grant obligations it incurred during the development of the Milwaukee streetcar. Moreover, I ask that the city be held harmless in future grant requests,” Spiker wrote. “I realize the somber significance of this request…You did not put [the streetcar] there, but neither did the taxpayers of Milwaukee. They were never asked whether they wished to take on the burden they now bear. They bear it nevertheless. It has become too heavy to endure.”
Milwaukee’s mayor says the city will need $4 million for the streetcar in the next budget.
Spiker said that’s $4 million that cannot go to streets, libraries or the city’s old and aging fire truck fleet.
The problem, according to Milwaukee’s mayor, is that if the city stops running The Hop, Milwaukee could have to repay $48 million in federal grants.
Spiker is not the only one hoping that Duffy will help Milwaukee.
Republican Rep. Bob Donovan, R-Greenfield, and Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, also joined with their own request to Duffy.
“If this is granted, the city of Milwaukee could once and for all end this public works ‘boondoggle’; that has plagued the city’s finances for years. This wasteful spending will be required to persist unless the federal government acts decisively,” the two said in a statement. “We believe the decade of sunk costs and the annual hemorrhaging of taxpayer resources will only continue if the federal government does not take direct action.”
Duffy is the former congressman from the Northwoods.
