As 2014 came to a close, the Forum was busy planning a robust research agenda for the next year.  Per our recently adopted strategic plan, our three priority areas will be economic development, education, and local government finance (in no particular order).  We will concentrate on research topics within those areas that are directly relevant to important decisions facing local government and school district policymakers.

 

The following highlights some of the key components of our 2015 research agenda: 

• We will publish two follow-up reports to our earlier comprehensive studies of the needs of arts, cultural, recreational, and entertainment assets in Milwaukee County.  The first will be an examination of public expenditures on recreation and culture in Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington counties, which is intended to provide perspective on whether a new regional funding source for culture and recreation would be useful to those counties.  In addition, we will produce a report on our region's philanthropic capacity to address the needs identified in our earlier research.  A third research project related to arts and culture - an interactive website for citizens to use to explore funding options and uses of funds - is described in detail later in this newsletter. 

• In a continuation of our research on how improved mass transit might address workforce development challenges, we will release a report early in the year that will focus on strategies for improving bus speeds.  Metro areas across the country have pursued interesting strategies to make their existing bus service faster and better able to move urban workers to suburban jobs.  We will explore the relevance of such strategies to Milwaukee, including the often cited, but not widely understood, "Bus Rapid Transit" approach. 

• Following the recent release of companion reports defining the K-12 education "system" in Milwaukee (also detailed later in this newsletter), we will dive into several research questions that emanated from those reports.  Those will include questions regarding school leadership, school restructurings, and school accountability. As in previous years, we also will produce annual Forum education staples like our Milwaukee Parental Choice Program survey, Milwaukee Public Schools budget brief, and Southeast Wisconsin public schools report. 

• We are working on two research projects related to the redesign of Milwaukee County's mental health system.  The first is a detailed financial analysis that will produce fiscal forecasts and models to inform redesign planning.  The second is a follow-up to our recent inpatient capacity analysis. We are again partnering with the Massachusetts-based Human Services Research Institute for this effort, which will explore community-based clinical capacity. 

• In recognition of the 20th anniversary of the creation of the North Shore Fire Department, we will release a study that will quantify the financial and operational benefits (or detriments) that have resulted from consolidation.  Our findings will be a useful platform for evaluating other opportunities for local government service sharing and consolidation in our region. 

• We hope to launch a new, multi-year research project that will inventory the infrastructure challenges facing three of our largest local governments - Milwaukee County, the City of Milwaukee, and the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District - and assess the region's financial capacity to address those challenges.  This project will build off our needs assessment of the County's cultural assets and use national metrics to assess where we stand in properly taking care of our publicly-owned roads, bridges, sewer mains, structures, etc. 

This list is just a subset of our complete agenda, which also includes continued research on workforce development, a report from our 2014-15 Gill Fellow on local planning commissions, and a possible new project on the policy implications of marijuana decriminalization in Milwaukee.  If you have any ideas for Forum research and activities, we are always eager to hear from you.  I hope to see you at our annual meeting on January 14!

Sincerely,