FPC members to receive email addresses
Cellphones also ordered to aid communication
City email addresses have been set up and cellphones have been ordered for members of the Fire and Police Commission, a Common Council committee was told Wednesday.
Ald. Robert Bauman asked during the Finance and Personnel Committee meeting Wednesday how the public could find the commissioners’ email addresses.
At a recent Steering and Rules Committee meeting, he expressed frustration that commissioners aren’t accessible to the public because they don’t have city phone numbers and email addresses. Fire and Police Commission Executive Director Griselda Aldrete told him at the time that the commission’s structure was set up by the state Legislature.
Aldrete on Wednesday told the Finance and Personnel Committee that she took the initiative to request the cellphones and email addresses for the seven commissioners.
Commissioners have been made aware that there are city email addresses for them, but she said the commissioners have to opt-in to using them. They could still use their alternative email addresses, she said, but she will encourage them to use the city email addresses for all Fire and Police Commission business.
She told the committee that she would ask that the email addresses be added to the commission’s website, where the commissioners’ photographs and biographies are posted.
“That’s what I wanted,” said Ald.
Russell W. Stamper II, who sponsored the resolution directing the city’s IT division to provide email addresses and cellphones to the commissioners.
The resolution states that without these methods of communication, commissioners “are therefore unable to be formally contacted by City departments, the Common Council, or citizens who wish to voice their concerns.”
The commission is a powerful civilian oversight body responsible for the hiring, firing and promotion of Milwaukee’s police and fire personnel as well as auditing internal investigations, independently investigating and monitoring citizen complaints, reviewing police and fire procedures, reviewing standard operating policies and procedures of the departments, and disciplining employees for misconduct.
The Common Council next meets on Feb. 11.