City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, it is 6 o'clock, so I'm going to call the Tuesday, July 7th, 2026 Common Council meeting to order. We will start with the roll call. Rico Camacho said that he will not be in attendance tonight.

Christine? Here. Everett? Here. Wignerson? Here. Piper? Here. Van Trieste? Here. Wells? Here. Mannion? Here. Molson? Here. Witeska? Here. Anderson? Here. Helgastead? Here. Matthews? Here. Miklitz? Here. Lemke? Here. Camacho is absent. All right, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and

All right, as a matter of note, a motion will be made to convene in closed session pursuant to Wisconsin Statute 19.85, parents one, parents G, to confer with legal counsel regarding the possible settlement of an excessive assessment lawsuit captioned SBV Fox River LLC versus City of Waukesha. A motion will then be made to reconvene in open session pursuant to Wisconsin Statute 19.85, parents two. An action will be taken on matters discussed in closed session. Next up, we have public comment. First, I have Doreen Wigderson. It is fair.

Hello, and just for the record, I'm Doreen Wigderson. For those at home, Alderman for District 3, I live at 1100 Anoka Avenue. I wanted to start off with Revitalize. Last weekend, or the last weekend of June, Revitalize completed and worked on two homes right in the Strand area. Thank you, Mike Christine, for being there, and Alicia also showed up for the builds. I'm happy to report that Revitalize Milwaukee has funding secured for several other homes in the Waukesha area. This program is vital to keeping our seniors in their homes safe, independent, and in the neighborhoods that they've loved for decades. I'm asking all of you, if you know of a homeowner who could benefit or you're wondering at home whether your own home qualifies for this, please reach out to Revitalize Milwaukee. and they're available online, or you can call them too to see if you're eligible for funding. These funds are here to be used, and the more residents we refer, the more homes we keep standing and more families we keep in place. Secondly, I wanted to follow up on the workshop that our city administrator arranged on June 23rd, with Ted Neitzke. He came to speak with us. For those who missed it, it was really a fantastic team-building session. We talked about what makes a highly effective council, staying focused on issues, working as expeditiously as possible, and serving our community with facts over feelings. One idea that stood out was rethinking how we should handle referrals, routing them through the city administrator rather than directing them at the committee level. That change could make us more efficient and cut down on duplicate efforts across committees. I found real value in our conversations, and I don't think we should let the momentum stop. I'd strongly encourage Tony to arrange to bring Ted back to speak with us. And just for the record, he has the Smart Thinking podcast that's available on Apple. Back for another training session so we can continue the work of becoming a more effective, more unified council for the people of Waukesha. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up we have Lisa Salb.

Good evening, Lisa South 434 Madison Street. In regards to the zoning code, RN4, residential neighborhood four, it's listed for providing buffers and transitioning between commercial, major streets, and lower density neighborhoods. So the area between Albert Street and Barstow, which is by the laundromat on North Street, that is now an RN4. People down there are fixing up their one and two story homes. The new code would allow a six story building there. That's 60 feet. Is that really a gradual transition? I would ask that you either change the neighborhood to RM3 or bring the height back down to 40 feet. like it was before several friends there have two-story homes there they said that a six-story building in their neighborhood would be ridiculous next with the zoning map with the removal of the historic overlay on the lower blair property the city disagrees that the special h historic district overlay includes the blair property down to Della Field. Well, I respectfully disagree with that. However, tonight I'm here to talk about what was added to the map and that's 139 East North Street. It has the historic preservation district overlay on it. It is a local landmark. It was built in 1866. It's the Waukesha Manufacturing Company building. It was part of the woolen mills complex, which was put together by William Blair, and it was the building that he stored the woolen. And if you take a look at the handout that I put at each of your desks, we did an open records request. In an email on October 15th, 2024, Charlie Griffith wrote to Alex Edgington, who is the compliance officer at the State Historic Preservation Office, And I'm going to read it right off of here. Charlie said, clearly the location and the associated views were a factor in Senator Blair's decision to build his house there. As the Madison Street District nomination form puts it, quote, Blair could look down upon his two successful businesses from his nearby home located three blocks to the northwest on the top of the Madison Street Hill. he also says the the buildings that housed senator blair's businesses were raised before the creation of the madison street historic district and also before his house was individually 30 seconds remaining designated that is not true 139 east north street is still there the information that was given to the state for the conservation easement is incorrect whether it was an ignorance or an intentional event may be for a judge to decide. I have shown on the handouts the view preservation if you take it from the Blair House to William Blair's business and this showed up on the new zoning map after the conservation easement was voted on. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else here for public comment? No? Moving right along. Approval of minutes. Is there a motion to approve the minutes from our last meeting? I'll make a motion. Thank you. Alderperson Miklitz, is there a second? Alderperson Moulton?

Yes, second.

Excellent. All right, please vote when it is before you.

Alderman Everett?

all right that motion does pass 14 to 0. um next up we have consent agenda are there any items to be removed from consent agenda no all right then consent agenda is passed next up we have our new business section first is proposed revisions to municipal code chapter 9 compliance with act 73 and other changes miles i'm assuming you are handling this

Maybe if I can, if I can get my microphone on. All right. Yes, in conjunction with the respected members of ordinance and license committee who might also want to talk about uh... something pertaining to this matter i believe this has been before the common council uh... several times already however because of a clerical error it's actually only on for second reading uh... even though i know all of you probably seen this a number of times it is uh... changes that have to be made for the most part to our chapter nine code regulating liquor licensing because the state changed the laws to a large degree and we have to make sure our ordinance matches up with the laws created by the state So that's most of what is in there. There are a couple of other things that were cleaned up just because they needed some rewriting in order to be easier to understand. And also there were a couple of things that were removed. I would just point out in case it hasn't been pointed out in previous meetings that it does remove the prohibition on liquor sales at gas stations. and also it removes the prohibition on restaurants selling alcohol for off-premise consumption. But other than that, most of it is just revisions necessary because of changes to state law. Because this has been in front of you a number of times, I suggest you consider also moving to suspend the rules so that it doesn't have to come back here again for a third reading when it's actually been here already, I think at least three times, if not four. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

Are there any questions? Alderperson Wateska.

Miles, I did go take a look while we were doing other stuff. This was at O&L on May 11th. It was at the council May 19th and June 2nd. And June 2nd was the one where we forgot to attach the actual amendment. So, I mean... I am happy to do either or make a motion to approve it or make a motion to suspend the rules so that we can approve it. Because in my mind, this is at a minimum the third reading, if not the fourth. And I don't think there's any reason to bring it back. But I'll open to people.

I will defer to your legal opinion on this one.

The boss told me there was an issue with the first time around also. And I have no way of verifying if that's actually the case, but it would make both of the times it appeared here before invalid, so that I would recommend you still consider it the second reading. Obviously, the older person may be completely correct, I just don't have that information available, and the boss said this was the second reading.

uh i advise um that you uh move to suspend the rules if you want to not have to deal with this one again which i understand if you don't i i appreciate that uh alder person with tuscan do you have do you have a motion or uh alder person lemke i move to suspend the rules and take care of it tonight excellent is there a second uh alder person with tesca seconds is there any discussion about suspending the rules All right, so that would mean that a yes vote would be to suspend the rules and vote on these changes tonight. Please vote when it is before you. All right, that motion does pass, 14 to 0. So now we are on the main topic of conversation, Alderperson Lemke.

I move that we vote on the proposed revisions to the admissible code, Chapter 9 compliance with Act 73 and other changes. Excellent. And Alderperson Witowska seconds.

You didn't actually say you wanted to approve it. You just said you wanted to vote on it.

Yes, vote to approve.

Vote to approve. All right, thank you for the clarification. Is there any discussion? Alderperson Wiggerson.

I actually just have a question for clarification, so I'm not sure if you'll be able to answer it, but I hope so. In 9.08, we have under the operator's license, the provisions allowing the clerk to issue renewal license without committee or council approval are clarified. The clerk can issue renewal operator licenses without further approval if the applicant has zero conviction since the last issuance. I just want to make sure. that this change is only occurring for the renewal and that they can still go ahead and do the things even for new applicants, correct? This change was just made for this section. I just want to clarify.

This only, at least what I'm looking at here, only concerns renewal applicants.

OK. I just want to clarify that it's not for everything. It's not for everything.

OK, perfect. That's my understanding also.

Any other discussion? All right. Then please vote when it is before you. All right, that motion does pass, 14 to 0. Next up, we have review and possible action on a budget amendment to increase capital expenses for the City Hall Security Improvement Project.

Joe? I'll defer to Alderman Lemke in that I was on vacation for this Finance Committee meeting, so I'll defer to Rick.

So this item in your packet, it's for approximately $319,000 for security upgrades. The main expense is for two ballistic glass on the main clerk's office and upstairs at the city planning public works building. There have been numerous instances of disgruntled folks, creating security issues. In fact, we've been found that two employees actually left, feel threatened and what have you. And Chief Thompson is strongly in favor of this. We all know that the public, not all of them, 99.9% of the public is wonderful, but there are a lot of folks out there, whatever their cause or reason, they think that they want to be violent, and this is just a way of securing our facility they're also going to put some bollards in front of the utility connections they're going to number the doors so that when if anybody does push the panic button all of the doors with the police will have numbers on them all the office buildings will have certain numbers to identify exactly where the the problem occurs and i This is being paid for with interest on city funds, so it is not going to increase taxes. But we do have to get a budget amendment because it's not approved in the CIP. So I urge you all to vote in favor of this. If there are any questions, refer to Tony or anyone else. Is that a motion? It passed four to zero out of finance. We do need a super majority. So I move to review and take possible action for the budget amendment to increase the capital expenses for the City Hall security improvement projects. It passed four to zero.

To clarify, that's to approve? To approve, correct. The budget amendment. Great, thank you. Alderperson Wiggerson and then Christine.

I'll second the motion. I spoke at finance in favor of this. Particularly, I did a little research on several other municipalities that spent money to increase security in their clerk's office. And just to give you an idea, I thought $319,000 was a drop in the bucket as Madison spent $12 million. on security upgrades for their security in the buildings down there. So I thought that 319,000 was actually quite reasonable. I also want to make it clear that we obviously care about the safety of our clerks and people that work here at the city. It's just very important. You can't put a price tag on somebody's life. So I am, of course, seconding the motion to approve and fully support this motion.

Thank you. Alderperson Christine.

Thank you, Mayor. I was a visitor on finance meeting and I came in, my background, what I do professionally is building, building management and paying for such things. I spoke out several things about, I felt that they didn't explore other options. Besides the glass, the bollards, the numbering of the exits, entryways, and main windows in the facility, I fully supported that. It was just the, only in my mind, they only had one One plan was the glass I supported just keeping the shutters that are closed right now and I heard a lot of things about they wanted to make it look very similar to where you pay your your tickets basically how the building was designed I suggested just having some windows put in the drywall and But what really changed my mind was Rebecca Peterson from the city spoke about employee retention as what essentially changed my mind. I was focusing on the building side of things and the cost, but we could put no cost, as Alderwoman Wiggerson said, on city staff and retention. So I just wanted to make that known as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Alderperson Matthews.

Yeah, just to mirror a little bit what Alderman Christine said, this, once again, just to clarify, will actually update and be in a very similar method to what's just a few feet over by the clerk on the window there. So very aesthetically, we'll look the same, and it's very similar. It's not uncommon safety procedures when we literally have it just a few feet over for the municipal clerk. Second part is we also did discuss, and I'd like to continue that discussion too, any new buildings, any new structures, know 319 000 is a good capital expense but it probably could be lessened if we incorporate that into buildings for new buildings and updates so i think that needs to be further part of the conversation going forward it is important security is good i'm in favor of it but also would like to see maybe some cost savings in the future incorporating this into an initial building and design but i am in favor of this

Thank you. Alderperson Piper and then Wells.

Thank you. I'll also speak in favor of it. As the board of directors for the city, it's our ultimate responsibility to ensure that our employees and staff are safe at work and that they have all the tools that they have to prevent unfortunate incidents from happening. Why it wasn't incorporated into the original design of the building, it's hindsight. And unfortunately, things have changed in our world very quickly and very rapidly. So to Alderman Matthews' point, hindsight would have been that we would have incorporated this when we constructed the building a little less than a decade ago, but we didn't. And these changes are needed to reflect kind of an unfortunate reality in our society today, and I'd ask that you all support it. Thank you.

Thank you. Alderperson Wells. I feel like Joe really teed me up. We did discuss some security provisions when we were designing City Hall. And what we discussed at the time and decided not to do was metal detectors. And I'm glad we didn't put that in effect then because what we're putting in now is a better, now we're in the building, we understand it. What we would have put in when we built the building is not this, probably would not have been effective. I think we should put in now that we know what the threat is and what the concerns are. But it was something we discussed, and I'm kind of glad we waited a little bit to get something that's actually going to work for our building.

Excellent. Thank you. Any other discussion? All right. Then please vote when it is before you. All right, that motion does pass 13 to 1. Next up, we have the public hearing for the zoning code update. Charlie, I'm going to toss this over to you. I know this has been before us several times, so I'm just going to let you take it over.

All right. So as all of you know, the city has been working since early 2024 on a full-scale rewrite to our zoning code. The council, the plan commission, the consultants at House Hill Levine, and city staff have all put in a great deal of effort to put the drafts together that are available for your review tonight. And we're very pleased to be able to present them to you for hopefully a final vote on approval. This was initially presented to the council in April. And at the time, we had noted that the city attorney's office was doing some final review, and they were going to be making updates mostly to the formatting of the code. They have made some of those updates, and they've also changed the wording of a few sections. They've stressed that none of the ideas in the code have changed. It's just that they've worded them a little bit differently to make those ideas a little bit more clear and more legally defensible. We've also corrected a couple of errors that were present in the zoning map previously. There was a map error in the map that was presented in April, so it didn't properly show the existing planned unit development overlay districts. And we don't want those to change. So those are, that's been corrected. There was also an error, a little bit of a discrepancy between two of the other overlay districts in the wording of the code. between the map and the code itself, so that it was just the name of the districts on the map was wrong, so that's been corrected as well. And we have been able to show a rezoning that happened this spring in the map. So with those changes, we are recommending of the recommending approval of the new code. And as I mentioned, we're hoping for a vote on approval tonight. We did bring this back to the plan commission and we have it as a public hearing because just to. Sort of be on the safe side with those changes. We felt that it was just enough that it was worth. Bringing back to the plan commission plan commission did recommend approval. At their June meeting, because it went back to the plan commission. The city attorney's office has told us today that they. They would believe that that is based on the council rules. That would be. That restarted the reading process, so. That would have been the 1st reading, and this is technically the 2nd reading. So, if you do vote to approve it. The city attorney's office is advising that you would suspend your council rules. To vote on the 2nd reading of this particular final draft of the code. We do feel that that would be appropriate since. As you know, we've had pretty extensive discussion both at the council and at the plan commission. And the code has been available in almost identical form. For the past several months. So there's been ample opportunity to learn about it and to understand it, both for the council and members of the public. And many of you and many members of the public have done so. So we don't feel that there's much to be gained from having more discussion and more delay on a final vote. And we are also, we've been shooting for an implementation date of September 1st. And in order to make that happen, we need to make some changes to our approval processes and the applications and the educational materials that we have on the code. So that takes some time. We've started that, but in order to go much further, we really need to have certainty on what's gonna be in the new code and that these changes are gonna happen at all. So we're recommending approval of

uh the new chapter 22 replacing chapter 22 and chapter 27 of the existing code in their entirety excellent thank you um this is a public hearing so i will open it up is there any member of the public that wishes to speak on this item all right i will take that as a no so we will close out the public hearing are there any comments or questions uh yes alderperson van trieste

Thank you, Mayor. I was looking over the draft and I wanted to see what the old ordinance looked like versus the new one. And Charlie, maybe you can give me some clarity here. Uh, the new 1, the way I understand it is, uh, somebody from the city, and this is a 22. 07, and somebody from the city regarding landscaping, natural resources can come on to any residents property in the city of Waukesha without permission. and do a look around. Is that correct?

I don't think that's in 22.07.

That's, well, okay. I guess, is there a, we could? Yeah, there were 262. I just looked at the city logo as they were flipping by, but I counted 262 pages, and it kind of reminds me of you know what they do out in dc where you get a thousand pages dumped on your lap and you got 48 hours to respond to it so that's the reason for my question i do have a another one too a follow-up in regards to uh the uh i gotta get back to it here this would would also be in 22 it's uh dot one one uh sub two uh and then a and a two and an h and an i And apparently this comes from the city attorney's office in regards to if they knock on your door and they're not allowed inside your home, then they can go out and get a warrant for it. Did we have that before with the warrant and the old ordinance that was there?

I don't believe it was spelled out in the zoning ordinance, but that is something that the city does do.

Can you make sure that you use the microphone?

That is new then.

Sorry, I don't believe it's spelled out in the current zoning ordinance that that much specificity as far as code enforcement, but the city does do code enforcement of the current ordinance. And in cases where a warrant is needed, the city does have the authority to obtain one. It's never really necessary with the zoning ordinance because it's mostly exterior regulation.

The reason I ask is we had a personal experience with that. Several years after we bought our home, they wanted to come in. The tax assessor wanted to come in. I wasn't home. My wife went and let him in. Then we waited to see what would happen. Down the road, we reengaged with them and we were Our assessment was marked as a premium, cabinet, siding, everything. And when I asked if we could get adjudication on that and reset the bar, so to speak, on our tax assessment, I was told there's no recourse. So just looking out for my constituents in District 5.

Sure, and in regards to your question regarding the landscaping and being able to go on someone's property at any given time, the only time we would ever inspect landscaping is when a project has been approved and it was approved with a landscape bond to assure that the landscaping would be completed at the end of that project. So by giving us that bond, they're essentially giving us permission to go on and check that landscaping. Once we've approved the landscaping and returned that bond, we'd have no need to go back on someone's property. We wouldn't go just into a single family home and go looking for anything if that's what you were getting at.

Yeah, that sounds like a commercial response as far as development goes, but I'm talking about individually, the residents themselves individually. Would there ever be an instance where somebody from the city is walking around to see how your property looks and what's going on?

no not landscaping wise um sometimes there is complaints where they'll complain about tall grass or something like that and then an inspector will go out there and look um but there's no need to but outside of code enforcement right outside of code enforcement there'd be no need for us as a planning staff to go on to someone's land to check landscaping especially on a single family or duplex property we don't really oversee landscaping on those it's only on the commercial properties

larger multi-family projects thanks for the clarification alderperson piper charlie i've got a question that's probably in the weeds a little bit it's under 2204 um as it relates to like dumpster enclosures and such we've code has been updated to allow like a composite material or like a to be allowed in that in that construction is that correct

Uh, yes, I believe so.

Okay. I've had some personal experience and some development I've done in the city from a nonprofit standpoint where that came up and that was allowed at the time. And I encourage the city to allow that material to be used for dumpsters enclosures because it's a little bit more economical than masonry, especially for some of our nonprofits. So I'm glad that I'm glad to confirm that that's in here as we've discussed. So thank you.

Uh, Alder person limkey.

It was brought up in public hearing.

I don't think your mic's on.

It is. Oh, sorry. It was brought up in public hearing that there are places in this city where we would allow six-story buildings and such. Obviously, something like that. well it's allowed i don't necessarily think i would be in favor of but the common council and the planning uh commission uh still has authority to say yeah this place we don't think a six story would go we'd be in favor of a four so something like that would still have to come to planning and get approved by the they could just automatically build one is that correct

Right, any commercial construction would require site plan and architecture review approval. There are some instances where it would just be planning, it would just be a staff review if it met all of the conditions in the code and it wasn't adjacent to a property that had a lower level of zoning. But for the most part, those will still go to the plan commission for review as well.

Alderperson Manion.

was an excellent segue into what my question was going to be um when we discussed this offline or i discussed it with staff offline i had expressed some concerns about this administrative review process we had some discussions around possible mechanisms for informing the public and the alders of Potential developments that are occurring or going through that that review process has any more, I guess clarity been. Brought to that what that process could look like. Going forward.

Yeah, we're working through that right now as we're also implementing our new software. So, implementing the new code and the new software and trying to develop a plan around that. But we envision it as a matter of report to the plan commission on what projects have come in and what their status is, at least in terms of how it would appear on an agenda for. Um, notification and then what we're also working on with our new software is a notification mechanism for the older person. So that. When we get a project in, they get this notification, this project came in and and then if you have questions, you can call and ask and we can discuss it that way too. So right now, those are some of the things we're talking about in terms of that.

Thanks, Jennifer. I'm just going to make a comment. I'm not willing to, I guess, stand in the way of this massive project over that one item. But I think it's important for the council to bear in mind that we throw the word transparency around a lot in the years that I've been on the council. And when we talk about moving things to administrative review, That means it isn't going through a public process necessarily to the same degree that it does when it comes to a planning commission meeting, an open meeting, or to council. So I had some concerns about that, and I think that we need to keep a close eye on the kind of things that go through that administrative review, and if that's the best process going forward. You know our constituents may feel like they are cut out of the process You know, I got into city politics a long time ago because of developments that were happening in the vicinity of my neighborhood you know coming to planning commissions and making sure that my My voice was heard and my concerns were heard long before I sat in this chair so I you know, I'm uncomfortable with This change being made, but I'm not willing to stand in the way of. You know, the greater process here, but I do think that this is something we need to keep a close eye on. And make sure that it is the best thing going forward and. You know, potentially pull those reins back if need be in the future.

Thank you all the person else. This was something that we discussed quite a bit at the Planning Commission. It definitely was a concern. We are very much trying to balance setting clear standards and providing a mechanism for developers, for builders, for businesses to know exactly what the city was going to expect from them, that they can adequately prepare, plan the kind of development that we as a city want, and have some expectation that if they follow all the rules that they can get approved. One of the biggest barriers to building new items is this unknown city process where you really don't know whether something's going to be approved based on the whims of a planning commissioner or council. So we worked very hard to set good standards, good expectations, be very clear. Part of the trade-off, though, is we need certainty that if you follow the rules, you can get it approved. The compromise we came up with was because we do know that residents are very concerned about what goes next to their homes. And new development is necessarily going to be something that goes in after the neighbors are already there. So what we kind of came up with was that if a development is going into a plot or a property that is adjacent to residential, that it automatically gets Planning Commission review. So if there's a empty parcel next to your home, you can know that it will go through Planning Commission. What can sail through on a staff approval is something that is not going next to residences. So anything that has a needs exception or needs to break the rules even slightly, get approval for something different, has to be approved by Planning Commission. to next-door residents, it has to be approved by a planning commission. And that was the compromise we came up with, because we still wanted that certainty that when developers came, they know if they follow all the rules we've set, they can get approval. They can plan on that. They can get all their financing. They can get all their partners involved. And it's going to be a trade-off. It's different than what we've done before. But it's not something that we didn't take time to discuss and talk through and work through.

Thank you. Alderperson Matthews.

Stricted it. You just mentioned that it was in compromise. Is that part of procedure now? Is that formal or is that just a an agreement or where is that written down or what's the policy or written? Is it written down?

Yeah, that's that's worked through a code. I don't know if staff wants to highlight where those are, but that's definitely something that we work through. I believe it's mostly contained under chapter 11, the review and decision making procedures.

Yeah, that's exactly where it is. It's under the site plan and architecture review process. It clearly spells out what the process is for different types of development, when it can be staff approved, or when it will have to go to the plan commission, and what those exceptions are. Also, at the beginning of every design section, there's a statement of what the exceptions are.

Are there any other comments or questions? Alderperson Moulton.

I move to waive the council rules and use this as the third, or avoid the third reading and take action on this particular draft. I think the readings, the rules, have intended that the draft will change from the first to the second or the third, so we anticipate that there will be many changes, and we have reviewed this many times. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there a second? Alderperson Lemke. I'll second that.

I second the waiving of the rules as there haven't been changes that are significant.

Thank you. Is there any discussion about suspending the council rules? No? Then please vote when it is before you. All right, that motion does pass 13 to zero with one abstention. Now we are back to the main topic of discussion, Alderperson Lemke. Oh, Alderperson Molson.

I move to replace chapters 22 of the zoning code and chapter 27 signs with the new zoning ordinance as presented in this draft.

Thank you. Alderperson Lemke.

I will second that motion.

Thank you. Any other discussion on this ordinance?

uh... all person paper thank you uh... to be on the record i'd certainly support the changes i've had more than one meeting with staff i've also come i think two or three plan commissions for this item has been discussed and i echo a lot of what dan said about making sure that alderman are notified of projects that are going to be coming up in their district and jennifer assured me that is that is worked into the process and i also would remind the common council that we also too have a responsibility to be talking to staff about what's coming up in our respective automatic districts as well so it is as many things in this job it's a two-way street as it relates to communication um so i know we all probably do that i probably do that more than i should in some respects but It's something that we all take. It's part of the job that we all take very seriously in knowing what's coming in our district. My district's fairly residential, pretty built out, but I know there's other districts in town that aren't. And I'd encourage all of us to drive around our district and continue to ask Jennifer and staff about what's going on with the site and that type of thing. And I'm confident that that'll allow us to make sure that we're adequately informing our constituents about what's coming up and making sure that we've got the information to get their questions answered. And to Alderman Wells' point, and what I've heard many times as I attended the Planning Commission meetings, is that economic development and redevelopment is important, and giving folks that are making investments in our community a level of certainty around what can be built, what cannot be built, and allowing them to do that in a timely fashion while balancing the needs of our constituents and communities is very important. That's why I'm supporting it this evening. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other discussion? All right, then please vote when it is before you. All right, that motion does pass 13 to 1. I want to say thank you to city staff, especially community development. But I know that this was a group effort. So thank you to all of you for putting in so much work over the past, what, year and a half. So thank you for that. Next up, we have a transit commission report. And it sounds like we are going to get an update on transit service levels. Brian?

Good evening. Brian Engelking, transit manager, if we have not met. I'm going to bring up my presentation momentarily here. Yes, the city administrator asked that I come to provide an update on the transit service levels that are in the city. We have made significant changes. If you're not on the transit commission or you just see these things on consent agenda, you may not Have seen you know the totality of what we have done over the last four or five years. I've got this hand. I've got this handout and I know I kind of give you the dessert right at the beginning with this big chart, but I'm actually going to float down to the bottom of this page and really first talk about the major initiatives and studies that we've conducted over the last four or five years. And I should just. take a step back and one of the things that even before covid we saw a declining ridership and so we had engaged with sewer pack to do what's known as a transit development plan they actually started this pre-covid and then covid came and kind of slowed us down but for those that have been on the council for a while in In December of 22 we had sewer pack come and present the final transit development plan. It's a five year plan on our service levels and really it focused in on what is the service levels that we are gonna have or we should be at in the post-COVID world because our world transportation did change extensively. You know, we don't have to get too much into, you know, work from home, things of that nature, but Teladoc, all of those things have come into play. In addition to that, and I'm not gonna go through all of these initiatives and things, but there's been a number of other ones that we've done. I have them listed here at the bottom of this page. And this is a pretty aggressive number of studies for a system our size. And we really wouldn't be able to do it without the great partnership with SOARPAC. They've had their hands in most of these, or have helped us out. And also with great data, a number of years ago uh well not a number of years ago but uh three years ago the council uh approved us to have automatic pastor counters on all of our buses so we know now where everyone is getting on and off and what time they're getting on and off and so that really helps us plan our service much better so if we have to make changes we can make changes to try and minimize the impact the negative impacts on the Passengers, but also look for opportunities as well. So now I'm going to go back up to the top of the chart and just kind of walk you through kind of where we were in the pre COVID world. So this this 883 hours that's hours of service within the city of Waukesha, and that's our fixed route service. So the big buses number of hours of service that we had in the pre COVID world. then in June of 23 that's when we implemented much of sewer packs transit development plan in fact I'd say 95% of that we put into place and a lot of that was um just straightening out routes you know maybe we're missing maybe we don't go into some of these neighborhoods as much um that have lower ridership and i know when we presented this to the council there was concerns and one of the things we reassured is yes for the vast majority of the passengers we are still going to serve there are some that going to be negatively impacted but with what what is Where our demand for ridership is and also where our funding because we get funding for both not only the city, but we also get funding from the state and from the federal government where we saw that going. We had to make changes. We just have to. We had to make changes and so. We implemented that with a full route restructure and included extending Route 1 to Freighter in 2023. And we did, although our overall service expanded, expanded outside the cities, particularly on Blue Mountain Road, Waukesha County, Milwaukee County paid for that. Within the city, we actually, when we implemented the the redesign we actually did about a nine percent decrease in in service hours and then in 24 because this was like our first and this was the first really really major um change we have tweaked things in quite a number of years so we wanted to see how that played out But in the interim, in 24, we looked at, we could find little things that we could tweak. So we did some minor adjustments. And then you see this big drop again in 25. Well, what we were doing in 24 was really evaluating the system redesign. And we were already seeing some trends six months to a year in. and also city administrator brought out the financial management plan and so we were kind of looking at okay well this might be something that we could do and then the financial management plan comes out and it's like it just seemed like that was the perfect segue to look at doing a consolidation and so this consolidation what we did is we went from 10 routes in the city down to eight And so we eliminated the Route 2, which serves like the Arcadian area completely. And then we combined Route 7 and 8 on the west side. And we really looked at how we can do this to minimize the impact. And for most part, These impacts on the existing riders, we're talking a single percentages. And I'm not trying to marginalize those folks because there are some folks that were impacted from these changes, but we really looked at. you know what aggregate how can we provide enough service or we can provide service in our fiscal reality and that change um that was a significant drop that was another 14 drop and then um We haven't really done any studies. We've just been kind of recalibrating. We've actually done three kind of reductions in January, then we did one in June, and then we have one coming up at the end of August. And that'll get us down another about 10%. so all total um our service hours compared to like the pre-covered world we're about a third less service hours or we will be come august uh when we start up getting ready for the new school year so we've made a significant uh decrease and this was planned this wasn't just things that we just uh just came on a whim we use a lot of data we talked to folks we talked to our riders we talked to you know the passengers we had public hearings for some of these and there are some impacts there have been some negative impacts but we really tried to focus in on serving the vast majority of these into of our of our passengers um and just to give a matter of perspective the uh that just over 600 hours a week that we'll be going to and maybe you think that's still a large significant number but just to give a perspective i had to go back into our audit materials and that's going to be the lowest level of service we've had in the city since 1990. that was a while ago some of us may have been in high school and then but we'll talk about that um and also another thing uh is just to note is that our 2026 contribution the city's contribution financial contribution is the lowest that we have had since 2011. and we understand the constraints that the city as a whole has and we've we've tried to do our part to try and make this as efficient as possible um i'm going over to page two and just on the top of this page it just breaks down some of the bigger things that we have done to the individual routes and some of the other things probably the only thing i really want to highlight is this last point is operating in capital budgets go hand in hand. And there is also significant cost savings in these reductions on the capital side because we are planning over the next three to four years of reducing our fixed fleet buses by six, so it's about 26% of our buses. So that's a $4.2 million reduction in fleet replacement costs. The federal government will pay 80% of that, but there is that 20% that still needs to be matched one way or another. And so that's one thing that we've been focusing on, too, is especially as we look out in the outer years, federal funds are probably going to start, from what we're seeing in Washington, federal funds are going to start drying up for a grant for a capital project. another advantage of doing this was to reduce some of our our uh our fixed fleet bus replacements and this will start next year we're getting three buses but we're going to be retiring five and then in the subsequent years we'll be retiring more than we are bringing in It is not all gloom and doom. We've had one of our big things that we really wanted to look at besides just trying to preserve our service for as much of our riding public as we can, is we really want to improve passenger efficiency. and as you can see in 2022 we're down just over six right around six and a half percent so uh passengers per hour so every hour of service we had we averaged six just 6.4 passengers per hour Well, through May of this year, we're now at 9.3. So it's a 45% increase, and the way we're trending was probably we'll trend to about 50%. So this is one of the things. We didn't just want to arbitrarily make cuts. We wanted to make it strategic so we can make the system more efficient. um the last thing i want to point out um or the last section i want to talk about is although we've reduced our fixed route service significantly we're starting to see with our metro lift which is for the disabled individuals that ride the smaller buses Um, we're seeing and I put this larger, longer trend, uh, graph here. Kind of in 2013, we're about just over 12,000 rides. And then we kind of just kind of pre coded. Up to 19, we're kind of just had a slight dip and then. and then covet hit and we went way down well we've rebuilt this and then 24 um we we saw some significant we saw things take off from 22 to 25 and 25 we actually have hit a higher ridership that we've seen for you know over a decade and in I should have put in the estimated amount for 26, but we're going to be over 14,000 rides easily. So we're seeing a steep increase here. And so the demand that causes a demand for more drivers, more buses out on the road. We are going to be requesting additional bus in the CIP just to keep up with it. Just to give a perspective, our 2025 Ridership was a little bit more than 2013. In 2013, we had a Metro fleet of seven buses and we would have five out in operation. We're currently doing it with four buses. And we're getting to the point where if we have any kind of breakdown, it's almost like NASCAR on weekdays for the mechanics to try and get that bus back up. So this is a good thing to have. We want to have mobility for our seniors and our disabled. individuals in our community it's just it does it will increase it does it is increasing some of our costs and um just a matter of perspective from 24 to 25 our average service hours increase 28 hours per week so that is an extra part-time employee now the good news is because of the reductions we've done on the fixed route side we have reduced it on the city service alone there's five driver positions that have been eliminated along with the supervisor position so it has um we have had a net decrease and then there's been reductions on our contracted service as well but we have this quarter or that this third drop has resulted in less um less staff I will put this caveat out there that these reductions in staff were done when those positions were open. So what it did is it reduced our overtime that we had to do. With that, I know I ran through that kind of quickly, but with that, if you have any questions or comments, I'll be happy to answer them.

Alderperson Evert.

Let me ask, you said that there's like six

Right now, the rides per hour are averaged throughout the whole entire system right now is about 9.3. 9.3. How many buses? Well, there's eight routes. Given day, we'll have, this time of year, 11 buses out on the road.

11, 22. It's a lot of empty buses. Sorry.

Alderperson Anderson.

Just out of curiosity, from your viewpoint or the city's viewpoint or transit commission's viewpoint, is the city bus service an amenity or an essential service?

I mean, I would say it's an essential service. I mean, the federal government, when COVID hit, felt it was an essential service. I mean, when you look at the demographics of the people that ride our bus or the typical rider either doesn't have a car or does not have a license, they're riding to go to work or to the doctor or to shop with employment being 50% of our ridership that's been pretty consistent. So if the city does not want to invest in Resources that will help their citizens. They do not have transportation get to gainful employment Yeah, I guess that's that's the argument is are there other things that you could do? I think it is valuable. I mean, I've been doing this for almost 28 years so But we have made a lot of, we understand the constraints that the city is financially and that's the big reason why we have done these reductions that we have.

Thank you.

Alderperson Lemke.

I didn't see it in your presentation and I don't need an exact, but what is the ballpark cost per ride over the course of a year. In other words, it costs $15 a ride to operate our system.

$10. $10. $10.

So we could not pay somebody a taxi or an Uber for $10. So it's a matter of this is cheaper.

Yeah, I think one of the things that, like about 10 years ago when Uber and Lyft were trying to get into transit, when Uber and Lyft was a lot less expensive. Well, they abandoned that, I think right after COVID, because they realized they weren't gonna make the kind of money that they need. Um, especially when somebody is making $15 an hour. Paying 2025 dollars to go across town and an Uber one way. You know, 20, you know, 40, $50. That's just not feasible.

All the person wells, Brian, can you clarify what that. 9.1 per transit hour means because i'm concerned that some people are hearing that and hearing that we're moving 9.1 passengers per hour of the week and if i understand your number here it's it works out to be over 5 000 riders per week

Yeah, it's 9.3. That's the average number. Every hour of service that we have, we average 9.3 rides. Now, some routes are not as efficient as others. Like Route 4 and Route 5, they're at like 15 rides per hour, whereas some of the others are a little bit less. So it's a balance. And we have looked at that and the routes that perform better, the service hours are typically larger or longer.

So I guess just to clarify for the public, when we're looking at 600 hours per week, that is 600 hours of central driving time.

Correct.

So if you were an employee working 40 hours, that would be- What I'm saying is it is not nine riders. It is 9.3 riders per hour the buses are in operation. Correct, correct. Which works out to over 5,000 riders per week in a city of 70,000. That's not a small population that's using the bus service regularly.

Yeah, I mean typically what we'll see is on average 1,500 rides a weekday. It's less, it's about 1,000 on a Saturday and Sunday it's 550 to 600.

Thank you all the person Matthews a couple of quick questions. Number 1, you talked about the cost at roughly 10 dollars per ride. Is that the same for Metro lift? Or is there an extended cost? And part 2 is you got almost 2223% increase year over year for 24 to 25. what do you attribute the sudden increase. In Metro lift between that time period, and do you expect that to continue?

Yeah, excellent question on Metro. If that is more expensive because it's more of an individualized, it's a smaller bus and even though it's a smaller bus, it's one driver going to, you know, we only average like their pastures per hour is two and a quarter to two and a quarter passengers per hour. So of course it's going to be more expensive. Last year our audit amount was just under $40 per ride. And that actually is looking at what the state averages are. It's a little bit higher than some of our peers, but it's a little bit lower than some of our peers. We're kind of on the high middle ground. As far as what we attribute that, part of it is just, and this isn't because we go out to freighter. We do have some riders that will go out to freighter, but it's only about 5% of our riders. It's mainly just within the city. The new perspectives, it's a senior facility off of Broadway. That has been a huge, we just continuously get more and more residents signing up for Metrolift there. So as, and we talked about this, there's like a coalition of senior transportation providers about 10 years ago uh that that the count waukesha county had put together we talked about the silver tsunami that was coming well it it's here and you know so this was anticipated um and it's i we anticipate that metrolife will continue to grow And it's required by the ADA, so we're very limited in what we can do as far as not providing it. But the only thing you can do is raise fares, and that is something that we're looking at for 27.

Are there any other questions? Alderperson Van Trieste.

Thank you. Brian, you and I have talked about this when I did the tour. I've been looking at this transit and I had a discussion many years ago with the director back in the day about nowadays it would be called a Corolla versus Escalade on the highway. educate me at the the public and uh those that that need to know this but if we were to run just metro lift size buses around on all of our routes and and use that we wouldn't make the mechanic uh pulling his hair out trying to get that fifth bus that metro bus operable The ridership, 9.3 per hour. It seemed to me that we could run the smaller buses and have them all Metro lift capable around the city. And it would reduce our overall, I think you said that our contribution is 20%, correct?

Yeah, I mean, it's roughly 20%, yeah.

And we even, federally, we even lease the tires that go on these buses. So with that, I would like to, have you uh commit to exploring that avenue would just change all the buses to to a metro lift bus and then uh you know it seemed to me it'd take care of two issues one being handicapped uh rides and the other one being getting back and forth to work.

Actually, it would increase our expenses. We'd have to hire probably double our mechanic staff because those smaller buses just... We're gonna be doing a presentation which will invite all the council to Hopefully later this month or next month about why we use the size of the bus that we do. There's a number of things involved with that. And I've had conversations too, and you can have conversations with Mr. Weinkauf from the City Garage about the difference between a heavy duty chassis and a medium duty chassis, that's just one of many factors that come into play with the buses, the bus size that we use.

Thank you.

Yep. Alderperson Piper and then Lemke.

Well, I'm not going to steal any of Brian's thunder as it relates to the size of buses. So I've been on the Transit Commission for a bit, and a couple of things I wanted to mention for the council and for the public is that Brian and his team are constantly changing routes and evaluating routes and moving bus stops and closing bus stops. So I mean, there's a constant evaluation by the Transit Commission as it relates to levels of service with buses. I too have asked for years, why not run smaller buses? And I've been educated in the fact that a couple of things that are reality and are well out of the control of all of us on this board is that there's only so many companies in this country that make buses. And there's only so many different sizes of the buses that they make. And these companies have a very strong lobby with the federal government around what sizes of buses they want to make and sell transit authorities like ours. So I would love to have a 12 foot bus, but Gillig doesn't make a 12 foot bus. They make a couple of different sizes of buses and that's what they make. And these companies know that the federal government pays 80% of the cost of these buses, so there's really no motivation for them to make smaller buses. And that's the stinky reality of some of the things that we have to face as a common council and as a transit commission and as the chair of the finance committee that I've asked for for many years. So I look forward to Brian's discussion around the size of buses because I've had that conversation with constituents for many, many years and other council members. and it is not me i'm certainly not making an excuse for anyone but i also know what sometimes is an unfortunate reality that we face and that is the unfortunate reality that the they only make so many different sizes there's only so many companies some companies that make buses and the larger buses do last longer than if the city were to run the metro lift size buses throughout their entire fleet So I talked more on that than I wanted to because I didn't want to steal Brian's thunder as it relates to an upcoming presentation. But I wanted to share that with the public and the council this evening. Thank you.

If I could just say a follow up. Right now there's two manufacturers that make buses that are Buy America compliant buses. There are some that are looking to get on, but there's basically two. And one of the two is Alderman Piper. He's asked me multiple times, why can't we go to a 30 foot instead of a 35 foot, which that's part of our discussion. Well, the 30 foot bus only is 2% of the buses that are being produced. in the country right now they're 35 40 and then you get up to 60 foot articulated buses so they're going to bigger ones because a lot of part of it you also have to remember is a lot of people a lot of systems are doing what we're doing because the there's less funding so it's less routes less service so that demand gets pushed onto fewer vehicles so

Alder person lucky one last question. The big buses are on a fixed route and the Metro lift is kind of goes where the people need because they're handicapped. They gotta go to their doctor. They can't. Get to the fixed route so we have this short buses.

That's the Metro lift and we have the big buses or that's on the fixed routes that that is correct and I'm sorry if I didn't explain that I probably jumped in too far so I apologize for that.

Thank you. Are there any other questions? I know there's been some discussion about empty buses today. The city did put together a nice video about two months ago. It's still available on our YouTube channel. So I would encourage both the Alders as well as members of the public, if you have questions about why sometimes you are seeing empty buses, River can tell you all about it on our YouTube page. All right. Any other comments regarding transit? I will take that as a no water utility commission report all the person Matthews.

Yes. Thank you. Miss mayor. Had the opportunity to tour the new building. The new facility is coming along. Well, we're really looking forward to 1 thing. I think it's important to mention is the consolidation efforts and what. The impact is going to be from a cost from the water utilities, being able to have everything housed in 1 building. And maximize services and 1, it's going to save a fortune in transportation and. allocations as well also too as you will the council will see coming forward you're going to see more buildings be coming up and open for distribution so a lot of good things are happening with that building and it's not just a rebuilding of a new building in a new facility there's going to be a lot of value and a lot of add to that particular piece so looking forward to it and a report thank you um it board report alder prison minion

Our July meeting, which would have been last week, Wednesday, was canceled. End of report.

Landmarks Commission, Alderperson Christine.

Thank you, Mayor. And we had three applicants come before and request some funds for maintenance and upkeep of their historic properties speaking of a national historic property the water utility as a non-local historic property hopefully coming before common council on what to do with it we finally got to see the inside of that property and that was the one of the highlights of the evening and hopefully it'll come here and you guys get to see the unfortunate of the inside of that property. So and to report.

Thank you. Redevelopment Authority Alderperson Lemke.

No meeting, no report.

Parks, Recreation, and Forestry Board, Alderperson Wells.

Thank you. No meeting, but I did want to thank the PRF staff and city staff for all their hard work over the weekend, but on the Independence Day events and celebrations. I'm sure I speak for many city residents who very much appreciated the excellent fireworks and the parade. Please check out your activity guide for all the other great events that we're putting on this summer, and enjoy your summer programs. Thank you.

And I do want to add a thank you to our Parks Foundation for our beautiful new flag in Lowell Park. So if you weren't at the fireworks, definitely check it out. Library Board Report, Alderperson Halgastead.

Thank you. Our meeting is this Thursday at 4.45 at the library. If anyone's interested, please come join us. I would encourage everyone again to join the summer reading program and also mention that this year's Waukesha Reads book has been announced. It is 33 place by Alice Austin and it will be available starting September 8th. End of report.

Excellent. Thank you. Cemetery Commission Report, Alderperson Christine.

Thank you, Mayor. Our last meeting, we discussed Waukesha Unlocked, and we are having two days at the cemetery. And I'm going to go back to landmarks. Landmarks and the Spring Commission is opening up some of the spring houses for Waukesha Unlocked. And the July meeting is not scheduled for cemetery, so our next meeting on cemetery is Monday, August 10th.

Thank you. Housing Authority report, Alderperson Piper?

No report this evening.

Community Development Block Grant, Jennifer? No report. All right, Public Art Committee report, Alderperson Molson? No report.

all right plan commission uh jennifer i will oh nope we're throwing it over to jeff thanks um this is a request that went through the plan commission is coming to common council for review and possible action on a request by habitat for humanity of waukesha jefferson iraq counties to waive impact fees for the construction of two new single family and one duplex in the tower hill neighborhood the single families are at 128 134 caldwell the duplexes at 909 madison street these are their next houses that they're going to be building after they complete dominica park which should wrap up this fall construction over there should wrap up so they're going to move over to this neighborhood so for impact fees our section 4 10 8c of the code allows the common council upon recommendation from the plan commission to waive impact fees for low-cost housing And the income level of these habitat families typically ranges between 40% and 80% of the county median income level. So in the past, we've waived them for Domenica Park. We waived them for the Prairieville neighborhood on White Rock, where there are some single families, some duplex, and the Little Pocket neighborhood. And then the other justification in this area is all three of these lots previously did have homes on them. Those were torn down by the hospital. As they did their project for the new entryway, they realized that some of these they didn't need anymore, so they decided to give them the habitat to develop some more homes in the area. So with that, we'd recommend granting impact fee waiver for all impact fees for the new homes being developed by Habitat at 128 and 124 Caldwell and 909 Madison Street.

Alderperson Matthews.

I'll make a motion to waive the impact fees for the construction of the two new single-family homes on Caldwell Street and the duplex on Madison Street.

Thank you. Alderperson Helgestad. Second. Is there any discussion? Alderperson Lemke.

I normally would be adverse to waiving impact fees until I found out that there were homes on 128, 134, and 909 Madison Street. And those homes originally, before they were torn down, did pay the impact fee. So a new home on this site here would basically be getting double the impact fees where all the infrastructure and parks and everything have already been paid for. technically from the impact fees. So I did change my mind about this and not because it was Habitat for Humanity income levels, but just I think the double impact fees per lot wasn't right. So I will be supporting this. Thank you.

Alderperson Van Trieste. Alright, anyone else? all right then we do have a motion in a second so please vote when it is before you all right that motion passes 14 to 0. uh thank you is there anything else for plant commission I will take that. It's like I will take that as a no. All right. Next up we have Finance Committee Report. Alderperson Piper.

Thank you. No items tonight, but I wanted to remind the council and the public that the budget calendar, the budget review calendar is out. Tony sent that out in an email on the 15th of June. The first meeting is probably the best meeting of the year in my humble opinion, and that's the show and tell, the capital equipment show and tell on August 25th at 6 o'clock at City Garage on Century Drive. Encourage all the members of the council to attend, and certainly the public is very welcome to come and see the various vehicles and pieces of equipment that are being requested in the 2027 budget. If you have any questions on that, please, you can certainly reach out to myself, Tony, or Joe Sherrill. End of report.

Can I ask a question about the report?

Sure. Alderperson Lemke, go ahead.

We always go to the garage, and it's a great thing, but we kind of get surprised when we go to the garage as to what they're showing us. They give us a little form. Would it be possible... Tony, to get that form to us a little earlier, maybe by our communications so that we aren't surprised when we get there and have not so much time to investigate before we get there.

So just to clarify, basically a list of the vehicles that will be presented on that evening.

Yeah, that's I don't know if it's possible. It might not be, but you know, I always get there and say, oh, you know.

Yeah, I don't. Let me talk that through with. Certainly departmental staff and the fleet manager, but I think that that's a possibility that we can certainly explore. Thank you.

Cool, all right. Building and Grounds Committee Report, Alderperson Moulton.

Well, everybody's had a lot of good ideas for building and grounds lately. As of yesterday, the balance in the buildings and grounds account is now $0. So if you have any further good ideas, you'll need to wait until January. We're not accepting additional referrals unless the referral you think costs $0, and then we'll be happy to look into it. Otherwise, I guess that's it.

Thank you for that update. Next up, Ordinance and License Committee Report. Alderperson Wateska?

Yeah, we've got an item here to review an amendment to Municipal Code 9.115 to allow temporary extensions of licensed premises onto Municipal Lot 13. And I'll pass it over to Jim, because this was his referral. So Jim, go ahead. Thanks.

Yeah, the item that's being brought forth is for the extension of premises for Maddie's Bar. I'm fighting for fairness with this because it seems that that original 9115 was made for the House of Guinness and other bars immediately joined in with them. and i'm only asking that maddie's have the same respect with the with the parking lot behind their bar that they have an extension of premises they get a lot of overflow from the friday night live um it was passed unanimously through committee so i'm just asking that this be uh be passed through thank you and just as a reminder this is the second reading so we are not taking action on this tonight um are there any comments or questions alder person with tesca

Yeah, so to Jim's comment, this did pass through O&L unanimously to come to council, or to recommend approval to the council. I'm with Jim, right? This is only fair, in my opinion, to pass this and allow you know, Maddie's to use that parking lot if they desire. It's not particularly fair to allow, you know, a few places that happen to be adjacent to one of our municipal lots and not allow others if they want to. So I guess in my opinion, the only two options are either remove it completely and not let anybody do it or, you know, allow lot 13 to also be used. So I'm supportive.

Alderperson Wells. just for clarification is this for a one one weekend uh extension premises or is this a because my understanding is that the uh house of guinness extension premises is for st patrick's day would this be a blanket throughout the year or just a one-off so just for clarification the ordinance um so this isn't the permit this is the ordinance the ordinance would allow them to theoretically do it

anytime that they get the permit for it.

That's what I was missing. Thank you. Yep.

Yeah, Alderperson Manion.

That was a question that came up at the O&L meeting that I asked and Brian actually sent me an email last week clarifying that. So currently the restriction is based on the fact that under the municipal code an extension of premise has an aggregate limit of 90 days. So just so everybody's clear, there could be some unintended consequences here because that is the limit upon this. So I'm not saying that Maddie's is going to do it, but under the current code, they could request up to 90 days of extensions in that parking lot.

Thank you. Alderperson Everett.

Yeah. Well, you are concerned about that. And I did manage to speak with somebody at the licensing. And they told me that 90 days is the maximum. However, at $40 a day, I don't think that'd be cost prohibitive.

Alderperson Wachowska.

Apologies. One other thing I thought of. Typically, when we think of extension of premises, it's like a sidewalk cafe or something like that. That is not the case here. This is a closure of a public lot. Same as it does for the other house of Guinness. Thank you. They would be required to follow our street closure. Um requirements, so this isn't. They're just going to set up a sidewalk cafe in the parking lot whenever they want, right? They have to apply for license. They have to follow our municipal code around shutting down the parking lot so that nobody is going to drive in, right? They can't just take advantage of it requires a permit. Those kinds of things. These were all discussed during O and L. It just kind of slipped my mind before, so that was what I wanted to add.

Alderperson Wickerson.

I just want to clarify that this ordinance is strictly just the modification with lot 13 being added. What Alderman Wateska is talking about is this does not stop Maddie. Maddie would have to provide a blueprint and come to O&L with their extension premise permit and their blueprint of what they're going to be needing. This ordinance only designates lot 13. That is just the change. You're not approving or not looking at all of these additional things, that's all a separate process for O and O. This ordinance strictly just adds lot 13 to the current ordinance where lot three, the clock tower lot is for the House of Guinness. So I just want to make sure that everybody understands that the permitting process and the blueprint that Maddie provides is not part of what we're talking about.

Thank you.

Alderperson Anderson.

Just out of curiosity to Alderman Wateska's comment. What's to stop the cascade of additional municipal lots being added to this? And you know, if it's fair here, it's not fair there. I mean, do we just make every lot available to people?

Alderman Wateska?

That is certainly a possibility that another owner near a parking lot would or municipal lot would come and ask us for the same permission right another amendment to open them all up we certainly could open them all up um for this i think that's something we all have to consider is what the future is again from my perspective It's fair until somebody ruins it, right? And then we have to talk about taking it away from everybody. But it's a great question.

All right. Any other questions or comments? All right. Again, this is the second reading, so this will come back to us at a later date. Moving right along, HR Committee Report, Alderperson Anderson.

Our next meeting is scheduled for July 15, 6 PM, in this room.

Thank you. Board of Public Works report, Brandon?

All items were on consent, nothing further.

Excellent. Yes, so I'm going to assume that's your report then as well, okay.

like yeah you've got two things here um all right uh city attorney's report anything uh no report thank you all right uh city administrators report yeah just a couple items uh coming back to the 2027 budget for capital we received all departmental requests early last week so we're slowly coming through those one thing you'll likely see if you compare this year's cip to the proposed one is that there are probably several projects that will be moved around especially for 2028 because there are a lot of requests some of which are mandatory that are putting us at a dollar threshold that i don't think we ideally want to be so again you'll probably see a lot of projects move around The other thing is just thanking the council for the investment in the upgrades or enhancements, if you will, in this building. I think part of being a good employer is making workplace safety a priority. So I think that's important to any organization, but probably even more so one where we have so many public facing facilities like this. as an extension of that to what Alderperson Creazine had mentioned it really is a recruitment and retention piece and we have a very strong staff here and I feel like it's my responsibility it's our responsibility to make sure that we're creating the type of environment to make sure that we maintain those standards and I think tonight was certainly a reflection of that and what you see from um the community development staff related to the zoning code you guys just undertook a pretty significant approval by really laying out the framework for what the community development is going to look like for the next 20 30 years but then also on the work that brandon did brandon excuse me brian does in terms of the transit system and where he's been able to take that to make improvements along the way so that is the end of my report thank you

Thank you. Next up is my report. I just wanted to make sure that I'm calling attention to the invitation that you should have all received in your email regarding a clean water plant tour. Just a reminder to RSVP by July 17th if you would like to attend that, and I would highly encourage you to do that if you are available, especially if you're a newer alder. It's a very exciting experience, and be prepared for some walking. All right, next up, referrals. Any referrals? Alderperson Lemke.

I would like to make a referral to Tony to investigate. Every one of us every year probably gets block party applications. And I know I've gotten 10 of them in my seven years or 12 of them. And the people always have to come to my door or meet to arrange somewhere for me to sign off their approval. And so, I'm thinking that they can make an application, give it to Katie and then she can send it to me and I can email her. Yeah, this one's OK. They don't have to come to my door to to have me sign there.

We already do that paperwork.

Well, I know, but I was told we can't and therefore yeah, you gotta sign it. So I just want to make sure that that's still the policy. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other referrals?

all right um then next up we have a closed session uh alder person manion i move that we go into closed session pursuant to wisconsin statute 19.85 parent 1 parent g to confer with legal counsel regarding the possible settlement of an excessive assessment lawsuit captioned sbv fox river llc versus the city of waukesha

All right. Alderperson Halgastad? Second. All right. Any discussion about going into closed session? No? Please vote when it is before you.

Entry is the aye.

All right. That motion passes. And it looks like the doors have closed. And the members of the We're good. We're back on. All right.

Alder person paper make a motion to reconvene in open session.

Is there a second Alder person Manion?

I will second that motion.

Alright, any discussion about reconvening in open session? No. Alright, please vote when it is before you. Wigderson I Anderson I.

Entry is the high.

Alright, that motion does pass 14 to 0. We are now back in open session. Alderperson Moulton.

I move to approve the settlement of the lawsuit between SBV Fox River LLC and the City of Waukesha as discussed in closed session.

Alderperson Manion. I'll second that motion. Is there any additional discussion? No? Then please vote when that is before you. Woodgerson, aye.

Anderson, aye. Bantry, STI.

All right, that motion also passes 14 to 0. Thank you very much. That was the last item on our agenda. So if there are no objections, we are adjourned.