Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said they need to “tackle both ends” of affordable housing issue

MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said he plans to tackle several different issues if he’s re-elected in April.

Crowley joined Tracy Johnson on WTMJ to discuss everything from the new state revenue bill, transit and affordable housing issues, and his re-election.

Crowley helped lead the charge to pass the state revenue bill for Milwaukee County. This bill added a new 2 percent sales tax for the city of Milwaukee, and Milwaukee County now has a .9 percent increase for its sales tax.

He said this deal was needed because the county was facing a crisis where the pot of money the state legislature uses to allocate funds back into the community wasn’t growing.

“Local municipalities weren’t receiving enough state support to pay for fire and police. To pay for mental health services. To pay for services that help out some of our most vulnerable communities, but also lifts up our society” he said. “This actually helps out the entire state of Wisconsin… being able to serve the people locally that we were elected to serve.”

Although it wasn’t easy to get this bill done for the county, Crowley said things got easier as he continued to build more relationships and have tough conversations with elected officials about what needed to get done for the people.

“We can get a lot more done… across the state by building authentic relationships,” he said. “As long as we can talk about the issues that are at hand… we can build a certain level of trust related to what is happening in our prospective communities… We can work together to figure out ways to help out the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County while also helping out folks across this state.”

He said he plans to continue to strengthen his relationships with the different counties such as Washington County and Waukesha County.

“[Milwaukee County] is the economic engine of the state, but we do this in partnership,” Crowley said. “We need those other communities that surround us in order for us to grow our economy and our entire region throughout southeastern Wisconsin.”

He said his office has done a lot of great work as of late, and they’re especially proud of having the first budget surplus in Milwaukee County in over 20 years. However, there is much more work he wants to do in the future.

Crowley’s Future Plans

Milwaukee County has about a billion dollars of deferred maintenance according to Crowley, and one of the things he wants to improve on is the transit system.

“We’ve been able to have the connect with the east-west Bus Rapid Transit, which has been widely successful. Now we’re looking at a north-south BRT route that can go as far north as Bayside and Fox Point and can go as far south as South Milwaukee and Oak Creek.”

Crowley said he also wants to work on better affordable housing for the county.

“We have to tackle this on both ends of the spectrum,” he said. “The affordability aspect because there are individuals who may not be able to afford… but there [are also] individuals who can afford to buy their own home and we don’t have enough housing stock.”

Crowley is up for re-election, and he said he is hoping to receive the necessary votes when April rolls around. Regardless, he still wants people to vote in every election come April.

“Spring elections are coming up. Very important elections… mine being included. So make sure that you make a plan to vote.”

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