Alderman Dudzik Chairs Capital Improvements Committee

Alderman Dudzik has been named chair of the Capital Improvements Committee, created and approved by the Common Council earlier this year to oversee and coordinate repair and replacement of city infrastructure.

The eight-member committee also includes fellow Common Council members Alderman Michael J. Murphy, chair of the Council’s Finance and Personnel Committee, Alderman Robert J. Bauman, chair of the Council’s Public Works Committee, Comptroller W. Martin “Wally” Morics, Department of Public Works Commissioner Jeff Mantes, and others.

A recent city Comptroller’s audit examining the city’s maintenance and replacement programs for local residential streets offered a stark portrait of the condition of Milwaukee’s streets, but it also offered scenarios whereby the city could “catch up” by investing several million dollars each year to repave and repair streets.

The audit's “catch up” scenarios exposed the critical need of better and smarter planning for repair and replacement of city infrastructure, and that sparked Alderman Dudzik and his Common Council colleagues to create and approve the new Capital Improvements Committee (approved by the full Council on March 3, 2009).

Alderman Dudzik, a longtime DPW worker who serves as vice chair of the Public Works Committee, said he sees firsthand the value of the panel, and that’s why he voted to create it. “The audit laid out in detail that the way we’ve been handling infrastructure repair and replacement is severely lacking coordination and oversight, and that’s exactly what the Capital Improvements Committee will provide,” he said.

The committee will develop, maintain, and update a long-term capital improvements program for the city’s construction and maintenance of its infrastructure and facilities. The committee will evaluate individual city departmental capital improvement recommendations for construction and maintenance of infrastructure and facilities and prepare, on an annual basis, a six-year capital improvements program based on city priorities and objectives.

Also, the committee will prepare a report describing the condition of the city’s infrastructure networks and facilities and the adequacy of effort made to preserve such infrastructure and facilities and eliminate any deferred capital maintenance. Based on these reports, each May the committee will submit to the Department of Administration Budget and Management Division a capital improvements budget for construction and maintenance of infrastructure and facilities for the ensuing fiscal year, and prepare semi-annual progress reports, with emphasis on the status of large-scale capital projects, for submission to the Common Council.

To see the detailed Council file that created the Capital Improvements Committee go to milwaukee.legistar.com and enter file number 081215.