Milwaukee sales tax increase; Mayor Johnson signs ordinance

MILWAUKEE - Mayor Cavalier Johnson signed an ordinance Friday, July 14, approving the new 2% sales tax, which will be collected to fund the City of Milwaukee's services and obligations. 

Two cents per dollar spent will be tacked on in Milwaukee but not in Wauwatosa. The new tax will come in the bitter cold on Jan. 1.

"It’s going to make all clothes, shoes, all of that more expensive," said Joesph Wesolowski, a resident in Shorewood. "It’s going to make it harder for me to afford it. I’m on a fixed income."

Mayor Cavalier Johnson said there's a reason to celebrate.

"Each and every one of us have accomplished something huge, something major, something extraordinary for our city," said Johnson.

The mayor signed the sales tax ordinance at the Milwaukee Public Library Mitchell Street Branch.

"A day of reckoning was soon eminent," Johnson said. " Unimaginable cuts to the fire department, unimaginable cuts to the police department, unavoidable cuts to our libraries which would have almost certainly shuttered this great facility and so many others like it."

FOX6 asked Johnson about the political risk the new sales tax could have for him in the election next year.

"I know that there are political risks in doing something like that, but they're also political risks in not doing the right thing for the city. And that's exactly what we did," said Johnson. "You know, it was a, it was a difficult situation. I said throughout this process and I wish that state shared revenue hadn't remained to be what it was at the promise state government made to not just in Milwaukee, but communities across the state remained in place. But it didn't. 

The state estimates the new tax will bring in roughly $194 million a year.

"The word that comes to mind is relief," said Jose Perez, Milwaukee Common Council president. "Relief that for the first time in years, the city can prepare a budget without a dark shadow over it."

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The money will go to deflate the city's ballooning pension and, later, some of it to hire more police and firefighters.

"I acknowledge that residents here in Milwaukee will contribute more to the city's budget," Johnson. "But for the first time, and this is really, really important. For the first time ever, in Milwaukee, visitors, commuters, convention-goers, tourists, they will start paying directly into the system for the services that they receive from the city."

It won't apply to groceries and medicine but everything else that's taxable.

"The cost of living has already gone up, so we’re already kind of penny pinching. It might make save a little bit more, do a little less recreational things that we normally wouldn’t think about. Coffee being one of them," said Sydney Weimer from Milwaukee. "Definitely probably pushing us to go more to the suburbs, Wauwatosa, West Allis, even into Waukesha County. Brookfield, things like that."

As far as cars, you pay your tax based on where you live, not where you buy it.