Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Chair of the committee, joining me in the committee room to my far left is Alderman Spiker. To my immediate left is Chris Lee, our staff assistant. We're joined on the big board by Alderman Jackson, and we'll shortly be joined by Alderwoman Coggs and by Alderman Stamper. We're going to hold item one to a later point in the meeting. Alderman Westmoreland is running a little late. We'll go to item two, file 260302 resolution authorizing the sale of the city-owned tax deed properties at 20 34-2038 West Greenfield Avenue in the 8th Aldermanic District. Anybody here on this item? Well, I guess we'll hold this item to a later point. All right, I assume the same would be applied to item three, so we'll hold that item. Moving to item four, file 252190, a substitute ordinance relating to the change in zoning from general plan development to a new detailed plan development known as the Everett Multifamily to allow a multifamily residential development on the property located at 234 South Water Street on the east side of South Water Street, south of East Pittsburgh Avenue in the 12th Aldermanic District. Anybody here on this item? The developers are here. Well, come on up. Tell us what you're doing. There probably is a presentation on this one.

All right, it looks like the DCD.

Is anybody here on anything? What are you guys here on? You're number five. All right, we'll go to number five sorry guys number five a substitute file two six zero zero four six the substitute ordinance relating to the change in zoning from industrial light to li1 to industrial office i01 for the western 50 feet of 1215 with layton avenue located in the south side of west layton avenue east of south 13th street in the 13th aldermanic district good morning good morning sir alden spiker you know anything about this

Yep, this is just a change in zoning to facilitate a CSM. The property owner owns the adjacent parcels for an expansion.

No issues on this in your mind? Nope. Alderman Spiker moves to recommend passage. Hearing no objections, so ordered. All right, we got one thing accomplished today. Yes, sir.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, guys. All right. Thank you.

Oh, you want to go to number two? All right. we're going back to number two here number two item 260302 resolution authorizing the sale of the city-owned taxi properties at 2034-2038 west garfield avenue in the 8th alderman district all right

Good morning. Rosita Ross from Department of City Development here to discuss the disposition for 2034 through 28 West Greenville Avenue in the 8th Automatic District. The city acquired the lots through tax foreclosure in July of 2010. The lots are currently zoned LB2. The current development is for side by side town homes, which will be owner occupied. The buyer is... Sustainable Development LLC doing business as VIA. They're the buyer. They will be developing those into townhomes. These townhomes will be owner-occupied. The city is selling the lots for a dollar. The investment for the new townhomes will be about a million.

The construction cost will be half a million dollars a piece?

No.

No.

No. This development is like a phase development. The townhomes will be... Why don't you take over?

Yes. Good morning, Chairman Baumann, Alderman Spiker. Joanna Bouch, Executive Director of VSCDC. Sustainable Development is a disregarded entity of the nonprofit organization which we utilize to do our construction work. We've been doing housing development since 2008. Our intention with the lot is to build townhomes for homeownership. Each unit will cost about $275,000 to develop. Our intention is to build four units on this particular lot.

Four units.

Four units, so it's two buildings, four units. Got it, all right.

Okay, very good. I assume the local alder person is in favor?

Yes.

Very good. All right, any other questions or comments? Hearing none, Alderman Spiker moves to recommend Adoption and hearing no objections to that, so ordered. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Moving on to item three, file 260304, resolution authorizing the sale of the city-owned tax deed property at 3068 North Titonia Avenue in the 6th Aldermanic District. Good morning. Good morning.

Rosita Ross, DCD. This is a vacant lot. at 3068 North Titonia Avenue in the 6th Automatic District. Our buyer, Mr. Antoine Williams, doing business as 3706 Property Investment LLC. I didn't see that. He currently owns the property next door where he is redeveloping that business and he is looking to purchase our vacant lot for extra parking and daycare, outside play. I'll turn it over to Antoine for him to give you a little bit more information about his development.

Please.

Yeah, I purchased 3074 North Titonia about a year ago. The previous owner had it for like 25 years, so it sat on that corner for a long time. So me and my development team, we just, it's a 6,000 square foot building, so we turned it to a childcare center, but unfortunately, without parking or playground spaces, it cannot be made. So since a lot is vacant, I asked the city where they sell it to me.

um they know they know we're going to get the job done so that's all i needed for i need some parking in the day in the playground space okay very good sounds reasonable all the woman cogs i think you're on the big board i think yes approval approval's been moved hearing no objections so order thank you thank you okay moving on to are we ready on number four at this point we're ready right number four file two five two one nine zero a substitute ordinance relating to the change in zoning from general plan development to a new detailed plan development known as the everett multi-family to allow a multi-family residential development on the property located at 234 south water street on the east side of south water street south of east pittsburgh avenue in the 12th automatic district

All right. Good morning, members of the committee. I'm Tanya Fonseca, City Planning Director from the Department of City Development. This site has been zoned a Detailed Plan Development, or DPD, since around 1999, and several development proposals have been approved in the past, including the most recent 2019 DPD known as Admirals Wharf. though none have been constructed. The Admiral's Wharf development entailed an 11-story residential building with 3,400 square feet of commercial space and an associated river walk. That DPD has since expired and the site is currently zoned GPD or general plan development pursuant to the provisions of the zoning code. The site continues to be used as parking for boat trailers and minimal daily parking. There's a new proposal for the site now and that requires a change in zoning back to a new detailed plan development. Additionally, the site is within the Riverwalk site plan review overlay zone or SPRAs requiring a Riverwalk to be constructed in conjunction with the construction of the overall development. That item relating to the Riverwalk overlay was approved by City Plan Commission at the same time this rezoning file was considered. The applicant team is here to go through their presentation of the proposal for the site, but briefly, the proposal entails a 12-story residential building with 200 residential units, the majority of which will be studios and one bedrooms. There will be 198 internal vehicle parking spaces and 50 bike parking spaces for residents, in addition to short-term bike parking racks placed near the main building entrance at the corner of Water and Pittsburgh. Similar to the prior proposal, vehicle access will be from East Oregon Street to the south, which will be constructed as part of the development. Building materials consist of a precast architectural concrete base and brick with accent metal and fiber cement paneling. All the units will have a private outdoor balcony or Juliet balcony. and there will be several amenities provided for residents including an outdoor amenity deck on the fifth floor and a rooftop outdoor space. A new river walk segment will be constructed along the river frontage and includes generous outdoor gatherings areas on the north and south ends connected by a ramped walkway to make up for the fairly significant gray differential of the site. The Riverwalk will connect under the Pittsburgh Avenue Bridge as well to the north and pedestrian connections will be provided on both the north and the south ends. In review of the city's comprehensive plan, the site is within the Harbor District's water and land use plan area, and the overall vision for this area is to continue its transition to a mixed-use live, work, and play neighborhood with a compact urban form that is walkable and inviting. Waterfront access is prioritized to provide residents and visitors an opportunity to enjoy Milwaukee's Riverwalk system. and the plan encourages high density multi-story buildings that take advantage of the water views. This site is also included in the Walker's Point Equitable Growth through Transit-Oriented Development Plan, and this plan identifies this as a primary development site to accommodate high density development that supports transit-oriented development near the South First Street corridor. A high-rise multifamily residential building at this location that provides a Riverwalk connection is highly consistent with the land use recommendations of the plan. Both plans have additional design recommendations that are relevant to this proposed detailed plan development, and this design is consistent with those recommendations. Staff have reviewed the development plans for the site and feel that the proposed multifamily residential development, inclusive of the new riverwalk segment and pedestrian connections, is consistent with the recommendations of the comprehensive plan in that it provides a high-density, well-designed building that is pedestrian-friendly and activates the river frontage. The applicant team has worked collaboratively with staff through our design review process. We feel this is a high quality development that is highly consistent with the comprehensive plan and will contribute positively to the area. The city plan commission held a public hearing on this file and also considered the Riverwalk overlay on June 8th. At that meeting, three people provided testimony on the file. One person asked whether the boat slips would be available to non-residents, and two people spoke in opposition to the file, noting concerns regarding the building height and density, removal of existing trees, and an increase in traffic and associated pedestrian safety, among other items. City Plan Commission unanimously recommended approval of the file, conditioned on the applicant providing updated exhibits that incorporate some technical corrections and minor changes to the drawings and narrative. Those changes have been incorporated into the exhibits and are part of the file you're reviewing today, and staff concludes that the City Plan Commission conditions have been met. President Perez is also sponsor of the file. And our applicant team is here if you have further questions.

Has your design team looked over this? It may be the renderings versus the reality, but this building looks awfully hulking. and massive, and that may be, again, the black color that the renderings are done in. I'm just curious, did your design team make a third one going over?

We did review this, and we've also reviewed material samples, and the applicant team can speak to that a little bit, but yeah, the renderings do appear much darker than the brick that is proposed for the building, and as I recall, it's the same brick that's used on the Abani in the third ward.

Yeah, it just didn't come across well. Okay. Because, again, this looks like a real big, husky, bulky, massive building, but you're saying that's not the case in reality.

That is not, in our review, the case, no. We believe that it will fit the site well and is consistent with other development proposals that we've reviewed on this site.

Well, it's a little bigger than what's across the river, actually.

It is a little bigger, correct.

And it's quite a bit bigger than what's... upstream on this side of the river. So it will stand out in that sense, will it not?

On this key site, we think that it will fit within the envelope on the site.

Currently, it's about 30 feet less in height than the grain silos about a block to the south. Those are about 165 feet.

The grain silos? Yes. I assume those aren't going to be there forever, though.

Well, we don't know. Yeah. Well, we'll find out. But the last proposal was for an 11-story, and this is 12, but I believe some of the ceiling heights are...

Is this a site that once had the helicopter landing maze on the roof?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, that one didn't shake out.

To say the least, right? Yeah. And that was actually bigger than this, if memory serves.

That may be the case, yeah. There have been enough proposals on this site that it's hard to memorize.

What's your arrangement with the Riverwalk? I mean, are we in for a TIF on that part? Is this going to be a standard 70-30 deal? Yes, yep. But that hasn't come before us yet. Okay.

The Riverwalk was reviewed by City Planning Commission.

The review part, yes, but I'm saying the funding.

Oh, the TIP file, correct.

So that'll be another file coming at some point in the future? Yes. Okay. I see everybody nodding their heads back there, okay. Okay, any questions by committee? Any questions on the big board? This does require a public hearing, so does any members of the public wish to testify about this item? Nobody appears to wish to testify, so we'll close the public hearing. Hearing no further, oh, we'll hear from the developers.

I'm short of any questions. I appreciate the invite. I appreciate being here. As you know, we've developed in this general area before. It was successful. Appreciate being back here working with staff. Everything seems to be going very well on the site. How many units is the Avani? 261.

So that's actually bigger in the number of units in this one, but shorter because of the design guidelines in the third ward, basically?

Generally speaking, yeah.

And how's the lease up going with that? Because that's a market rate project, correct?

Yeah, yeah. Going well.

Okay.

Thus, we're here and ready to go for round two.

Right. Well, this is a prominent site, and we're joined by BJS, which is the current owner, correct?

Owner and contractor and designer.

Oh, you will be the general contractor on this project? Oh, well, that's convenient. All right.

They also were on a Bonnie.

All right. Got it. I understand. All right. Very good.

Mr. Chair? Yeah, well, Jackson. Does this site contain any restaurant stores or is it all residential?

All residential, yeah. Active first floor space, you know, management offices, co-working space, exercise facilities, that sort of thing. And so you'll see activity on the first floor as you're walking the boardwalk, but all internal activity.

I was just seeing if that was the bar on the top. That's all.

That prominent corner there.

Yeah, yeah, so that's that's a community area offices Mailroom co-working space and then on the backside large exercise facility.

Yeah Okay Yeah, this is a prominent location. It's been vacant a long time The guy who currently there's there's a tenant on that site corrected the Jerry's Doc's right. Yeah, okay, and he's gonna be relocated believe he's just he's also to the south i believe he's just shifting the excess storage back to the south i see so he'll still have a presence near the waterfront on that definition okay very good all right any other questions or comments Hearing none, Alderman Jackson moves to recommend passage and hearing no objections to the order. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Okay, moving back to item one, Alderman Westmoreland's file. File 260309, communication from the Department of Neighborhood Services providing an operational status update sponsored by Alderman Westmoreland. Alderman Westmoreland.

Thank you. Good morning to the committee. Thank you to the department. for being here today. The purpose of this communication is not to assign blame, but to better understand the department's current capacity, staffing, workload, and performance. Our residents expect timely inspections, clear communication, and responsive government. As policy makers, it is our responsibility to understand what's working, where the challenges exist, and whether there are opportunities to improve service delivery, accountability, and communication with both residents and aldermanic offices. Before I get into my I understand you have a presentation that might answer a lot of them, so go ahead.

Thank you, good morning. Hesa Mila-Rollovega, Commissioner with the Department of Neighborhood Services. Thank you for having us today. Today we're gonna be responding in a communication from the Department of Neighborhood Services providing an operational status update. The presentation that we put together, I wanted to just mention, based on the questions the Alderman Westmoreland shared, we're really oriented to our inspection staff. So today we're really gonna be looking and zooming in into our inspection divisions, not necessarily development center. With that in mind, we can just start. Just a fresh reminder of what is our mission. Through the enforcement of buildings zoning fire, environmental, property maintenance, and other ordinance, D&S protects the value of investment in neighborhoods and commercial properties while supporting community goals of building safe, healthy neighborhoods and increasing investment and economic vitality throughout the city. We do this through plan review, permit issuance, building inspections, occupancy inspections and property maintenance and code enforcement. We are a total staff of 290 field inspectors. We have 113, that is roughly 40% of our staff is dedicated for field inspectors with an annual approximate budget of 27 million for the full department and with an annual approximate revenue of 28, 29 million dollars. We wanna zoom in into inspection and staffing. Let's just go over all of what it is an actual code enforcement inspector profile. Of office hours of an eight hour day, office hours are between two and three hours daily. This is the time in what inspectors use to schedule inspections, respond to calls, respond to emails. polish any kind of reports that they need to do, and so on. From there, it is inspected and it's our policy that they also spend between five to six hours daily at the field conducting inspections. An average stop per day for a well-rounded and trained inspector, it's around six stops to eight stops a day. With our equipments, besides our vests and any other safety equipment that we handle, they also carry iPads and laptops to do their performance on the field. Certifications required for code enforcement inspectors at an entry level are international property maintenance code. certification, and the international fire code, fire inspector one. These are the basics for performing our due diligence as enforcement inspectors. If you have any questions about the salary range as an inspector, enforcement inspector, that rounds between $57,000 to $95,000 a year, depending on the entry levels or the experience as the career progression continues. Inspector staffing level, the slide that we're carrying today, it's for levels from 2020 until today. We are only, for this exercise, focusing in commercial, environmental inspection, residential inspection, and special enforcement inspections. From 2020, a few things that I want you to clarify here. It's like if you see from 2020 to 2026, there have been some budget adjustments, which means that there's been some polishing in the actual amount of staff dedicated to inspections. That actually also reflects what is the average vacancy rates through the years. In 2025, in commercial inspection, Right at the end of the year, we promoted two inspectors to another divisions of the department. We are currently doing an onboarding for the commercial inspection site, which is two inspectors right now. And residential inspection, almost the same kind of situation, promotions at the end of the year. We are currently doing the onboarding, we have the list, and right now we're just starting to get where will be those first time starting times. And almost the same with the special enforcement. With the special enforcement, I wanna highlight that for the last few years, we have been able to have more than eight inspectors. That said, we are funded for 10. Right now, we are doing the full recruitment for the whole 10 inspectors. positions available. So right now there's one vacancy, but we're gonna use the two that we were having on hold and trying to see if we can recruit three special enforcements at this point.

So I'm curious, the approved position has actually decreased in the 2026 budget?

That's correct.

I assume you didn't request that decrease.

It was more based on the actual recruitment. If you notice, from the last three, four years since 2022, we were not able to attract more than eight or 10 inspectors in that side. And when the budget adjustments were coming, there was positions that were just not getting filled and we just have to start somewhere to do the adjustments. So that's why we ended up at 10.

Why aren't the positions being filled? In your judgment, why is this not an attractive job? Doesn't pay enough, too hazardous?

A little bit of everything, a little bit of everything, and I think from our experience, too, this requires a lot of skills, very, very different to what it is residential and commercial. This is pretty much one of the most complicated and comprehensive special enforcement. Okay, what do they do?

Why don't you describe what they do?

Most of the time, from our perspective, we really deal with also nuisance properties, and we also manage large portfolios of multi-family properties.

So that's okay, all right.

And we also do zoning. So those are pretty much the three basics for special enforcement. So pretty much a lot of our recruitment is internal. For these positions, it's really hard to actually find qualified individuals outside that kind of like,

Because although the numbers, the percentage lies a little bit, but I mean, you're talking 30% vacancies.

Correct, correct. So they look like high rate vacancies, but the reality is that there was just more shortage or like trimming or getting that.

Given some of the issues we've had with large portfolio properties, wouldn't we be justified in increasing vacancies? The number of positions here?

That's correct and that's why I'm pushing for those two that have always been like just not filled to really attract and fill those two.

Mr. Chair? Yeah, I'll let Mr. Perez.

Thank you. Would it be safe to say that if there's a need for more enforcement with the multi-unit buildings and the attention that they need, is there a way to cover the cost of that through that type of enforcement considering they're so large and they're not being managed properly? We had a big communication here about how some of these landlords are using DNS in a really odd way to manage their properties that, oh, we know something's wrong. Now we're gonna repair it, we're gonna get orders. So anything that would help us help you to figure out how we can ramp up the cost to these multi-unit buildings that are creating a drain to help us justify the cost for because I know we can't exceed the cost of inspection because of the state statute, but if we need to lobby there, we need very specific things to lobby for, and or how do they pay more for the attention they're getting?

church that that's a good question but you're going to be we can that was a little bit i don't think we do that but i think we can definitely take it a deeper dive at you know the amount of time that we spend handling these the specific cases uh... i think a good example that passed recently is the uh... posting fee for emergency orders so those that we are visiting because we have to issue an emergency order now have to pay for that time that we spent to go there to post that order to get certified mail, the amount of office time and administrative time is significant as well in addition to what it takes our inspectors in the field going out. So if you get an emergency order and you correct it within that timeline, previously there was no cost recovery method for that order. So now that posting fee accounts for the time that it takes our inspectors to go out, post that order, go out, re-inspect that property, and then handle the administrative work on the back end.

It seems counterintuitive. Back in 2020, you were authorized for 18 positions. You had 17 in place, and now we're down to seven. I mean, that's a huge decline in special enforcement capacity when the problem seems to be expanding, especially now with the city attorney going into litigation, in which your people are intimately involved, I would assume, correct? Yes, absolutely. I mean, that would seem to be a problem to have that. I mean, you're down 10, that's well more than half. Anybody do anything about that? I mean, just curious.

Mr. Chair, on that, so special enforcement used to be its own unit. A former commissioner was head of it, Erica Lewandowski, Erica Roberts now. The decision was made to kind of fold it under residential, and I guess... Has that was that decision? Tied to anything with the vacancies. I mean now you don't have somebody a pure supervisor for residential and commercial and special enforcement advocating for the staffing and stuff was this by design because The special enforcement cases I deal with are mostly zoning ones illegal auto activity a range of things so it's not the multi units, but it's extremely time intensive. We sometimes have requests for after hours things. It seems like with seven folks you can't even, and that's for the whole city, you can't even begin. So I guess my question though originally was is the folding of special enforcement into residential, was that supposed to accomplish anything and how can it accomplish anything if you only have seven out of 17 that you had just five years ago?

Yes, two points for that question. The first one was the decision of reorganizing special enforcement with residential. It's all driven through organization and increasing the direct reports of management. This was a strategy for a budget adjustment. We do know that we've been in budget adjustments for quite a while. And the best intention here was not to actually go and do the cuts at the boots on the ground, but actually just reorganize the management perspective of it so we could comply with the adjustment of the budgets that we were needing at that moment. Right now, there is indeed a supervisor for a special enforcement. The difference is that supervisor reports to the manager of residential. enforcement. That's the difference. The supervisor managed around the eight staff that is in there, that inspectors are. So that's one way of, a reason of why we did that adjustment. The second one, which is not yet.

Just briefly on that. Yes. So the direct reports went down in part because the staffing of special enforcement went down. So if you had 17 people, then there would be a need for that manager. So be told like, hey, well, we need to, have fewer oversight folks over smaller staff, that doesn't really address the problem of the reducing staff. Again, from an advocacy standpoint, somebody who's on a par. I'm not saying that was the wrong move, but what I have found is special enforcement does a ton of work. Even just in my district, the amount of work I have for them goes way beyond what, seven inspectors?

And it's understandable, and this is exactly why we're recruiting three inspectors at this moment so we can have 10 full staff inspectors for the special enforcement. The second point that I was trying to also address is like, I know you mentioned zoning. Zoning back in the day, way, way, way, way back in the day, it used to be hosted in the commercial division. That is something that we are reevaluating it because we do understand that zoning, and especially with the large portfolio of multifamilies that we're facing right now, definitely needs that attention. Zoning definitely can be rehoused in an area in where we don't need to overwhelm the special enforcement dedicated specifically to special enforcement multifamily inspections.

Any other questions?

Yes.

Are there credentials required for inspectors? And if so, what are they?

Yes, the initial basic inspection certifications for a level one entry are international property maintenance code certification and international fire code fire inspector one. That is through ICC. That is an entry level perspective. Through that, we are working in the career progression that is like they attain more certifications with the goal of like having a better understanding of framework of what are actually inspections out there, like UDC, Uniform Dwelling Code, or commercial code, certifications, those are different levels, so then they can continue going through their career progression. But entry level are those two that I just mentioned.

Do we offer opportunities for those two for maybe internal city staff that are in some other positions so that they can move into the section we do?

Yes, we do offer across training. That's one of our new sections, the Outreach and Training Division, in where we are actually cross-training internally. We also right now in the works of getting the certification to actually become a tester within our own department instead of then having to go to proctor's offices or anything like that just to facilitate that side. We have also purchased codes for them to practice for those tests as well. So if we go to the next slide, we can just talk a little bit more about uh... what have been actual promotions and transfers a lot of these vacancies have been internal promotions elder woman cox as you uh... we're asking and that is actually the intention just to continue uh... that go back to the previous so i mean i guess i mean the the the small print makes it kind of hard to read but as i look at the special enforcement you actually

with the exception of 2025, you haven't hired anybody in six years.

Because we haven't get any interest in the postings. That was the issue that we were having from the beginning and from all those years. So you see the zeros is because even though we were having vacancies and we were promoting them and we were trying to recruit, people were just not coming and being interest into actually being part of specialist.

Are there contractors out there that we can use to fill these?

That is not a bad suggestion. We can look a little bit more. I know there was some recommendations maybe a year ago that we were discussing about how to use external resources or professional services from that part, more in a part-time position side. So that is definitely something that we can.

So the special enforcement, when we get a complaint about a 40-unit building's heating system failing, in the middle of December, they're the ones that respond to that?

That's correct.

That's a big response.

It is.

It's usually multiple people, correct?

It is.

Well, that's a problem, it seems to me.

Yeah. Just to be clear, no one's applying or you're getting recruits that just don't even meet the basic?

At the beginning it was no one was applying, that's why we did the cleanup. Right now, even that we're having some that don't have all the requirements that we're looking, we are being willing to bring them on board and continue the training and that's probably the ones that we just recently have two promotions that were moved from commercial to special enforcement with that purpose. Wow, okay.

Mr. Chair, for that training piece for the first level, I know you said it's a new program. Are you all working with employees to help upskill folks, or is it just your department?

Let me see if I understood the question. You're talking about if we're asking with other workers or other employees outside of the Milwaukee to bring staff?

No. Since we already have an entity that we work with as a city for employment and for training purposes, which is Employee Milwaukee, I'm asking for those two levels of... credentials that are necessary for that entry level inspection. I asked if you guys offer that to other internal city employees so that they may now be eligible to become inspectors and you say yes, a new program. I'm asking do you work with Employee Milwaukee on that credential training at all or do you just do it internally?

It's just internal. So our method of bringing in new recruits and then getting them trained would be the intern program that we have. So we have five approved positions for our interns. Those are under the outreach and training manager. So kind of revamping that program and really looking at what skill sets those individuals need to both attain those certifications and then move into a position of a code enforcement inspector with the goal of they can get those certifications or get started on those when they're interns and then really kind of seamlessly move into the role of a code enforcement inspector and hopefully already have those certifications. If not, anyone that we recruit generally has one year to obtain those certifications.

It might be some other ways to get some more city employees who might be interested in getting some upskills to help fill some of those positions. I would encourage you to work with DRA Employee on how some other ways there might be to do that. Additionally, when inspectors leave, do you all do exit interviews? And if you do, have you found any... specific things?

Yes, good question. Most of the, like I was mentioning, a lot of the vacancies that we have are being promotional or transfers. That said, the few ones that were because of leaving, we have two that were medical reasons and the other one were relocation, like personal relocations to other jurisdictions. Okay.

Recently, I know that, and over time, there have been occasional safety issues that have arisen for inspectors. Do you find safety being a major concern of inspectors? If so, what have you done and what have you offered for inspectors to help them feel more safe in being able to execute the job?

Yeah, absolutely. We certainly address those incidents when they come up and evaluate what happens. Is there anything that we could do to prevent this? Are there steps that we could take from our perspective, but also to better educate and prepare our field staff to have awareness in the field? Recently, earlier this year, we offered a multi-day code enforcement inspector safety training that all of our field staff took. very robust in depth training, covering a multitude of topics. So hoping that that would prepare them with the skill set that they need. And then making sure that these inspectors that we're bringing on board, that a key component of coming into this role is having that field awareness and that safety training and understanding how to safely operate in the field and perform this job.

And my last question for now, Mr. Chair. Of the inspector positions, how many managers are there currently or supervisory and managerial? The leadership. How many? So 17 inspector positions, seven are field. And how many positions are manager, supervisory, leadership?

So... We have commercial division manager, residential division manager. There are five supervisor positions within the residential division, and there are two, three, I have to count them, three supervisors within the commercial division. I think that covers all of them.

Yes. Of those, is it eight or is it 10? For what you just said, is it eight or ten?

For the supervisors? So within commercial, there's three supervisors. So there's two commercial code enforcement supervisors and then one environmental supervisor. And then for residential, there are five supervisors that oversee that division.

Okay. Yeah, different teams. So of those eight, what is the diversity, both in gender and race?

I don't have that offhand, but I can get that information for you and have you provide it Thank you Is the code enforcement inspector an actual job classification or there are multiple like there's inspector one inspector to inspector three kind of thing is that I

A little bit of everything. Yes, there is a code enforcement inspector is the title that said within that, which is what we're working for the last two years with DER, it's the actual career progression, which is level one, level two, level three, four, which is based on certifications, time of inspection, like expertise, and qualifications overall. that's kind of like a design that we've been having to really impulse the progression within the department.

So the starting range for Inspector One is $57,000 a year with all those certifications?

So that would be the entry level for our residential or commercial code enforcement inspector. Those individuals will be given one year to obtain those primary certifications.

The basics.

Yeah, and then the top end of that is for special enforcement inspectors. So that's not just for residential.

And just to be clear, where does someone, can anyone just Google where do I get my certification and go pay to get it done? Or is this easy to find? Yeah.

Yes, we have like, this is all to the Department of Safety and Professional Services. We can do two routes. You can either obtain it through the state or like other folks have the, through the ICC, International Code Council. So what they do is like they obtain the certifications through that process and then go to the state and kind of like

How long does it take? Does it depend on the person?

It all depends on the person and we have folks that have been really brilliant and do it in three months and we have half inspectors that have been needing more than a year to complete. It's all based on experiences and methods of study and help and mentoring.

To me, 57,000 starting is an impediment to recruiting. for all the study that has to be done and the potential hazards involved. Do they still use their own vehicles or do they use city vehicles? Yes, they do.

Yes, they do.

Okay. And there's a vehicle allowance. Were there mileage? Yes.

Yes, mileage.

Okay. Because, again, I think we mentioned this in one of the other committees. I keep seeing ads on TV for WE Energy's ground men and that's $32.50 an hour. Yeah. And that's basically a laborer with no certification. The qualifications are a clean driving record, willing to work hard, and willing to work in bad weather, period. Those are the qualifications for a $64,000 a year job. Has there been any consideration of getting these reclassified? these inspector grades, the one, two, three, and four?

I think, I don't know the last time the positions were evaluated and reclassified. Our focus currently has been on moving forward with the career progression so that folks in these roles have an opportunity to advance by pursuing certifications

we'll attain performance measures so mr chair yeah just on average from the moment someone they start with dr correct to for the moment they start with dr to you hire what does that average time look like well that

That all depends. One of the examples that we were having right now are vacancies that started in December. It usually takes around three months between filling vacancy and doing the process for the job posting. Then the job posting is done. We have to wait a little bit for getting the list and organizing what it is, the next step of interviewing and ranking and everything. It could be easily from three months to nine months, and I wouldn't be surprised if a year, but it all depends on.

You can hire anybody around here. The processes, correct.

We have plenty to go through, and I wanna make sure that we're addressing it, so. There was a question of inspector average years of service. Commercial enforcement is in roughly five years. I do want to mention that there's a saying for us that anybody that it's more than six years, seven years, that when it actually mature inspector, So just wanted to give you a heads up on that side. So commercial we have around 5.6, environmental code enforcement 11 years, neighborhood improvement program nine, residential code enforcement nine, special code enforcement inspectors 14, and construction trades nine. With that in mind, we're gonna jump really quick to complaint volume, just something that also Westmoreland was interested in covering, and we're just gonna have Mike Mismanian to go and cover those.

All right, so the first slide here illustrates our annual complaint volume overall, and it tracks it from 2020 through 2026, year to date. So we're generally averaging around 35 to 40,000 complaints annually. This is a breakdown, the six year average by aldermanic district. You can see it varies quite widely across the city as far as complaint volume and where our higher volumes are versus our lower volumes. This slide just illustrates some of the increases in complaint volume that we've dealt with compared to that six-year average. So for 2025, these are increases in percentage. What it does is it really shows that we are seeing a higher volume of complaints across the board. Residential showed a decrease, but had a 7% increase in the previous year. So this is department-wide, but it kind of shows that things continue to increase as far as volume goes for the work that we do.

So this one breaks down. Could you explain administrative? I mean, what does that entail?

So that would be property recording, things that are handled in the back office. So in order to track those, to make sure that people comply, we create an ENF record for those. So making sure that people are recording their properties correctly so that we have a contact that we can reach should we need to for issues that come up.

Okay.

So this is an issue.

Mr. Chair.

Who's up next? Alderman Stamper.

Thank you. Thank you. Regarding the complaints, are those all resident driven or are and do we track inspector violations versus complaints? For example, I make a complaint that is recorded versus an inspector out seeing a complaint. I'm seeing an issue. Sorry.

The numbers here would include all of our complaints. I don't know if we would track self-initiated versus non-self-initiated, but I think that's something we could do.

But do we have that? Is that being done though?

I don't believe there's a field to track that currently.

Is it a complaint driven process?

Yeah, I mean, everything is so if an inspector initiated a complaint, it would follow the same path, the creation of an ENF record. I don't think we have a field that indicates this is self-initiated, but I think that's something we could easily do. Okay. Yeah, I'll be interested in that.

Is that even happening?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we encourage our staff to, you know, when you're out there, you know, don't focus just on the issue, kind of take the blinders off and look at it holistically to make sure that we're, there were complaints in the past that that wasn't happening.

That's why I asked.

Yeah. And that's, that's why I'm sorry. Um, but that's why I asked that question. I asked too, because there was a period of time where, you know, people are given their zones and you repeatedly recheck, check those zones. So whether it was, um, complaint driven or not they would initiate stuff then it was a period of time where it was like no it's only complaint driven so people we would get caught my office would get calls where they were written up but a neighbor wasn't and it's like well if they was over here they saw that too why didn't they write them up too it's like no they were called because somebody reported you and so that's what they came out to do so are you sitting before us telling us now that your instruction to them is to

is to not just be initiated yeah to also initiate yeah there is no there's no instruction to only focus on the issue that you're called out there for in the complaint if you see something that's a violation then inspectors should should be writing that up

Mr. Chair, on that point, somebody within DNS told me that Wisconsin state law prohibits an inspector from visually seeing an inspection that has not been reported to DNS in initiating a inspection or a complaint. The inspection or complaint cannot come from the inspector. Is that true?

I don't believe that's correct. I can verify with the city attorney, but I think that an inspector that observes a violation could be the complainant for violation. All right.

Okay. Mr. Chair? Sure. Yeah.

Alderman Stamper, go ahead.

Yeah. So, okay. So as you survey areas, are we, are inspectors assigned to particular districts or zones? For example, if an inspector comes on a block and sees an issue and comes back and sees the issue or another issue, is it just that inspector?

So it would depend on the nature of the complaint. So assuming that it's, say, we have a residential inspector that's there for a residential complaint, it would be on them to write up another residential violation that they saw. If it were something outside of their scope, they could refer that to a different division. Does that answer your questions?

Well, for example, I'm just trying to see if you have the same inspector surveying the same area on a regular routine.

Yeah, generally our inspectors are assigned to certain districts.

Yes, that is correct, Alderman Stamper. So they are all assigned by districts. We use geo codes. It all depends, all the trades, all the inspections are assigned by districts. When there's a survey or a neighborhood walk, what we've been instructed to inspectors is like they have to track all the properties that were in discussion so then they can bring them back and entry those kind of like observations into the system. So just wanted to add that. to your answer to your question.

Thank you. Just on the commercial inspection, is there a violation for a property being abandoned and boarded for over 5, 6, 7, 10 years? What are we doing about... daily inspection of abandoned commercial buildings for years.

So a building like that should be part of our vacant building program, which should get an exterior inspection two times a year. If there are outstanding violations on that property, when we inspect, they are charged enhanced reinspection fees.

Okay. Okay. Do we... Properties have been sitting that need to be condemned and they're privately owned. Those part of our inspection reoccurring process.

So any property... If you can send me those addresses, we're happy to look and see what the status of those is. If they haven't been evaluated by our condemnation team, we can take a look at them and try to reach out to gain entry or see what the status is and see if they meet the criteria for a raise order.

Okay. And what's the highest fine we have available?

I think well generally if a property or commercial vacant building what is our highest ability to find I'd have to check to see what the six month inspection fee is if you have outstanding violations but I can get back to you on that just to verify. But our monthly re-inspection, if a property's on monthly re-inspections and it has outstanding violations, the fine is $500, roughly $560 a month, I believe.

Okay, that's good. And that's separate than residential. That's just commercial, correct?

So that would be any vacant building, or I'm sorry, any building that is on monthly re-inspections that has been looking.

Okay, so monthly commercial and residential have the same inspection fees? Recurring inspection penalty fees?

Yes.

Is that right? Shouldn't commercial receive a higher fee? We could talk about that. Okay.

I think it would depend on the nature of the violence.

I would support vacant buildings that are commercial. Yeah, okay. Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair. Yeah, I mean, I'll say it again. Please help us really ramp up covering costs, doing what we need to do. We've got plenty of nuisance properties, especially the ones where From my experience, I'll think about 20% of the nuisance properties are probably new that come online versus they've changed hands and they've become a new nuisance. The other 80% are chronic nuisance folks. I got some on national that special enforcement was out there six years ago, eight years ago, and we're still having problems with them. And I think we have to figure out a way where the penalties get worse or stronger or tougher for these chronic nuisance folks. nuisance that we they were having problems with them they'll get written up we'll get real tough there'll be a period where they'll you'll see no vacant vehicles with out tags and the building having some decent upkeep and then there's a level of comfort it goes right back to we got to find a way to those chronic folks they get to feel it

All right. Keep going with the slides here. So this one just illustrates the year over year changes in volume broken down by section. Special enforcement is in green. Orange is our animal complaints. Blue is our trade section. Residential is not part of this because on the next slide you saw, based on the volume, if we add that in, it kind of just distorts the overall scope. but generally increasing across the board as far as volume of complaints.

You mean the green is special enforcement? Mr. Chair.

The green on this slide that says no residential is special enforcement complaint volume.

Wow, and that's the place where you have the biggest vacancy rate.

Yeah.

Don't we see a problem there?

I think... Right. I think the high vacancy rate is partially due to the lower number of positions. The percentage is going to read higher.

Okay.

Mr. Chair.

Alderman Samper.

Thank you. On animal complaints, how many pit bulls can one house have and what if they're not chained up or not locked up? Is that a violation? Come on.

Yeah, animals can't be left to run at large. There is no breed-specific limitations on animals, but I'm happy to kind of get into the specifics of that.

We literally have amendments coming forward at the next council meeting on that.

Right, yeah, we've been working through phase one and phase two of animals, and then phase three is forthcoming.

Okay, but I thought there were a two pit bull limit.

That's not accurate? The dog is limited to, the limitation for animals is based on the number of the animals. It is no longer breed specific. There is no specifics to limitations on the number of pit bulls that you could have. It's the number of dogs before you would need a fancier's license or other provisions.

Well, how many dogs can one person have then?

No more than three. Okay, so three is the limit?

Yes.

Okay.

It's amazingly complicated, Alderman Stamper. Trust me. We've been going over this with some difficulty getting our arms around.

It's difficult to understand and to apply, I'm sure. But let me ask you this. The inspectors, are they protected from a pit bull bite?

So part of our safety training is animal awareness. So we train them to be aware when they're approaching a property, not to go into backyards with closed gates, to be aware if there are signs. If there's animals at large, we really can't prepare them for that. We do have specific inspectors that investigate bites. So they have a higher level of awareness of having to deal with animals on a regular basis.

And then you call MADIC?

Correct, yeah. If there are animals loose, we call them right away. Or the police do.

Okay, okay. But there's no specific training like for the protection from a dog, like a pit bull and that?

No, we don't have specific training for that. Okay, okay.

Thank you.

What do you do after someone's been shot at? Sorry, what? What do you do after an inspector has been shot at?

There's a few different levels. One, first of all, is definitely apply and see what the situation, how is the person doing. We usually put them in an administrative leave while there's an investigation. overall we have the communications with the police department in regards to incidents as they are the ones who actually investigate that site we actually communicate to when there's any kind of like violence or threat we have a communication in internal communication, which is the one call. We send the email to everybody, just to notify where is the areas that they should be avoiding at that time. So it just depends, too, on what is the case, particularly. But we are always very aware of where they are and inform everybody else and then sometimes we also have a post event in where we sit down, we have debriefs, we have conversations, we have AP as well to those kind of conversations. So it all depends on the magnitude of the event.

So is the potential for counseling or therapy or anything like that made available to the employee and to all staff after such an incident?

Yeah, absolutely. The last time it happened, we brought in EAP and made that available to staff if they needed to talk about the incident, even the ones that weren't directly involved in it.

Do you look at any changes? and how you send out staff or things that you all do that could work differently to prevent or to at least help staff deal with such occurrences.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if something like this happens, it makes us take a step back and really look at everything. Did we prepare our staff or are we preparing our staff to best go out in the field and safely navigate in these scenarios?

Can I see, off of this meeting today, can I see a copy of the correspondence that y'all sent out to staff when maybe what you did the last time, a shooting or something violent occurred? Sure. Or shots fired, I should say.

How many incidents do we have like that a year?

were inspectors are shot enemy that specific ref very random uh... maybe one this year honestly uh... acting they might be probably more late random threats probably that's not the one that which is like over the phone but uh... defense like shot at very very very very random and honestly in the last few years we just have this one

But they are in the vicinity where they're close to shots fired and things of that nature.

Yes.

Maybe it's not them, but they're in an unsafe environment.

Correct. And every time that we have a notification like that, we send a correspondence to everybody to avoid those places.

Sounds like the dogs are a bigger threat than getting shot at.

Depends on what neighborhood you are. Okay. All right.

We're just gonna jump really quick into complaint tracking and accountability. There were some questions of how do we manage aldermanic service requests. So once we receive a complaint, a referral, or a request, which is typically to supervisors of managers, aldermanic contact, either supervisors of managers, we have instructions on a policy that we need to respond between 24 to 48 hours for that initial response and acknowledgement. of the communication, then from there we do the referrals to the appropriate DNS division for investigation, ENF is created, within three to five business days, inspector is doing an investigation, is expecting to do an investigation, inspector issues appropriate orders, if any findings are done on that moment, and follow up with the results of the investigation and action taken between five to 10 business days. and subsequent status updates provided are open requests within 24 hours if you're needing more from that perspective. Inspection metrics and key performance indicators.

Go ahead.

Inspector metrics and K performance indicators that we've been working for the performance measurements for inspections divisions is the number of average daily stops. How many inspections are we performing daily? Complaint response time. How long is it taking us to respond to those complaints? Percentage of fire inspection completed. Are we hitting our percentage targets? Volume of overdue orders. Are we performing timely follow-ups and enforcement? Order review prior to mailing or court referral. Are we issuing orders correctly? And inspection results tracking, which is advisory issues, no entries, partials, just trying to get ahead on that side. For the last few years, this is just a glance of the inspection metrics and key performance indicators since 2023. With the complaints that we have received, I wanted to just zoom in on the average days to actual inspection or initial inspection back in 2023. 14 days to actually do that initial inspection in 2024, seven days. And from 2025 and as today, we are steady with six days of response from the initial complaint to go and do an investigation. This is a glance of overdue orders. This is one part of our metrics, with 2023 being the blue, 24 the orange, and 2025 the gray. Overdue orders are those that are kind of on that limbo stage and there have been no follow-ups. You can see we have in 2023 really high numbers of those overdue orders, so no follow-ups. 2024, we start decreasing those by 10% and we continue just to continue cleaning with the grade being what we are today.

I'm not sure I understand the range of 30 to 60%. What's 30, what's 60? Is that categories of orders? Is that the range?

Volume of orders that are overdue. So if you have a 30-day compliance timeline, then this order would be 30 days past that date or 90 days would be a 30-day order.

Oh, that's what that means.

So ensuring that inspectors are going back out to follow up on the orders that we've issued to take further enforcement action or make contact to try and get these issues resolved.

So the way it is reading, it's like, for example, in 2023, 89% of all the orders issued through residential were overdue. As today, 39% of those orders are overdue. That's a significant decrease in cleanup. So that's kind of like how we're looking at the data today.

Okay.

workload volume and service delivery. I just wanted to really highlight things that we have add to our services in the last two years. Animals, we have had a significant increase in bites, investigations, and appeals. We also have the biannual fire inspections. These are the non-conforming spring grows. We have around 650 additional fire inspections that we're doing annually. Vacant building inspections, around 2,000 biannual exterior inspections, short-term rentals, 325 licenses, so that's where enforcement we were doing this year. Community partners, neighborhood efforts, additional outreach and inspection volume, and targeted enforcement prosecution. We are currently working with the city attorney's office to prosecute no-complain property owners. Once we are kind of running out of the tools that we have as an enforcement, now we have regular standing meetings to discuss with city attorney and recommend those properties to them to see what else we can do for enforcement. Moving forward, ongoing process improvements, broader training opportunities on DNS operations and processes internally, streamlining program inspections processes is a continuous effort. Being mindful that inspection staff capacity, we show you the numbers today, we show you how much we're doing, I think like now is just the time to really start evaluating that if we continue to add more, We don't know how many more inspectors we're gonna be in need of. So just be mindful on that side. And we continue to explore technology to create processes, store, retrieve, and transmit communication and information. With that, that concludes our communication presentation. Any questions?

Based on this, there were two files that were to be scheduled today, but Alderman Stamper pulled them back and they involve basically a targeted inspection regimen for certain specific neighborhoods. And I guess it wasn't ready to be heard today. But judging from what I've heard today, do we have the capacity to do what's being proposed in those two files?

Great question. Right now, the scale that we are looking, and this is why we still wanna shape a little bit more the proposals, are looking at very, very small scale right now. Honestly, I think for us, we're looking at 200 properties in a span of two years. The pilot program have to start very small if indeed we wanted to have a successful program in the near future. And be established but for now, that's why we're starting really small just to see what other processes or what other needs have Going to be needing or evaluated it down the road and that's why it's called a pilot program so far But great question.

Thank you Okay And I access question

because when we put in a complaint to DNS from my office, we follow up.

Alderman Stamper, mute yourself. I'm sorry. Calling DNS to file a complaint.

What is the requirement that an inspector has to communicate with an alder and like what's the expectation I know they have office hours and ask that question because you know sometimes you know we'll put a request in in orders are frequently or not orders violations are frequently missed sometimes it'll say no violation sometimes one violation to be listed the second and third will be missed so we try to reach out to those inspectors to get more information and sometimes they don't respond Sometimes they respond after three weeks of hounding them So what is the expectation from an inspector to communicate?

Maybe we should ask them. What is the preferred method of because I have always in 24 years I always go through either the section head The deputy or the chief that's correct on the severity of the matter. I've never dealt with inspectors directly and

That's correct. If it would be the preferred method, I think we have echoed this for a while, especially since 2023. Our preference is you do the communication either directly with manager or supervisor. Right now, we're actually, after we did, We did an aid training for your new aides and one of my recommendation and request was that we are gonna be developing after that training, I thought like about developing a profile sheet for your district and where you would have the actual supervisors that are assigned to your district in a specific. The preference methods have always been talk first with leadership. The reality is, and that's what we wanted to show today, inspectors are busy. And inspectors are on the field. Inspectors are, like, managing a lot of different things, right? But the kids don't respond. That's why I'll continue to mention supervisors are going to be probably more suitable to do that kind of tracking.

No, and I understand that now, but I didn't before. So my frustration is I'm reaching out, I'm reaching out, and I'm reaching out. And if they're checking their emails, they're choosing to ignore those emails.

Yeah, and we actually did a directive recently, too, to remind everybody what is the process. Even a case that an inspector would have received an email or a request from an elder, the expectation is that that inspector actually reports to the supervisor, and that way we can engage them in the conversation. If that hasn't been happening, then we would need to go and zoom in specifically of what are those inspectors that are not following our directives.

My next question is tied to certificates of occupancy. As you know, I've dealt with that quite frequently in District 5. In the last two months, I found three businesses that were operating without certificates of occupancy and each of those businesses have had DNS enforcement and they've been issued orders for operating a business without the certificate of occupancy. So at what point does DNS get the pool. Cause my understanding is the police department is the only entity that we have to shut down the business. At what point does DNS get the police department involved instead of just continuously writing these orders? Because all three of these businesses I've gotten shut down. Um, and I feel like that doesn't happen unless I'm initiating it.

Yeah, I think, um, certainly the, bring us to the worst of the worst that you have if they don't have occupancy they continue to operate and it's it's an egregious situation uh... i'm not familiar with the process for the police being able to shut down a business our focus with these persistently problematic non-compliant properties has been to work with the city attorney's office and you know try and use the legal avenues to take further enforcement action to actually file suit against these owners and take them to court to hold them accountable and that's the slow process commissioner mpd is the only entity we have correct to shut these businesses down so my question is at what point

Does DNS reach out to MPD or is that on each alder to do that?

Who has that responsibility? What's that? I'm not sure if the police have that authority. Oh, they do.

They've done it three times for me in the last month. Are these licensed premises as well? Yes, they require Bozo approval.

Okay. So I think the license may... bring a different element into it just not having a certificate of occupancy i'm not sure is is grounds for them to shut down the business but i'm not familiar with that but the authority they have with the license and the ability to shut down this issue with rooming houses repeatedly

where a rooming house either has no license or has a license non-renewed and nothing changes. They just continue operating. And we've raised the question, well, what happens if a license is non-renewed? And the answer I get is the only remedy we have is to go to court and file an eviction action.

Well, for mine, without certificate of occupancy, which is legally required, MPD has shut those businesses down. So... which is what i'm hearing is that you guys have nothing to do with that and you don't know what the process is but you'll just entirely looking okay to win and right because i mean a good point and and we've been working with you on the last four years and i've been seeing the same thing for sure and you know i've had one that has continuously been written order since twenty twenty five yeah you're operating without a certificate you know what i mean uh... enough that happens So, I mean, I'm interested in knowing what the internal process is, but it seems like it would make sense that you guys would get others involved instead of just continuously writing those orders, because as we know, those orders don't mean much to some individuals.

Yeah, we will use any tools that we have to try and address these problems, certainly.

But what is the process?

Four.

If an establishment is not operating with appropriate occupancy, what is your process?

So we initially would issue orders telling them that they need to obtain occupancy. If they persistently don't, follow through on that process we would send that order to court eventually if they continue to not comply it would go to monthly re-inspections if it's something egregious and it's a public safety hazard we could tap the city attorney's office earlier on in the process what are we defining as persistent and how are we defining egregious um i guess it depends on the activity that's that's occurring as part of this whatever, I guess it would depend on the circumstances. So I don't have a definition.

So it's up to the inspector to differentiate that?

No, I mean generally if these issues are largely problematic, they rise to the level of the supervisory staff, the managers, the commissioner's office awareness. And then we'll bring in the city attorney's office to see what other options we might have legally to address the problems.

Mr. Chair, yes, but is there a fine?

Alderman Stamper.

Yes. Fine for operating without an occupancy.

Yes. So there's re-inspection fees. We can issue citations. Sometimes that doesn't move forward.

Shut it down. That's the only way. Exactly. That's the only way. I mean, to me, the way I see it is you need a certificate of occupancy. It's like it's too many gray areas. Is there safety threats? Like, no, you need a certificate of occupancy to operate, period.

I agree. So let me ask you this. Where is it marked for accountability when it does, when they do try to get their occupancy permit to say, hey, you've been operating illegally in the process?

So it would depend on if it's a permitted use or not. Generally If something is a permitted use and someone Pursues that occupancy after they've received orders they would have some kind of inspection depending on you know what it's for if there's an additional administrative process, like they need BOSA. So they're pursuing this. They need to get BOSA for a special use approval. We have a group that would weigh in and say, hey, this business has been persistently noncompliant. These are the existing violations or the outstanding violations. So it kind of depends on the scenario and what they're proposing to do or what they need occupancy for.

but is the penalty satisfied before they receive an occupancy permit?

If there are outstanding violations, depending on what they are, they could prohibit them from obtaining occupancy.

Is that considered a penalty before you can open up occupancy for operating without an occupancy permit?

Yeah. I mean, if you want to open a business and you can't because you haven't satisfied these conditions or corrected these codes violations, I think that that in addition with re-inspection fees and citations potentially, um, would be a penalty.

But I think, um, I think he's also speaking up if they were operating, um, and having people in there and they didn't have an occupancy and then they come back to get their occupancy. Is there any kind of penalty? for them having previously operated without it.

That's exactly right. For example, you're operating without a permit, now you go get your permit. You should have paid your fine first.

For anything that requires permits, There could be a multi-permit fee associated with that. I don't know that we've explored that as an option for occupancy. So if you're persistently non-compliant for, so if you do electrical work without a permit, we can charge you a quad fee. I think that's a good question if that's an option for occupancy as well. You know, if you have continually non-complied with what we're asking you to do, why shouldn't you also pay some additional penalty?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And Auderman Westmoreland, you asked these questions, and it sparked something in me that it's partially due to what you're talking about, but partially due to a whole bunch of other occupancy-related DNS stuff. And Commissioner, you know, in my district, like the 901 East Keith thing, and in my conversations with the police, I'm like, but they didn't even have occupancy. So you should have been able to go in and da-da-da. And it was all these legal reasons why they said they couldn't. going yeah um even though i knew it didn't have occupancy um and it took over a year and the city attorney and involved in a whole bunch of stuff to be able to um to shut that situation down i do think it's a lot of unclear and unresolved issues around who has the power to do what when it comes to occupancy or lack thereof for buildings, establishments, or whatever. And I do think we should try to add clarity where we can, but it seems like, at least from my dealing with 901, that a lot of it's based in statutory stuff. um and having clarity for both police and dns um as to what can be done but i do think it's something that should be looked at and should be yeah um we need to be fighting for something right um to make it more clear because it was because when you talk about you know how bad the problem is or whatever the risk you know at least for me what was happening at that building with the large sums of people they were inviting in there and the environmental issues electrical issues and all that stuff that building had I think nobody got hurt but to listen to police say we know it's no occupancy we know they're not supposed to be having nothing and we see the people going in and we can't

um do anything until xyz yeah it's kind of um crazy you know how did the police shut these businesses down did you know how they physically did it they just yeah they go they go there and they let let them know you don't have a certificate i mean board to place no i think they just advise you don't have your certificate of occupancy you can't be operating we're letting you know you can't be operating or else what

Good question.

But all two have closed without, you know, incident and they're working on the third right now. But it just, I mean, and this is a topic for a different committee, but to me it's wild that you can approve a license, that license committee that does not have a BOZA approval for that use.

You're not supposed to. You're not supposed to do that.

And it's been happening a lot.

That's something to take up with licensing.

So I think the recent ordinance change that was put into place was intended as a stopgap for that. And I think once we're all in the same system, once licensing's on Acela, I think that communication, that visibility of both records and coordinating those processes will be much better.

We literally this last licensing hearing sent back something in my district because at the table the licensing manager realized that it had not gone through both of the way it was supposed to. So we held it and sent it back. But technically they're supposed to look at that licensing is before it ever gets put on a schedule. And if it needs a BOSA, it's supposed to go do that first. And we went through that process because for years we were doing exactly what you're talking about. We're voting on stuff that didn't even get approved at BOSA. So it's like, why are we wasting our time with these things? So that was the process that was supposed to be set up. I do think it'll be easier once the systems are like more sense, but you're right. Lately, some things have been slipping through. I noticed that at the last hearing.

Well, one last thing I have for you guys is what do you need from the council to make things better?

We can continue the conversations. I think, like, today we have really good points that I would definitely like to evaluate more and have a follow-up, you know, one-on-ones and continue doing these conversations. But I think, like, what we appreciate of today was for all of us to understand that we are doing an amazing work. Yes, there's some flaws here and there that we're gonna continue to improve, but it was just a good point for us to really express like, A, we have the interest and the commitment with the City of Milwaukee, Second, we have been working tremendously in improving our processes and everything. I continue to talk about it's not like we're raising the bar. We're literally looking at our jobs and our roles and responsibilities from the basic perspective, and we're looking for accountability from our staff. to stay with that. So it was just continue this kind of conversations, honestly. And I will probably have a better list down the road.

Inspectors use their personal vehicles, right? Yes. Is that a concern for some people? Do they leave because you don't want to use their personal vehicles or the personal vehicle breaks down? Would it help if DNS had...

Yes, yes, yes and no in regards of like how we have effect. I did notice when we were doing recruitment, for example, for our electrical inspectors like maybe a year and a half ago, we have a lot of folks coming from different jurisdictions, right? And once we would explain you have to drive your car, in the city of Milwaukee, them not familiarized with city of Milwaukee, they will go like, yeah, not really. Thank you so much for the opportunity. So some people have chosen that side. I'm not seeing that right now because it's very internal what we're doing. but from the comfort perspective of we do mileage for them, but think about like how the conditions are out there, maintenance of the actual cars, that's the parts in where we continue to struggle a little bit from the staffing perspective.

How are they reimbursed for the car, mileage?

It's mileage based on the route.

On the center system there basically? And they submit a mileage report weekly, monthly? Daily? Monthly.

Monthly.

And there's a portal for that, a computer portal?

Yeah, so they do that through CityTime.

What do we pay them, like 30 cents a mile or 45 cents a mile?

I don't know what the current rate is. I think it's between 30 and 40.

That's it. Have we ever looked at switching over to vehicle fleet? Then we could track via GPS and they could have radios installed in the vehicles and other protection devices. I mean...

I've heard discussion about it, but I don't know that it's ever been explored on a larger scale just because of, I think, the number of vehicles that we would need and then the parking and maintenance and ongoing capital costs that come with that. So I don't know that anyone's ever taken a deep dive into what that would cost to stand up and maintain it.

Mr. Chair, just on the follow-up with the coordination, I'll be probably doing communication file because I have convened BOZA, DNS, licensing, city attorney. We tried to get to the bottom of looking at how these systems should be talking to each other, can be talking to each other, and I'll share that with the rest of the council. Anyone interested can follow up with me. I know that The license division is yet to come fully aboard on with Acela. That would make some of this easier, but we still have to coordinate how licensing and BOSA and DNS are talking to one another because we're seeing these licenses get held over. They're supposed to go to BOSA before they get to licensing. Some slip through the cracks. we're realizing there's a lot of expired occupancies through BOLSA that we're catching up with or we only realize when there's complaint-driven complaints and inspections that, oh, you don't have an occupancy. I had a... mechanic on 10th and Greenfield that didn't have one for almost two years and then remained open and was just getting fined every day until he went to Bowles and straightened it out. So we got to get better at it and figure out how we coordinate all of that in a better way.

And I know you can't answer this, but both, you know, Bowles that licensed the vision, not both being on the cellar, why is that even an excuse?

Hmm.

I can't answer that for them, but I will to your point, though. We made the pivot on licensing to make sure that they go through BOSA first some years ago. Mm-hmm. I don't think it's really become a big issue until more recently of stuff slipping through. So I do think for some years, even without being on the same system, there's been enough communication that for the most part, maybe not 100%, but what we're seeing now, it was not to this level at all. So there was a way at some point that communication was enough. that it wasn't a whole bunch of stuff that needed BOSA still coming before us. To your point, something has happened more recently that I think is a breakdown somewhere. to where you're seeing more of the stuff get through license.

And the other thing is a lot of occupancies have requirements on them, right? And lots of times those occupancies, the establishments lapse on those. The biggest violator for me are auto body or mechanic businesses or even car dealerships where you cannot have any cars on the street, they'll do that for a while. Then slowly you'll see cars that they're working on in the public right away that shouldn't be there. Right. And it isn't until people complain that you're violating your Your occupancy.

And for licensing purposes, you can get approved because you know how they ask you if you're holding something. They say holding occupancy all the time. Right. But that also means even if we approve it, it shouldn't be released until that occupancy is satisfied.

And that's not happening, but... Hopefully, I mean, I don't think it's an excuse, but there is an excuse that they're both using the Acela piece, but I think once that gets cleaned up, talk about workload, I think that helps you guys out.

Looking forward for that. We are still working a lot in revamping some of the Acela kind of loops, including the public portal, too, just for better navigation as well. So it's work coming.

We all good? Yep. Thank you.

I do have one last question. I'm sorry. Go ahead. During budget, there was a whole bunch of conversation about condemnation because of the lack of demolitions that had taken place. And it was arguments over the money that we were allotting and all of that kind of thing, you probably recall. But you all, I think, gave your... word that you knew the condemnations would likely increase and you're working with DCD and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I wanted to know where are we on track for the year for condemnations and I also wanted to know who's in charge of the condemnation stuff currently.

I think we could provide you with a report that shows kind of where we're at, what we've received from DCD, if you are with us following up on that. Currently the condemnation section is under our construction trades division manager, so we have a supervisor in place, we have staff performing those inspections, but that has moved from commercial to construction for alignment purposes.

What does that mean?

The condemnation inspectors are construction inspectors, essentially. I think the thought behind moving them there was to have better universality with those inspectors. They should have similar skill sets and similar awareness to be able to perform those duties. I think they do that by being part of that division.

That's new.

Yeah, previously it was under the commercial division.

You said you'll give me the exact numbers. Are we at a higher rate of demolitions than we were this time last year?

We continue to be at the same pace in regards of the people that we are... the properties that we got. I honestly would say that I believe it's tomorrow we are meeting as a full staff to look just specifically where we are in the numbers. So I just don't wanna like jump right away because we do have that communication tomorrow among all of us because we really want to start preparing for budget and the next years. Few things that are definitely changing that we're optimistic it's like also We are having now as a key performance indicator on the timeline when we receive that property to Demolition, full demolition. I think like for a long, long time we were just like leaving the contractors just to manage on their own pace. I think of the demolitions when we were expecting that if we have a contract with you, you should be demoing those within the three months of expectation. So we're also changing some expectations from that perspective so then we can like really move into getting that backlog again. Does DPW still have the internal? Yes.

I was going to ask that.

And they're doing around two properties every week and a half.

They were doing city-owned properties and then you bid out the work for privately owned properties? Yes. And that's still the division of labor that exists?

I think they're busy on the books through August currently. We can provide more detailed numbers.

But they're running out of properties at the Malish?

No, I think they're going to be busy through that time.

There's more. Mr.

Chair.

Not on condemnation, but one request for you can supply after committee. I'm interested in knowing whether the number of cases you're sending to Muni Court is going up or has gone up and whether you're finding that that is... A more necessary tool these days to move people off the dime several businesses that just accept You know, they'll pay the reinspection is the cost of doing business and and sometimes muni court is the only way to go To get them to to change their ways so don't have to answer that here But if that's something you could look into and supply Alderman Westmoreland and the committee with that'd be helpful will do.

Thank you. Thank you

All right, so Alderman Jackson moves to hold this item at the call of the chair. I'm hearing no objections. Thank you. Good discussion. Thanks. Okay, moving on to item six, file 260299, resolution authorizing and directing a transfer of funds from the Capital Improvement Advanced Planning Fund to a subaccount for comprehensive planning, land use, and zoning analysis, GIS mapping, printing, and other related administrative activities.

Thank you, Chair. Okay. Tanya Fonseca, DCD. This is our customary file that we use to allocate funds into our administrative account, which we use for various day-to-day expenses in the planning division. This includes our graduate planning interns that work on current and long-range planning, our GIS and data subscriptions for mapping and data analysis, printing, and some other routine annual administrative items.

Okay, very good. Any questions or comments on this? Hearing none, Alderman Spiker moves to recommend adoption. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Moving on to item seven, file 260298. Resolution approving amendment number one to the project plan and authorizing expenditures for tax incremental district number 62, which is the DRS Power and Control Technologies, TID, in the First Aldermanic District. This is sponsored by Alderwoman Pratt. There's also a request for a substitute. Alderman Jackson moves to amend the file by introducing a substitute. Hearing no objections, so ordered. The substitute is before us. All right.

Thank you. Mr. Chair, committee members, Alyssa Remington with the Department of City Development. As you just stated, this is the First Amendment to TID 62, which is a two parcel district located in the First Aldermanic District. It's generally bounded by West Congress Street and West Hope to the north and the south and between 30th and 31st Streets. This district was created back in 2005 for the purpose of improving facility efficiencies that would be required within a technology manufacturing business in order for them to remain competitive. DRS improved their HVAC systems, they completed window replacements, improved their fire protection systems, and they achieved a 30% reduction in building-related operating expenses. The city provided a $1.5 million forgivable loan for this purpose, and required DRS to maintain employment at this facility at 450 employees for a period of 10 years. In addition, the TID provided $150,000 for a residential assistance program for exterior repairs and upgrades to nearby homes and apartment buildings. Now this district is nearing the end of its statutory life and we've worked collaboratively with the Department of Public Works as well as with the Alderman of the District to prioritize a list of possible public improvements that are located within the 1 1⁄2 mile boundary and propose the following projects. So the Dr. Howard Fuller Collegiate Academy opened its campus on North 29th Street in the fall of 2023 and has brought significant increased traffic to this single block of North 29th Street. A top priority for the Alderman and is to see a significant quality increase in the condition of this street. And we have budgeted a resurfacing project at $120,000 for North 29th. In addition to that resurfacing, there are five high-impact paving projects that will have a positive impact on the neighborhood. At a cost of $570,000, we propose these five high-impact improvements to West Congress Street, West Cortland Avenue, North 31st, and North 20th. There are two stretches on North Congress, so that's five, but on four streets, as shown a couple of examples here, North 31st and West Cortland. The high impact paving project on West Congress between North 27th and North 30th also has the inclusion of speed humps as a traffic calming measure to increase public safety on that particular stretch. Traffic calming measures are also going to be focused on North Hopkins, as it was recently identified as a high injury network corridor. I'm sure most of you know what that is, but this is an area of our city where the most fatal and serious crashes occur or are predicted to occur if we don't make changes to the conditions of these streets. We are looking to provide $370,000 to make improvements to the stretch of North Hopkins that's located within the boundary of this TID, as well as install raised crosswalks near the Lloyd-Barbee Montessori School. Those are indicated by the two dots, two blue dots on this map, and then the stretch of Hopkins that we are going to accommodate with this TID is this purple line in the top left of the map. This map just generally identifies the locations of all the proposed improvements that I have put before you, which is mostly concentrated in that northern section. So pretty straightforward, but in total we're proposing a million dollars in project costs as laid out more specifically here for raised crosswalks, traffic calming, high impact paving, and that resurfacing in addition to the speed humps. When you look at the general feasibility of this TID amendment, the district's current value is about $6.8 million and that equates an incremental value of just over $4 million. We are generating just over $80,000 in annual increment and with this future anticipated expenditure of a million dollars, we anticipate payoff of the TID by year 2027 or year 22 of the TID. If you have any questions, otherwise we seek your approval.

Are we extending this one for affordable housing purposes?

We could once it closes. We're not at that point yet, but yes. Okay.

Mr. Chair. Hold on to the question. $120,000 for raised crosswalks. How many does that entail?

Let's see. We have right now I think only two... Two, but there could be more in terms of the design on Hopkins, but I do also have Kevin Muse here from DPW who could answer your questions more specifically as it relates to these improvements.

Mr. Chair, in the meantime, DRS has always maintained that level of jobs there for those 10 years?

They did for those 10 years, yes, yep.

Are they there or gone? They're gone. I thought they were gone.

Yeah.

Yep. So there's somebody else in there that's still generating? There I think are various uses in that building at this time. They're trying to occupy the space, but yes. Okay. DRS has left.

Yes, sir. Chair, members of the committee, Kevin Mews, City Engineer, Department of Public Works. To Alderman Jackson's question, it's actually the $120,000 is one raised crosswalk. The reason there's two dots on the map is we're going to work with the Alderwoman and the community to determine which location is more advantageous and addresses the concern around the school and worries about utilities. There's always concerns about utilities and things like that for raised crosswalks. How much are these to make one crosswalk? One raised crosswalk is about $100,000 to $120,000.

How is that possible? What's a good word? That seems excessive, exorbitant.

That is unfortunately the cost. A raised crosswalk work typically requires, almost always requires redoing the curb ramps on each side to bring those up to ADA compliance because we're doing an improvement to the crosswalk. So there's usually some sidewalk squares on either side to get the slopes correct. We're usually redoing the corner, reforming the curves. Depending on the conflicts at the location, we might need to be moving or changing drainage structures. So a catch basin or an inlet might need to move or change. And then we're building the slopes, matching in the pavement, and putting the concrete across. So it is about 100 to 120,000. And we have been building quite a few of these across the city, so we're confident in that number.

Listen, I have a guy, I could cut that call.

A guy who can meet public requirements.

Mr. Chair, are utilities an issue?

With the race crosswalks? It depends on the location. So drainage is the biggest one from a cost driver. Again, if we have to adjust one of our own catch basins or inlets, that's the biggest thing that might determine a cost. We try to avoid utility conflicts, mostly in that we are trying to avoid putting a manhole onto a slope. that we can't easily adjust that manhole lid to that slope. Some cases we can, some cases we can't.

Could you just be clear what utilities you're talking about when you say that?

Oh, any utility that's occupying underground in the city public right away. So could be our own water or sewer manhole lids, could also be AT&T, WeEnergies, those types of things.

Okay, so we spend TID money on relocating WE Energy's utilities and other AT&T utilities?

No, no. So no, this is more about making sure we don't have to do that work. We want to avoid that conflict if we can so that we are not impacting our own utilities or costs. That's why we give ourselves flexibility on the map to avoid those conflicts. So are we spending TID money on moving utilities or not? No, we are not, because if they need to move for our project, they would have to move, but there are obviously city-owned utilities that we may not want to impact, because that increases our overall costs.

Just curious, on that map, the green, horizontal, space and then it turns north into a much wider green space going vertical that's the infamous lincoln creek correct is lincoln creek yes which is one of our most flood prone waterways in the entire city if not that's called an area correct

It's among those, yes.

I'm just curious, wouldn't we want to commit some of this money to that? You're dealing with the flooding issue? Sure. And isn't there a culvert under the railroad right away that is like a dam, works as a dam, and it causes Link Creek to back all the way up into the neighborhoods?

So that will turn this into a very large and complex discussion, but I think probably the biggest thing to point to is actually succeeding items on the agenda do include... All the next files? Yeah, include... basically things in coordination with a very large project being led by MMSD called the West Basin Project. So we could probably discuss it then, yeah.

You know, patching the holes in some street, you'd want to eliminate the flooding problem, which is a massive issue for the residents over there.

It is, it is, yes. And eliminate the flooding problem is a very difficult and very expensive conversation, but we can talk about that, yeah.

There's a lot of overlap in the next two items too with this one. Okay, fair enough, but then we'll move on. No, in terms of countries and projects.

Calling? Hello? Yes. Okay, you're up.

Thanks. I joined in to say that I was in support of this TID and what we're doing with the money, doing a lot of infrastructure things that have long been ignored in this area and millions of dollars into an area that had been long somewhat forgotten. So I'm happy that residents are going to have something they can use and that they'll be able to see every day.

Okay. Appreciate that. Very good.

Any other questions or comments? So on... Hampton right there where the train tracks are. Do we pay for that or do we get that money from the train people or is that a split cost or something like that? It's train tracks on Hampton right there.

Uh, yes. Yeah. So those train tracks, um, what specifically about them?

I'm saying when we redo on a street or do anything projects right there, do we get the money from them or do they be involved in a project at all?

Um, they do need to be involved in the project. Um, if it's has to do with the quality of our streets, it is ours. If it has to do exactly at the crossing, it becomes a more complex conversation. Um, we are, Let me just make sure I don't misspeak here.

That one is. The tracks go overhead across Hampton.

Yep, the one to the east is a project that is actually active right now. Closer to 29th, 28th, that at-grade crossing on Hampton, there's an active project to improve that.

That's still operational? I thought it was abandoned.

It's not abandoned. Really? Okay. It is less active than it was even somewhat recently. Yeah, that was the old beer line, of course.

right yeah there's a there's a few facilities right there that do use it okay interesting all right okay so all injection moves to recommend uh adoption of this item and hearing no objections so we're moving on to item eight We wanna read these together, all of these put to him. Item eight, file 260295, resolution approving amendment number two to the project plan and authorizing expenditures for Texas incremental district number 72, which is Bishops Creek in the first and seventh aldermanic district. And then item nine, file 260296, resolution approving amendment number two to the project plan and authorizing expenditures for taxing criminal district number 74, which is North 35th Street and West Capitol Drive in the sixth and seventh aldermanic districts. There's also a request for substitutes for both of these items. Alderman Jackson moves to amend item eight by introducing a substitute. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Sub A is before us. With respect to item nine, Alderman Cogg moves to amend the file by introducing a substitute. Hearing no objections, Sub A is before us on that file, okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, committee members. Lori Lutzka with the Department of City Development. I'm here to present the second amendment to TID 72, Bishop's Creek. This TID was created in 2008 for the purpose of facilitating the redevelopment of the former Kaiser Tannery at 32nd and Hampton. and to provide forgivable home improvement loans throughout the TID district. The total project costs at that time that were approved was $1,585,000. In 2014, Amendment 1 was approved for the redetermination of the district's base value after the district experienced a decline in property value such that the district's value was reduced at least 10% than its base value for the prior two consecutive years. And this happened during the Great Recession with a number of our TIDs, so we had the ability to come in and redetermine the base value. So when the TID was created in 2008, the base value was 32.6 million. When we redetermined it, it was reduced to 24.4 million. So that presents the opportunity for us to be here today. Today's value's at $45.8 million. So it provides a lot more capacity to provide this type of amendment.

Didn't we have to subsidize this TID with other?

Yes, yes. This TID also received a donation as well as many others. So first of all, I want to thank Alderman Jackson as well as Alderwoman Pratt for working with both the Department of City Development and DPW to collaborate and determine what we will fund with this TID amendment. So presenting today, I'm presenting to you today a proposed amendment, amendment two. In total it'll be an increase of $2 million in project costs. The previous TID provided improvements along North Hopkins. This TID does as well to provide traffic calming measures between Billard and Cortland. We will also do raised crosswalks at North Titonia and West Lincoln Creek Parkway. This TID will also fund a full street lighting circuit replacement and this is occurring on the northwest side of the actual district in and within the TID boundary. As part of the West Basin project, residents and stakeholders asked for a playground. So this TID will fund the playground. And to give a little background on the MMSD West Basin project, it's a 10-acre site along North 35th Street between Congress and Hopkins. And it was intended to help with stormwater management. It will hold up to 30 gallons of water. northwest side cdc was they conducted the outreach and residents and stakeholders again asked for more community green space in the area trails playground area and playground equipment as well as sledding hill and other amenities the basin project will be under construction next year and then the playground we anticipate being installed in 2028. So the feasibility of the project, to date we've spent a little bit more than $1.4 million. The items being presented for funding include the traffic infrastructure, traffic calming and other infrastructure with the raised sidewalks for 315,000. The upgraded street lighting circuit at a cost of 935,000. The playground equipment will cost 750,000. Administrative, professional, organizational, and legal costs to date are a little bit more than $114,000. And the total project costs, including this amendment, is $3,564,452. And the financing, including previous and proposed on the bonds, will be a little bit more than $2 million. The TID is projected to pay off in year 2020, year 22, by 2032. So with that, I open it up for questions.

Mr. Jackson. So, um, first I want to thank all the men, all the woman prep for graciously donated to the seventh district. But, um, with these projects, the way they overlap, what part of the project where you connect the sewer from Roosevelt to this West Brayson project?

Sure. Again, Kevin Mews, chair, members of the committee, city engineer, Kevin Mews from the Department of Public Works. I know, Laurie, if you want to go back to that slide you had about the West Basin project.

That's the old school bus yard, right?

It is, yep. The old B bus lines, yep. So this is, as Laurie indicated, a pretty significant stormwater management project for this area, targeted to hold up to 30 million gallons of water, again, being led by the sewerage district. But we have a number of interrelationships between our infrastructure, our responsibility around the flooding, obviously the sewage district's responsibility on stormwater management there as well. So our infrastructure is going to come from the south to connect into this basin. So right now, you're aware of the substantial work that's been done along Roosevelt, of course, in your district, Alderman. That's still beneficial work, but there is greater benefit in doing the connection piece from the intersection of Capitol and Roosevelt to, well, 35th and Hopkins essentially right here to get into the southwest corner of that parcel that's highlighted, which will then take advantage of this basin. So the basin needs to be built first. MSD really should speak to this, but my understanding is it's a 2027 construction timeline for that. the basin needs to have time for the grass to grow, the plants to grow, those types of things to be ready to accept water. We will then be building our I've never had that happen to me here before. We will then be building our connection along 35th there to get the water between those two locations and then take advantage of the basin. There's also work happening independent of the MMSD work in this area specifically to address stormwater issues on Capitol. and using the old, on the east side of the railroad, the Ned's Pizza site. So we built the basin there recently, the sewers part of DPW infrastructure, and we will be doing some work underneath Capitol, within Capitol, to connect and deal with the drainage issues right in this location of Capitol underneath the railroad viaduct and other places nearby. So there's a lot happening in this location. Basically, the public is aware of it because MSD has been doing public outreach for years on this project, but the work, the physical work will start soon and will take a few years in a row of construction and different pieces to make all this connect and work together.

So we're putting a playground in the middle of what could be a big lake when there's heavy storms?

So as part of the outreach, thank you, Chair, as part of the outreach for the project, again, led by MMSD for West Basin, there was a desire by the community to have a lot of community amenities associated with the project. So outside of the flood, of the stormwater management piece. There will be community assets, some of which MMSD will be paying for because they're eligible expenses under MMSD's mandate. A playground, as I understand it, again, they could speak to this more than I could, is not something within their mandate they feel like they can spend their tax revenues on, and so that would be a city contribution, and luckily for us, the TID funds are available to do that.

All right, very good. Mr. Chair? Yeah, Alderman President. So how much of this is, everything we're talking about today, how much is it dependent on the base and MMSD executing that? And what happens if they don't? Have they given you a timeline of when it's gonna get done?

Yeah, so a couple things. So I believe the only thing that's dependent, the only project that's dependent on that is the West Basin play area in this TID amendment. What I just described was a number of other sewer projects that need to run in succession with MMSD's projects, but those aren't related to the TID funding. That project did experience some delays. They are re-accelerating it and trying to get essentially as close as they can to their original delivery time period. I know it is a high priority for them to deliver the basin very soon, especially after last August floods. So they are working very hard to get that done as quickly as possible.

On the KK River, we've been waiting a long time for 16th Street East to get done and it's delay after delay and waiting for Jackson Park and then. So just wondering how dependent that is on this.

Yeah, the playground would be the only piece that's dependent on.

Which is probably very important to the community.

It is.

Mr. Chairman Alderman Perez the expenditure period for this TID expires in December of 2030 so we do have a little bit of buffer time but we get if but if we do get to the point where we feel that the funding will not be able to be used for the playground we will revisit what are the things we can fund with the Alder the council members that represent this area.

I'm just curious. Can this be a backdoor way of siphoning money out of the high-performing TIDs by basically making donations to this TID? And then, whoops, look, there's additional increment. Now we can spread it around in the neighborhood.

That was not the intention. This TID and a few others...

But it effectively worked that way.

It did work that way, but, I mean, it literally just worked... in the last two years, meaning that the property, this, yeah, this district and the one that, TID 74, Century City, they have a large number of residential properties and in this case, those residential properties are now seeing that appreciation much greater in some cases than the city average and it's bringing that valuation up.

But I mean, that'd be a neat way of basically directing downtown TID increment to Central City TIDs by, oh, we need a donation, and then, oh, mysteriously, the assessments have increased. Now we have surplus, so let's do some amendments. Yes. Okay. Very good. That's an accurate statement.

Mr.

Chair. Yeah.

Real quick, in the proposal, do you have the, what is the proposal, resurfacing of 35th Street from Capitol to, I forgot the other street?

That'll be the next TID amendment. Right, right. That's TID 74. Okay.

Okay, very good. We have this claims issue with all these flooding victims, and there may not have been any claims if they had had this basin in place last August. This is designed to specifically alleviate the Lincoln Creek flooding, right? Kind of?

It will help, yes, it will help. I mean, the level of storm that was experienced last August is not... That is one that is difficult to design almost any system for.

14 inches of rain is, you'd have to have a basin the size of the entire north side to afford that water.

Right, right. We'd have to restore probably the original floodplains, which you'd have to remove the neighborhoods, which is not obviously something that's being considered, so. Mm-hmm.

Right, got it. Okay, very good. So on this one, there'll be no other questions or comments. Alderman Jackson moves to recommend adoption. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Moving on to item nine. We've already read that into the record. Let's see the PowerPoint on that one. By the way, that big building that burned down was in this TID, correct? It was. That the trespasser was just taking a look around, decided to smoke a cigarette and the whole thing burned down?

Mr. Chairman, go ahead. Mr. Chairman, yes, it's not only nearby, it's within the district boundary, but I did check with the assessor's office to see if that would impact the feasibility. And because the property itself, the improvements, had no value, literally it was assessed at zero dollars, it does not impact the feasibility. But excellent question. Thank you.

All right. Mr. Chair, good question with that. So when we were originally seeing these, that building hadn't burned down. So what changed where you get the money from to demolish the building?

The demolition, the property owner would cover. The church, I assume, right? Yes, Holy Redeemer, yes. The subsidiary owns that property.

But you just had it up there, so that doesn't come out of any of the TIA funds?

The property, the improvement, okay, there was initially a 55-unit apartment building was built within the district, but there was a second property that was supposed to be part of a later phase. That is the building that burnt down, and it had no value.

It was vacant.

Yeah, it was vacant. It was assessed at no dollars, and so it did not impact the feasibility, and the owners are responsible for that demolition, not the city. Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the committee, Dan Casanova with the Department of City Development. This is the third infrastructure TID amendment in this vicinity. In total, it's $7 million of investment. $4 million would be coming from this amendment to TID 74, which is the North 35th Street and West Capitol Drive TID, or often referred to as the Century City TID. It was created in 2009 to fund $15.6 million in infrastructure demolition and environmental remediation at the former A.L. Smith Tower Automotive site. It had a base value of about $89 million when it was created in 2009, and like Lori described in the last file, because of the Great Recession and the decline in particularly residential property within the boundary, the base value for this district was reset in 2014 at around $63 million, almost a 30% decrease. The good news is as of last year in 2025, the value in the district has increased significantly to almost $110 million. So there's $46 million in incremental value in the district right now. And with donations that it's received in the past, it's in a position for this amendment today. Real quickly on the history, I think you're all familiar with the site, but this is the former A.O. Smith Tower Automotive site. Over two million square feet of buildings were on the site. It was an industrial powerhouse for the city and for the neighborhood, involved in all sorts of manufacturing over the years, the war efforts, and before closing, was mostly doing car frames. In 2005, when Tower Automotive declared bankruptcy, a few years later, this TID was created. The Redevelopment Authority acquired the land and began demolition. In 2010, DPW constructed their field office on the west side of the property. 2015, the tracks were extended into the property at the Talgo facility. In 2019, the corner of 35th and Capitol was acquired. The Century City One building was constructed, as well as Melvina Park. Again, this TID amendment would be for $4 million of improvements, and like with the last two amendments, we talked to the Department of Public Works and the local alder about potential projects in the area, and here we are proposing $1 million for additional remediation, soil management, and stormwater work at Century City to make sure that those sites are shovel-ready. Then there would be improvements to three arterials which are on the high injury network. The first would be North 35th Street from Capitol to Congress, which would be repaved and include safety improvements. The second is West Capitol Drive from 31st to 35th, particularly underneath the railway viaduct there. The third is North Hopkins from 20th to 27th, which would receive safety improvements. Then there would be repaving of one block of Bernhard next to Townsend Elementary. There would be some funds for our housing programs through NIDC and then small contingency and administration totals four million. So in total with the previously approved costs and this amendment, the TID would have just under $20 million of project costs and we are estimating that it would pay off by the 25th year of the TID in 2034.

There's been substantial donations to this TID, correct?

Correct, so there has been 33 million approved, but only 21 million were needed to pay off the outstanding debt because of the increase in property value.

And those donations came from high performers?

Cathedral Place, New Arcade, which was the Grand Avenue, Intermodal Park East, Stadium Business Park, and Midtown. Okay. What's the total investment overall since day one? Private investment? No. The city's investment, if you include TID capital dollars that were put in, there was a new market tax credits and grants, the total is just under $50 million in remediation and site prep.

And the new market was for the building that was built?

Yes. How is the Talgo building assessed? Because that's city-owned, right? Yes, but it isn't. Does that pay a pilot, or is that just free? I don't know.

Good morning, Chair. Committee members, Dave Miske with DCD. It is tax exempt, that's right. It's owned by Rackham. There is a rent that is paid to Rackham on a monthly basis, but it is not part of the overall tax, the feasibility analysis.

Interesting. So if we were ever to sell that building, it would go on the tax roll and its assessed value would add to the value of the district?

That is correct, yeah.

and the rent is high enough to feel like it's having an impact as if it was paying taxes?

Yes, the rent is, it's about 30,000 plus a month, which covers most of our expenditures. There is some upkeep that we have to take on with roof and pavement and security, things like that, but it does cover our expenditures. We have looked at the possibility of a sales. We have an appraisal that does have a several million dollar value. The current tenant has not been interested in purchasing it at this point, but it's a conversation we've had.

Okay. Just to be clear, the $50 million you talked about investment, that included the infusion of the donor tits?

The initial was 15 million. Right, the donor tits helped pay off that existing debt because there was an increment coming in from the TID for a number of years because it was negative.

But when you say the 50, that includes the infusion of the donor tits?

Correct, it's not additional above that, yeah.

And then how many acres is this total?

The total is about 100 acres, including the Talgo building and the outlets.

So between, in the 100 acres you have Talgo, you have, how many structures do we have on the 100 acres?

There are four structures. So you got the Talgo building, the tower off the building 65, which is the Art Deco building. It's still standing, right? Yeah, it's still standing. The original office building 1A, which is the brick building along 27th and Hopkins, and then Central City 1, the building at Hopkins and the Capitol Drive.

So how many acres are available for development?

Right now it's about 60 acres. 60 acres. Yeah.

45 east of the track and 14 on the corner of Capitol and.

Just out of curiosity, there is a redevelopment plan, correct? Yes. And the redevelopment plan does specify permitted and prohibited uses. I remember this came up with the slaughterhouse situation several years ago before your time. Oh yes, I heard of us. Yeah. Does data centers fall under any of those prohibited uses or is that a permitted use? Or is that not even contemplated?

It probably wasn't contemplated. I mean, the original redevelopment plan was 2005. It was amended a handful of years ago. I can get back to the group on that. I don't know the answer to that question.

Because now we hear they're talking about vertical data centers, which 60 acres, 60 acres is nowhere near big enough to do one of these farm field deals. But if they're talking a 10-story data center, 60 acres might be enough. And of course... The issue of getting delivery trucks in and out wouldn't be a factor here, because they don't need delivery trucks. So I'm just curious if we have that on our radar for future concern.

I will get back to the group.

You saw the stink over a lousy 19,000 square foot data center, much less a 60 acre site. All right. Okay, very good. Any other questions or comments on this file? Very creative use of our tax incremental financing laws and rules, and I like it. Alderman Coggs moves to recommend adoption. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you. All right, moving on to our last item, item 10, file 252193, substitute resolution approving a project plan and a development agreement authorizing expenditures in creating tax incremental district number 134, Austin Commons in the 14th Aldermanic District. All right, who wants to take the laboring over here?

All right, good morning. Larry Kilmer, Department of City Development. I'm here, I'm joined at the table from my far right, Tyler Sharon from Commonwealth, Brandon Mathieu from Northern Star Companies, and obviously, Alderman Dmitriyevich. Happy to get us kicked off. So TID 134, Austin Commons. The site address is 2318 South Austin Street. Here's the general map, and you can see where the proposed TID boundary sits within the Bayview neighborhood, so just south of Lincoln Avenue. Zooming in on the TID boundary map itself, you can see that the TID, the extent of the proposed TID boundary is originally three parcels, which will be combined through a CSM into one parcel for this development itself. So the TID boundary will be drawn only around this development. Some existing site conditions, so at the moment there are currently three houses located at this property. I believe it's two single family and one duplex. They've been boarded and vacant for many, many years, I think over a decade. I am gonna turn the presentation over for the next two slides to the development team to introduce themselves.

yeah yeah um thank you all for your time i'm brandon with northern star companies um i'm here with tyler with commonwealth development corp we came across this site a few years ago it was a zone for multi-family housing the homes have been vacant for extended period and the factory did they work I'm sorry. And the factory that they were associated with was no longer in operation and would not be coming back. So we saw this as an excellent opportunity to carry forward some of the housing goals of the city and meet some of the affordability needs of the neighborhood. Todd, I don't know if you have anything you'd like to add to that.

No, I mean, I will just add this was a project that Brandon had put together, being a Milwaukeean, if you will, and Commonwealth has really kind of come on board to further assist him in the development efforts to make sure that we can reach the closing table and start seeing some vertical construction pending approvals that we're seeking here today.

Because I'm talking about the project overall and then I'm happy to jump into the financing in the next slide. Sure.

Yeah, so We are proposing a hundred unit development on this site it is I want to say roughly an acre as you can see we have spread the unit mix across myriad of unit types as well as income categories and we're really excited about the opportunity of offering a mixed income housing solution on dilapidated properties. We, during this process, have made a few iterations under the leadership and guidance of the Order of the Area to account for some parking concerns. traffic and congestion, as well as a forward facing approach to being a really good neighbor and steward in this community. So we're really excited about bringing these units to the market.

I'll just add, so if the TID is approved at the schedule that the development team is looking for, we should see construction completion by the end of next year. Is that still the target?

Who owns these three houses now? Is it private ownership?

Yes, they're currently under private ownership, and the same ownership is the owner of the adjacent factory as well.

And the factory lies which direction on that map? West. Across Austin Street. Yes. And what are the lots facing Lincoln? What are those comprised of? Is that commercial, residential?

Yeah, those are most, I believe all one and two family residential. The corner building might be a three unit, but...

And then to the south, what does that large parcel represent? Is that a multi-unit building?

That's correct. I want to say it's 16 or 18 units.

And what's to the east facing Howell Avenue?

It's the Housing Authority Tower.

Oh, it is? Okay.

You can see in this picture, you can see it in the background there as well as in some of the renderings.

Okay.

Okay.

All right, so for the financing piece, the overall project investment is at about $33 million. You can see the variety of sources that are required for many affordable housing developments specifically for this project. The development team is seeking a first mortgage, multiple avenues of low-income housing tax credits. They're deferring a developer fee. They've already received a word from Rackham on a revolving loan fund. Additionally, Section 48 tax credits, Wisconsin Department DOA housing trust funds, received a home allocation of funds, focus on energy funds, and then the TIF that you're considering today. The TIF itself is up to 2.135 million and it is developer financed for up to 21 years with an interest rate of 5.91%. And the project does include the human resource requirements of 40% RPP and 25% SBE. in terms of how the development sits within both the southeast side area plan and the Bayview neighborhood plan. So the development is consistent with both plans and I've identified a number of housing components within those plans where that consistency lies.

What's the parking arrangement here?

the parking, so it's 104 off-street underground parking stalls for 100 units.

Okay, because Austin is a narrow residential side street, correct? So you're building facing a residential side street, not an arterial street, right?

It's on the corner of Lincoln, but yeah.

And this is zoned multi-unit, RM zoning?

Yeah, so the development that's being proposed is within zoning and it's actually slightly less dense than the zoning cap would allow.

Because I could see if this was facing Howell or facing Lincoln, that would be a very different situation than facing a low density residential street with street parking, I assume. And that factory, is that occupied or is that still vacant?

Vacant and blighted.

It's the former Clement factory?

Yes.

And then west of it is the railroad. Right away, I assume. A couple blocks. There's one block. Oh, just a block away? Okay. Sorry. Okay. Alderman, do you have anything? Okay. Yeah.

Just a few things. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman and colleagues. So just a couple of comments that I'd like to offer to the file. We've had three public meetings on this. We had one at the Tippecanoe Library, one at the Bayview Library that was an open house kind of format, and then the third one was a virtual. So we tried every tool to make sure that we communicated with people. Throughout the whole process, we wanted to make sure that we focused on residents living a little bit closer by. So with that, with each mailing that we did, we made sure that we probably talked to almost everybody around there. This has been challenging. I've certainly learned a lot from this process as well. And we've been keeping in our office very close track of who has responded to us, where they live and what they've said. And interestingly, the work that we do sometimes is extra challenging. It was completely divided. So herein lies decisions that we have to make. The question before the committee today is should TIF be used to support this type of project? When you're looking at the map, what you perhaps can't see is that it's about approximately one to two blocks away from where many of you supported and attended the largest affordable housing complex in the state of Wisconsin. That's the Corliss. Nearly 600 units, it's not even fully constructed or occupied. So in these meetings, and I do want to state for the record, I will always take the time needed to listen to every one of my constituents. It takes time. It will always take time. It should be built into every single process. And with that, along the way, we had so many requests and every single request, um, We've confronted, and I think we've actually risen to the occasion, and by we, I mean the Department of State Development. There's questions about parking, congestion, being so close to the core lists. And that is a very different change in the neighborhood. So when you have over 600, excuse me, approximately 600 units plus 100 units, and a reminder, the Corliss as well as the Austin Commons are 100% affordable. So every unit in each building is affordable. Of course, there's a spectrum of affordability, which was something that we also had to talk a lot about with constituents. In our virtual meeting, Department of City Development did an excellent job listening. We spent a lot of time listening and putting together the top questions and responding to them. So with a pretty divided nearby district, now my position will be not to object to this. I have thought long and hard about the future of our neighborhood. and also our position in the city. When you combine this along with the core list, that is almost 700 units of 100% affordability. We are doing our part. We are part of a larger city, And we cannot thrive in the Bayview neighborhood if the entire city is not inclusive and doesn't thrive. So this has been challenging. There will be some people who will be disappointed. But I think in the end, the fact that Department of City Development went out of their way to accommodate every question. We had questions about the values of properties. How would it affect people? Parking, so that's one part we didn't really talk about. but we've changed some local parking if needed for double-sided parking on Austin, Lincoln, and surrounding streets. In fact, please correct me if I'm wrong because I'm going off memory, the Department of Public Works stated that an additional 100 parking spots would be available by the parking accommodations that the city will make. There was a while here where I felt like the city was making all of the changes that were needed. to accommodate the development. But it's process, like I said. So parking, congestion. We do think that every issue that was brought up by constituents has been met with an answer. We have a live video of it from that last virtual meeting. And so with that, Mr. Chairman, like I said at this point, I'm not going to be objecting to it.

When did this rezoning, because I got to tell you, those are... It looked like decent little houses to me. How did that ever get rezoned multi-unit? Who rezoned it? Was that initiated by Clement? Was that a city rezoning? How did that ever get a multi-unit site mid-block on a residential street? This reminds me of some of the god-awful apartment buildings in my neighborhood which were built on residential streets mid-block because they had big sites. They tore down one house and built a 40-unit building and they did nothing but trouble for 40 years. How did this ever get rezoned?

Yeah, that's a great question. I don't think we've been able to pinpoint when or how that happened exactly, but I think just given some of the mixed use zoning and density in the vicinity, especially the adjacency to the housing authority development,

It must have been zoned as such at one point in time, but that predates all of us here today to all the persons and future all the persons When I got first elected the first thing I did was the down zone all these RM areas in my district So this wouldn't happen Because if it's a zoning change we have a hell of a lot more leverage than when it's just approving a tax incremental financing I mean this does not belong on this street in my judgment, but that's fine Mr.

I do want to say that the same owner owns the blighted factory as well as these properties and they have been bored parking at some future date.

So they were going to demolish it and create a parking lot at that. Yeah, I get that part. But I don't think Clement sought multi-unit rezoning. Somebody wants to say something back here.

Can I get in there?

Well, not from back there you can't because they can't hear you. There are thousands watching on TV and they can't hear you. You have to have a microphone.

I'm happy to step... I can go step over there, actually.

Mr. Chair, real quick. Yeah, go ahead. So do you guys have first right of... for the Clemens property as well?

So there is a sequencing that we are hopeful... will move forward as this project moves forward, wherein resources from this development will lead to the demolition of the factory. However, those decisions are still in the hands of the owner. What's gonna be put at that factory site? I'm not sure. You could create a vegan lodge? I know that currently the factory is in eyesore. It's a nuisance to that area. And one of the consistent themes from all of the neighborhood meetings was finding some way to address what's going to happen with that factory. I would like to reiterate that I am not in control of what would happen to that factory.

the owner has communicated to me that his intention is to look to redevelop that factory as well sequencing that after this you might point it i wouldn't care if this was high-end condominiums this does not belong at this location a multi-unit building low income high income market rate condos does not belong at this location so i'm going to be a no vote on this one mr chair Yeah, please, Autumn.

So what exactly do you have site control of right now?

The three homes that we are looking to develop. The Austin Commons project.

So the 100 units are just going where the three homes are?

Yes.

How many floors is it?

It's four stories.

What's the unit mix?

It is roughly 23. It's a mixture of ones, twos, and threes. And those homes, they are some fairly large lots. They equate to roughly an acre. So they're not necessarily typical depth.

What amenities will the apartment have?

So we will be offering community room as well as energy efficient appliances, charging stations for vehicles. This will be built to Wisconsin green built standards as well as the typical package, leasing office, are things available to the tenants. There will be a community room and a fitness center as well.

Who will manage?

The management will be done by ACC, a very reputable firm that has extensive experience managing buildings of similar size in the Milwaukee area. They have over 3,000 units under management in the Milwaukee area and are renowned for being excellent property managers.

What does that stand for?

I'm not sure what the ACC stands for.

What are the principals in ACC?

The principal is Chris Hand. H-A-N-D? H-A-N-D, yes, sir.

All right, very good. What are the rents?

What's the range? They range roughly from $500 to roughly $1,300. with a number of units set aside for individuals at 30% AMI up to 80% AMI. If we were to look at this in regards to the kind of salaries that this housing supports, it's 30 to 80,000 per year with, I would say, almost an equal split between the folks within that income range.