The suburbs don’t want to “subsidize” the city:
Service consolidation has been a popular topic for local government, but the notion of a metropolitan form of government has sparked controversy.
“Metropolitan government is tough,” Glendale Mayor Jerome Tepper said. “We have 20 municipalities including the county. People identify with their community” and some don’t want to give that up, he said.
Rob Henken, president of the nonpartisan Public Policy Forum, said the controversial part about metro government in Milwaukee would be concerns from suburban communities that they would be subsidizing “much more intense levels of service in the city.”
Right. Much more intense levels of service.
For fuck’s sake. You know why the city would need more services? MORE PEOPLE LIVE THERE. And the city’s been starved of services forever, creating more problems to solve, as businesses and anybody with money fled to the ‘burbs and city government could and did ignore things like building inspections and public works upkeep in neighborhoods where nobody had time or inclination to complain.
I’m not saying metropolitan government makes perfect sense here or anywhere, really, but the glib dismissal in that comment is … something.
A.