Due to the lack of a quorum, the regularly scheduled Common Council Meeting for July 6th 2009 has been canceled.

My apologies for the late posting on this, I was away for the weekend and I simply ran out of time.

The agenda for the May 18th Common Council Meeting is available on the City's website. It is a fairly light agenda and the Council packet really does not have a lot to offer on any of the agenda items.

Judge Glojek has three items, two relating to forfeiture fines, one to increase the amount and another to hire a collection agency. The third item has to do with an Illegal Alien ordinance. I do not have any additional information on any of these items.

Item 7 on the agenda is the recommendation from the HR Committee to create three Lieutenant positions within the department. The positions would be staffed by existing personnel so there would be no increase in full time positions. The positions would free the Division Chiefs of some of the direct supervision as well as providing for accountability on the fire grounds.

As with many areas around the lake, there are parking issues. Item 8 on the agenda is specifically about issues that have arisen on Parkside Drive. We have received a number of complaints about illegally parked vehicles, many of them customers of Doc's Dry Dock which is a business in the middle of a residential area. The traffic ordinance currently has both the north and south side of Parkside as no parking, however it appears that in 2001, the Council ordered the signs removed, yet the ordinance was not changed. I have been in discussions with the Acting Police Chief and the Acting Fire Chief, and both are in agreement that because the road is narrow, a 30' right of way instead of the usual 66', street parking is a concern from a Public Safety point of view. I also understand the desire for residents to have places for guests to park. Alderman Enters and I met with both Chiefs last week and took a road trip to evaluate the situation and we have come up with a compromise. We will be proposing a staggered parking arrangement on the north side of the street. The south side is to remain no parking.

For the last open session item there is an informational update on the possibility of a renewed attempt at the state level to amend the State Constitution to allow for different tax rates for a merged municipality. It appears that Representative Scott Newcomer will be working with Representative Gordon Hintz to reintroduce a bipartisan bill for such a Constitutional amendment. If the effort was successful, the earliest it could be effective would be 2011 as it would need to pass two sessions of the legislature and a statewide referendum.

The agenda for the April 20th Common Council meeting is posted on the City website. I will not be able to attend the meeting, however I wanted to post the information about it.

There has been a lot of press lately relating to the mandatory Sick Leave Ordnance that was recently passed in the City of Milwaukee. There are many that feel the Milwaukee ordinance is very overreaching and inhibits employers from negotiating the terms of their own union and employee contracts. The ordinance impacts more than just companies that are based within the City of Milwaukee but extend to those that do business within the city. This then crosses municipal boundaries. The Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce has issued a resolution in opposition to the mandatory Sick Leave Policy. Item 6 on the agenda is discussion about the consideration of the adoption of a resolution of the city's opposing the mandatory sick leave policy.

Item 8 is consideration of claims be two residents along Bluemound Rd. When the sanitary sewer lateral was installed, the contractor took down some trees. The residents claim there were trees removed from their property, although the contractor believes the trees were in the right of way. I do not know who is correct and now that the trees are gone, it is hard to prove either side as correct.

Possibly the most interesting thing on the agenda is the swearing in of the Elected officials. We have another new face on the Council. Welcome aboard Cheri. Farewell Kathy. Remember next year the three other Aldermanic seats, one in each district, plus the Mayor will be on the ballot.

The unofficial results are in for the City of Pewaukee.

District 1

District 3

Congratulations Cheri and Doug!

Today is election day! I urge every one got get out to the polls today and cast your vote. Besides that state wide races for Justice and School Superintendent, we have the local aldermanic, trustee elections and schoolboard races. The Village will be selecting a new Village President as well.

I don't know how the races will turn out, but given the fact the in the primary election, there was a single vote between incumbent Kathy Novack and challenger Cheri Enters, I suspect this will be a nail biter in District 1. I have no idea how the race between incumbent Doug Kiser and challenger Fermin Rivera will turn out.

As far as the Pewaukee School District goes, there are four people running for three seats. The three incumbents are Frank Goodwin, Ann Wells and Jim Huismann. The challenger is Chris Durski. I don't even know if I would say I was surprised that I have heard pretty much nothing from any of the candidates in that race.

This election is predicted to have a low turnout. Every vote counts I hope everyone gets out and casts your vote, it is important. Just in case you are not familiar with the polling places in the City and Village, you can find information on my Where to Vote page.

The agenda for the April 6th Common Council meeting is available on the City's website. Here are a few items that may be of interest.

Item #6 is the discussion and possible action regarding interest in the proposal from the village to office police services to the City. This item is something that has been recently discussed. The item refers only to the letter from the Village administrator which asks if we are at all interested in the Village putting together a proposal. No proposal has been been put together as of yet.

Item 8 on the agenda is an update on tourism activity. In a nutshell, it appears that tourism is down about 20% from what was budgeted.

Item 9 is an update on the Merger Committee meeting. There has been some discussion on this site already. This agendas item is just to update everyone on what the Committee has done so far. The consultant who made the presentation at the March 18th meeting offered 4 possible options on how the Communities could be merged without having the tax rate of the tax payers of the City go up. The one idea that appears to have been noticed by the people I talked to was the use of the Village's Utility fund to offset the rate increase in the City. I mentioned before that I think the Committee and the consultant made a mistake there. The goal appeared to be to make sure the City tax rate did not go up. It should have been to ensure the City's tax rate went down as well as the Village's. If the tax payers in the City do not see an direct and immediate positive impact of a merged community, there is no way it will pass a referendum. Even if it can be shown that the long term benefit would be positive, there must be an immediate and tangible benefit for the tax payers of the City.

Item number 10 on the agenda is discussion and action on some budget amendments. The first is to pay for the financial analysis related to the merger and the purchase of some new filing equipment for the clerk's office totaling about $16K. These items were approved in 2008 and must be paid for in 2009. The second budget amendment is for the settlement for the former Police Chief. That settlement included $170,879.90 in a one-time lump sum payment. It also included health insurance premiums until age 62 or medicare eligibility. According generally accepting accounting practices, we must include that cost as a liability in 2009. The estimated impact on the 2009 budget is $105,100, $10,500 was included in the budget already. The budget amendment is for $265,479.90 to cover the lump sum payment and the cost of insurance.

A busy night tonight, but I wanted to get a quick note out regarding last night's Merger Advisory Committee meeting that was held at the PHS Auditorium. The meeting went about as expected.

The consultants outlined several methods that they determined were feasible ways to combine the municipalities without the tax rate for the city tax payers to increase. I think the presentation actually was quite good, but I thing the committee made one fundamental mistake when they directed the consultants. The directive was to present scenarios where the tax rate for the City would not be greater than what it is today. That should have actually been a directive to ensure the tax rate for the city would be lower than it is today. I have to be honest, if the Village residents see a much lower tax rate, and the City residents stay the same, what is the point. However, if both actually see the a decrease, perhaps it would be easier for the City tax payers to see the benefit.

Yes I know that the numbers that were presented last night were made using assumptions and the only way to get real hard numbers is to to a complete, head to toe analysis of everything. The numbers used in the presentation were for operating expenses only, there was no consideration for capital expense avoidance, which could be a significant savings area.

I scanned in the presentation(PDF)(1.5) and the analysis(PDF)(4MB) documents.

The last few weeks have been extremely busy for me with work. Several projects needed direct attention and I just spent a week in Baltimore doing factory acceptance testing on the replacement equipment for our vehicle locating system. Upon my return, I only has about 700 e-mail messages to wade through.

This week promises to be busy with city related business. Monday is the Common Council meeting, Wednesday is the Merger Advisory Committee meeting at the High School and Thursday is the Plan Commission meeting.

The Merger Advisory Committee is presenting the study done by outside consultants. That meeting is at the high School Auditorium at 6pm.

The Plan Commission meeting will be reviewing, and possibly adopting, the 2035 land use plan for the City. That meeting is in the Common Council Chambers at 7pm.

The agenda for the March 16th Common Council Meeting is posted on the City's website.

Item #5 on the agenda is a resolution required prior to the City issuing promissory notes to raise about $4.75M. The money will be used both for street projects and in the Water and Sewer utility for two wells and the Ridgeview water tower.

On the topic of the Water utility, item #6 relates submitting an application to the PSC for a water rate study. Since 2005, the utility been operating at a loss. Please keep in mind that we do not set the water rates, the rate is set by the PSC. When we start operating at a loss, it is time to have the PSC review our rates and set the rate accordingly.

The ongoing dispute with ProHealth Care is also on the agenda. The have filed a claims with the city relating to unlawful taxes. They believe their facility on Riverwood Dr. to fit under the exemption in Statute 70.11 (4m), we do not. We are currently in litigation over this issue and item #9 is the payment of $3,600 to an expert witness in the case. Item #11 relates to the claim filed by them in January of this year protesting their 2008 taxes.

For those of you interested in the Peterson Drive paving projects from a few years back, we finally have the final engineering report. If you remember, there was an issue with the contractor and the City was awarded $21,400 in liquidated damages. Those damages are applied to offset the assessments levied against the property owners. Basically, it boils down to about $390 per property.

There are several items related to grant applications. Item #13 is application for 7 projects to address drainage problems identified during last years floods. Item #14 is an application to WISDOT for some paving projects and item #15 is an application to the DNR for funding through the Urban Nonpoint Source and Storm Water Grant programs.

Item #16 has to do with the 2010 Census. The Census Bureau would like a commitment from the City to create a committee charged with raising awareness of the importance of completing and returning information to the Bureau.

Business Week has published a story on the 2009 Best Affordable Suburbs. Their number one pick... The City of Pewaukee. They actually even made the distinction between the City and the Village. The evaluation was based on affordability, lifestyle, quality of schools and the strength of the local economy.

My thanks to the reader who furnished the link.