Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

Yeah, it's a good thing. only a couple thorough Well, that would be nice.

Yeah. Next Christmas talking coupon. Yeah, definitely.

I like your All right, Ted, you're ready in the back. ready in the back.

Good Tuesday evening everybody. You are at a plan commission for the city of Wasa. It is Tuesday, November 18th, 2025. It is 5:00 pm city hall council chambers. First up, we have public comment on agenda items. Sam's not here for public comment. Anyone else for public comment? Seeing none, we go to item two, consideration of the minutes for the preceding meeting and that was September 16th, 2025 regular plan commission meeting minutes and they're in the packet. Would entertain a motion

from Bugamman, second from Barnaman. I didn't hear you on the end. Got it. That was Bulan on the end. Not on the end. Um any question changes suggestions? Look good for everyone. All right. Those in favor of accepting the minutes signify by saying I. I.

Any opposed? All right. That passes. We've listed here on the agenda is a public hearing, but we have none tonight. The public hearings have took place last week that our last meeting that we were concerned with here. Discussion. Item four is discussion and possible action. Uh, two items tonight. Item 4 A is discussion and possible action on vacating and discontinuing a portion of the 28th Avenue corridor rightway. I would entertain a motion. Are we taking taking one here or are we taking two separate votes? Twice. So, we're going to take 4A first. Would entertain a motion.

Motion from Bugerman. Second from Borne this time. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of vacating and discontinuing that portion signified in the map for for 28th Avenue corridor rightaway signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? All right. It would entertain a motion on item B is a discussion of possible action amending the official city map by removing the land's 28th Avenue corridor rightway for that above item. from Bugamman. Second from Barnaman. Seeing no discussion, those in favor signify by saying I.

I. Any opposed? All right. Item five. Under discussion, we have anformational presentation to summarize city of Wasau for older adults report 2025 prepared by North Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission. And tonight we have Sam Wessel at the podium. Sam.

Yeah. And just before Sam speaks, I just want to provide a little bit of context. Thank you, Chair Denny and members of the commission. So, um, director Fifick had enlisted regional planning about 6 months ago, maybe at the beginning of summer. Um, in 2022, I know you're all very familiar, they had prepared the WASA Metropolitan Housing Assessment for the city. It was actually a regional effort that WA was included within. and he thought that it would be beneficial to spend a little more attention on the group that is 55 and over for a few reasons. Um we already have a higher than median average age in Marathon County and the city of Wasa and then due to the composition of our population, we have a large segment of that group that is now getting into the over 55 group and as a community we want to look at how we are best meeting the needs of that group in terms of housing. Um, so Sam did a really great job. We we met over the course of the last few months. We shared articles. We we had um different ways that we were meeting and communicating about um how we wanted to approach it. And um Sam's going to present on it. So

yeah, thank you Carrie. And um a few more observations we had going into this. I work in a 10ount region and people keep asking this question. And it's not just a WASA specific thing, but there's very few out there in terms of numbers that a developer could work with to say, okay, here's what the demand looks like in those senior reports. Um, and some people call them senior housing studies. We did older adult just because people are retiring earlier and they're living longer. So, there's a lot more different there's more variety than there used to be maybe in the past and people are starting to shift to using the term older adult. But those other studies I've seen, they say this stuff is really hard to project. um here's our best whatever. Um data is really hard to get. You can't just call up a nursing home and say, "Hey, what's your vacancy rate?" because there's a lot of confidentiality around that data. So, this was a new one for me and I found some other examples to um get some inspiration from and hopefully this will help tremendously because uh the question just comes up so much. So, um if I think that is the document itself, if we could go to the PowerPoint which is somewhere within the packet. There it is. Yep. All right. So, we can go to the next slide. So, Carrie G gave a little bit of the background. Just for a refresher, the 2022 assessment, um, you can see the the total for the units regionally among the eight municipalities that participated in Wasau's share of that. But also, you know, because there was such a deficit as of that 22 study, anyone any building that occurs in Wasa is going to help that regional total even if you exceed that um initial projection. So there's been that interest since then about okay what does this look like for older adults and there's little information out there available. So really the same conclusion exists where affordability is going to be the biggest concern but also staffing because a lot of these specialized types of housing require workforce behind them and we'll get into some of the statistics behind that too and what that looks like. So we can go to the next slide.

There are three main age groups I broke this out into when doing all the calculations. So 55 to 64, 65 to 74, and 75 plus because that's where you sort of have different rates of home ownership, different rates of, you know, the percent of the population needing some of the more specialized care and that sort of thing. And while we're projecting the housing demand for older adults, we're not adding to those previous projections. It's more just projecting what share of our total housing stock is going to be occupied by people 55 and up. There was a new set of population projections released in 2024 by the state. The ones we did um for the previous study were from 2013 based on the 2010 census. These are based on 2020. The projections are more um they're lower than the older ones. But we are also seeing since those projections came out, more people are moving than those projections would have suggested because I think the secrets out that Wisconsin's a really easy place to live in compared to, you know, more expensive places, places with hurricanes, places with wildfires. But the reason those population projections from the state aren't as high is because they can't factor in migration driven by like a natural disaster or something because those are less easy to predict versus how they base it was basically the existing fertility rates, existing age groups. So, um hopefully that makes sense that we're just projecting the share of housing occupied by people 55 and older rather than adding more units to the projections from the old study. and the state has not released new household projections yet. So, we just have to do the best we can. So, here's a quick snapshot. It's hard to read on a screen, but it's in the the document itself and we can come back to it for discussion later, but you can see the bold letters show where the bulk you can see that first wave is baby boomers and then the decline after that is because Gen X isn't as large of a population and then eventually once you get towards 2050, then millennials who are children of boomers for the most part are kind of that second wave. So, it's kind of a challenge where we're going to have this

big demand and then the demand goes away, you know, only a couple decades later for some of these types of housing. Next slide. Here's sort of an infographic showing the continuum of care. So, all the way to the left, no services. That'd be like your market rate housing. Uh sometimes you can have market rate housing that somebody in the 55 plus crowd might really want where like snow removal is covered, lawn mowing is covered. Um, once you get to some services, that's when we get to more what we've uh what we call independent living where maybe there's meals included and other a greater share of your chores are taken care of, but you're not totally in a long-term care facility. Then the three on the right are considered the long-term care categories. And then underneath that, you can see the four different types of licensed facilities that provide those types of care. Next slide. So things we found, we did a bunch of data u analysis from census for the most part and some from DOA which is the state. Um if you're in these older adult categories, you're typically making less than the median wage because fewer of fewer people are working. Um some are still working part-time um even if they consider themselves retired. But that shows you right off the bat that affordability is going to be number one when it comes to housing that these age groups will occupy. Uh people are also living longer. So it's kind of scary when you retire on a fixed income and it's you know how long will it last? And we haven't really felt that dramatic shift left shift yet because people are living in their houses longer. So there hasn't been like huge weight lists to our knowledge um compared to the recent past but that could change rather quickly. Unfortunately, debt is rising for older adult old older adult households and sort of the the wealth gap is growing between people who have, you know, a bunch of savings are doing better and better, but people who don't have as much maybe are falling behind a

bit. So, that's going to be a big challenge. And um once you get to 75, that's when owner occupancy starts to shift more to apartment or renter own or renter occupied housing. uh just because, you know, a lot of people love to live in their house forever, but then some just get to a point where it's not feasible anymore. And sometimes that can be a challenge when you need to fix a bunch of stuff to sell your house to afford that next, you know, rental, but you might not have the cash on hand to pay for, you know, a new roof or something. That's a big expense. And then there might not be an apartment you can afford that's readily available at the same time. So, some people maybe would start moving into the next stage, but they just can't. And then finally, there's sort of this boomerang effect in this area where a lot of people will retire and they'll say, "Well, I want to go somewhere." You know, it's kind of destination like where they'll go to Florida, Arizona, the Northwoods, but then keeping up your house and driving a half hour to get a gallon of milk starts to get old and then you maybe come back to Wasa where you're closer to your kids and your grandkids. So, that's a pattern that locals observe in this area. All right, next slide. So, I think I touched on a few of these already. Um, one thing that's unique about our areas too is that the city of Wasa is sort of the center of this study, but the main commercial areas that a lot of people frequent are in Rib Mountain and Weston and there's no transit connectivity. So, if you the older you get, the more less likely you are able to be um have a car and drive independently. Certainly, a lot of people are able to, but it becomes a a smaller share of the population as you get up there. So that's a challenge because transit doesn't currently go there, but some people might like to see that as the demand for that increases with time. New housing expensive to build. Uh a lot of people once they move to fixed income, they make too much to get any sort of public assistance, but because of inflation that it's not quite covering their their basics anymore. Um, again, we talked about that boom where

it's going to be a rapid increase in demand, but then it will probably, you know, not last terribly long in the grand scheme of things. And, um, condominiums are historically something that was desired by a lot of u older adults, but they're not really being built anymore. That's a combination of liability from HOA type stuff and maintenance fees, and also lending is really tricky. Uh, people just don't lend um unless a lot of very specific criteria are met. and then the other occupants in the building are also meeting those criteria. So, we just haven't been seeing that getting built in the past 20 years or so. And if you look in pretty much every direction of Wasa except maybe south of here, there's not many cities of a comparable size. So, there could be an influx of people from surrounding areas that just can't do the long commuting to get their groceries or anything like that. Um, that could increase demand as well. When you are married to someone or you're partnered in some way and they go into something like memory care, you don't always move with them. So people who have to pay for their existing home and memory care at the same time have kind of this dual cost burden. That is another set of affordability issues too. U but there are a lot of things that we have going for us. So the landing I didn't realize it was recognized nationally. It's not just a local big deal. It's people are noticing it and other places throughout the country are trying to copy it and they've noticed the staff that works here that people are moving here or they're commuting in for the day just to participate in some of the activities they offer. We have good health care systems nearby because there's so many close together. People like the walking trails, they like the pickle ball courts, uh different outdoor wreck opportunities that we have, especially for the more active older adults. There's some emerging trends where people are getting creative with that continuum of care where um in the past you might be able to move from unit to unit within the same complex as your level of care changes over time. Now they're designing them where you don't even have to move to a new unit. The level of care sort of follows you uh

with whatever stage you're in. Um we do have a good mix of we've got our urban walkable downtown. We've got some rural areas that are not far away. There's suburban in between. So there is a variety of sort of lifestyles that we have to offer. And people say that, you know, Wasa has got a lot of stuff that larger cities have, but it doesn't have the traffic. It doesn't have the higher cost of living and some of the other problems. So it's a good fit for a lot of people in this age group. And um there are transit options available. There are walkable neighbor neighborhoods and there's opportunities for more aging in place. So constructing wheelchair ramps, getting more teleaalth, uh things that help people stay in their house as long as possible because that is preferred for a lot of people in those age groups. Next slide. So unfortunately, the state doesn't project those age groups out for the city specifically. So we just did all of Marathon County. Um because we have so much of the infrastructure in Wasa and those immediate cities, we would expect that a lot of the demand would occur in those areas versus something farther out. But if you're doing an apartment complex, it's hard to do that on well and septic. It's hard to, you know, those things get tricky outside of the sort of the core urban area. And how I designed these projections is I basically just kept the status quo. So similar income distribution for all the households, similar rates of owner occupancy versus renter occupancy for those three different age groups, and then the percent of the population who might need some of those long-term care options or independent living. I basically held all those variables constant to what they currently are. And then as you get those projected numbers and you just type them in, the demand inflates accordingly. So it's sort of if nothing changes, this is where we're at. Um if we become even more appealing to live, then the demand could be even higher. I did add a 20% factor to all of the projections because I saw other senior housing sites had done more like a 25 to 30 and I thought, well, I'll do it more conservatively so we don't

overestimate what the demand might be. If you want to see more of a baseline, I could take that 20% off to show them side by side or you can just mentally subtract 20% and it's still, you know, a pretty considerable amount. So then we end up with the categories of housing. So we got the market rate is that first bullet point uh both renter and owner occupied. Then you get into independent living which is sort of halfway between and then long-term care which is the more um you're needing more services. Next slide. So here's the the numbers for uh owner occupied is on the left, renter occupied on the right. You can see that the owner occupied demand is higher for the near-term, but then the renter occupied shifts more in the 2030 to 2040 range. And that's because once you get into those higher age groups, people start to shift more to renter occupied. And that's again just based on the current rates for those different age groups. Next slide. for independent living. This is based on uh one and a half% of people above 65 and then 13% of people above 75 uh usually need independent living. So it's based on those factors. And then here you can see two different price ranges. On the left, 30% of your income on housing is the HUD accepted affordable housing definition. But oftentimes with independent living, you're adding services which costs more. You no longer have to pay for a car. You might not have to pay for groceries anymore. So it does sort of make up for it then. But a lot of times people are paying about 65% of their income on independent living, which is a lot, which is why those numbers seem huge. So that's just there for reference because I think a lot of people are going to get sticker shock. Um, I mean, I was shocked making this study to see what stuff costs. Next slide. And finally, long-term care. So I looked at how many per capita we have of the current four different state licensed facilities. And I just base it off of keeping that same per capita in the future. And this is what it looks like. So, um, considerable amount of demand

between now and 2040, but then it tapers off by 2050. Next slide. And here's just the numbers all summarized at when they the maximum demand is expected to be. So, that single family will peak in 2030, then the renter occupied by 2040, and then the independent living and assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing facilities all peak closer to 2040 and in higher numbers. Next slide. And this is just a summary of what we did in the 2022 study. You can see the sort of tiers of priorities where the highest priority stuff, you guys have already done most if not all of that. The second priority stuff, you've done a decent amount of that as well. The ongoing stuff is just monitoring. You know, state programs come out, different loan programs come out, different uh state law changes are happening. We monitor that. So, I see your staff pretty frequently and I am capable of updating you guys on it. So, um we're good to go on that stuff. So, next slide. Here's what we're adding to the 2022 report in this new one of new recommendations. So, these are the shorthand version. And I have a a much longer uh less concise version of these recommendations in the document itself, but basically recruiting builders who specialize in housing for older adults, especially for all those different types of care and enabling flexibility where you're not building one of those facilities and then it's going to go vacant in 20, 30 years. It can be converted back to maybe market rate housing after that demand sort of tapers off. working with the health care systems. Um, one statistic that I thought was pretty alarming was from Wisconsin Public Radio. They think that there is going to be a shortage of 36,700 workers who are CNAs, RNs, and home health aids by um by 2040. So, that's quite a big shortage statewide. So,

we're anticipating that there's going to be a need for more collaboration with training programs, local schools to get more people um qualified to play to to work in those roles. Uh transit, parks, outdoor facilities, we got a lot going for us already, but continue development in response to the demand that's anticipated is also recommended. Maintaining the existing housing stock, that stuff's more affordable than building new construction, so it makes sense to keep preserving it and modifying it as necessary so people can stay in their homes as long as possible. And then finally, setting up some vacant sites and structures that are already in existence and advertising them to developers. You guys have already done a pretty good job of doing that. Um, maybe more will become available in the future. Who knows? But that's something to uh keep on doing. So, I think that's about it. So, we can move into questions. And there's a lot more in this report I didn't touch on. So,

thank you, Sam. Thank you. Any questions? Who is who has seen this document so far? You guys, it's been in your packet. It's not on our website yet because I wanted to make sure any feedback could get incorporated until we get a final draft. I found a few typos, uh, just spelling, grammar, stuff that I'm going to change. But if you have anything that you think should be changed or added or could be done better, let me know. Does feel like something eventually the council should see, maybe economic development team. Yes. Yep. It's it'll be going to economic development December 2nd and then it'll go to council. Okay.

And just for the planning commission, one of the things just for kind of contextually is when we're looking at updating our comp plan next year, um some of these ideas would be, you know, useful when we're looking at that housing chapter. So, this helps us build that out and start to think about how we want to approach that. And the sense I've gotten just speaking with developers is that it's like we know it's coming, but who's going to be first to jump into it because there's not a whole lot of data out there to follow. So hopefully this helps them um evaluate the risk of a project more better and maybe make it more feasible to say, "Hey, this community supports this if you're if you're looking to build it." So all right.

Yeah. Yes. Couple things. Do you have examples of um the assisted living or other zones like this that are designed so that they can flex back say can I interrupt can you can you run that into the microphone where it's getting sorry do you are are there examples where there's the assisted living or other um 55 plus communities that um are designed in a fashion where they can flex back into that market rate that you mentioned um because it seems like a new concept and

some might be almost contrary uh in in current design principles for what they're accomplishing. So, it's just it's an interesting one because if then as you look at the useful life, it's certainly going to extend beyond the the the 20-year peak and trough that we're going to experience in that space.

Yeah, that's a really interesting one because it hasn't happened yet. So, no one's really done it yet. Um, and two things I should point out before answering that question in more depth are there's an appendex of all the existing known stuff in our county. So, you can go look some of those up in their websites and see what they have to offer. And then throughout the report, I included some examples of what other communities are doing. Some of them are pretty high-end, and that's obviously not going to be probably most people, but if there are some people in those higher income categories who want, you know, stuff that has more amenities on site or more um, you know, like almost a little community, like I I used to have family that lived down in the Villages, Florida, and it's like Disneyland for um, retirees because there's just there's a million things to do down there. It's kind of interesting how that's all set up. I I don't anticipate that happening up here, but there might be some someone who wants to come around and do something more like a small scale community where people interact with each other or maybe there's pickle ball courts on site or a pool or you know some of those amenity type things. Um there's also examples in the report of places where I think it was Purdue University like they're building housing for alumni who are retiring on campus so they can still have a connection to their university. of just really interesting stuff where it's like this might not happen here, but a version on a smaller scale might happen here. And the the reason it's important is that if someone can afford to live in something like that, then they vacate something more affordable that someone else can move into. And it's maybe not something that you want to put public resources towards, but it's something you certainly want to enable if someone's willing to build it because they're I don't know who, but there's there's probably demand for it if they're happening in other parts of the country. Uh but back to that flexib flexibility, that's a really good question because um you know the ADA stuff is nice because there's people who aren't 55 who need the accessibility or you know I could sprain my ankle tomorrow and be really

thankful for you know one level living or something like that. And I do think that yeah, we just should find somebody who has some ideas about how to actually put that into a blueprint or something that yeah, again, it's just it hasn't happened yet. But I think it's important to consider so that you don't build all this, you know, all these fancy buildings and then they just sit there 20 years later not being used. Um, well, I would I would say if you look at uh some of the office space we have around here, we we're converting that office space isn't usable. I think it's a whole lot easier to convert living space from one form of living to another hopefully, but it's a good good thing to think about as we as we move forward.

And ultimately, you'll always have, you know, every year some houses get lost to demolition or uh fires unfortunately or over time you're going to have to replace housing as you go. So even if there isn't a ton of demand 20 years from now, you're going to have to replace some of the housing stock inevitably anyways. Mr. Bugen Bugman, do you have some more questions?

Good. Um, you know, I think we free up there are a lot of elders living in their their homes that have been living there for their whole lives. their kids are gone. And we this has an added advantage. We can free up free up some of those larger homes for families if they can find alternate Yes. places to live.

Yeah. And I agree that there's certainly people who are, you know, I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying in this house forever. But if you look at some of the surveys that um in some of the sources that Carrie got me that we read before starting this, it's the percentage of people who want to stay in their home forever versus the percentage of people who think they can based on what their community or their neighborhood has to offer. There is a gap there where yeah, it'd be great if I could stay here forever, but I don't think it's possible. So, I do think there is definitely room for that. It's mostly because they don't want to pack up all the stuff.

Well, and if you Yeah. Well, if you look too, I mean, if someone's had a paid off house for several years and then you look what rent is, it's like, why would I move? So, that's where that affordability piece comes in big time. All right. Thanks, Sam. Thank you. And that's our last item for tonight. We would entertain a motion to adjurnn. Motion to from Bulan, second from Bergman. Those in favor? See you later.