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Milwaukee city leaders are engaged in a heated debate over the possibility of issuing refunds to residents for snow removal services. This discussion follows a wave of complaints received by city offices from residents after a significant snowfall event in December. “I’m sick and tired of taking the heat from my constituents that say my alderman sucks my street isn’t plowed,” Alderman Lamont Westmoreland said during a Milwaukee Common Council committee meeting Wednesday morning.The meeting involved back-and-forth discussions with leaders and employees from the Department of Public Works. “As you can imagine as many phone calls as you get there’s 15 others that all also forward,” said Danielle Rodriguez of DPW. The call for refunds is led by Alderperson Peter Burgelis and three other alderpersons. “Residents are OK paying a reasonable fee for a reasonable service. But what happened in this last snowstorm on the 20th of December was not, a reasonable, snow/ice clearing operation,” Burgelis said. The snow and ice removal fee is a significant part of the city’s budget, contributing approximately $11.3 million. “We don’t recommend making a mid-year budget reduction, an alteration that would create a budget for that,” said Nic Kovac, the city’s budget and management director. He acknowledged that while feasible, issuing refunds would create a budget shortfall.Jerrel Kruschke from the Department of Public Works emphasized the broader impact of reducing the fee, explaining that it supports multiple operations, including salting and bridge runs. The committee decided to postpone the refund decision to a later date. The snow removal fee is calculated based on the distance between a home and the street it faces, with an average fee of about $46 annually for homes set 40 feet back from the street.