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Proposed 2027 Milwaukee Metro Fire Rescue Corporation Budget
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Submitted by:
John Ruggini
Department:
Finance
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.
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.
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Based on this, each City developed their own fire department budgets. The budgets were compared for consistency. Each city a...
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