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Proposed 2027 Milwaukee Metro Fire Rescue Corporation Budget
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Submitted by:
John Ruggini
Department:
Finance
A. Issue
A 2027 budget is necessary for the Milwaukee Metro Fire Rescue Corporation in order to ensure compliance with the intergovernmental agreement governing the partnership between the cities of West Allis and Wauwatosa and facilitate Milwaukee Metro Fire Rescue Corporation operations.
B. Background/Options
The Intergovernmental Agreement sets forth a maximum amount that Milwaukee Metro Fire Rescue Corporation (Metro Fire) can charge the cities of West Allis and Wauwatosa without requiring approval of their respective Common Councils. This is referred to as the Metro IGA Payment and appears as an expense in the municipal budgets and a revenue in Metro Fire’s budget.
The service agreement between the cities and Milwaukee Metro Fire Rescue Corp. establishes how the cities will provide fire services in 2027 to Metro Fire and charge Metro Fire the “net cost” which equals municipal fire department expenditures minus fire department revenues. This is referred to as the Municipal Service Contract Charge.
The Municipal Service Contract Charge includes municipal support service costs as allowed by the Intergovernmental Agreement. For West Allis, these include City Attorney and Information Technology costs and for Wauwatosa it includes Finance and Human Resources/Payroll costs.
While the legal limit for setting the Metro IGA Payments is 105.75% of the 2025 actual costs as submitted to the Department of Revenue, the five-year forecast demonstrated that this amount would likely result in the cities not qualifying for all five Innovation Grant payments. As a result, the cities used the 2027 Five Year Forecast adjusted totals to establish targets for the IGA Payments and the Municipal Service Contracts as shown below.
Based on this, each City developed their own fire department budgets. The budgets were compared for consistency. Each city also agreed to eliminate one command level position to free up resources for the new chief position. Shared costs that were not in either city’s budgets were then included in Metro Fire’s budget.
Metro Fire has a total budget of $28.8 million The following are included (line item detail is attached).
1. Positions
• Fire Chief
• Communication Specialist (Vacant)
• Senior Accountant (Vacant)
2. Capital Spend
• New Fire Management System (FirstDue)
• Upgrade to Tosa’s Financial/HR Payroll system (Tyler MUNIS)
3. Contractual Services
• Fire service payments to West Allis & Wauwatosa
• Legal and IT support services to West Allis
• Finance/HR support services to Wauwatosa
o (Finance overhead is less the Senior Accountant Position)
4. Revenues
• Payments from West Allis and Wauwatosa
• Additional Charge to cities for capital to be paid for with the Innovation Grant
The final IGA payments totaled:
It should be noted that the actual levy impact when considering the reimbursed overhead costs is $640,000 between the two Cities. As Metro Fire unifies its operations a measure of success will be its ability to eliminate this additional impact and reduce the cost of providing fire services. One immediate initiative staff are exploring is unifying ambulance billing practices which result in increasing the amount charged per trip for West Allis and reducing the amount of balance billing written off by Wauwatosa.
C. Fiscal Impact
Approving this budget will result in an Intergovernmental Agreement charge to the municipalities totaling $28.7 million as well as a capital charge of $148,260. The municipalities intend to fund the capital charge using their Innovation Grant proceeds. The budget is balanced so there is no impact on Metro Fire fund balance.
D. Recommendation
I recommend approval of the proposed Milwaukee Metro Fire Rescue Corporation 2027 Budget.