Village Board - Regular Meeting

Thank you. doesn't get more money

You were supposed to last time you showed up.

All right, let's call the meeting to order for the Board of Review for 2026. It is 6 p.m. on September 2nd. Roll call. Stigler. Here. White. Here. Niles. Here. Adams. Buchholz. Here. Select the chairperson for the Board of Review. I'll nominate Al White. I'll second that.

Hold on.

Is that planned?

Anyone want to discuss? Very good. All those in favor of Al being the chairperson, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Done. Take it over. It's yours. Thank you very much. You're welcome.

What are friends for? You can't best friend me better than that, can you?

You have to start with number four. Yep.

OK. Number four, here we go. Select a board review vice president. Any nominations for that?

I'm going to nominate Bob, and it's for vice chairman.

I'll second that. We'll have a vote. Everybody's saying, hey, Bob. That's not how it works. I'm going to give you a hard time.

I'm surprised.

Anybody in favor for Bob being the vice chairperson?

Yes. Yes.

Yes. Three, four.

I'm abstaining because I'm . No, you can't.

Motion carries 4-0. Thank you, Bob. Verify that at least one board member, review members, has met the mandatory training requirements. And I think, Bob, you did that?

Yes, I did.

Thank you much.

Yes, Roger was the other one.

Okay. Approve the minutes from September 17, 2025 meeting. And before I start, I'm going to sustain my vote because I was absent.

Move to approve. Second.

Motion to second. All in favor say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Motion carries. 3-0 with one sustain. It's Al White. Approve minutes for the June 2011-2026 meeting.

Move to approve.

Second.

Second.

Stu. Stu. I'll sustain on that one too. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries 3-0, 1 sustained. Verify the village has an audience for a confidential income and expense information provided for accessor. Skip number 8. Number 8. I can't take my glasses off now. Sorry about that. Confirmation of appropriate board review and open meeting notices.

Yes.

Thank you Verify that the village has an audience and for confidential and income expense information provided for assessor on our state law Wisconsin statute section seventy point four seven said seven AF Yes

review the new laws all right i'll take that one there's there are uh two court of appeals cases that i'll mention actually take it back one court of appeals case a supreme court case and then there are two pending court of appeals cases that i'll mention the first is a monomany falls border review case was against middleton westbrook and basically that just confirmed the statutory language where if a taxpayer does not provide the income expense information to the assessor that is requested they don't have the opportunity to have an objection hearing so that's what the That's how the statute reads, and we've always interpreted it that way. It's just good to see that the Court of Appeals said the language is black and white. You must do it, otherwise you forfeit your right to have an appearance. And that's kind of this trend the last few years where the courts have been interpreting the statutes very literally and it's black and white if you don't meet the procedural requirements you don't get the opportunity to be heard in front of the board of view which i prefer so i'm glad that they continue to kind of follow that trend the other one was a lowe's case out of city of delavan and basically That confirmed that the assessor has a presumption of correctness. What they clarified was it's not just a presumption of correctness for the amount of the assessment, but also the methodology used. So those can be overcome by the property owner, but that's kind of a higher burden that they must meet. They must show with substantial evidence that there was an error made by the assessor in some way. And then the other two, they're actually, they're both Milwaukee County cases. They both are, they have different judges, but they're coming out of circuit court. They both were appealed to the Court of Appeals. And it's kind of a long, I don't know, I find it interesting, maybe Sam would, and I don't think anyone else would, but it's a longstanding question where should the assessor apply the assessment ratio for that year to the fair market value when we're reviewing these assessments? The way that would come into effect for us, for the board, is if we were to overturn a valuation, In our packet from the DOR, there's a section where you have the fair market value and then it reads as if you should apply the assessment ratio. So let's say the fair market value is 200 grand and we're at 85%. Is the proper assessed value 85% of the 200 grand or should it be the fair market value of 200 grand? The circuit courts have both ruled that you should not apply the assessment ratio, which has kind of been position that i've had and suspected uh we don't have answers yet from the court of appeals i would anticipate at least one of those decisions coming out prior to the end of this year and i would i'm guessing it's just a guess but i'm guessing they're both going to uphold those decisions so that's not something we have to deal with often i had a couple of those cases in city of pewaukee where we dealt with that this year but I don't recall us ever having to actually apply that. But that's just kind of the other thing that's out there, this trend of order review law that we're dealing with.

Okay, thank you. Discussion related to the filings of summary of the annual assessment report by the assessor.

here don't have to be that close uh my name is sam monroe i'm the assessor for the village of waukesha i work for tyler technologies we are the contracted vendor uh beside me is dean smith we are both certified as assessor threes through this department of revenue for the state of wisconsin uh this year was a maintenance year for the village uh historically 2026 this year is a maintenance year 2025 was a market update and 2024 was a maintenance year The assessor's oath of office was taken on September 17th, 2025. Uh, this year we mailed the notice of changed assessments on August 5th of 2026. I have signed and attached the affidavit to the assessment role today, September 2nd, 2026. The municipal assessment report was submitted to the department of revenue and an estimated Mar was filed on June 8th of 2026. Corrections and omissions discovery. We did have one correction, which I'll go through here shortly. We had no emissions. Open book. The first date of open book hearings this year was August 11th, 2026. There were six parcels that were reviewed and there were five changes through the open book review process. Revised notices were sent to the owners to advise them of their appeal rights. Board of review information, the date of the board of review with the first complete assessment role is today, September 2nd, 2026. This year property inspections. We had 85 properties that were inspected. The inspection types were exterior and drive-bys. Uh, property sales, total number of sales that were valid and invalid in the municipality for the year of assessment was 265 valid sales. We reviewed 265 sales. We determined 77 sales were considered to be valid sales building permits. We had a total of all building permits for new construction and remodels of 85. And the number of permits that were field inspected were 85 new construction. Number of new construction permits that were field inspected were 13. We did analyze the new construction and adjust for value changes. agricultural parcels we currently have 131 parcels within the village that are considered agricultural and we did 131 inspections by drive-by online maps aerial photos to verify the agricultural use of those properties we did update the agricultural land values using department of revenues use value rates and we did conduct a ratio study for the current and previous years For 2026 residential ratio study, we had 77 sales. The total assessed value of the valid sale parcels was 36,764,200 total sales price of the valid parcel sales was 39,901,500. The aggregate ratio was 92. The mean ratio was 95. The median ratio was 91. The coefficient of dispersion was 13. The coefficient of concentration was 73 and the price related differential was one. For 2025, we had 85 valid sales. The total assessed value of the valid cell parcels was 25,907,000. The total sales price of the valid cell parcels was 38,091,788. The aggregate ratio was 68. The mean ratio was 66. The median ratio was 66. The coefficient of dispersion was 13. The coefficient of concentration was 66 and the price related differential was one. There were no valid sales for analysis of commercial sales for the commercial ratio study for 2026. In 2025, there were two valid sales for commercial properties. The total assessed value of the valid sale parcels was 1,101,600. The total sales price of the valid sales parcels was $1,758,520. The aggregate ratio was 63. The mean ratio was 67. The median ratio was 67. The coefficient of dispersion was 24. And the coefficient of concentration was zero. And the price-related differential was one. And that completes the assessor's report for the 2026 assessment year.

That's a mouthful. Thank you. Receipt of the assessment roll by the clerk from the assessor.

2026 assessment roll. And I have signed the affidavit word, your signature.

Done? Thank you. Received the assessment role, swore in statements from the clerk. Do you need any of that? Review the assessment role statements.

I have none. You have zero.

Review the 2026 assessment role and perform statutes duties. One, examine the role. Okay. No, that's okay. I don't know why my pen blew apart, but it did. Take mine.

You don't need it, do you?

Okay, we're going to examine the role, correct the description of the calculation and errors, added or omitted properties, and eliminate the double assessment properties.

So what we did last year is we... broke down that packet we just got from the assessor passed out portions of it to each board member and you guys can go through if you see any anomalies anything strange you can ask the assessor questions if we find an error we're going to have to we'd have to hold or give the property owner an opportunity for hearing um you know i would say it's Rare we find errors, but they do potentially occur, but that's kind of the, it's take as little or as long as you want, but obviously we've got hour and 45 minutes to kill. So you're welcome to look through it slowly.

Right. I think in the past and Greg remember wrong, I think everybody took a handful and we passed them out and everybody went, went through them.

So excuse me, remember where we put, where it came from though. So you're going to back in our right order.

We're in order with each other.

Here you go.

Thank you.

Yes. First one. 1361. 1361. 1975. 1975. 001. Your question will be mushed into the balance. horses, cattle, something along those lines. It's not tillable crop land. It's just land set aside for livestock. Well, so it's part of the farm that's not actively being farmed or

Okay. Okay.

So there are some trees on the property, maybe about a third of it, and the rest is just open land. Let me see if you can trace it on there.

The adjacent owner is the smart foot that's in the city lot. And then the river is there, plus some of the rest is owned by the state surrounding it, which is the White House.

Thank you.

So yeah, that is about the city property.

It's more that all of that is more than a classification, like wooded area or forest?

So there could be a classification as ag forest or forest lands. From the aerial, if it's not being utilized in agricultural, probably the best description would be undeveloped. Sure. So the undeveloped would be assessed at about $1,000 an acre as opposed to the agricultural use of it would increase the assessment. And I can flag that for further review if that's what you like.

Sure. So undeveloped. I have one for you, too, if you want. I'm just kind of curious on what this is. Yep.

It's 1-3-5-0-9-9-3-0-0-3. It doesn't show like March Atlanta. I'm just kind of curious what it even is.

1-3-5-0-9-9-3-0-0-3. That property is exempt, owned by the city of Waukesha. And it is, we have it as .167 acres.

.167. I'll just ask the question, why it's exempt? I'm just curious.

It's owned by the city of Waukesha.

So we can't do that?

Yes, it's owned by the city of Waukesha. All right, thank you. Yep, I got you.

I wrote on this.

I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sure it will. Okay.

If they're a utility, they're probably taxed directly by the state, I would guess. We don't have authority locally to tax them, usually.

It's a telecommunications company.

Yeah, that'd be my guess.

Yeah, so it's treated like a manufacturing company. The manufacturing is just part of the revenue.

sam did you have a chance to respond to the email from jennifer about the lack of parcel number on 164. the address listed on this parcel id is for the wrong property You've been a little busy the last few days.

Yeah, it has been. What date was that?

Monday. I received it at 1-12 on Monday. Is that something you respond to?

Yes, if the address is correct, I will respond.

They just did a CSM, I think, this year, so I think that's part of the issue.

Yeah, parcel 1298-985-002. Yeah. Okay.

Thank you.

is currently assessed for $1,237,300. What's the following page? This is 67, 68. So I believe it's at the top of the next page. So it takes up all of this page, and then it comes down here. It's just listed as highway 164 without street arrest.

That's what I found, too.

And it looks like they're saying it's 2265 and we have it as 22650. So... Oh. Okay. It should... Yeah.

I heard you say it. When I put that address into the county site, I get no active tax parcel with that address.

Yeah, because the county has the address just as Highway 164. Oh. So it's not showing the 2265. Oh.

Really?

So I will.

Should that be considered Lincoln Avenue as an address?

That's how we have it. So we have it as Lincoln Avenue. You just have the extra zero at the end. And I'm forwarding this to Laura Dressel at the county. I want to see if you want that as well.

Yeah, because the other one ends in 22650. So it's not going to be, it's got to have a different address than that, doesn't it? I don't think so. I wonder how they missed that.

So we're going to have a question for you right here. Yeah. So going back to that court of appeals case for the information.

Yeah.

I think the original request that goes out at the beginning of your process counts. I always recommend you send a secondary follow-up.

the the second half of that requirement is the assessment has to be made using the income and expense method if you use a different method then that statutory requirement doesn't uh doesn't qualify okay i should say either party has to make so if the objector is using income and expense to make their opinion of value, then that would also qualify. They would have to give you that whatever documentation you requested.

I guess that would extend my question to you. If I have a tax rep that provides a performative where it's just here's your market rent and it's not the actual rent and that would be requested as well. So would that tie in?

Yeah, I take the position. That comes up quite a bit. I take the position that that does not qualify. If you've asked for more than that and they're only willing to give you that, I don't believe that qualifies. And I've handled that two ways. Number one, you can just say, no, it doesn't qualify. We're not going to put you on the agenda. You don't get a hearing. I prefer to do a different method where we hold like a mini-hearing. You basically both, you know, you tell the board, look, this is what I asked for, this is what he gave me, he's missing this, this, and this. They'll have a chance to respond to that, and the board can decide whether or not, they kind of make the evidentiary decision that no, he did not provide the income and expense information that was requested. Therefore, your objection hearing is denied. that's not required statutorily but it makes it a lot easier down the line if they you know sue us for due process or whatever we have now created a record that shows look they clearly didn't provide the information that was requested that way we can get the case kicked at the beginning stages and have to instead of having to create a record ourselves through discovery and end up like waiting until summary judgment to actually deal with it so i do that i do that most of the time

Well, and I do have reps that will provide, like pro forma, here's your market rank for this type of property type. And then I request the actual, and they will provide a document that says this is the actual ramp, and it's not a ramp roll or a lease or anything. Exactly. So, okay.

I've got a lot of pushback, or I should say, you know, my assessors have gotten a lot of pushback on leases lately. I don't know what it is, but they're just like refusing to give them up.

Right.

We had one community, we're on the record, so I won't name the community, but Basically, the property was, this was a, it was retail, but the property was assessed at like $20 million. They thought it should be assessed at $6 million. They pushed back. We're not going to give you the lease. We're not going to give you the lease. Finally ended up getting the lease, and they were clearing like $2 million to $3 million a year. And it was like, you really think it's worth $6 million? I'll buy the property right now. We'll make my money up in three years. Are you kidding me?

they don't you know they want it both ways sure yeah i'd be as specific as you can requesting documents and if they don't provide i mean obviously i think the standard is reasonability

If you ask for something that's way out of left field that has no, that either they don't have access to or it has no relation to what your assessment, to you making the assessment, then maybe a judge would shoot that down. But I think a lease is well in bounds of what you can ask for. That kind of goes directly to the heart of the income and expense method. You need that information in order to accurately make an assessment based on that method. For whatever reason, there's a lot of pushback on that stuff the last couple years.

That's good. We had one where it was a tenant objecting

with the authority from the property owner, and then they tried to make the argument that I don't have access to all the documents you're asking for because we're just a tenant, we're not the owner. And we took the position that, well, then the owner should have objected. If he's not willing to share that information with you, then he should have been the one objecting because we need this information in order to make an accurate assessment. Um, that objection hearing was, we had like a procedural hearing and then that was kicked and they didn't get an objection hearing in that. So I wish this case would have been published. It wasn't, um, cause that would make it an even stronger case for this. But everything shows that seven days means seven days, all income and expense means all income and expense. So they're, They're interpreting it strictly, which helps us, in my opinion. And I hope we'll see that same kind of trend. I think we will. But you never know what the courts are going to do.

no we have to do that one next so you'll have to call for a motion for that this would also have

I said action, so I don't know if we had to do that.

No, the next.

I don't know if we had to do one or not.

The next motion.

I don't know if we had to do one for that or not.

I think the next motion is to adjourn. After that. I can't open it. No.

Are you good? Are you done with yours? Let's see if Stewie's got some more.

Yeah, we have to have a motion to accept the assessment roll as submitted. And then he's got to talk about the change that he did, the correction or whatever that he did. You want to do this one? I'm just saying, this one here. This one, yeah, we want to do that one. You want to call for a motion to do that? But the 2026, it should say that.

It should, yeah.

Yeah. That's what it will say, yes. There you go, writing on my paper again. Oh, all right.

Stuart, do you want to split some of yours up yet? Are you good? We spend them in half now now they're all mixed up in order Okay Oh my God. Look at the one I picked by the way. So what's 5M?

5M is microphone.

Thank you.

This number looks lower than I thought it was for this year. I'm on the very last page, so it says 1.721. as the equalized, so they took the ratio from last year and their equalized value is bringing it up to market value. I think last year we were at 95%. This year we dropped to 92 on the ratio, but the assessed value did increase due to the infrastructure. Okay, so the 1796 number is 100%?

So I have a question.

So you have an, I'm just curious, how many taxpayers you exactly have number wise? Do you have an exact number?

So I don't have that exact number because you can hold multiple properties. And you may have properties in your personal name and you may have properties in your business name.

I'm just kind of curious if you had a, I'm just curious.

I'll see if I can get that. I was just kind of curious. That'll take a few minutes to pull some data in.

No, I just thought you might add it. I thought maybe they were all numbered.

Yeah, no. So I know that there are people that own multiple properties. So I can try to see if I can narrow that down just in general.

I know who's right. I know who's sorry.

1-4-1. 1-4-1. 9-9-9. 9-9-9. 0-0-6. 0-6. It hasn't been classified as an intervention.

I don't know what it's been.

The value of it was like $35. Was that all the numbers? I had a 1-4-1. Was it 1-4-1? Is it 1-4-1-9-9-9-9? So that property is a class four residential and it is lot owners. So it looks like it's land is held in common. It's a private road. Right. Yes. What is your question? Well, it's always been like the value of it.

I did it just before I came here. She was still on it when I came here.

It's the private road, right? Right. So it was $4,100 last year and it is $4,100 this year. We have that as three-tenths of an acre.

I'm still watching my canvas with that one. Okay.

Oh, okay. So she's been dragging it. Have you reached out to her recently? Or I'm not sure if she's transitioned to another officer. Because I've been in contact with her, but I've had some slow responses, so I don't know if she's getting ready to change. I mean, if we want to create new parcels, we could do it individually that way, but that would require some information from the county, like a CSN or a directive to create individual parcels per owner. But I believe the county would be responsible for if they were breaking that tax bill into each owner. So it's been breaking it into four, five, or six. There's already a document that says each owner, each property. document on that it's just a matter of getting it switched so i'm assuming that that so that's the that would be and i haven't done any research on that that would be the road and each owner has refuge on that so we could add that to the individual assessments pretty busy because I think that normally I would be dealing with her to send the, get the assessment roll created so we can balance our values. I don't know if there's a change, if Laura's kind of taking over or working with her to kind of alleviate that, but I know she's been very busy

So I think we can move forward if everybody's got their roles done. So back to line 14 to, to review the 2026 assessment role, uh, performance of ABC and D we're going to need a motion to accept the 2026 assessment role as submit as submitted. So somebody can make a motion for that.

I'll make a motion that we accept the 2026, whoops, yeah, 2026 assessment rule as submitted and corrected. Is it corrections?

Correct.

Okay. So as presented.

Do we have a second? Second. by Chad. There's a vote on that. If we could say aye if in favor.

Aye.

Motion carries 4-0. Thank you.

915 discussion action to certify all corrections and errors under state statute law 70.43 any more discussion on this so we did have one correction of error for 2025 uh this was a property that was at the board of review and the value was changed and it was not communicated to the county in time for the tax bill uh this property's previous year's assessment for 2025 was 494 500 We corrected it to the board's action of $489,000, which resulted in a reduction of $5,500 in assessed value. I have it calculated, and I will verify this with Chris and the county, but it would be a refund of taxes of approximately $140.06. That is the only correction we have for 2025.

I will make a motion that we accept the correction that's certified by the assessor.

I second it.

We have a second by Bob. So a motion was carried for Stu, second by Bob. Everybody in favor say aye. Aye.

I believe it would be a, I think it's handled as a refund. I'm not certain, but it could be a credit towards future taxes as well.

Okay, that motion carries 4-0. 16, discussion action to verify the assessor that the open book changes are included in the assessment roll.

Yes, all open book changes from 2026 are included in the current assessment rule that's been provided.

Thank you. 17, all taxpayers are examined and assess the assessment data. So I think we all did that. Okay, thank you. 18, discussion of possible action regarding the following public considerations. A, waivers of the requirement 48-hour notice and intent to file an objection when there is no good cause. B, request for the waiver of the Board of the Review hearing allowing the property owner as appealed directly to the Circuit Court. C, request to testify by telephone, video conference, or submit sworn written statements D, Sabina requests an E, act on any other legal action allowed required by the Board of Review matter.

You don't have any requests of any of the sections that were just mentioned.

Is that correct? That is correct.

Okay. Okay, 19, review notice of intent to file an objection.

None.

Okay, proceed with the hearing objections, if any, and a proper notice waiver sign given unless scheduled to another date, which we don't, correct? Discussion of possible action to schedule additional board or review meeting dates. We're going to be none.

We've got to wait until 8 o'clock.

Yep. We have to. So if anybody has any more discussion, we've got 10 more minutes here. Yep. I have nothing. Thank you for your time. You guys did great. Thank you.

So we're glad to be here for those.

Yeah, it's nice not to have any objections. It kind of runs smooth.

I like it.

We hear that all the time as well.

Yeah, we have those issues here, I'll tell you, with the ditches that we have had and a lot of things.

So, yeah. Yeah, so there's a project that had been ongoing for, I believe, eight or nine years, but Waukesha County had been comparing each parcel with its deeded acreage, and it's a of those were increases and decreases simply in land value for corrections of the acreage. So some properties we had assessed had too much acreage and they received a reduction. Some properties were assessed below what their needed acreage were, so they received a small increase on the land value outside of any native construction.

So it was more notices

I have not looked at the 2026 sales yet. We usually try to get through the board of review, so I don't have a number on that. I would say most likely, I would think that we would fall out of compliance slightly, unless I see something to believe that our sales are coming in at a closer ratio, so I don't know that we would be at 90% necessarily. So I would anticipate that next year would be a first year non-compliance.

So if we're at 92% for this year,

We will see once we have the official numbers in front of us where they haven't started looking at assessment ratios for themselves yet.

Yeah.

So do you recommend 2028, 2029, try and go through and do another maintenance or market?

So that would be up to the village. If next year we fall out of compliance, there would be a five-year window and before we'd have to do a market update or revaluation to come back. whatever the building would like to do.

It just seemed like, well, these past five years, there was quite a big jump.

Yeah, well, the market has been very strong for the last few years. Going back to COVID, COVID had kind of the exact opposite. I thought the market would stay steady or kind of drop a little bit, but we saw some increased numbers there. Also, the market was affected by, whenever they shut down the economy, building materials kind of shot up in price as well. Yeah. and remodel a home or just buy a home than it was to build a new home. So there's been several factors at play. I feel that it's going to level out at some point. I don't know if it will be in the next year or two necessarily. I don't think it will keep increasing at this rate. Time will tell.

I haven't seen anything officially.

I kind of think that should curtail.

but eventually all the boomers are gonna go on.

When the heck do they have enough?

How many are there?

Yeah.

But nobody really wanted to sell because they got a 4% interest rate.

My kids are in that position that they bought houses for a low interest rate. They got to be tempted to buy another one and selling it.

Yeah, last time we were at the five-year mark.

Yeah.

And it made quite a jump, so I'd like to try and avoid that.

Well, and we found with the communities where we do a market update, like an annual market update or a market update every two years, we have less traffic. part of the job, necessarily. So we can have those discussions.

Yeah, there'll be some, it's more than just that discussion, but yes.

Yeah, property owners see their valuation go up 50% in one year. They think that means they're taxing people 50%. That's not the case, but that's what... That's what they equate it to. I think it was Yes. Yeah.

and I think a lot of them did leave without filing their rejection. So it's a common issue when you go through, when you don't do the revaluation on an annual basis and you take those 40 to 50% jumps, that is kind of a common thread that people, and I don't know if it's because of the calculus themselves and one person kind of spreads that information, but that's what they're looking at. My taxes are going to go up 50% when actually there may be a small higher increase or some of them may actually go down if they're below kind of the average increase.

See, last year when we had them here, we explained that, and the people that were out there waiting, they were the ones that figured it out then and just got up and canceled, remember?

Yeah. So far, that's been the largest turnout in the public for initial board review in my experience.

Great. You're welcome.

I stay away from Facebook.

We'll never have that here.

Well, I thought it was odd, too, because we do an annual market update for the village of Caledonia.

And last year, after, I think we had four hearings, and this year we had two days scheduled, and we had like 12 people who came out. So I don't know if it was just something in the water, because we didn't have any large increases necessarily.

Okay Before we return I want to thank Chad and Bob for Fill in for me last year because I was supposed to do the assessment. I was on vacation. They took over my spot. So Kudos to you guys.

We got even with you though.

Yeah, so then you guys gave it to me back. So, thank you appreciate it I guess All right now for that So let's have them make a motion for adjournment at, call it 8.01, September 2nd, 2020, 26. Did you make that motion?

Sounds like a motion.

I said I want you to. And then we're done? Yep. I'll make that motion. We got a seconded by Chad. Everybody in favor, say aye. Aye.

Aye. Ayes in favor, 4-0. We're adjourned. Thank you. Thanks for everyone.

Thank you very much.