Landmarks Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'd like to, it is 06:00. I'd like to get start call to order. We do have a quorum, and we, our chairperson is not here yet, so I will fill in. Hopefully, she perhaps is in the parking lot on her way in, but it is 06:00. We do have a quorum. So let's do roll call, please.

Morning. Morrison.

Linda Gordo. Andrea Dorantes.

Mike Crissine. Matt Ratzak. Tony Lonza. Alright. As stated, we do have a roll call and we do have some people in the audience tonight. I didn't think you guys signed in, but do you have a specific topic or do you want to talk now? Okay. Alright.

If you

can come to the microphone, I know how you know how to do this. But if you could state your name and address, and welcome to Landmarks tonight. The first one of twenty twenty six. Thank you, guys. I'm very proud to serve with you guys as I said that last year. So please go ahead. State your name.

Lisa Selb. 434 Madison Street. I just wanted to bring up a few points about item 25 02208, discussion of springs maintenance and potential friends of the springs. On the cover sheet for this item, it starts by saying the landmarks commission is responsible of mid for maintaining four historic spring sites. And then it goes on to say there is no maintenance budget and no maintenance staff are assigned to the spring.

So, I'd like to ask why. And maybe this is, something that you can look into as alderman. Mike, why why can't we get budget money like any other department of this of this, city government that we have, whether it comes from community development or whether it comes from parks since a lot of these are in a park, why can't we get money? If we're responsible, there should be some funding that should be should be available there. So why why do we have to rely on grants, which like we found out in the last year, there may or may not be money there where the springs are going to be there and they do require maintenance, and, we need to take care of that.

And it it also says, that maintenance needs to be done primarily using volunteer labor and alternative funding. Again, why does it have to be volunteer labor? Why can't we get anyone to help with this? Another thing I just questioned was it mentions, quote, unofficial Springs Committee, and I'd like to address that. In 10/02/2013, there was a ad hoc committee that was formed, it was voted on, and that was Linda Hansen, Alan Hilsselman, and Dennis, Sereda.

Then again in March 2017, we it was on the agenda to nominate and elect members to the ad hoc spring committee. That was Bob Selb, Linda Hansen was renewed, Kimberly Metz. Again, October 4, appoint new citizen members to the Landmarks Commission Springs. There was a committee vote, Milton, Maryland were added to that ad hoc committee. So why is it considered unofficial?

Well, before I interrupt Lisa, one second. The first date you gave me, the the second date was March 2017. The first date was

10/02/2013.

2013. I put '20 '23. That why these dates didn't make any sense. Okay. I am taking notes. Continue, Lisa.

Didn't mean

to interrupt.

So so it is something that is voted on. So I'm I'm just wondering why they're saying that it's that it's unofficial. And it was in 02/04/2015, it says the ad hoc spring committee is to report on any priority repairs on maintenance for the city springs and take action on recommended allocation of CDBG funds. So that sounds like an official, position committee. So that was something that I wanted to bring up.

I do have, one of the charts. I was on the Landmarks Commission for six years starting in 2016. So I was there when they took that vote in 2017 to do that. And and this was one of the springs repairless, and I think that the ad hoc committee did a wonderful job of putting this information together. And I think that the commission and staff did a great job of getting those taken care of.

So it it is a a great idea to move forward with this. There I actually went there today to visit because it's been a while. The out of those 4 Springs, menisca looks good. It looks like the electric is back on. The the large stones have been put back into position, so the water isn't sloping.

Just a couple notes. I know that the commission, the committee has not been able to meet due to well, unfortunately, milk passed away, and then there were some health issues and things like that. So, Menisca, I wonder if maybe the swale that's in front of it, if that could be dug just a little bit deeper and maybe the runoff that comes down that huge hill could be diverted just a little bit more. It looks like it's already, been working a bit, but maybe even just a little bit more on that. ACME.

ACME, I slid down the hole the hill trying to get there. That's still quite dangerous. There is a hole in the ceiling, the concrete, of the underneath that's getting a little bit larger, so I don't know, if that and and in inside on the left hand side towards the back, there's also another hole that's getting a little larger, so I don't know if that's something that can be grouted or repaired or or if that's a water dripping through issue. I'm not certain about that. Salarian, unfortunately, four out of the eight tiles that we had redone are showing pitting.

So I don't know if that's something that we can take back to Marion restoration or if that's just, you know, part of it being a ceramic tile in Wisconsin, but I just wanted to mention that. One thing of concern is the metal, doors were removed. That was all redone with a a large metal plate opening. The concrete that is around that is cracked, and it's actually heaving. So that's about a maybe three eighths to half inch crack.

So that looks like it may not have been supported underneath. So that's gonna be a issue. And the reason why we were changing that out was because the water was running down through the crack in that same type of scenario, but so that's still an issue there. The major concern is Hobo. Hobo is flooded up to the second step.

It's the worst that I've ever seen it. And so having all that landmarks info, I just look back. And in January 2007, Reginald Sprecher, had made a report and that he and staff had toured the springs, and they took an inventory. And this is in almost twenty years ago. It says Hobo is in need of spring maintenance to clean out the basin and to make sure that the overflow pipe works properly.

So we're working on almost twenty years of having that same issue. And, I know that it's going has gone back and forth between parks, community development, parks, community development. And, going there today, the formal garden is all dug up. And I had spoke with Ron Gahl previously about it, and it was because of drainage issues. So if they can be making repairs to the formal gardens, why can't they dig that out once and for all, put some type of new drainage system in there, and then have it done, and then we won't have this this, overflow problem.

To me, it looks like a safety issue because there's steps leading down to what looks like a a pond. You can't even tell because all of the stones are covered with at least six inches of water. So that's a big thing, about that. So as far as, as having a Friends of the Springs, I think that's an amazing idea. If we can get people to pitch in, get get interested.

I I do question back, in 2015 in the annual report, it there was an introduction of the Landmark Commission donation fund. So it says in 2015, the Landmark Commission created the Landmark Commission donation fund. The fund which is managed by Waukesha Community Foundation was established as a mechanism for private donors to provide tax deductible contributions that will be used to protect, enhance, and perpetuate you know what I mean. Perpetuity. Thank you.

The city's cultural, social, natural, economic, political, and architectural history as embodied and reflected in improvements, landmarks, landmark sites, and historic districts. And so if if we have that already set up, maybe it could be advertised more, and maybe we can build on that instead of starting all over with that. So that was called the Landmarks Commission Donation Fund. So so I hope we can move forward and that our springs will be protected and that they'll be here for another hundred years. K. Thank you.

Normally, we don't comment right away on other committees that I serve, but I will comment. I did take good notes. And as long as I've been here, we obviously, it's on the agenda, every agenda. And we usually just talk about hobo and one of the things that you brought up is checking to make sure the drainage and it's not filled up with leaves and it's not and we think it's impacted. I think that's the right word is basically filled up.

And Charlie gives a report on that. We do have some volunteers that help with that, but the other ones we could also look at. And I know I also serve on the cemetery and a lot of things you're talking about, the cemetery has, the friends and the donation fund. So I've been doing this for less than a year, serving with this team. So this is certain, with city staff and going back on the records, I took really good notes. We will look at that and have some answers by the next time. Do you have any input, Charlie or Jeff?

I have a report on later on.

Okay. Okay.

I'll watch online. We can't stay. But thank you very much.

Okay. Thank you, Lisa. All right. That concludes public comments. Hopefully, we've had a management last year since we have to approve these minutes. So looking for a motion. Do you guys have any, comments reviewing our last meeting's minutes? If not, I'm looking for a motion to approve the minutes. Alright. Do we have a second?

I will second that.

Thank you. Jeff, are you getting all this? Alright. Time time to vote.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Alright. That was approved unanimously. Thank you. We are now going to move on to

Charlie. Alright. So as you can see from the agenda, they're really there aren't any applications on

the agenda tonight or anything like that. I just had a couple

of reports that I wanted to get to you guys right away rather than waiting until we do have some applications. So the first one is the 2025 paint repair grant summary. So I just have this slide to start out, the usual one. As you know, Landmark Commission paint repair grants are increasing scale of roughly 15% of the cost of a project up to a maximum of $3,000 but the Landmark's Commission may use discretion to change award amounts based on project scope, overall impact, fund availability and any other circumstances. And then this kind of summary at the bottom I have on the next slide.

So for 2025, we had $25,000 of in the grant fund plus three fifty dollars that was left over from an incomplete project in 2024. And all of that grant money has been approved. So that the funds is at zero for 2025. The environmental reviews and the SHPO approval, that's the State Historic Preservation Office, those were as of last year, we were required to be getting those done as the grants came in. In some cases, I was able to get them done well after they came in, but still before we had allocated any of the money.

Those are all completed. And we've dispersed roughly 18,600 of the grant money. There is $6,432 that has not been dispersed yet that we'll have to wait until two projects are completed. But we do anticipate those being done in the spring, the applicants do. If we are expecting $25,000 again for the 2026 Pain Repair Grant Fund, which is of course dependent on federal CDBG funds.

As far as we know, we should get them, but we don't know what the timing will be or anything like that yet. So we'll have updates on that going forward as we find out. As a reminder, the Land and Waste Commission approved 12 grants over the course of 2025. So here are the projects, the addresses, the project descriptions, total estimated costs and then the grant amounts. The largest grant was for 114 Southeast Avenue for $4,000 and the smallest was for $180 for 323 McCall Street.

And again, all but two of those have been paid out. The two that haven't are 202 West College, which was a siding repair replacement that had gone back and forth, and they had ultimately settled on repairing the wood siding, and they're working with thoughtful craftsman. They're hoping to be on their agenda in the spring once they get to that project. But again, those are projects that kind of they're not able to tell what the timeline is going to be until they start work. So they're not sure when that will happen, but they do hope that it will be sometime early in the spring.

And then the same for 122 Southeast. This is actually 114 Southeast Avenue, which was a siding repair and painting work project along with some roof repair and gutter repair. And that was one that came in kind of later in the year. And they are also hoping to be on their contractors' agenda for early in the spring. And those are both larger projects that we're and they're new homeowners, so we're expecting that both will be completed.

And and then moving on, we had a monitoring of the CDBG from the Waukesha County of the Painter Repair Grant program. This is a kind of a standard process that they go through. The county has a number of CDBG programs that they're the coordinators for, some of them with the city, some with other entities, and they pick a few every year to monitor just to make sure that they're in line with federal guidelines and federal regulations. The historic Springs fund was monitored several years ago when we still had that. And that was one of the reasons we don't have it anymore.

So in this case, they found that the program is mostly in good shape. In general, it's they believe it's a very good program and that it is mostly in line with all the regulations and all the reporting. There are a few things that we do need to change. There's a contractor eligibility website that we have to verify going forward. Hopefully, it should be a quick search.

There's also verification of completion of work. Previously, we were able to just provide completed the paid invoice, the evidence that the applicants have paid their contractors. Now we have to actually either inspect it or get photos to verify that they've done the work. In most cases, you can see the work that's done. So we've essentially done it, but now we'll have to actually have some record of it.

And then they recommended that the SHPO approval and the environmental review be done prior to project start. That was one where we had said that, that in many cases is not going to be possible. It's just people come to us, and they want to start the next day. So I am going to be trying to get the SHPO documentation to them before the meetings going forward. But we won't be again, going forward, it'll your approvals will have to be contingent on getting those approvals.

And we did add a few lines to the application to make sure that it was all that everything was clearly laid out to applicants. And then the last big thing is the eligibility requirements, which will be a pretty significant change to the way that we're doing paint repair grants going forward. So we are not able to do area based paint repair grants anymore. So previously, it's been based on the census tracks. It had to be in low to moderate income census tracks, which included most of the historic districts, but excluded the Caples Park District and a small portion of the East Broadway District.

So that does not apply anymore. So any historic property in the city can be eligible for a grant. But by approving the grant, the Landmark Commission will have to be doing a spot slum blight designation on the property, which is a sort of a different process. There's an area slum blight designation, which is a long legal process that a municipality has to go through that has some very specific standards. But the spot designation is much less specific.

Our coordinator at the county told me that it is possible to do a designation based on preventing potential future blight. So something like a roof replacement that if this roof is not replaced, the house will experience leaks and there will be significant damage going forward. So that is a basis for doing a designation. This is what they've been what they've given me from the guidelines. So we're still working on trying to figure out exactly how the designations are going to work.

But I think the important points of this are specific conditions of so that they can be the activities can be undertaken on a spot basis to eliminate specific conditions of blight, physical decay or environmental contamination, which wouldn't really apply that are not located in a slum or blooded area. And then one of those activities is historic preservation. And it says rehabilitation must be limited to eliminating those conditions that are detrimental to public health or safety. So this is something that we'll have to have a little more discussion of going forward. The way I read it is, it's more about the specific types of projects that are being that are getting grant money rather than necessarily the conditions of the houses, that it would be specifically something where there's a rationale that if it's not done, then the house could have a serious safety issues or could become a public health or safety concern.

This is also this is just kind of a as additional information, this is from the area slum blight designation. So again, this doesn't apply specifically in this case, but it is some more information that might be useful to make a determination. So the standard is, in that case, at least 25% of the properties need to be experiencing physical deterioration of buildings or improvements or abandonment of properties, chronic high occupancy turnover rates in commercial buildings or significant declines in property values or abnormally low property values relative to other areas in the community or known or suspected environmental contamination. So I just kind of bolded the two that seemed like they were relevant. And this isn't a specific standard that you have to go by, but it's a similar kind of designation.

So we'll have a little more information on that going forward, I guess.

Before we move on to the next agenda, a couple of quick points. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you for putting this all this together. A couple quick things. I guess I was gonna go I'm gonna go backwards because that's how my notes are. Some of the extra money that could help in this where I've served with Jeff for a long time on RDA. If it's in with a certain amount of this distance from that's two different maps or landmarks maps and our RDA map, but there is extra funds that is available. I don't know if somehow you want to address that or?

So our fund that we have through the redevelopment authority, we actually have two, we have a rental rehab fund and then we have a homeowner rehab fund. Unlike your program, these are loans, but they're low interest loans. The rental rehab loans are anywhere from one to half of prime depending on this number of units and the homeowner ones are 0%. So it could help with a lot of these. You don't have to do any of these designations.

However, they're income qualified, so you have to be added below the county median income level to qualify for the homeowner one. And then for the rental rehab, you have to rent to or affirmatively market to people at or below 80% of the county median income. But those especially for bigger repairs, We've actually had a few there have been some that came out of landmarks like on Baxter Street. Their repairs are so significant they took out a loan and they also had a grant through you guys. So there's funding available for that.

And that was commercial shingles and eaves that was a huge repair. And

then through the commercial and also we can help commercial properties which is also a landmark commercial. We've actually done a handful of them that have been done on commercial properties there either in historic districts or landmarks.

Thank you, Jeff. I just wanted to let fellow commissioners know that that is another option. Other point that I had was I thank you, Charlie, for getting the paperwork to a lot of these people, applicants that come eventually before us. I just particularly like the two zero two West College, that younger couple, they they just literally bought it and didn't know what they were getting into. That's my opinion.

Whereas some of the other people that we see that come before us, they know how the process works. So it's relatively easy for them, but somebody that is new to this entire process, getting them to the paperwork in a timely fashion gets them prepared to come here so they know what they qualify, what they don't qualify for. And with a lot of these changes that we have, didn't mean to necessarily pick on this one, but this is the one that stands out the most in my mind because a lot of reasons.

And actually the other one that hasn't been completed yet, the 114 Southeast Avenue, that was another it was a similar case where it was sold. It was Carroll University owned. It was sold and the buyers found that there was some deferred maintenance that they had to do right away.

Right.

Inside and outside? Yes. Okay. And then the other comment was the website that you're trying to expand and update. I know this is I hate saying the word no brainer, but just trying to have as many local area Waukesha, New Berlin, Waukesha County contractors. There's obviously other contractors that come in here from Milwaukee area and Watertown area, nothing against them, but there's many local businesses you can, not to exclude them, but make sure that we have qualified people that are in Waukesha area contractor wise?

Yeah. Well, and that's there's a a federal federal website. It's called sam.gov

that Oh, I know all about that.

Yeah. It's it has a list of contractors that are excluded from getting federal money. Right. So we just have to look them up to make sure that they're not on that list. Okay. So and I have to figure out how to it's not a very user friendly website.

And you're are you taking some of that I know you mentioned the county, but

are you taking some of that verbiage to so we're in line with the county requirements are as well? Yes, definitely that's the county is basically making sure that we're in line with the federal requirements.

All right, that covers what I had. Do you guys have any comments? Go ahead.

So we're projecting 25,000. You probably don't know and I don't know if anybody here knows, what has been the numbers that we've been given over the years? It's because it was obviously 25,000 last year, so we're Yeah. But we all know everything is going up. So I'm just wondering if if we need to say, can we index money to the cost of living? You know, if or we're just

It's

helping less people. The the city gets

a a CDBG. There's a certain amount of money that the city is entitled to every year. Jeff knows a little more about it than I do.

Actually, it goes to the county first, does it not? And then

the Yes. County It goes to the county, but the city is entitled to a specific amount of And the county administers the program and they use some of that funding to have staff that can administer both our program and then a number of other programs throughout the county. And so there's a specific amount of money. I don't think it's gone up recently. And then out of that money, the majority of it goes to there's public works projects they do they've used it to repair parks in ways Signage, public art.

Yes. So there's a whole bunch of different programs that it goes to. Landmarks Commission, paint and repair grants in the past had been at $10,000 when I started for a few years. And then the grant amounts were increased, and we were able to increase the total amount to $20,000 for several years. And I think in several years, we were able to reallocate money from different programs that were not able to spend all their money.

We're able to be reallocated into paint repair grants because there was extra demand. It's been at $25,000 for the last two or three years at least, I guess. I think three years. That was what we requested at least.

I'm just as a board, if anybody thinks 25,000 is good and we just keep going along with it? Or

My main employer is a not for profit and we're lucky that we see anything. And just like the delay in the funds we're talking about, were those funds delayed five months or so. Mean, At least. Yes. I mean, I'm very happy with 25,000. Obviously more would be better, but just on the not for profit sides, we're all very afraid of even more cutting. Again, that's my employer We as

a not for can ask we can request more larger share of the city's fund in future years if you'd like. That will be up to the CDBT committee to determine based on the other programs. And I know they certainly are in favor of the Paint Repair Grant program, but they'd have to decide if

They are. I was on that committee for a year and there's usually an Alder on that and I can talk to the Alder that is serving and then will serve after May. So that is a very good point.

Yeah. Think the issue is the cost of all these are going up. So we have facade grant, is similar to this, but for downtown facades and signs, the cost of those have really gone up, especially you've noticed with signage that over the last couple of years has doubled. But the thing about that is sometimes we have a program like facade that doesn't use a lot of like this year we didn't barely use any money so we got the money so late that sometimes there's also opportunities to reallocate to programs like this where the money does get used. So we always try to identify opportunities to reallocate unused funds to programs that are gonna use the funds.

Yeah, remember that the last meeting I was at for CDBG and probably saying that wrong, we had nothing to talk about because we didn't even know when the funds were coming. So that's why I'm bringing that up now. And one other point is grants are getting harder and harder to get ones that we usually count on. You mentioned two of them that we don't qualify or they're not there anymore. Is there city staff? This, I guess, this goes out to Jeff and Charlie, not that I wanna hire a grant writer for the city of Waukesha, but are there any city staff in this building that set aside looking for grants? Or is that something we should be looking for, checking with the city of Appleton? Or

It's mostly Kaukauna. It's community development staff that Okay. Would do that.

And you guys are looking for

We're always yeah. Looking for grants. Mean just today we got one from AARP that came out. We applied Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. We've been very successful with those grants, 250,000 for the Cobblestone Hotel, 250,000 for Civic Theater and then just recently $50,000 for Friedman Alley. So yes, we get a lot of emails from different grant things that we'll see opportunities come up. DPW does the same thing. They have certain grants. They're always looking for transportation grants and there seems to be a lot out there. We have a grant writer.

I don't think we have I don't think we have I think we do fine with what we have with the staff we have because we kind of tailor it like so if there's a public art kind of grant, Robin's gonna write that. If it's a historic, Charlie got a grant for nominating things to the National Register. So we kind of tailor it to whatever staff member kind of works on that.

I'm chuckling because HR meets next week and it sounds like a topic to bring up. All right.

There are the conferences that throughout the state for historic preservation, there is discussion of grants. It's usually when I've been involved in it, it's there are cities that are not aware of CDBG grants that, hey, this is an option that's out there. I haven't heard of other grants that are specifically for aside from the tax credits that the state provides that are specifically cover what this program does.

It's nice they're starting to start conferences up again, at least ones that you can meet in person. Yeah. Because they were languishing for a while. Do we have any other comments while we're still on this for city staff? All right. Let's move on to the next one. Charlie, thank you. All

right. So the other topic that I had was historic springs restoration. This is I think Marty had mentioned at the last meeting that we don't have anybody that's nominated to the Springs Committee as a representative anymore since Julie Scarpaji left. We have that was sort of a request to bring that up. As all of you know, we have four springs in the city that are the city is responsible for maintaining.

So that's Meniscus Spring, kind of going clockwise, I guess, Meniscus Spring in the top left and Acme Spring and Silurian and Hobo Springs. And there is not there's never, as far as I know, been a regular budget for money that's used to maintain the springs. We don't have staff people that are going out and cleaning them or fixing maintenance issues. As far as long as I've been at the city, it's always been volunteer and bigger issues, like for instance, the restoration of the murals at Silurian Spring, we were able to use grant money for. But one of the issues with the grant money was it the CVG grant, it had to be spent on specific things.

It couldn't be just sort of a fund that was ongoing. We also had got money in the city's CIP that the capital investment budget for repairing the Silurian Spring Basement. But those are kind of one off projects that are major needs and the general maintenance is volunteer labor and donations. We do have the donation fund at the Waukesha County Community Foundation. We've had a few large donations from individuals in the past, relatively large.

And we also had a lot of donations that came in as part of the Franklin Boggs mural where the sections of the mural were auctioned off. There were a number of donations surrounding that. But that's also not a fund that's regularly increased. And in the past, we've had the ad hoc springs committee, which Lisa explained earlier. I wasn't around for the creations of it.

Some of that information I wasn't aware of. But it was never an official city committee. It was sort of something that had been formed by the Landmarks Commission, didn't meet regular basis that city committees typically do, the meetings weren't noticed or anything like that. And I had just I had talked to Julie Scarpaji, who was on it previously, really this week, and she told me they hadn't met in a couple of years. All the members have kind of had to step back for various health reasons or other reasons.

So it's really kind of, for the last few years, just been doing the bare minimum to keep them yes, which is the volunteer projects that we've had a couple of times a year And then when there are bigger things that are needed and also sucking out the drainage from Hobo Spring whenever it floods. And that is something that I had asked the parks and DPW staff to do, but they weren't able to get to it before it got cold. And so now it's been kind of sitting there for a while. So there are a number of organizations in the city that are organized basically for these kind of specific things that aren't necessarily city budget money, the tax money that it are wouldn't necessarily be appropriate to use that kind of money on. But they take donations, they fundraise and they organize things like volunteer events.

So the Friends of the Waukesha Parks, Recreation and Forestry, we've used the equipment that they have in their volunteer trailer. So they organize volunteer events to help clean up and repair playgrounds and other things throughout the parks. They fundraise they have fundraisers at a lot of the parks events throughout the year involve fundraisers for the friends of the parks. And then they sponsor educational sessions for children and I think for adults also. The Friends of the Waukesha Public Library has been around for a very long time.

They purchase art and furniture for the library. They support library programs for children. And they also do financial and volunteer support for supported the Library's Capital campaign. So they're another similar program that the city has. And then the Friends of the Prairie Home Cemetery, I believe, is the most recent and sort of the most similar objectives.

Raise money to do maintenance and smaller projects at the cemetery that wouldn't be something that would be in a city budget or that wouldn't be covered by the cemetery's other funds. So they do things like pet walks, and I believe they organize the hayrides that happen around Halloween. And they had a Culver's donation night as well. And the thing that's on their website, I have a meeting scheduled with the Director of the cemetery in a couple of weeks to talk about it. But the thing that was on their website was they were raising money for a veterans tribute garden in the cemetery.

So those are similar programs that kind of cover these kinds of needs for other areas of the city. So I guess the hope is that we could form something similar for the Springs, Friends of the Waukesha Springs, which would be an official organization that I believe that they're all separate from the city, but would have some sort of a relationship with the city and fundraise for the Springs maintenance and restoration projects, identify new work that needs to be done like the Springs Committee has done in the past, and then maybe take over organization of some of the volunteer events and potentially organize things like tours and other fun events to sort of get more interest and more provide more information on the Springs for people as they can. This is something that has kind of been something that I've wanted to look into more for a long time. But like this everything that has to do with the springs, it's just always kind of on the bottom of the priority list and it's something that as I have time and which is very rarely. So really, what I'm kind of asking you guys to think about is, A, is there anybody who's interested in sort of putting in the time and extra time beyond the commitment that you have with the Landmarks Mission to help organize the Friends of the Springs?

Or do you have ideas of people who might be interested that you know or that you would be any ideas that you have for how to get some this sort of a thing off the ground. You don't necessarily have to give ideas right now. You could contact me later on. But anything that you are willing to contribute would be welcome, but not expected.

I just have a couple of questions about like fundraising and stuff like that. Have you ever had a fundraiser for any of the spring projects at all?

We've like I mentioned, the biggest fundraiser that we've had for the springs or the fund that that

good

not to I question.

Off. I Sold off. But I I mean, like that's an event or anything like that, like a dinner or a

We have not. That would be the idea would be that that hopefully the Friends of the Springs could organize something like that.

Are you opposed to bar crawls?

Absolutely not.

Okay. Yep. I I guess the question is Absolutely not opposed. Not opposed. We've raised that money. It's where is it held?

It's at the Waukesha County Community Foundation.

Okay. So if you started up the Friends of Waukesha Springs, would they hold the money? And who who's gonna be the holder of the money, and how is that money allocated and given out? I mean, obviously, we have the BOGS money. Is that just for Springs or that's for any art project? Or is there still money left?

There is still money left. I guess of that money, half of it went to the public art fund. And I believe they've used it for their public art. The public art committee has, the other half went to the Landmark Commission. And most of that's still there. Some of it's been used, for the most part, it's still there. But it hasn't been increased really since then. So that would be something that you all would have to decide whether you want to Okay. So I just want

to take the holding of the money and the the accounting of the money out of somebody volunteering because nobody wants to do that. So if we if we started this program, we would all agree that the money would stay in the foundation, but the foundation would keep it separate for these projects. So they would account for it, do whatever has to be done by the government, you know, for auditing and everything else. So totally off whoever wants to do this. We just make the money, give it to them, and they do the rest. Okay. Just so that everybody understands that. And

Well, and it's my understanding too. If you're having a friends of organization Mhmm. It's going to be set up as a nonprofit. Right. And it's gonna be an independent organization.

But in

the beginning, who

somebody has to be be accountable if you get the friends, and it's a nonprofit. Somebody has to fill out all the paperwork to be a nonprofit. So whose name is on that?

It would be friends of the springs.

I know. But there's still gonna be a person that gets

the mail in. So then you end up having regular organization where they're gonna have a president, a vice president, a secretary, a treasurer, and they're gonna run it just like a regular business type thing.

Then it gets it it I'm thinking Right. You know, it just sounds like it's getting too deep for what most people wanna do.

Right. So if you you'd wanna look to see what Friends of the Cemetery do, Friends of the Library do, because those organizations have been long standing. And I know especially Friends of the Library, I think every community library has their own organization for that, to pick up all of the incidental things that their budgets don't cover. And they're probably the best models to follow, but I know they're independent organizations not affiliated with you know, they work in conjunction, but they're not directly affiliated. They're all like, they're separate little organizations.

So they don't have to report back to

Yep.

The library board

Yep.

At all. Nope. And so they don't have to tell them when there's meetings or what we did in our meetings.

Correct. They're just an independent organization that assists them

with Mhmm.

Help along the way. And they do fundraisers and they do events and they do all Right.

But it sounds like they're holding their own money.

Yep.

Where, you know, I would prefer if I have anyone involved, not to have to be the accountant of the money. Another benefit So it's their hybrid.

Yeah.

It's A benefit of doing it that way is okay. If we do grants here, have to pay prevailing wage in that. You don't have to do that with the foundation. We have to get bids when we have work done. You don't have to that. So there's a lot of, like kind of governmental policies and procedures that we have to do before doing any work with Springs or but in this case, I think the money could probably go a little further in a foundation as well because of those. Obviously you don't want to set up by to how things get bid out and stuff but it does make the money go farther than here.

All right. Thank you. Since we are patterned after common and council all voted on this very similar layout to cemetery. I've been on the cemetery committee six years, and the way it works is the friends have a board member or a commissioner as one of the friends. That's the way they do it. I think it's always been that way. And then that friend, since they are also on the board, just like, you know, every month every meeting, we have our springs report. So they're independent, but they still give a report. And we used to do that, again, last year, but that we're all new here. Marty can speak on that in a second.

But I I'm gonna go back to public comment tonight. A lot of this stuff, I think, has already been set aside, particularly if common council has already voted and said this is what it is. It's number one. What do we call it? Friends of the Springs. Sounds like it's already been established.

Well, I don't think it was the common council that voted on the Springs Committee. It was Landmarks Commission. Okay. So and that yeah. They they it was an ad hoc committee. Okay.

I just don't wanna reinvent everything if it's already Right. Hey. Look. Mike, you should see this binder. And I do believe somebody brought a lot of that information tonight. I'm just trying to think of if we could, hey, let's do this and this one. It's already in a binder or a folder like it already exists. Now we just need someone to volunteer and bring it up again or nurture it or and bring it into the 2020s.

Yes. And I guess the hope would be to make it a thing that can have an official status that, like you said, would be independent but able to be continued into the future and and to keep keep going, that wouldn't necessarily depend on the individuals that

were It starts with PR. I've been volunteering with, the parks and cemetery for over twenty years through my youth organization. Emails, I mean, I get emails, just like, they need volunteers for, Jamboree, and I'll talk about that a little bit later. But those emails come out six months ahead of time. So the city has, and the city will work with us on that.

The city's got a lot of emails to get up. So once we do get these ideas and events and fundraisers and sign up no one uses SignUpGenius, I think, anymore, but there's gotta be something more modern than, you know, of sign up genius. But I do believe the city, Rebecca's department, I'm not speaking for her, but each friend does have some city help, particularly since we're modeled after or newly modeled after the cemetery commission and their friends, I would think the city would help with that. And I can I can speak with city administrator on that this week? So that's that is exciting.

But the biggest thing is PR. How do you get that out there? How do you get that included in the mailers that a city reticent get? So but it starts with volunteers. We're not expecting city staff to do that, but I'm just saying this that there's stuff out there, resources the city has, and it's already out there.

We just need someone to put some input on that. So was that clear? Did I muddy the waters even more? But I'm just saying there is availability of to get the word out there. And the other thing is I went before I forget this is I've only been to The Springs because I've worked at Hobo Springs for Eagle Scout projects and when they have Waukesha open house. So Marty, do you have keys for the springs? No. No? Okay. I I know there's I know one of the speakers tonight, they have keys to the spring.

So let's have I would like to organize a meeting in the spring when it's nice for us to visit. Unless you guys think that's a ridiculous idea, I think. Not that we have to visit all of them in one day, but, you know, have you guys been inside the Springs or seen them?

Some of Not all of them.

Okay. Just an idea? Another action item?

That's a good idea.

Great. April 16. I'll meet you. Anyways, I think that would be a great thing since the board is all commissioners are all fairly new to this. Yes. So I'm excited about that once the weather gets nicer, unless it's nicer to visit when it's not so wet and leaking so bad.

But Right.

Do you have keys? Yes. Oh, there we go. There's some in the room that has keys.

I was gonna shine some light on that. The Springs Committee was never intended to be a permanent committee. This board really doesn't have authority to create their own committees. So that's why it's called ad hoc. Was to just deal with okay we have have CDBG money that Springs ad hoc Springs Committee is thrown together to take some local experts and that are interested as well as Landmarks Commission members and have them look at come back to the commission on hey here's the issues we see, here's what we think the priority should be.

It was really only just to use that money so it was never intended to be this long term thing because we have people learn on Landmark Commission on like a committee of the Landmark Commission. That's why they call it ad hoc. If it was an actual committee of the Landmark Commission, it'd only be Landmark's Commissioner. So like I said, it wasn't supposed to be a permanent thing. It just sort of became because every year we'd have CDBG money. Now we're not we don't have CDBG money for Springs. We haven't applied for it in a couple of years. So there's no committee.

Okay. Thank you for that clarification. I guess I was getting too excited to

But I mean

tell us about that.

I mean, I don't know. We could talk to the city attorney how that work if you want to have a permanent committee of that. But usually, we have a most of our because this is kind of a a separate committee. Most of our committees don't have a subcommittee unless it's for a specific topic.

Well, it

could Springs, but it's supposed the whole intent of that was just to be short term tackle the problem. The committee's kinda resolved.

Well, the ask was to have someone here tonight to volunteer, and we can reach out to it sounds like based on public comment, they're still out there. The current people of the ad hoc, the Friends of Springs, we can talk to them, but somehow we have to get them and one of us or none of us, somebody involved to reinvigorate that. I like the idea of it.

Yeah. And I'm certainly not asking any of you to, you know, stand up and volunteer. But if you have I any idea

think you did ask that, and I was agreeing. It's a great idea.

I like to organize things, but I don't wanna do, like

You've already got us on our crawl down in Downtown Waukesha. When is that, by

the way?

I'm just having fun.

Yeah. We did a really fun bar crawl last year. So but I'm all for organizing events, but that's about where my strength is, and that's where it ends.

Well, we can have we have each other's emails and we can just bring this up again at our next meeting.

Alright.

Thank you.

And the last item that I had was request to consider other dates for the February Landmark Commission meeting. We thought we were going to have to do a plan commission special meeting. They've been considering a full rewrite to the zoning code for the last two years. And we were looking at times to do special meeting for that. We thought it was going to have to happen on Wednesday February 4 or that first week, but it turns out it actually works better the following week.

So that will not be happening on that night and the February meeting. If we do get any applications that will go we'll just have that at regular time. So you do not have to consider different times.

Alright. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Jeff. What I have to talk about tonight is I've kind of let's talk about Waukesha Park and Rex always needs volunteers for one of their biggest events. I think this is actually a larger event than actually Oktoberfest, but it's coming up Janboree. I I we were doing it when we were kids. I took my kids there. But basically, it's citywide and even outside in some of the county parks, Waukesha Jamboree. The sixteenth to the twenty fifth starts, I do believe, Friday and Saturday, the sixteenth and seventeenth. This year, they have something called a Jamboree food tour. It that's you? Do you wanna say anything on that or

The food tour is full and so is the bar crawl.

Fantastic. I told you it was a good idea. Anyways, but there's other things. You know, just go on the city website, Jamboree. I'm sure everyone got stuff in the mail. It's fun. My kids always had a good time doing that, but now they're a little bit older and forgetting the local fun we have. Other thing, city of Waukesha, we like in our mailings, we like fire hydrants. Clean out your fire hydrants and make sure your mailbox is clean. But something else that the county asked us to do because you can actually adopt a sewer drain.

I have a drop seven sewer drains in the city of Waukesha, and you can name them. And you go to a website, and you can see my children and my father in law's name. You can name them. But make sure you're

I

think only my father-in-law. My mother-in-law didn't wanna do it, but it's a I forgot it. It's like he's a Vietnam corpsman, so I gave him some real cool name. Corman Dan, I think it is. But you guys can volunteer for that if you want. But if you don't want the recognition, particularly with all the leaves we have all over our city, if you have leaves in front of your city, make sure that storm drain because that can really not affect you, but people down the street. That can actually back up and then it freezes. There's some things on Saratoga Street that really ice up badly. So you know what the storm drain is? Just kinda if you're out there shoveling, shovel it in the street.

Thank you very much. That was my end of alderman report. Okay. And that moves us on to I turn my thing over to read my notes. Springs report. I think we had a pretty good spring report tonight.

I don't have anything more for that.

Alright. Do you guys have anything else to add? Yes.

The one thing that I have for communications and publications is the Landmark's ordinance updates that were proposed back in October were approved by the council on December 2. They haven't I've been kind of waiting for them to be updated in the city's muni code, which is published on the website. I'll send PDFs of that once that's done. Hasn't been done yet. It has been published, so they are my understanding is the ordinance updates are official. It just hasn't been put into muni code yet. Yeah, unless they're found No, in the it's

we had three public meetings on or three public readings of that even after it came out of here. And you guys all received emails every step of the way, right? It was an agenda item and we talked about them. Did you guys get emails?

Yep. It's just as it says, the final one. That's what we have to work.

Right. And the reason I bring it up is because there was two public comments sessions of public comment. They wanted it delayed because they felt that landmarks commission landmark commissioners weren't getting updated emails. I just wanna make sure that, in fact, you guys are. Because if I get them, then you guys get them too. So I just that was my only expansion upon that. So I see no delay in any of this stuff because

That's just the

Correct. Another local expert.

All right. So and that really shouldn't change any of the ways that you operate or any of the approvals or anything like that. It really was just kind of codifying things that the Landmark Commission has been doing for a very long time.

All right. Thank you, city staff. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Jeff, for coming out here tonight or perhaps you've been here since eight this morning. I'll be the way I thank you guys for sticking around. It's a long day. And I once again, I'm very proud to serve with you guys. You all bring something to the meeting. I'm really proud to be a commissioner with you guys. So with that, I'm looking for an adjournment.

Second. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye.