Shorewood Voters to Weigh In on Whether County Board Should Be Downsized

With talks on whether to downsize the Milwaukee County Board stalled, Shorewood hopes other municipalities follow suit and agree to allow voters to weigh in via an advisory referendum on the April ballot.

Village President Guy Johnson says village leaders in River Hills and Fox Point presented the referendum idea at a recent meeting of the Intergovernmental Cooperation Council, a group that represents Wisconsin municipalities.

In addition to asking voters whether they favor of reducing the County Board from 18 to nine supervisors, the referendum will ask whether board members should be .

The advisory referendum is not binding and, if passed, wouldn’t do any more than making a statement and asking the County Board to take a serious look at the reduction.

The idea is to force the County Board to revisit downsizing and part-time compensation, trustees said. Local officials have said they haven't been included in the discussion of downsizing and , which blanketed much of the North Shore, excluding Shorewood.

The measure was approved unanimously by trustees on Monday. The Whitefish Bay Village Board also agreed on Monday to put the measure on the ballot in that community.

"This as an outgrowth of some of the efforts the Greater Milwaukee Committee was involved with in possible changes to the size of the County Board," Johnson said.

The committee, a private sector civic organization whose mission is to contribute to the cultural and economic base of the Milwaukee Metropolitan area according to its website, had asked the size of the board be reduced but supervisors shot it down, most recently during redistricting discussions.

“Quite truly, it also relates to the redistricting that the County Board did with elimination of the district that Supervisor Rice was in," Johnson added.

The new maps reduced the number of county supervisors from 19 to 18. Rice, who has represented most of the North Shore since 2004, lost his seat due to the redistricting, as the district was split into two separate ones.

The ICC hopes all of the municipalities in Milwaukee County agree to place the referendum on their ballot.