Milwaukee, WI

After the latest delay on the Milwaukee city flag, an alderman proposes a city-wide vote

Published

1 year ago

October 15, 2024

After the latest delay on the Milwaukee city flag, an alderman proposes a city-wide vote

The Milwaukee Common Council on Tuesday again delayed a vote on changing the official city flag to “Sunrise Over the Lake,” this time with the measure’s sponsor saying he planned to pursue a change in the City Charter to allow the flag to go to a binding referendum in April.

However, whether a referendum is legally feasible remains to be seen, and other council members raised concerns about the broader implications of changing the city’s most important legal document that is akin to its constitution.

Ald. Peter Burgelis, who revived the debate over changing the Milwaukee flag this summer, said he had talked with other council members and others in recent weeks. (The council delayed a vote last month after a heated hourlong debate.)

“Given the conversations we had, I think the best path forward would be to put this question to voters and let voters decide,” he said.

The People’s Flag, as “Sunrise Over the Lake” is known, depicts the sun rising over Lake Michigan. Under the legislation Burgelis put forward, the change would take place as of Jan. 31, 2025.

Referendum on Milwaukee city flag faces unsure path

It is unclear whether it would be within the city’s power to put a referendum like the one Burgelis has proposed on the ballot.

Under a change he put forward and then withdrew Tuesday, the flag legislation would have been amended to direct the city Election Commission to place a binding referendum on the April 2025 ballot.

Such a referendum, however, “is not supported by state law,” according to an email City Attorney Evan Goyke sent to Burgelis Monday night.

The question cannot be placed on the April ballot without a change in state law or, theoretically, a change in the City Charter to adopt a process for such a step, Goyke told the Journal Sentinel. The latter option would require additional legal work from the City Attorney’s Office to determine whether it is feasible, he said.

And, even if a Charter change would offer a path to referendum, it is unclear whether enough council members would support a change.

Ald. Jonathan Brostoff said he objected to sending a decision on something like the city flag to referendum.

“If that’s the case, why do we make decisions on much more important things?” he asked.

Ald. Robert Bauman said sending the flag to a binding referendum would set a precedent for sending any number of issues to such a referendum.

“I think that’s a very bad precedent, particularly if it only takes only a majority vote,” he said.

Burgelis after the meeting framed such referendums as an avenue for direct democracy after state legislators last y year banned local governments from putting advisory referendums on the ballot. (The law left in place an exception for capital expenditures proposed to be funded by the property tax levy, according to Goyke’s memo.)

Questions of equity, inclusion in city flag process persist

Tuesday’s meeting followed at times tense discussions last month at council and at the Steering and Rules Committee, which recommended the legislation on a 5-3 vote.

Ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, Burgelis sent his colleagues a nine-page memo that sought to answer questions council members had raised about the proposed flag’s design, whether the selection process was equitable, how much the change would cost and more.

Burgelis argued in the memo that the flag selection process was equitable and inclusive. The city’s chief equity officer disagreed.

Burgelis wrote that the design initiative was publicized by all major news outlets locally as well as on social media, more than 1,000 designs were submitted by members of the public, the judges on the selection panel were chosen based on their knowledge of design, history or flags and that the rating process for the five final designs was active for two weeks and open to the public.

“Given the foregoing, it is clear that the selection process that was followed to identify the People’s Flag design was even more comprehensive and inclusive than a City-managed process would have been,” he wrote.

Among the concerns that have been raised, including by Mayor Cavalier Johnson, was that the sun rising over the lake was a sight not equally afforded to all residents across this racially segregated city.

“While that may unfortunately be true, part of the vision for the People’s Flag is that it can be a symbol of a city looking towards the future, where all members of the community can enjoy the water resources that make Milwaukee special,” Burgelis wrote in the memo.

He also said the flag’s rising sun is an element “visible from every neighborhood in the city, and can be interpreted as our commitment that every resident of the city be given a fresh start and a bright future.”

It is unclear whether Johnson would sign the legislation. Last month he said there ought to be more conversation about using an image of the lake, when Black and Latino Milwaukeeans do not have the same access to it.

In a separate memo, Chief Equity Officer Bernadette Karanja wrote that it is important to include the opinions of children and parents in ZIP codes not exposed to Lake Michigan or the city’s rivers.

“If I was to use an anecdotal representation of the proposed Flag’s acceptance, then, I would subjectively and anecdotally observe that this flag is flown predominantly on the East Side of Milwaukee,” she wrote. “I would also subjectively observe, there’s little to no representation of this flag on the North and immediate Southsides of Milwaukee where Black and Brown people reside.”

She raised concerns about the extent to which the voices of low-income residents and people of color were included in the flag’s selection process.

Karanja included in her recommendations the creation of processes through which the preferences of people of color are accurately represented in decision-making on “a Flag that will be representative of Milwaukee for hundreds of years.”

“It may likely be that when all people are included in an evidence-based manner that this flag is chosen again,” she wrote. “This will only affirm its relevance to all communities of Milwaukee. However, it is my humble opinion, that the data we have thus far does not provide this evidence.”

Cost of City of Milwaukee flag replacement could range depending on work done

As for the cost, a city fiscal analysis found that it would be about $800 to replace flags currently flown at 13 locations by the Department of Public Works, Police Department and the Mayor’s Office.

Burgelis’ memo said a group of donors had offered to cover the replacement cost.

It would be much more expensive to replace the seals on Department of Public Works vehicles, but only if they were replaced all at once on existing equipment. The department’s current seal incorporates the city’s existing flag.

To replace all the seals at once would cost an estimated $463,750. There would be no extra cost to change the decals if they were phased out as the existing vehicles were replaced.

Alison Dirr can be reached at adirr@jrn.com.

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Milwaukee, WI

Milwaukee oversight body asks for more police pursuit policy changes

Published

7 hours ago

March 6, 2026

Press Room

Milwaukee oversight body asks for more police pursuit policy changes

The Fire and Police Commission is mulling a recommendation the Milwaukee Police Department amend its police chase policy and restrict chases for reckless driving.
The current recommendation draft calls for a ban on chases for reckless driving after an attempted traffic stop. That will now move to a committee for further changes.
The draft recommendation comes after department modified the policy to remove speeding as a sole justification for chases. Prior, speeding was allowed to be considered when evaluating reckless driving

A Milwaukee oversight body is pushing for further restrictions on how the city’s police decide to chase vehicles, but isn’t ready to move those forward yet.

At its March 5 meeting, the city’s Fire and Police Commission mulled a recommendation the Milwaukee Police Department no longer chase drivers for reckless driving after an attempted traffic stop and stop other chases for reckless driving if it raises danger to the public. The department’s pursuit policy has been a point of contention for years and has come under intense scrutiny after nine people died from police chase crashes in 2025.

But that recommendation was tabled and sent to commission committee for further discussion, after concerns it needed to be further tweaked and receive more police department input.

“I’m trying to find incremental changes we can make to reduce chases,” said Commissioner Bree Spencer, who sponsored the recommendation.

Spencer said she was hesitant to push for policy changes that were too sweeping or too permissive. She said that had happened in years past, when pursuits were heavily restricted in 2010 and then later opened up in 2017 in response to reckless driving, following a then-Fire and Police Commission order.

As has become the norm at the commission’s meetings, a lengthy public comment period was held where some were critical of the proposed changes. Some called for dashcam footage of pursuit-related deaths to be released, as policy requires in officer shootings, and for the city’s costs of police chase-related lawsuits to be publicized.

“Police chases do not keep our community safe,” Angela Lang, the co-executive director of Black Leaders Organizing Change, said during public comment.

The Fire and Police Commission’s proposed recommendation comes after the department voluntarily removed speeding as a permissible reason to chase someone who is recklessly driving. However, that move was met coldly by members of the public and the commission, which is the oversight body for the department, who said it didn’t go far enough.

Generally, department policy considers pursuits “justified” under six circumstances, among those being when an occupant is involved in a violent felony.

Milwaukee Assistant Chief Craig Sarnow said the department was content with its previous change, when commissioners asked him for feedback on the proposed recommendation.

Both the Fire and Police Commission’s drafted recommendation and police department’s change focus on reckless driving chases. Those make up an overwhelming amount of all chases that officers in Milwaukee make – with officers citing reckless driving as the initiating reason in 742 of the 970 chases in 2025, according to police data.

The Fire and Police Commission’s recommendation is also the first time the body has exercised that power since state legislation, 2023 Wisconsin Act 12, was passed. Before that legislation was passed, the commission held the ability to outright change police department policy, but the law shifted that to the city’s Common Council.

Some have called for the Fire and Police Commission to more aggressively issue recommendations like these.

The recommendation will now move to the commission’s Oversight and Accountability Committee. The decision was made after commissioners said they sought more time to tweak the language and for police to provide input.

License plate reading camera use scrutinized

The department’s use of license plate reading cameras, a system known as Flock, came under scrutiny from many attendees at the meeting as well, who called for the city to ban it. Many noted the recent criminal charges brought against Josue Ayala, an officer who prosecutors say improperly used the system to track a former partner and another person.

Ayala resigned and is facing a misdemeanor charge of attempted misconduct in public office. Ayala had previously faced claims of lying and excessive force but was not placed on a Milwaukee County District Attorney’s list of officers with a history of dishonesty, bias or integrity concerns until recently.

That was despite, in 2022, a federal public defender issuing a complaint against Ayala, saying he exaggerated so much in his testimony and reports that it almost seemed “like a compulsion.”

Milwaukee police officials like Heather Hough, the department’s chief of staff, said they were never made aware of that previous concern against Ayala.

“Had we received the information from defense counsel about these concerns they would have been investigated,” she said in an email to the Journal Sentinel.

But that goes against the role of the defense bar, outside experts and defense attorneys locally told the Journal Sentinel. Prosecutors have the ethical duty to share potential Brady material and serve the public, whereas defense attorneys’ obligation is to their client.

Milwaukee police began using Flock cameras in 2022. MPD has a $182,900 contract with Flock for the use of the technology. That contract is active through January 2027 and passed without requiring approval from member of the city’s Common Council, a point criticized by attendees.

The scrutiny against Flock came despite it not being on the meeting’s agenda. Attendees held signs that said things like “GET THE FLOCK OUTTA HERE” and called for the city to be “de-Flocked.”

David Clarey is a public safety reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He can be reached at dclarey@gannett.com.

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Milwaukee, WI

Illegal dumping plagues closed Milwaukee Pick ‘n Save

Published

19 hours ago

March 5, 2026

Press Room

Illegal dumping plagues closed Milwaukee Pick ‘n Save

Illegal dumping plagues closed Pick ‘n Save

Neighbors say since a Milwaukee Pick ‘n Save at 35th and North closed in 2025, the parking lot has been filling up, but not with cars or people. It has been attracting illegal dumpers.

MILWAUKEE – Neighbors say since the Milwaukee Pick ‘n Save at 35th and North closed in 2025, the parking lot has been filling up, but not with cars or people. It has been attracting illegal dumpers.

Trash piling up

What we know:

There are old mattresses and furniture in the parking lot. There are piles of garbage at the entrance of the old grocery store. Behind the building, there are tires, more mattresses and more trash.

Illegal dumping at former grocery store near 35th and North, Milwaukee

The Pick ‘n Save stores closed in July 2025. Since then, the building has sat empty.

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FOX6 News was contacted by a man who manages senior and family housing in the area. He said in the last couple of months, he has noticed the stile turn into a place for illegal dumping. The man said he was so fed up, he called the office of Milwaukee Alderman Russell Stamper about the problem. The man said the whole site is an eyesore, and something needs to change.

Illegal dumping at former grocery store near 35th and North, Milwaukee

Change sought

What they’re saying:

“As the snow melts, it’s full of garbage. People are dumping furniture on it, tires,” said Jeffrey Sessions, who manages nearby property. “If you drive around it, it’s garbage everywhere. It’s unsightly for the neighborhood, and it’s probably going to create rats and mice problems.”

FOX6 News reached out to the Department of Neighborhood Services. Officials said the dumping has not been reported. They said the department’s commercial team will now be made aware of the issue.

Illegal dumping at former grocery store near 35th and North, Milwaukee

“It makes the whole neighborhood look like garbage, like nobody’s taking care of anything around here,” Sessions said. “It’s a detriment, it’s unsightly, and it needs to be addressed.”

Illegal dumpers could face fines

Dig deeper:

If the dumpers are caught on camera, they could face fines.

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The owner of the property may also be ordered to clean it up.

Illegal dumping at former grocery store near 35th and North, Milwaukee

The Source: Information in this post was provided by a person who owns property near the former grocery store, as well as Milwaukee Department of Neighborhood Services.

Crime and Public SafetyMilwaukeeNews

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Milwaukee, WI

Things to do in the Milwaukee area this weekend, including Sports Show

Published

1 day ago

March 5, 2026

Press Room

Things to do in the Milwaukee area this weekend, including Sports Show

Travel to Ireland, learn how to catch a fish, visit wildlife at the zoo, and see costumed characters this weekend in Milwaukee.

Anime Milwaukee

The 2026 “Magical Academy” themed animation convention comes to the Baird Center, 400 W. Wisconsin Ave., and Hilton Milwaukee City Center March 6-8. The weekend features Japanese industry guests and cultural experts, artists and official merchandise, gaming, music, dance, manga, cosplay, anime and Asian fashion. New this year is the Nocturna Anime Bar with a lounge and specialty drinks, including nonalcoholic beverages. Exhibit hall hours are 1 to 8 p.m. March 6, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. March 7 and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 8. Full weekend access is $100; single day access is $50-$75. animemilwaukee.org

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sports Show

The 85th year of the Sports Show is at State Fair Park’s Wisconsin Exposition Center, 8200 W. Greenfield Ave., West Allis, from noon to 7 p.m. March 6, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. March 7 and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 8. Along with outdoor exhibitors, see what’s swimming in the trout pond, watch the lumberjack show and the fastest retriever race, or catch the archery and air rifle tournaments. General admission tickets at the door are $15; youth tickets (ages 6-14) are $6. In honor of Women’s Day on March 8, all women receive $10 admission at the door. Check out the full schedule at jssportsshow.com.

Gardens & Gears: Steampunk Faire

Celebrate the industrial age at the Gardens & Gears art fair from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 7 at the Mitchell Park Domes, 524 S. Layton Blvd. The immersive garden event features creators, costumes and live entertainment, with gears, goggles and handcrafted mechanical curiosities on display in the gardens. Domes admission required. mitchellparkdomes.com

Milwaukee County Zoo Family Free Day

Everyone receives free admission at the Milwaukee County Zoo, 10001 W. Blue Mound Road, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. March 7. See the red pandas in their outdoor habitat, lions, penguins and more. Parking and regular attraction fees still apply. milwaukeezoo.org

Irish Family Day

Travel to the Irish countryside during “Passport to Ireland” from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 8 at the CelticMKE Center, 1532 N. Wauwatosa Ave., Wauwatosa. With Irish dance, arts, crafts and storytelling, each county will be featured with an activity that celebrates Irish culture, history and traditions. Buy one, get one free Irish Fest tickets will be available to purchase, with lunch, beverages and snacks served in the Celtic Café. Admission is $10 at the door. celticmke.com

What’s new in Milwaukee-area theaters this weekend

Marcus Theatres: See a marathon of the 2026 Best Picture nominees at select theater locations. Day one of the marathon is March 7 and features “Sentimental Value,” “F1: The Movie,” “The Secret Agent,” “Bugonia,” and “Sinners.” The marathon resumes March 14 with a new set of films. Visit marcustheatres.com.

Milwaukee Film: Women’s History Month programming features the action films of Michelle Yeoh. See her Oscar-winning performance in “Everything Everywhere All At Once” screening at 6 p.m. March 6 at the Oriental Theatre.

“Hoppers”: A robotic animal with a human mind helps real animals thwart a plot to destroy their habitat in this Disney and Pixar feature film. See it at AMC Mayfair Mall; Avalon Theater; Marcus Theatres’ BistroPlex Southridge, Hillside, Majestic, Menomonee Falls, Movie Tavern Brookfield Square, North Shore, Ridge, South Shore cinemas; Rosebud Cinema.

“The Bride!”: A lonely Frankenstein (Christian Bale) travels to 1930s Chicago to ask a scientist (Annette Bening) to create a companion. See it at AMC Mayfair Mall; Marcus Theatres’ BistroPlex Southridge, Hillside, Majestic, Menomonee Falls, Movie Tavern Brookfield Square, North Shore, Ridge, South Shore cinemas.

“Protector”: A veteran war hero (Milla Jovovich) must use the violent skills she thought she left behind to save her daughter. See it at Marcus Theatres’ BistroPlex Southridge, Hillside, Majestic, Menomonee Falls, Movie Tavern Brookfield Square, North Shore, Ridge, South Shore cinemas.

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