Fire chief tells city committee that budgetary constraints create racial equity concerns
The prospect of closing two fire stations by the end of 2023 puts Milwaukee in a racial equity bind, Fire Chief Aaron Lipski told a city committee during a budget hearing Friday.
Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s proposed 2023 budget calls for the termination of one fire engine in January and another in June, which would effectively close two stations in the city after the Milwaukee Fire Department already closed nearly 20% of its stations since 2018.
Milwaukee is often referred to as the nation’s most segregated city. Lipski summarized his options as either closing stations in the inner city, where communities of color are predominant and where emergency services are most often called, or closer to the city’s perimeter, which is predominantly white but is often, already, served by fire personnel in neighboring suburbs.
Cutting from the inner city, which has long suffered from poverty and neglect, would take away more badly needed resources. Cutting from the city’s perimeter could potentially harm relations with neighboring fire departments to share resources.
“I have to be responsible for looking at this with a racial equity lens,” Lipski told the Finance and Personnel Committee during a nearly four-hour hearing.
Lipski said he has not determined which stations are vulnerable to the cuts and likely will not know until the end of the month. But it builds on a message that he went to great lengths this week to communicate to the public during community hearings held at fire stations across the city – that continued budget cuts are putting the public at increased risk.
He said during those meetings that the city's financial situation has forced him and other members of the Fire Department to step up outreach efforts to state lawmakers to make changes to Wisconsin's shared revenue system, or implementing a sales tax.
Every fire department in Milwaukee County has entered into a shared services agreement that allows the nearest fire engine, regardless of municipal boundaries, to respond to emergencies. During community meetings at two stations Wednesday night, Lipski provided data showing fire departments involved in the agreement already respond into Milwaukee more often than vice versa.
He said Friday cutting a Milwaukee fire station near those boundaries will tip the scales even further. Since neighboring departments are already dealing with budget constraints of their own, Lipski fears such a move would jeopardize the county’s shared services agreement down the road.
“I can’t lose them right now,” he said.
But Lipski said Milwaukee’s inner city, specifically on the near-north and near-south sides, is home to “the busiest fire engines and paramedic units in the state of Wisconsin.” Those areas have been dealing with much of the city’s historic rate of gun violence the last three years and a higher frequency of fire calls.
“(It’s) an area that nobody in their right mind would say, ‘Yeah, cut that one,’” Lipski said in an interview Wednesday.
The Common Council members sitting before Lipski made no promises they could preserve two stations, but Lipski and city’s budget director, Nik Kovac, did say one unknown factor is how much money the city stood to receive from a new federal government program.
The Ground Emergency Medical Transport program, or GEMT, allows public ambulance providers like the Milwaukee Fire Department to receive reimbursements from the federal Medicaid program.
The GEMT is still in the implementation phase in Wisconsin. The amount Milwaukee could receive from it is unknown and it is expected to remain that way until mid-year 2023. Kovac said the city would need an extra $2.55 million to prevent two station closures in 2023.
Lipski asked the committee for funds that could stave off the station closures long enough into 2023 until more is known about how much additional funding it could receive from the GEMT. He suggested the city use American Rescue Plan Act money to buy the city time.
“I would say initially I’m very averse to use ARPA funds to plug operational gaps because ARPA funds go away,” Ald. Scott Spiker said. “But you make an excellent point.”
Contact Elliot Hughes at elliot.hughes@jrn.com or 414-704-8958. Follow him on Twitter @elliothughes12.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee fire chief says budget limits create racial equity issues
