MILWAUKEE- The Milwaukee Common Council has a new president.
Council members voting unanimously in favor of electing 12th District Alderman Jose Perez to serve as the next President. Perez was the lone nominee and will serve a 4 year term. He replaces Mayor Cavalier Johnson who served as President from 2020 until 2022.
“I want to say thank you to my friends & colleagues,” Perez said. “Serving in this position is impossible without us being together, we won’t always agree but I promise that we will talk and we will agree to disagree sometimes, and I will listen.
Perez was first nominated to the Common Council in 2012 and has also worked for the AFL-CIO as an organizer as well as in Milwaukee’s Department of City Development.
“I want my time as president to be about hope, about the future, I want it to be about shared purpose,” Perez said.
“There’s lots of talks about divisions between the black & brown communities and the Asian & Native American and each of these against each other,” Perez said. “These divisions are real and I won’t deny knowing them, from seeing them first hand, but we must not let them to take our eyes off the things that bind us together, shared experiences.”
Perez also used his time prior to this morning’s common council meeting to congratulate Mayor Cavalier Johnson on his historic election and pledged to be a partner on the Common Council.
In another move that’ll shakeup the makeup of the Common Council, Mayor Johnson nominated Alderman Nik Kovac to serve as his budget director. Kovac has represented the north shore on the council since 2008 & if his nomination is confirmed by the Common Council later this year, he’ll vacate that seat.
