Judiciary & Legislation Committee - Regular Meeting

We're informing people at the same time of why these buildings deserve the designation that they receive. We are a group that does look, in fact, at other things than simply the the historic nature of places. We look at the economics of things. We look at a number of things that

Those of us who have lived here a long time don't always appreciate the many architectural styles that are prevalent here. Milwaukee is a treasure of historic homes with several dozen architectural styles. Some are designated landmarks. Others simply outstanding examples of popular styles from another time and place.

The common council realized that designating things as historic encourages people to reinvest in, like, residential areas in older parts of the city, and that's been one of the real successes of the historic preservation commission. So the city has been very much support in support of historic preservation because it encourages the revitalization of old neighborhoods and and is good for property values and because they view it as a way to market the city to businesses and individuals who want to move in based on the fact that we're a unique old city with wonderful old buildings and neighborhoods.

In virtually every neighborhood, you'll find the duplex, the most popular housing type in the eighteen nineties. The middle class Milwaukee bungalow showed up around nineteen o five, and there's that distinctive Polish flat, apparently a response to narrow urban lots and population densities and working class neighborhoods around the turn of the century. The city wants you to know about all of them.

One of the things we've done is we've written these three little brochures that you just alluded to that highlight the old world architecture, the old German and Polish architecture that in The United States can only be found in Milwaukee and that really sets the city apart from every other city in the country.

One of the other

things we've done is is we realized that visitors to the city as well as city residents, don't have or haven't had any way of really finding out about the city's historic buildings or knowing what they're looking at when they're walking around. So the city did a series of nine walking driving tours of historic neighborhoods in the city and we're going to be expanding that number by doing a few more this year. Of course, the other thing we've done is we've published a book called As Good is New, which is a guide to how to rehab your old Milwaukee house. It's an illustrated guide that sort of leads you through the various steps involved with rehabbing the exterior of an old house.

Historic architectural character is a marketable asset in Milwaukee's older neighborhoods these days. Historic preservation commissioners hope the old world craftsmanship that remains will not be lost in the name of modernization.

At boys and girls clubs, it's not just about trying new things. Tanya, come here. Learning the right steps. Two, three, four. And making contact. It's not just about exploring the future. It's about helping them build it. It's about making

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So there's this guy I heard about, Michael.

He's just a kid. He thought he was pretty cool, though.

He liked to act tough, steal cars, stuff like that.

And Michael just tend to get in trouble a lot. One time, he picked his friends up for a free ride in a stolen

He wants to impress the girls in the back seat, and they kept telling them, come on, faster, faster.

So he floored it and smashed into another driver doing 80.

And then he ran. He ran away without checking to see if other people were okay. They weren't. They were dead.

They're dead.

They were dead. Bernie and Tina were just a block away from their house when Michael killed them.

That's somebody's mom and dad, and he just ran away.

But he didn't get far. There's no such thing as a free ride.

After he was arrested, Michael had to face the families of the people he had killed. Now, he's serving thirty years for vehicular homicide.

That's what happens when you steal cars. This ain't no video game.

Hashtag no free rides.

Morning. Welcome to judiciary legislation committee, Monday, 05/04/2025. I am vice chair alderman Lamont Westmoreland, joined to my right by alderman Robert Baumann. Online, alderwoman Andrea Pratt, and to my far left, alderman president Jose Perez. Also, to my left, staff assistant Joanna Ortiz.

We'll start with item one, two five one five one three, resolution relating to the claim of Shelton King Junior. Is Shelton King Junior present? Doesn't look like it.

First time. First time?

Oh, here's the

first time.

It's the first time. One. Wait. Wait. This might be the second time. Hold on. Yes. This is the second time. Okay. Week.

With denial. What? Motion on the motion by Alderman Baumann is denial. Hearing objection is so ordered. Item two, two five one nine five six, resolution relating to the claim of Julius Adway. Is Julius Adway present?

First time.

We'll be holding.

Motion by alderman Bowman is hold. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Item three, two five one three eight four. Resolution relating to the claim of Meg Delia sure Bhatti. Is Meg Dalia present? Meg Dalia. Meg Dalia. Thank you.

Did I

say the last name right?

No. That that that That's on your own.

Alright. Second

time. Second

time, mister chair.

Motion by alder Men Perez is denial. Hearing objections.

Could someone else be on the record for that?

Yes. Motion by alderwoman Pratt is denial. Hearing objection, so ordered. Item four. Item two five one six three one resolution relating to the claim of Julian Woodruff. Is Julian Woodruff present? Doesn't seem like it. First time.

First time?

Yeah. Move to hold. Motion by item involvement is hold. Hearing objection. So ordered. Item five, two five one six two seven, resolution relating to the claim of Steven Brandenburg. Is Steven Brandenburg present?

First time. Right?

First time. Kevin?

Yes.

Motion by other woman Pratt is hold. Hearing objections. So order item six two five one six two nine resolution relating to the claim of Peyton Resner. Is Peyton Resner presence. Very good.

To defer a front when we're here.

Is there any

Anywhere, Good

morning. The floor is yours.

Good morning. I'll go to the city attorney first.

City attorney?

Yeah. Yes.

So miss Resner alleges that her vehicle was damaged by a manhole to cover on 08/10/2025 at or around 2829 South Howell Avenue. This was And

And

road. Then

little

is to landed on her vehicle. A DPW field investigator was did respond to a missing lid complaint and secured the lid. There are no prior calls regarding this or any other manhole covers in the area. And as I said, on that date, the city, had a rainfall of 14 and a half inches, and the city's attorney's office has recommended Nile, because the city had no notice of the defect and was not negligent in its response.

Good morning.

Before we Good

morning. Claimant that I see the claimant.

So I wanna go to public works. How is this possible? What's the dynamics in play that would push a

Good morning. Here. Jason Sanders, sewer services manager, DBW Sewers. So the on August 10, that was the weekend we had the storm where you see 14 inches of rain. The sewers were filled over capacity. So the pressure, the back pressure knocked the lid off and blew it. And I guess it's possible that it did damage the car that was parked there.

So it can go into it can actually propel the lid into

the The back pressure from everything that backed up and went into the air, I can't say how far it went into the air. As far as, historically, as far as I've seen, was maybe four feet at the most. I can't attest to it actually damaging the top of the lid, but I mean, I'm sorry, the roof of the car. But the lid was, at the time covered with asphalt because it was located in the bike lane and being, you from the freezing, the thaw of the man, the street, the lid may have sunk down a little bit so someone patched over it to make it, you know, safe for cyclists to travel in the back lane. So at that time, it was probably asphalt.

It may have blown up. It may have blew up and went as far as the roof of the car, but the pressure from the back pressure basically knocked the lid off. And it's a very big lid. It's very big. I

don't That's satisfactory. Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Could you

start with your name and address, please?

Thank you. Peyton Resner, 2435 East Sharon Drive, Oak Creek, Wisconsin.

Yeah. Then you can go. Yeah.

But I was visiting at 200829 South Howell Avenue where my car was parked. So, the manhole from what I saw that morning, the manhole, I have some photos. It was located on, like, on the street on the inside corner of my car.

We have and we have those same photos.

Perfect. Yeah.

And then there was another photo on the opposite side of my car where you can see where the manhole ended up. It looked as though it and my neighbor also saw it happen. He it looked as though it blew, hit the top of my car, rolled over the other side, and landed in the ground. And then from when I discovered it, it had it had been moved back to its cup where it cover the manhole.

But I'm sorry. That happened in the entire time you were in?

It was it happened while I was asleep. I discovered it the next morning. I'd seen the damage and it's taken the photos and wasn't sure what happened until I talked to my neighbor who told who had seen it and told me what he saw.

Mister chair?

Alderman Press.

Yeah. I'll just ask DPW. So someone from DPW took the manhole cover, put it back?

Yes. We responded. It was about 04:00 in the morning. We received a missing lid, we went out and we put the lid back on the manhole.

And then do you guys leave a note for someone Mhmm. Realizing the damage? I mean, what's the procedure you guys do?

No. They may not have noticed the damage to the vehicle wherever they picked the lead up from. It was usually a missing lead complaint. I'm not sure if the complaint said that there was damage to a car or anything like that. I'd have to check and see if the report said that. But as far as I know, was just another missing lid.

Where they replaced it was right next to the car. So I don't know how they wouldn't have noticed the damage to the car.

It was on the other side of the car.

Right. Exactly. And I I mean, the I'm her mother. And I think for us, thinking we were never notified, what if, you know, I mean, yes, she saw it the next morning but what if this would have went on for days. I mean the car was totaled and she had only had it for a month and a half. So I guess the communication piece and then shortly after the next week they were worked there was you know there were we sent a picture of the work being done on that exact lid, seemed a little ironic that right after this happened that there was being repairs done to that area of of the road specifically to that manhole cover.

This car was totaled?

Yes. That car was totaled.

Yeah. The Jeep was totaled?

Yes. The Jeep was totaled.

From the damage on the roof?

Yes. And you can see the crack because the water It's

a hybrid. It was the electrical damage.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Makes sense.

And the insurance our insurance claim is on here, but it was completely totaled.

And did the insurance pay pay this out?

Not the full amount

that was paid for the Jeep. There was a difference of like $5,435 between what was paid for the Jeep and what the insurance covered.

What was your deductible on that?

$500, I believe. Yes. $500.

And what's your theory of negligence? How was the city negligent?

Just the notification. Just How would that have affected the damage?

It wouldn't have, but just knowing next how it proceeds, I had to file my insurance claim not really knowing what necessarily the damage was. I just had done weather damage, but it was kind of weather induced damage because it wasn't really direct directly from weather but because of, I guess, a side effect of the weather.

And I think just because then shortly thereafter, it was being worked on. So obviously, there was probably something wrong with it. Maybe the weather just made it worse, but it just seemed to be ironic that then all of a sudden there was work being done in that specific area of all the areas of the city. I'm sure

there's, you know, that it was that it

was right in that spot. Well,

there's there's really no evidence of actual negligence here. I mean, damage,

nature induced mishap, yes. And frankly, we start settling all these claims. We'll be There'll be a lot of money involved. So I'll move denial.

Motion is for denial by Alderman Baumann. Any objections? Hearing none so. One objection noted Alderman Perez. So order. City attorney.

So this is the first step. What happens next is that the recommendation of this committee will go to the full common council, which next meets on 05/12/2026. If the full council adopts this committee's recommendation, then you'll receive a formal notice of denial by mail. And then once you have that notice of denial, you can file suit in circuit court if you wish to pursue this matter. Thank

you.

Thank you.

Like to make everybody aware that you're holding. Item 12, yeah. Okay. Item 12 if anybody's here for item 12, that item will be held. And I'd also like to make everybody aware that we've been joined by Alderman Russell Stamper. Welcome. Hey, man. Thank you. Item 7241692, communication from the intergovernmental relations division and legislative affairs division related to legislative updates. Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Thanks for having us. Jordan Primico, agovernment relations division director. We did add Kenny Yeager and I in the government relations division along with the Ladd division. Now that the legislative session has wrapped for the year, We wanted to just quickly run through legislation that the city had advocated for or against and talk about the impacts. There was a PowerPoint presentation included in the file but we can just quickly run through that now. Katie, you want to take it away?

Sure. Jordan said I'm sorry, Katie Yeager, Intergovernmental Relations. Like Jordan said, we did put together a slide show. So if you have that and can follow along, We broke it down into categories and included things that all of the bills that either well, all of the bills that did pass that we had registered in support of. To highlight for you all, a lot of them were discussed before this committee throughout session.

So we'll begin with bills pertaining to housing and development. Last meeting, I touched on it a little bit, but the truth in planning bill was passed. The governor signed that one. We were registered as sideways on it because there were aspects that we did support, including the TIT extension, but then other aspects that we weren't fully in support of. But it will have a large impact on the city because it will increase our pot of affordable housing funds in the millions.

There was also Wisconsin Act two thirty seven. This is a WIDA program fixes. These broadened the scope of allowable uses for developmental or project loans in the WIDA fund. There was about $05,000,000,000 in the WIDA fund to allow coupling with both TIF funding and historic preservation tax credits that should loosen restrictions on those WIDA funds to help move along housing development projects in our community. Another one was Wisconsin Act two thirty eight, Historic Reservation Tax Credit Program. This broadens the use of the historic preservation tax credit program, again with the hope this would help move projects along in our community.

And similarly Act two thirty nine, similar to the WIDA program, it made some changes to the state housing tax credit program which will expand access to financing for various workforce housing and increase mixed income and middle income housing development. Next, under the environment category, Wisconsin Act, acts one seventy and one seventy one. These established a battery stewardship program. This will help with fire safety, shift some of the recycling costs to the producers, taking some of the burden off of local governments who offer those types of services and allow better access to recycling options for batteries.

There was also Wisconsin Act 15 increasing the bonding authority for the environmental improvement fund. This legislation approved 7 and $32,000,000 in bonding authority with the state for water infrastructure projects. This is not a fund that the city has traditionally tapped into but being that federal funding may be running out for lead lateral replacements, it would give the city another option to potentially tap into the state's bonding authority to continue to do water infrastructure projects including lead lateral replacements for the city of Milwaukee. There's also a number of public safety bills that we worked on this session. The impoundment of reckless driving vehicles, I know the LAD division worked hard on this one as well as inter government relations, Wisconsin Act 46, Alderman Westmoreland, we're all well aware of that bill and the impact the positive impact it's had on our community to continue to attract reckless driving in our community.

There was Wisconsin Act 36 reimbursements for EMS services. This broadens services from our emergency services of which the fire department conducts a lot of those services that it will increase the financial sustainability of local EMS services and it will also provide training programs for EMS services to increase the pipeline of individuals trained for EMS coming into our system. So it should have positive impacts to both Milwaukee Fire Department and EMS services as well as the private ambulance providers in our community.

And then some really monumental bills that passed on the very last days of session that will have really positive impacts for health for Milwaukee residents, one of those being the postpartum Medicaid extension. So this is the bill that extends postpartum Medicaid coverage from the current sixty days to one year and bringing us up to speed with the rest of the country except for one other state at this point. And then another one, Wisconsin Act 103, providing breast cancer screenings under the medical assistance program which again will increase access to great preventative care for Milwaukee residents.

Next category is we kind of called economy and jobs. There was Wisconsin Act 15, creation of a state film office, something that there was a large coalition pushing forward to create a new incentive program for filmmakers to come make their films in the state of Wisconsin. We are already seeing the impact of films being shot in the city of Milwaukee and these also lead to the creation of jobs. So we're excited to we're happy to have supported and excited to see that program. I know I believe last month the governor announced the hire of the new director of that office.

So that is up and running and successful already. And then Wisconsin Act 175 opportunity and attraction program. This is a new set of state funds to help attract large scale events to the state of Wisconsin, things like the NFL draft, the RNC, other large events that we might host. I know we've talked in the past about potentially WWE events. This would create a state pot of money that would allow the state or local governments to apply to tap into those funds to draw a major event into the community. So that was another piece of legislation we supported.

We talked about Wisconsin Act two forty the last hearing, but, that was the occupational credentials for DACA recipients. Again, expanding local workforce options for, dreamers in our community. There was Wisconsin Act one seventy six in relation to the Transform Milwaukee Jobs Program, a state and local partnership. This just slightly updated some of the eligibility requirements for residents to participate in this program. And by participating in the program, it expands their access to workforce training, some transitional employment opportunities, helping to strengthen pathways into full time long term employment.

I also just wanted to note that the governor did veto the restriction on local government programs. That was Assembly Bill 165 that the city had registered in opposition to because it would have directly disallowed us from offering various city programs that are currently offered. And then just an overview, there were several bills introduced to this session that would have changed election administration procedures and impacted voting access in Wisconsin. The city opposed several of these bills. You know, I want to highlight one of them, Assembly Bill five sixty, which would have completely prohibited the use of absentee drop boxes, which our elections commission has worked really hard to have those stationed throughout the city in in convenient locations for voters to be able to safely drop off their absentee ballots so that they can securely be processed and counted by eliminating or prohibiting the use of these, of a way of returning ballots.

It could have definitely impacted the ballots that are getting back to the elections commission and thus counted. There were bills creating different regulations for election observers. Again, not considering the city of Milwaukee, which is really unique and having in central account locations. And logistically, these bills just would not have been feasible for an operation of our size. So there was a lot of educational a lot of education going on behind the scenes to make sure that these legislative offices that were introducing these types of bills kind of understand that the city of Milwaukee is extremely unique in our size and the scope of elections here.

So I think that these were really great learning experiences. None of them passed, thankfully. And I think in a future meeting, we'll have Polina Gutierrez here to and available to discuss some of these things in greater detail.

So that's a wrap up. I do want to give an opportunity for Ladd Division to add anything. But before I do that, many of you saw on Friday, Katie Yeager is leaving the City Of Milwaukee. I just wanted to take a moment to thank Katie for all of her hard work. We've been tremendously lucky to have her on our lobbying team. She many of the things that we just went over would not have happened without her hard work out in Madison. She is, believe it or not, headed off to bigger and better things. As we like to think maybe nothing is better than the city, but a tremendous opportunity for Katie. So I just wanted to take a moment to thank her for all of her hard work.

Thank you, Katie.

Thank you. You.

And I I so appreciate the opportunity to get to represent the interests of, like I said, in in my note to you all, the the greatest state city in the state of Wisconsin. So thank you for allowing me to do this great work.

Are you happy or sad? Mhmm.

It's bittersweet. It's bittersweet. Absolutely.

Thank you. Thank you.

Well, that's hard to follow. However Sure.

Oh. Yeah. Go ahead.

Yeah. Thank you. Before we get to ours, I'd like to talk with Jordan. Hey, Jordan. Did we on the bond authority?

Yeah.

What will be our when will we know this? The ability to use it.

Well, it really depends. So, now, you know, primarily from my understanding discussions with what Milwaukee Water Works, we've been tapping into the funds that have been made available, the bipartisan infrastructure law under the previous presidential administration to replace lead laterals in our community. And this council along with the administration worked very hard to prioritize equitable distribution of removal of those lead laterals, communities of need, places where work is already happening. And we've been able to at this point in time tap into those substantial federal funds to do that work without additional cost to the rate payer or many times the homeowners. If that line of funding were to dry up and again it is uncertain if that will be renewed by the current Congress administration.

There are we are advocating for it to continue, but if it doesn't, this 700,000,000 plus from the state government in bonding authority could be another avenue for us to pursue to do these projects as well as another avenue of against state bonding authority for any other major water infrastructure project we might look to entertain.

How much money is left? Do you know?

So I think that money was just set aside this session. I believe applications are ongoing to tap into it. So my I think the whole $700 and some million are still there. But again, as we're all well aware, water issues, water infrastructure issues, PFAS, things of that nature are an issue around the state. So yes, to your point, money could go quickly. But I think this set a new standard for the state. What we're hoping is that budget after budget, the state will continue to put this. I mean, part of mine, do you remember, Katie?

It went from I

think it was the number that's in my mind, was 56,000,000. And, you know, that had historically been enough for the applications that they were receiving. But a lot of the water infrastructure was created in the 1970s for a lot of local governments, of course, as a result of the federal Clean Water Act. Now that infrastructure is kind of nearing its end of life and is needing replacement, of course, the smaller communities in Wisconsin are also growing, which is putting greater strain on this aging infrastructure. So that money became, a lot more coveted.

And, in the last round, I believe that MMSD or the city was going to be putting in an application and they were told this is already so competitive. A city of our size does have the ability to go kind of private market to get bonding authority or to get to do bonding and smaller municipalities did not. So those smaller communities were prioritized for the $56,000,000 So now with this huge expansion of bonding authority, we would be able to apply for

it once

That's good. So do they take in consideration the aging of our infrastructure in the last four floods that we just experienced?

You know, I don't know. That's a good question. I think Pat Polly or someone from Water Works would have to answer that or MMSD. And certainly, since this legislation was passed, I mean, I believe if memory serves, this was passed before last August. So we've had two major floods in our community directly impacting water infrastructure. So even when this was passed, we've had major incidents. I mean, I think the good news is that the state was able to recognize we are vastly under bonded in this program. They added $700,000,000 in new bonding. I could see this continuing to be discussion with the state moving forward so that they can make sure to continue to renew that money in bonding authority or increase it if necessary.

Excellent. Okay. And then who was the author of this large event fund?

I don't remember offhand. I know Visit Milwaukee was a tremendous advocate for You know, that's something, you know, Peggy Williams Smith, Claire Hannan and the team, they pushed very strongly for because they are our leaders when it comes to pursuing these major events. So I don't remember the authors offhand, but visit was very prominent.

Yeah. How much is available?

I believe it was I think they put like 20,000,000 in the fund.

Yeah. 20,000,000. Yeah. And I believe senator Bradley was one of the the key sponsors on the senate side. I'm not sure off the top of my head who is leading in the assembly.

Okay. Then last, on 04/30/2026, the US Supreme Court in a 63 decision in Louisiana versus Cutter significantly weakened section two of the Voters Right Act of 1965. Where are we as a state in our opposition to this strike down? And do you think it'll reach up north or the Midwest anytime soon?

That was a Supreme Court decision. Louisiana versus Callis. Calvin Lee with the legislative affairs Alderman to your question, there was an analysis that I prepared and sent out last week for you. Okay. So please check your email or I can report that to you.

I'll check it.

Obviously, Kitty had brought up some of the election materials, some of the bills. We will be working closely with the election commissioner and protecting everything that we can do here. But depending upon who you speak to, many are looking at this as as being a resurrection of Jim Crow laws, in my opinion.

Well, obviously. But what I'm saying is that we Yeah. I could In your email, did you put something in opposition to this as a city?

It was an email to inform you about that decision.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. I think we'd wait for this body, particularly, you know, I'd like to to put a file forward.

As soon as possible.

I'll put an email

for And I can I can say what, you know, what we're seeing in an immediate response to that Supreme Court decision are redistricting efforts like you had said particularly in Southern states? Sure. Right now, our state legislative maps were agreed upon between the governor and the republic state legislature. So our maps

should be How long do they last?

They would these maps would go until 2030 when the next census is done and redistricting will be done at that point in time. So so right now these maps should be in place until 2030. There have there has been litigation around our congressional map. Recently two, three judge appellate court panels have denied a redrawing of that map. That has not yet made it to the state supreme court if it does.

But you know, we are not seeing the efforts of mid decade redistricting like they are in many other states with going on what's on federally. I think we can I think it certainly does behoove us as a community to speak up and say we oppose the Supreme Court decision? I think for the four of us up here, divisions, we're going have to be diligent in making sure that these sorts of efforts, if they happen in our state, our community, particularly our vulnerable communities are protected. But I do not see anything immediate or nor have I heard anything immediately on the horizon from this Supreme Court decision coming to Wisconsin.

Okay. But An orderman? Twenty third. Okay.

That's if they

governor and and the the legislature legislature would would have have to to determine determine and and set set what what those those maps maps are are based based on on the the census and now that race or demographics cannot play into how those are mapped out, it will be structured population wise which could have an impact on how these particularly inner city districts look.

Right. Okay.

And I will just point out just rumor mill that there is quite a bit of attention to the county maps that were agreed upon. So I would not be surprised if there might be some sort of challenge in the future on the county maps. Speaking with Jim O, he's fairly confident that we're in a very good spot as far as the city maps go, all the man and boards, things of that nature that that won't be impacted and things should be in place at least through 2030.

Those issues you mentioned

Mhmm.

Be in direct correlation with the changes of this law if it comes forth?

So fortunately Yeah. For Wisconsin, a lot of the provisions, I mean the Voter Rights Act federally had various provisions in addition to redistricting. And we have state laws that reinforce a lot of those federal provisions. So it would actually take some undoing of state laws well to increase vulnerability of certain voters other than throughout the redistricting process. And we have been in conversations with Paulina to

be a little

bit more specific and add items in the legislative package to account for these attacks that were noted in the PowerPoint. And then of course, I'm sure Paulina has some ideas to protect us against the impacts of that Supreme Court decision as well.

Alright. Thank you. Now I'll get to you. Me. I haven't read the email, but I'll get right on it and get back

to The only

thing that

I wanted to advise you of as well is in that, you will see towards the bottom of the email, a part of that analysis was a decision from 2023 versus the most recent decision here in 2026.

Okay. Alright? Cool.

And if

you have any questions yeah.

If you

have any questions about interim.

I'll sure sure. I'll reach out. Yeah.

Alright. Thanks, mister chair.

Oh, yeah.

But the reality is is that they really don't pay attention to the local maps as much as they do the state and the federal to congressional seats.

Yeah.

So do you guys have any assessment that those are gonna challenge before 2030? Or does it just depend on what the state legislature supreme court the governor looks like.

Twice had assigned a body of judges that would look at redistricting the congressional maps. Twice, they've said that they don't have the authority now to do that. So it's very unlikely that we'll see anything before this election. I would not be surprised if we see continued efforts to restructure those going forward. There's also some conversation that the legislature might come back in the near future certainly to discuss what to do with the surplus that they have on hand but also maybe coming to some sort of agreement on congressional maps simply because the Republicans perspective is a worry that Supreme Court or Democratic control legislature will change those significantly to benefit them.

So they might get ahead of that and cut some sort of grand bargain on those maps. It's hard to say exactly what it's going to be but there is conversation and part

of what I was going

to say in my update as well is that they have scheduled to come back next week on a special session to meet on the floor. I believe they have agreement of some sort or at least one in place regarding the surplus. I'm not sure where they're at with the maps quite yet.

And I will say to your question, know, Supreme Court a new case law. Yeah. And that case law now carries throughout The United States Of America. So there's always the opportunity that a law firm or a concerned citizen could bring a lawsuit against the city of Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, the state of Wisconsin, and under the new case laws and the changes to the Voting Rights Act. We are certainly that could happen in our community. I'm sure city Attorney Goyke and his team are on top of it. But there is always the case that a new suit could be brought under this case law to challenge what we've done here.

All right. Thank you guys. Keep us Yeah.

And I

just wanna point out one other thing as legislation or the session wraps up in the legislature for the year is I think it's really important to understand the landscape there. One of the interesting facts that have come out recently is Democrats have authored more than 500 and introduced 500 bills of which only five had received even a committee hearing. So 1% of Democrats' efforts have gone through the actual political process that we all know and understand. So

Justin, 500 in how long?

Just not the last two years in the this last session.

Bills and four only got to?

Five got to a a committee hearing and were heard. That doesn't even mean that they made it to full enactment of law and that the government signed them into law.

So is that process similar to ours? They need someone to sponsor?

Well, they need someone to sponsor, and bills that were authored or sponsored by a Democrat had only seen five of them receive a committee hearing. So it just goes To

the committee hearing, how does it get there?

It's a side

Yeah.

The committee chair chooses what bills are heard of

their committee.

So they they just don't? Yeah.

If it's a republic the the the all the committees are chaired by Republicans. Gotcha. And so the Republicans can choose what bills do and don't

come in front

of their

committee. Okay. What about do they have the same processes on the floor?

No. No. Different.

So you can't even bring it on the floor?

No. So there there are some, you know, operational strategies that can help at times such as what we saw with the DACA bill and some of our democrat allies helping to negotiate. But there is a tremendous amount of power in committee leadership and certainly majority leader and speaker to control where Okay.

Some of those are ours?

No. They were I mean, they're I'll have to go back and see exactly what

the five.

I'll have to go

back and double check that that that information just came out last week to what specifically they they were.

I think what we need to pay attention to is that there was a lot of bipartisan support. This team had worked diligently and hard on Good. Those bills that had passed through this legislative session. Good. It was tough. However, we were able to move quite a few things forward.

Thank you. Thank you. Are we making progress on the red light cameras?

Certainly not this session, but speaking with the the senate author last week at the MMAC night, He's optimistic that depending how things look next year that they would more than likely be willing to introduce it or reintroduce it.

Excellent. Thank you, guys. Thank you, mister chair. Thank you. Any other questions? Or comments? No.

Now, just quickly too, just on behalf

of lab, we would like

to thank Katie and all her efforts, you know, on the record that we we certainly appreciate working with her and and wish her all the best.

Thank you. Good luck.

Thank you.

Yes, So you

guys updates are you guys similar updates or did you own update or that was the same update?

Yes. It's a collaborative city. So they covered a good summary of everything that.

Yes, sir.

Yeah. Over the weekend at Cicco de Mayo event that Conquistador did, they honored the city for their work on the DACA. So, I wanted to thank everyone involved for the state level licenses that was approved which is basically around we have about 5,100 dreamers in the state of Wisconsin that now have an ability to apply for licenses from plumbers to nurses which is huge for them not only for us to retain them there. I think we can recruit other DACA folks to come to the to the state and work. So they honor the city and so I just wanted to say thanks to the all the team that had anything to do with working on that and it is a big deal.

It's probably the most important piece of legislation for Latinos in the

state of Wisconsin.

It's good news.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Motion by president Perez. Hold to the call of the chair. Any objections? Hearing none so ordered. Thank you. Item eight.

Right. Just

stay for a second.

Two five two two two zero. Substitute resolution amending the city of Milwaukee state legislative package to express support for legislation requiring the installation of speed limiting devices on vehicles owned by those repeatedly convicted of reckless driving sponsored by Alderman Stamper. Alderman Stamper.

Thank you, mister chair. Yes, I read that in Maryland, they passed a bill repeat or extreme speeding offenders to install intelligence speed assistance, which is a device that will prevent you from speeding. So thought it would be a proposal to bring it to the city of Milwaukee. And the pros of this legislation is that it directly stops dangerous behavior, not just punish it, it stops you. It targets the highest risk drivers.

It has proven technology and is an alternative to license suspension. So being that Milwaukee has a speeding problem, reckless driving problem, this becomes a public safety issue, and I like to add this to the legislative legislative back package along with the red lights and then everything else we're doing to the curb reckless driving.

In that book

oh, yeah. Go ahead.

Oh, I was gonna say,

Alderman Samper Yes. As we discussed weeks before, this bill there was this bill was introduced in the legislature this session. Okay. AB six fifty five, senate bill six fifty nine. Both representative Goodwin and Senator Larson. It did not advance. I appreciate you wanting to reintroduce this. I think this adds on to the work over the last two years with like the reckless driving bill that Alderman Westmoreland wanted us to pursue. With this, we are in the process also of putting together the ledge package as well. So this will definitely be added when we get ready to run, start running, and get ready for next session.

Sure. You mentioned Maryland and so forth. To the best of my knowledge, I think there are 10 states and I can provide that to you later after the meeting that have introduced or moved forward with this type of legislation in the nation. Yeah. Thank you very much.

Alderman, I appreciate you asking about the red light camera bill. So we were working on that one as a way to deter the reckless driving from occurring in the first place. When somebody comes up to an intersection, they see that there's that it is camera enforced. They slow down. They stop at the red light actually.

So that was our more so preventative effort to decrease reckless driving in the community. This bill that Calvin just mentioned was introduced by a senator who actually is very, very opposed to the red light camera district. So we tried to do some educational work there to help to get him to a place where he maybe wasn't in such opposition to a preventative solution and then we would, you know, like to support the, you know, kind of last ditch effort of literally slowing speeders cars down.

Yes.

We weren't able to get there unfortunately. We do hope. I I hope this team can can work on that senator and get him to a different place next session because it would be great to have a Milwaukee senator in support of of a bill that would be huge impact to the massive issue of reckless driving in Milwaukee.

Well, can you continue to help us in your new capacity? Alright. Well, thank you so much. Just one

last thing. To your point, Alderman Samper Yes, sir. So that the public understands what this building is. It states you stated what it is, but it's actually the installation of a speed device that would prohibit you from going over a certain miles per hour over the speed limit or whatever the registered speed limit is. Yeah.

And then one note on that if and maybe you'd like this to be specific in the ledge package, but there were a lot of questions and concerns about the burden of cost and who actually pays for that technology to be installed in the cars and then what happens if the owner of the vehicle can't afford that expensive technology. So, maybe consider adding a specific provision to account for that.

Yeah. Okay. Unfortunately, this is one of the 500 bills that did not get a committee hearing so that wasn't fully flushed out in the negotiation Alright.

Do you do you know

if this one because I'm I like and I like this.

Thank you.

I'm curious if if all goes well and and we can do this, if we would have the ability as a city to have these installed prior to an impounded vehicle being released. Like, at one point are they installed?

I mean, the the yeah. The legislation that it's completely open to being reconstructed. So that's something that we can have discussions Do you

know what

it currently?

How it currently?

I I believe that it would be something similar to an ignition device if you were to get a drunk driving arrest Yeah. Whereas you have to You have a certain amount of time to to put it in your vehicle before you can drive it again.

First offense.

And I think, I mean, this is the sort of thing that priority of inter government relations division is always to craft legislation the best we can in Madison to give you all the opportunity to design it. You know, what I'd love to have the state say is that these devices are permissible. Local municipalities can require these, you know, these devices. And then local governmental bodies can say, in our community, if you get impounded, we're not releasing your car until the device is installed. For sure.

So I think, you know, again legislative package wise, it's always good to look broadly of give us permission state and then let us design how that works for because it may we may want to do something in Milwaukee than they want to do in Green Bay or Madison and it's our we have to the state needs to start recognizing better. Municipalities are different. We have similarities, but we're different across

the state.

Right. So allow the local governmental body that is closest to its residents determine what's best for their community.

Yeah. Particularly because not every city has enacted the impoundment bill for reckless driving. So the right there, there'd be some serious he

has? Half?

I don't. Not at the top of my head. I mean, we could probably check with LRB and see if they hit their Okay.

I'd like to be added as a co sponsor Excellent. To that. Any other questions or comments?

No. Thank you, guys.

Alderman Baumann moves for adoption. Hearing objections, so Item nine two five one six nine six, communication from the office of the assessor relating to twenty twenty six assessments sponsored by alderwoman Cox.

Alderwoman Cox is requesting I'm here. I'm here. I'm I'm here. Okay. I'm on the board. I do just oh, back into the assessor. I know we had this on last month's agenda a little prematurely. But now that folks have received their assessments, I try to do this every year, or we kinda have the assessor present and go through the assessments, what the city average is, but also where the highest spikes are or the declines and all of that kind of thing and to answer some of the questions that some of us may have been getting from some of our residents. And with that, I think we can go ahead with the assessment.

Thank you.

Good morning, everybody. I'm Ryan Ranker, the deputy commissioner of the assessor's office. And today, we're going to talk a little bit about the 2026 revaluation we've done for city property assessments. I'm going to start with some broader themes talking about what a revaluation is, some of the statutes within which we have to operate, where assessment and public policy might kind of cross paths and how assessments are determined. I'll finish then with where we're in right now, the open book period and how property owners can discuss or appeal their assessments.

And also to my left here I have the assessor's office real estate modeler, Mr. Colin Williams. He'll present a little bit later into more of some of the specific sales and activity within neighborhoods.

Mr. Chair? Yes sir.

Yes. What is a real estate modeler?

So basically I'm the main math guy in the office. So I collect all the data, process it, do statistics, develop the citywide models for real estate values. And what do you use? What do I use? We use a combination of Excel and an open source statistical package called R. It's a common statistics and modeling software for the assessment industry.

Is citywide is countrywide?

Offices across the country use this. Some use proprietary software, either Microsoft product or there are various other ones that vendors charge for but this is a free open source software that I'm able to use.

And you manually insert the data?

We get not manually. We're not hand typing but I'm manually manipulating all of the data once we get it from our various sources and I'll get into kind of how all of the what data we have and how all of that works in the presentation as well.

Okay. And what kind of software is that again?

It's called r. Just the letter Okay.

Alright. And where's the commissioner today? She and I have been having some discussions. I was expecting her today.

She had a family event over the weekend so she's probably not going to be in our office all week.

Sure. Okay. Well, we wish her the best.

Thank you.

Alright. Thanks guys. Okay.

So I'll just start here and I'll kind of talk, you know, what is a revaluation. So that refers to the reassessment of all parcels within a municipality and this is necessary because economic conditions are constantly changing. So properties are revalued to reflect those changes in the market and also at specific properties if there are raisings, kitchen or bath updates, things of that nature.

The

two most prominent statutes that kind of define how we are to value real estate are 7,005 Wisconsin State Statute which basically says that we need to value all classes property within 10% of full value. So that's 10% of the market value. And that's for all classes, so residential, commercial, agricultural, undeveloped. And then the other stat ute that we kind of lean on is seventythirty 2 which it's how we are to value it and it's either from actual view getting into a property which is up to a property owner if they want to let us in or not or the best information available. So that's an could be an exterior inspection, that could be information we've gleaned online and other information that's available publicly to us.

And what we're trying to do in the end is figure assessments are what we anticipate a property would sell for based on that data.

Excuse me, Mr. Chair. Yes, sir.

On evaluating what a property would sell for, Is that pure subjective or do you have a formula?

That's where the modeling comes in.

I would say yes, that is where the modeling. We have based we have the city broken into neighborhoods based on the style of property. So we're not valuing commercial with residential and we're not looking at triplexes to value a ranch. So we try to get, you know, down to the level of detail that makes sense so that we can see patterns and trends and identify that ranches in this neighborhood are selling for $150 a square foot. So that's kind of how we try to break up the data and make the most sense of it. We're not comparing North Side to South Side or anything like that. It's very compartmentalized when we're looking at the data.

Oh, so it's not blanket throughout the city. You go district by district?

Yes. We have the city broken up into numerous residential neighborhoods and commercial neighborhoods.

Different formulas or the same formula?

The same methods are applied to all of them. I mean, the formula is more based on the data that is available. You know if there's not sales available and it's a newer development, the cost might be the most pertinent way to value those properties. So it kind of goes hand in hand with the location of the property and then the data available to make a value or an assessment on that property.

Okay. But the data that you receive and the numbers you put together to evaluate a property, standard or is that the same?

No. It's standard procedures and it's all dictated by either statute case law or the Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual which is put out by the Department of Revenue. By district though? Yes. It would be the same process district to district, neighborhood to neighborhood. We go through So the same the

4th District wouldn't seem the same evaluation number wise and equation wise as a fifteenth district?

It would depend on what the sales are in. So we don't consider Aldermanic District when coming up with values, we purely look at neighborhoods. But it depends on what the sales look like in each individual neighborhood. And for context, there are approximately 140 residential neighborhoods that we have the city broken up in two. So if you have two identical houses in different neighborhoods and we have sales of those identical houses and one is for 100,000 and one's for $150,000 Our modeling process and valuation process would put an assessed value of $100,000 on the one that sold for 100,000 and anything like it in that neighborhood and 150 property and any similar properties in that neighborhood.

Right. That's understandable. But where you do that, is it the same?

Yes. It's a yes.

And each throughout the city?

All of the neighborhoods are treated identically throughout the city. We're not looking one by one at them. When I get the data in, the same procedure is applied to all 140 neighborhoods.

And is that separate than the R software?

No. I apply the methodology using the R software and our other IT.

How does R software relate to the state statute that you referenced?

So I look at the state statute for the prescribed methods for valuation. I basically convert what the state statute and the manual say into code that takes the day that we have what the state law says and it outputs assessed values and then those go into our system and then there's levels of checks that are applied by other real estate professionals in our office. So it's not just what I say or any one person says, there's some level of checks in there between appraisers and managers and then as Ryan indicated, we're currently in the open book period. So if a mistake gets through all of those levels and a property owner notices that, then they're able to discuss that with our office as well and appeal if they, after the discussion, feel that we are not at market value for their property.

Okay. Yeah. I'll wait till the presentation to continue the conversation, but thank you very much.

Thank you.

Real real quick. I because I need to know as I think about this presentation. You use sales, right? Yes. Only sales?

For residential properties, yes.

Okay. And how many do you use to evaluate the property?

It depends on so we've used this year for all residential properties. There were over 5,000 usable sales. I'll get into what makes a sale usable in a moment. Okay. And in each individual neighborhood, it just depends on how many properties sold in that area.

The current assessment of properties Mhmm. Will outweigh Okay. Good. The amount of sales. Is that calculated?

If you have a block, if you have you sell one whatever radius you use, but at the most three or four or five, but the amount of homes that are much, much less than 10% or less than that, are they used as an evaluation of the properties? Let's say I have three blocks and five foreclosures or or a burnt up house or dilapidated house Sure. Or just negligent landlords. But you a house on that block is sold and rehabbed and fixed up and sold for 250,000. But these houses aren't worth nothing but 100,000 or less. Right. Do you consider that?

Yes. We do. So we have property records for every property in the city. Mhmm. And so we have a ton of property data size, condition, number of kitchens, number of bathrooms, any sort of issues like that.

We get data from permits, observation when our team is in the field and so we'll update that and we make sure to validate what data is on sales. So in the case that you described where there's a house that was flipped, that would be in above average condition, it might be good or even very good and the surrounding properties would be average fair or even lower ratings. And so that's then taken into account when we're developing the value. So we're not saying that that flipped house is the same as all of its neighbors.

Got you. And if you can't find a house that has given you enough proximity to a neighborhood, do you continue to go out further?

Essentially you

stay within the district or you go out further?

We will go out further as appropriate so if we won't just indiscriminately expand a circle until we find something because neighborhood markets can change very rapidly as you go block to block. So that's where our appraisers when they're reviewing the values if there weren't any sales of a particular property type they will find the most comparable nearby neighborhood or area. And

the sales, that includes sales that are sold with the subsidies attached to it?

Part of the sales validation process that I'll describe evaluates the whole range of things including the relationship between buyer and seller and the financing involved.

I'm just talking about a house that received significant government subsidy and now they're selling it.

Yes. So if the previous owner had received subsidies to fix up the house and then it sold on the open market, we would consider that sale because if a house hadn't received subsidies and was in the same condition and was sold on the open market that would reflect what the market is for that type of property.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Okay. So I'll just consider like and I think we've kind of talked to our discussions here a little bit but so what is it that we're considering when we're trying to figure out assessments and it's sales. It's what properties are transacting for by class and within certain boundaries or neighborhoods. And we're specifically looking at arms linked transactions which are the buyer and seller acting independently. There's no coercion, no special interests and this will usually ensure that it's a fair market price.

When both parties, the buyer and the seller are acting in their own self interest, this usually results in what's known as market value. Some of the items or sales that we generally don't include in our analysis are auction, foreclosure or properties that are sold under duress.

What about city sales?

We generally wouldn't include those. You wouldn't include? Wouldn't include city sales. No.

Mister chair?

Yeah. Go ahead.

For arm's length, though, geographically,

how close?

Or arm's length sales that you're considering when you do the assessments, geographically, close?

The closer the better. Generally, we like to stay within what is defined with our neighborhoods that we have defined as far as residential properties. But again, there can be properties that we can't find a good comparable right in that neighborhood. So we might expand to an adjacent neighborhood that we find similar. So that's part of a sales comparison approach where you can make adjustments for the slight differences between one neighborhood and another. But the best sales are going to be as close to January 1 as we can get and as close to a certain subject property that we can get. We like to stay within the neighborhood with the sales.

Part of the reason that I asked is because in some of our neighborhoods, block to block is a world of difference.

For sure.

For what a buyer would actually pay. So, yeah, a house two blocks away may have sold for 150,000, but my house with the similar amount of bathrooms, similar amount of bedrooms, in this direction, two blocks would never sell for that. Mhmm. So if that's what you're using for the assessments, it puts it puts my house at a disadvantage from what it would should actually be.

That's correct. Yeah. And generally, we would avoid that and that's one of the things we're looking at. So if we use an adjacent sale but we know that that sales are typically 20% higher, we're going to make that adjustment and reflect it in that neighborhood. We're not just going to we don't reach out far and wide and just apply anything to any neighborhood. That's why I say we try to kind of make it an apples to apples comparison in our review of the sales and the data.

And if a resident felt like y'all didn't do that properly, that's what the appeals process is for?

Correct. That's that's the appeals open book period that we have.

Thank you.

Mister chair.

But but but all of them did ask, like, what what was the distance? Like, do you go a mile out, two miles out, three miles out? What do you do?

It depends on the neighborhood and the data.

So what's the furthest you've ever done?

Well, in commercial, I've gone out of state. For residential, generally, jeez, I I'm a mile. One mile? Probably would be, you know, like One

mile is good.

I mean, with it, you know, typically, if we're when we have to defend stuff at the border review, I like to have sales within a few blocks of, you know, somebody that might be

For the in process of the mile?

It it and again, it will depend on the neighborhoods because some neighborhoods are much tighter and smaller. There's not even a mile across. Yeah. It just depends, you know, we have to go by what the best sales tell us. So if I have a good sale but I think that the subdivision or the neighborhood is very similar to the house I'm looking at, I'm going to use that sale. But if I know that subdivision generally sells twice as much, I'm going to ignore that sale and not consider it as something that would reflect the value of a home that I'm looking at.

Okay.

Mr. Chair? Yes, sir. Go ahead.

You guys take into account, like, the natural boundaries of districts? I look at the freeway dividing my district and night and day east and west of it.

Yes. Those were general generally, it's either a river, a commercial strip, a highway, that does usually kind of demarcate different neighborhoods and different kind of investment patterns or sales prices. So we do reflect that. That's one of the things that kind of helps us determine where neighborhood boundaries are.

So with that case, like, told the woman with Cox's Point, you have a house. You go up two blocks in one direction from a busy street. Mhmm. It's much higher. You have a house two blocks to the east. It's lower. What decision do you make at that point? It's same neighborhood, whether it's even two blocks or three blocks of a difference, they're still within the range of someone might say, why aren't you taking the low one?

Yeah. And again, that would come down to the apples to apples again. What is most comparable? If I'm looking at a property and I've got a couple of sales that I think are really comparable and they're at one price point, if I go to this better area or higher district that's two blocks away and it's a much larger price point, to me that's they're not competitive properties and that's a sale that I wouldn't use to value that property.

And that's personally saying, no, I'm not going to evaluate that property, you?

Not that we're not gonna evaluate. That it's the fact that I don't know that it's a good comparable to determine the market value in that scenario.

In that instance instance, it's the deputy director, not the machine.

No. Because we're and Colin will get into how we list these properties. It gets into size, condition, location, all of those neighbors. And within neighborhoods, you can have sub neighborhood factors because just as in one in a residential district, there could be that one block that historically always sells a lot higher than the other blocks. So there's a lot of different factors and variables that we can adjust for to try to catch instances like that where two blocks over on this neighborhood, it always outsells the rest of the neighborhood. So we have to have some type of economic adjustment for that.

Okay. Can I give you a scenario? You have January 1 is the date that you collect the data.

Right? Correct.

On January 15, the house sold for a $100,000. Uh-huh. Okay? Now this you you it's just a sale, so you have to evaluate that. Right? Yes. Okay. Now they fix it up. They flip it the next year or the same date. They put in whatever amount of money. Now it sells for 250,000. Will the entire area change? Is that just like it change? Or would it change both times?

Well, the property record obviously would change. So that's going to be updates to kitchens, bath, overall condition. So that alone the capital improvements to the property, you know, that That

changed because it's better. But the neighborhood changed.

And that's it's going to obviously the neighborhood change then is dependent on all sales in that neighborhood. But we're not generally going to look at a completely updated or brand new property to value, let's say, a distressed property. I mean, it's

It almost was it was distressed. Are you known to value a distressed property that sell?

According to other distressed properties. I mean, if I was if I was looking at a property that was in, say, fair condition, I wouldn't look to the completely remodeled property to try to come up with a value for it. I would look for

thing. The market is

not thing.

As sales when you do your assessments for that year? We consider would that all sales in a neighborhood. But again, they each kind of operate within a specific market.

If

The generality is fine. I'm just talking about this particular situation or these situations. When houses sell for less and then the following year they sell double, does that affect assessments in the neighborhood both times?

Yes, it would. But the first time it would affect so you can think of maybe three tiers of properties. You've got distressed properties, your average properties, and your high end remodeled flipped properties. The first time it would affect the properties in the neighborhood that are in that same tier. So if it's an average property that's sold to a flipper, would that sale price would affect average properties.

The properties that are not updated but not in bad shape, just kind of your typical property in the neighborhood. The second time it sold after it had been remodeled and flipped, it would affect the prices for that higher tier because our staff is reviewing the sales of both seeing it's an average property the first time, it's an above average property the second time and so they're not claiming that on average about 60% to 70% of properties in the neighborhood are in about average. There's maybe 10% that are in that high end tier and it depends on the neighborhood exactly what those breakdowns are. But that second sale wouldn't heavily affect the rest of the properties in the neighborhood because we identify it as atypical for the neighborhood. Both times?

The first the second time it wouldn't affect rest of the neighborhood because it's now atypical. The first time it's more of a typical property and we look at that first sale price.

Okay. But as far as evaluating the area and other houses Mhmm. Does that change?

Yes. So if we have a property on record that's and it's on record as being very similar to the house before it was flipped. It's just the average house.

Right.

If it's sold for $100,000 then what we're looking at is, okay, there's a very similar property next door. We think that that property would then probably sell for about $100,000 It sells a year later for $2.50 and it's flipped, well it's no longer like the next door neighbor. So we don't say the next door neighbor is worth $2.50. We might say it's worth a little bit more because there's other sales in the neighborhood and the average properties have gone up in price, but we're not looking at that $2.50 and saying the next door neighbor is the same.

Okay. When you're saying wait, you're talking about the formula.

It's a combination of both the mass appraisal process that I lead and our assessments. Both parts of the process are looking at it. It's a, yeah, you could say the machine the

first Are gonna give the process?

Yes.

Like who does what?

Yes. Okay. Thank you. Okay.

So next I just want to continue on kind of talking about where like assessment and public policy meet and kind of the objectives and maybe some different departments and kind of how the assessor's office can be impactful or you know what we can do for other departments. So assessments are data points amongst other market and social indicators. The real estate market is an investment or asset market. So whether we're thinking of real estate as office buildings or restaurants, other commercial properties or we're looking at homes such as bungalows or duplexes, these are markets with buyers and sellers creating or indicating the market for those properties. And at the assessor's office we try to capture that market value as of January 1 each year.

But assessment data, our sales, assessment values, that's available for policymakers for decisions for their departments and their offices. Excuse me. What is? Our data and our our assessed values, our sales values, all that's available on our website.

No, I'm talking about what policymakers can change. You just said something about it's at the hands of policymakers.

Yeah. So whether it's the common counsel or the mayor or

No, no. I'm not community I'm talking about we have the ability to change the policy for the assessment's office?

No. No. No. No. No. I'm saying people can use our data to apply in their endeavors, you know, as they see fit, as it might be helpful to

them. Gotcha.

So and again, so the real estate market data reflects and informs tax policy, development policy and budgets. Where this is most applicable to the assessor's office is probably tax policy. And I had mentioned some stats earlier in chapter 70 of Wisconsin state statutes which get at the valuation of and how to value real estate. But we also have in the Wisconsin constitution the Article eight uniformity clause which basically says that we must value all classes uniformly at market value. So those are some of the prime directives under which I would say the parameters under which the assessor's office really has authority or jurisdiction to operate.

And the levy that is created is set by the budgets of the city, the county, MPS, MATC and the sewage district. As far as development policy is concerned, this is not something that the assessor's office is specifically involved in or really has any control over. This is something either set by the common council or the mayor acting through different departments or agencies and this might involve planning, zoning, tax incremental districts or policies that are aimed at providing affordable housing or lead abatement, things of that nature. And then another realm that people might try to influence is social policy which is aimed at making society better in some way or another through department, through some act and this might involve libraries or the health department. Some of the more recent things are violence prevention program or traffic calming that we've tried to put through different roads within the city.

So although the assessor's office doesn't make development or social property, we can aid and support other departments in those endeavors and we do this through discussions with elected officials, city departments, community partners. We work with them. We provide data or reports that we have available based on our assessment data and what we know of the neighborhoods and the markets that is occurring. And we also have had in the past we discussed this with some researchers at universities or community advocates that are looking to us to find information on property data or sales data that might have some influence or connection to whatever project it is that they're working on. So how are assessed values determined?

And I think we've gone back a little bit on this, but our appraisers are reviewing roughly 13,500 sales every year and they do this by looking at real estate transfer returns that have to be filed with each sale. They look at property listings that are available for sales. We send out questionnaires to buyers to try to find out what they were thinking when they purchased it and or then we do internal or external inspections of the properties to make sure that we have the correct record to match the sale record. The other thing that would influence a property value is the actual property record, what's going on at the property which is why we review all permits associated with properties. And over the last three years, annual permits that we've had to review in the office have ranged from 17,500 to over 22,000 permits.

And again, a similar process happens where we send inspection letters, we try to get in and look at these properties and or we do external inspections to try to review these permits that are occurring at the properties to make sure we have the most updated information on our property records. Another way that we try to get data is that we review online listings. I'm sure everybody is familiar with Zillow or Trulia. We do look at those. We look at apartments.com.

One of the biggest as far as residential is the multiple listing service or MLS. We review that data. We also look to what local real estate broker brokerages are reporting as far as quarterly reports or listings that they might have available. We take all of that information and kind of try to distill it within our mass appraisal process and with also using that to update any property records that we might have incorrect. So now I think it's the time I'm going to pass it over to Colin.

He's going

to get into mass appraisal, sales data, market value, some of those things. He'll get into some more details on that and then I'll kind of close with you know, where we're at right now and how owners can talk to their local appraisers and possibly appeal if they feel that's necessary.

Madam chair I mean, mister president.

Yes, sir. Damn. I'm not a madam or or a president, but go ahead.

Mister chair.

Yes, sir.

Thank you. Hey. In the budget process, when is your number determined? We got fees. We got share revenue. Now we have property tax. And then we have property tax to make up our budget. When is yours determined?

When do we finalize our assessed values each

year?

When does the city or the direct budget director know how much money is gonna come in from taxes?

That's part of the budgeting process. So the common counsel and the various committees set the

No. I know that. Yeah.

You got what is your do you give a number?

We we tell them what the total we provide both to the council and the state are statement of assessment. So the total amount of assessed value in the city, I believe it's the second Monday in October. October. And so once the budgeting process is done for all of the jurisdictions that have levying power, then we work with the treasurer's office office to uniformly divide up the levies based on assessed value of the properties.

Yeah. But when is that done? And the city knows the number that we can operate off of.

The we provide the the final assessed values for tax billing the second Monday in October.

Second Monday in October. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Mr.

Chair?

Yes,

sir. The appraisal of multi unit apartment buildings. I want to read you an an excerpt from our report out of the Marquette Law School involving the Verada properties. We own some 10,000 units. Now quote and listen carefully please.

All this scale, accumulation of wealth is enormous. The 2025 assessed value of all these properties together was around $625,000,000 but this substantially understates their market value. I matched 26 individual mortgages obtained by Barata Companies with City of Milwaukee parcel records. Each mortgage covered between 67 to 168 apartments and altogether the 24 mortgages refinanced 2,629 units over a quarter of Verado's total. That data came from prospectuses filed in 2024 and 2025.

The city assessed value of these properties the city assessed the value of these properties at $116,300,000 in 2025. However, the appraisals of these properties shown to investors totaled 471,400,000 In other words, these properties were assessed by the city at just 34% of the value at which they were appraised by the market. Some of the appraisals came after the assessment window ended but some did not. Applying this ratio of assessed to appraised value to the rest of Baratta's properties would suggest a total value in excess of $1,700,000,000 What do got to say about that? I think you just went through giving us all this chapter and verse about market value and 100 of market value in state law. What do you say about that?

Sure. And I actually have tried to connect with the author of that and he actually has sent me some data that I plan on reviewing to see if we might have a property record wrong as far as those apartments are concerned. But I started looking into all of the mortgage mortgages concerning that property owner and many of the ones that I saw contained ten, fifteen properties with a mortgage amount. Now we haven't been provided any of these appraisals.

How did he get them? Have He got the prospectuses.

I don't know.

They're public record.

That's why I say I'm in contact with them. I'm following up on that to

So all this modeling and expertise and following state law and Barada who's a very problematic landlord assessed at 34% of his market value?

Well, according to that article, his calculations, again, that's what we want to look

Well, I'm Paul Barker living in Stamford's district with their old bungal. They've been in for fifty years and now all of a sudden worth $200,000 when

You guys, it's obviously a flawed system. Do you guys because those numbers right there don't even match.

Well, again, we have to be able to look at all that data.

But you have

Do you have comment on.

You have your own data. Right?

Yeah. That's why we have apartments uniformly assessed based on the information we have. If this article unearths more information regarding these specific properties, we'll gladly apply it and update those records.

In other words, you rely on a Marquette Law School to drive the appraisal of commercial properties in Milwaukee?

No. I'm saying on those specific properties. We rely on any available data whether it's property owner, a neighbor, a brokerage firm. We use

all of that.

Do you assess the broader property that's $650,000,000? What is your how did you assess their that entire portfolio for $650,000,000? Process? Rent records, rent rules, do you estimate, guesstimate, do you model what a typical one bedroom apartment goes for, what the income do you use an income approach or replacement approach for those properties?

We use an income approach to model what we're seeing in sales.

Sales of the property building?

Of apartments, yes. So we look at apartment sales and then we look at rents, what they're reported to be for cap rates according to those sales and that's how we develop our models.

You got that in here too. John Johnson. Yes. Author. And he shows the effective gross income per month is $12.22 dollars across Baratas entire properties which puts his net in gross income at $149,000,000 a year.

Okay.

Is that useful information to appraise this portfolio?

Well Baratas properties all over the city too so.

Well actually not. They're concentrated in Balloon Cox's District my district all in Stanford's District they're actually not all over the city

well I meant they're they're they're in different neighborhoods sorry.

He had a lot in Northwest Side though

yes yes that's true.

I do have a question because this.

Go

ahead. These are good questions, I think. Mister chair, if it's okay. These are the questions I think Audeman Bowman is asking, and it it makes me think about a couple of years ago when the state let us know that we weren't properly assessing not residential properties, but corporate properties or whatever, commercial

Mhmm.

Properties. And we had to adjust some things to fit within the parameters of what the state felt that the number should be, or else they will come in and start doing it as well. So I guess this is sounding kinda similar to me. So I guess and and we were told by the assessor that you all have done whatever corrective stuff you needed to do, and you are in line with what the state had wanted now. So I guess what I'm my question is, do you guys ever get, like, audited, or do you do self audits or some like, samples or something to, like, let you know if the the computer system you're using, the discretion of the assessors, if the way that you're doing it is is right, is is as fair and as accurate as you could possibly get

Yeah.

Even beyond challenges from residents or or commercial owners. Do you all get audited or do you self audit or anything like that to try to capture? Because, for example, if so what to me, what the state was accusing of of us with the commercial thing, it that was a huge it was a huge enough gap to me and that to me ended up for those years that that we did that, it put pressure on the residential side for whatever. To me, I felt like it made residents have to pay a little more than they probably would have if we would have accurately assessed the commercial. With this, if you examine a Marquesda, what if the guy is right, and we're not properly assessing by potentially hundreds of million, this one owner, what additional pressures is the lack of us doing that putting on the other Correct.

Taxpayers or whatever. So I guess yeah. What systems do you have in place that try to, you know, capture those mistakes or those inconsistencies?

So so because our state definition of accuracy is market value based on sales, what we do is we look at the previous year sales or previous year's assessments, so they're set as of 01/01/2026 in this case. If any property residential or commercial sells in 2026 after the assessments are set, that's a measurement of how accurate were we for that year. And so then when we're working on 2027, then we update our values, our models for that property class. One of the big challenges with valuing commercial property, there's a number of them. One, we don't have as many sales, so it's hard to know exactly which is why we rely on an income approach.

When we do receive income and expense data, we get some from third party sources but the largest batch we would get I'd estimate is from appeals. So these are property owners who believe they're over assessed and are then providing their income and expense information. We and then on top of all of that commercial property owners are the most savvy and have the most resources to appeal and have their values lowered and there's financial implications for the city when we do that after the once tax bills are sent out. So all of this leads to us kind of constantly fighting to capture as much apartment value or commercial value as possible without putting the city at risk financially by needing to pay remissions and going through costly litigation. So when we get new sources of information such as private mortgage documents, when we get income and expense information, we'd love it for every property.

We'd love honest documents from every property owner and that would allow us to be as accurate as possible. Unfortunately, they have strong incentives not to provide that to us And so there's only so far we can go on our side to obtain comparable information.

Well, I do hope as you seek the information from the particular author of this study that in your dialogue, which I hope he does allow himself to have with you all, that you also try to seek sources. Mhmm. They like, he's not the only source, but he could let you know what his sources are or whatever he's comfortable with sharing so that in future years, it doesn't take a report to to get you the information you need, that you could go to those sources as well.

Yeah, Mr. Chair, I just want to emphasize this is all public information to the Security Exchange Commission. I mean, John Johnson is not rummaging through Barada's garbage cans to find the documents accidentally thrown out. It's public record. Why aren't we looking at those public records especially for these massive landlords? I mean right. The man paw guy that owns two duplexes I don't know you got to go to the SEC for him he's probably not there. But the guy who has 10,000 units Yeah. The quick check. What does the SEC have to save?

And sure, this guy could dig it out. I mean, I think we need a subcontract with John Johnson to run the assessor's office because obviously we're missing as as all one cut potentially hundreds of millions of dollars at a certain value which transfers the burden to the homeowners. And that's the real issue here because they're the easy ones. You can you can beat up on them. They can't push back. They can't hire lawyers. They can't hire appraisals. It's easy to load up on the homeowners because they're defenseless. We try to load up on a big 10,000 portfolio guy who's with a net worth of a billion dollars. Yeah, he will push back.

He will litigate. Guaranteed. So we don't want to go there because the homeowners are easy. I think it's what I read in that article is that our assessment process is arguably fundamentally unfair to homeowners in the city Milwaukee? Well,

again, like I say, I would have to look at more of the data. I don't have all the appraisals and like you're saying, some of it is available publicly. But also too, we have 20 appraisers in the office to search through 160,000 parcels and try to dig into those every year. So part of this is also time and how much are we involved. We have tons of sales too of apartments and income information. So if we were to just say pull out Baratas properties and suddenly increase them, you know, 300% that wouldn't be fair and uniform either because

It wouldn't be but if it's yes, it would be fair and uniform if it was market value. If it actually You're you just made the argument in essence that because all of our commercial properties are under assess it would be unfair to assess somebody at market value. That would be a violation of uniformity clause in reverse. Everybody's under assessed in commercial properties. If we assess one to market that would be a violation of uniformity clause because we uniformly under assess. You understand the logic of that?

I'm not saying that we can't raise him. There's under no circumstances could we raise his values. I'm just saying I can't pick him out and say I've got this one data point

on you. Of course you can. He has 10,000 units.

But we've also got a lot of other Two units in

out of three tenants live in a broader building.

Again, I'm happy to look at that data, look at those rents and check them against our models and make any changes that are necessary.

Which won't be until January 2027?

Yes, it would be the next round.

Okay.

Any other questions or comments?

What? We went on this presentation. I'm good on. Oh, you got more? Yeah.

Well, hey. Yeah. I'll know it.

Go ahead.

Yes, we do. So this, the presentation, this process describes the residential revaluation process where we do have an abundance of sales information. The commercial process is different. We can answer questions about that. But it all starts with collecting sales data as Ryan just said earlier.

We get every property conveyance record from the state and the county in two different formats. We validate whether or not that sale was arm's length. And then based on our appraisers work, they will conduct file maintenance. So that means they'll look at listings, they'll do inspections if the owner allows it, they'll look at permit data for sold and unsold properties and they'll update property records based on that. Then what we do is Alder Woman Cogs' question, we do evaluate the previous models.

So we'll look at by neighborhood, look at by building type, grade condition, age of properties. We'll see how accurate we are within those groups and across those groups to see where the model needs to be updated for the next year. Then this is where I get involved with the statistical software. So we will update the model parameters. So for example, the price per square foot of a ranch on average citywide will get then we'll update update we'll we'll new model model and against and the sales to make sure that we're at 100% of market value and uniform across price points and different property types and neighborhoods.

Once I provide that information to appraisers then the individual neighborhood appraiser who is responsible for doing inspections, doing appeal reviews, customer service with property owners in each neighborhood will review that that neighborhood's new assessments. They will make changes if they notice say one block is over or under assessed based on market forces. They will update the factor on that block to say if it's the residential property on a high traffic street, they'll make sure we're valuing that uniformly. One thing that we evaluate is proximity to college campus. I work with appraisers every year to make sure that we're capturing the value added by being close to Marquette and UWM and then seeing where that value goes away as you depart from campus.

Once the appraisers are done and their supervisors have reviewed their work, we publish the new assessments. So that's what happened on April 17. We published the data online and sent out notices of assessed value. That leads us right now to open book. This is where property owners are able to call us, tell us they think that our opinion of market value is wrong, the assessment is wrong.

Sometimes they bring to light inaccurate property record cards which will fix for them and change their assessments. And after all the conversation and work we do with property owners without an appeal, if we're still at an impasse, we've looked at our data and we feel the assessment's accurate and the property owner disagrees, they can then submit an appeal to us. At which point we will put in additional work to review whatever data the property owner provides. We'll do our own secondary inspection if we haven't been on-site in four or more years or if we have evidence that something on the property changed such as a permit record. And then once all of this is done then the appraiser will submit their recommendation to the Board of Assessors and then defend their opinion and value to the Board of Assessors and then later stages of appeal, the Board of Review and Circuit Court if it reaches that point.

So I've just got a quick example for how this translates into the top line numbers you might see on the reports we published.

Thank you. Officer Sampley.

Oh, sorry. Say this is a neighborhood with three properties. We have a smaller home, a ranch with 1.5 baths, 1,200 square feet. We have one Colonial 1,500 square feet, two bathrooms and an 1,800 square foot duplex with three. So let's say the market was relatively weak on the smaller home based on the sales, we'll raise that assessment 5%.

House B had a stronger market based on the sales. So we raised that 110 and then the duplex, we find that duplexes are booming in the neighborhood. All the sales show an increase in price of 20%. So that's how we increase the assessments for that. When you see the top line numbers that Commissioner Larson shared in April and are on our website, that all translates to say neighborhood change of 13% with us adding up all those disparate changes dividing by the total previous value and that gets us our total change from 25% to 26%.

We included these slides just because we get a lot of questions from taxpayers on while I saw that my neighborhood went up 5%, but my assessment went up 7%, what happened? So we just want to be public about how there can be different changes within one neighborhood versus the top line. So then our actual changes for this year, the citywide increase between all classes of property was a total increase of 6%. That was 6.43 for residential properties and 5.31 for commercial properties. The district with the lowest total residential change which is a 1.4% decrease in the 4th District and the highest total residential change was 13.1% in the 7th District.

Our internal projections, so the sales and our initial communications with the Department of Revenue indicates that both the residential and commercial classes will be determined by the state to be at or near 100% of full value within least 5%. I'd estimate about 98% for

both.

Mister chair?