Graduation

Significant changes are coming to federal student loans July 1, potentially affecting tens of thousands of Wisconsin’s estimated 700,000 federal student loan borrowers.

When President Donald Trump signed his massive tax and spending package last year, it set in motion a laundry list of changes to how people can borrow and repay federal student loans.

One of the most significant changes was eliminating the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan. Beginning July 1, borrowers still enrolled in the plan are going to be contacted by loan servicers about transitioning to a new payment plan within 90 days. Nearly 1 in 5 Wisconsin borrowers were enrolled in the SAVE plan as of March, according to the head of the Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt.

The package will also limit how much graduate students and parents are able to borrow.

Betsy Mayotte is the president and founder of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, or TISLA. She told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” these new caps and repayment options mean students and parents should learn about these newer, smaller loan limits and calculate how much a degree will cost in full.

“Families really need to project how they’re going to pay for the full degree, all four, five or six years,” Mayotte said. “For borrowers that are currently in repayment … they need to start looking at the repayment plans that are going to be available to them and that will best fit in, not only short-term budget, but long-term student loan management strategy.”

The Trump administration claims these changes will make student loan repayment easier and will lower the cost of college. Mayotte said this move may make repayment plans “less complicated” in the long term.

Mayotte explained more about the changes and how they may impact loan delinquency and default.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Rob Ferrett: An estimated 135,000 student loan borrowers in Wisconsin were enrolled in the now-sunset SAVE plan. What are their options if they want to avoid a significant jump in their monthly loan repayment?

Betsy Mayotte: If they’re done borrowing, so as long as they don’t borrow a new loan or have a consolidation go through after June 30, they’ll have options such as Income-based Repayment and Income-Contingent Repayment. There’s also plans that aren’t based on income, such as an interest-only plan called Graduated Repayment or Extended Repayment. They’ll also be able to use a new plan called the RAP — the Repayment Assistance Plan — that’ll be available somewhere around July 1. But for anybody who consolidates or borrows on or after July 1, their only choices will be that new RAP plan or Standard plan that’s based on the balance of their loan.

RF: Parent Plus loans aren’t going away, but there are some changes to this type of loan, including some restrictions. What are the changes and how can families adapt?BM: On the borrowing side, Parent Plus borrowing used to be unrestricted … there was no limit on how much you could borrow, other than the cost of attendance for the undergraduate school. Now there’s a pretty hard limit. They can’t borrow more than $20,000 a year per dependent undergraduate student, and no more than $65,000 total for each dependent undergraduate student.

On the other side of the coin, it used to be that Parent Plus borrowers had to jump through some hoops, but they had access to these plans based on income. For any parents that haven’t consolidated already, or don’t have one in progress or who borrow again on or after July 1, they will have no options for repayment plans. They’ll have a standard plan, and that’s it.

RF: You looked up some Wisconsin-specific data looking at people who were delinquent on their student loans or behind on their loans. What do you see here in Wisconsin?

BM: We are in a delinquency and default crisis. This is honestly one of the most worrisome periods in student loan history that I’ve seen in my career.

From a national perspective, an additional more than 3 million people defaulted on their loans in the last quarter of 2025. To put that in perspective, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were a total of around 3 or 4 million borrowers in default. So we almost doubled that number in the last quarter of 2025.

From a Wisconsin perspective, you mentioned there’s a little over 700,000 Wisconsin borrowers holding federal student loans. Almost 20 percent of those — or 125,000 — are currently in default. The Department of Education has started putting out a new piece of data that they’re calling the “non-repayment rate.” They’re only looking at people who recently left school — so people that have left school since January of 2020 … at the national level, between 20 and 25 percent of them are at least 90 days past due and are on their way to default.

Wisconsin is doing a little bit better than the rest of the country, but you still have half your schools where at least 10 or 20, or a higher percentage, of their recent grads are 90 days or more past due.

RF: What do you tell a student loan borrower who reaches out for help because of these changes?

BM: For people that owe high debts, I use that old expression: “How does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

What I find is helpful to the majority of the borrowers we work with is just being able to educate themselves on what their options are. Using the online tools and calculators like what’s on our website and the Department of Education’s website to understand what your options are, what they’re going to cost you in the short term and what they’re going to cost you in the long term.

With federal student loans, even with all the changes, we have sort of an embarrassment of riches as far as options go. There’s more than a handful of lower payment options. If none of those work, there’s temporary postponement of payments altogether through deferments and forbearances. If life really gives you a hard left hook, there’s even discharges for things like permanent disability, or if the borrower should pass away.

New student loan rules take effect July 1. Here’s how Wisconsin borrowers could be affected. was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.

Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) Headquarters, 260 W. Seeboth St. Photo taken Jun 8, 2026 by Graham Kilmer.

More whistleblowers have gone public with allegations of mismanagement against Veolia Water Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District‘s (MMSD) private wastewater plant operator.

Common Ground Southeastern Wisconsin is working with dozens of whistleblowers to bring the allegations to light. On Thursday, Common Ground released a report documenting new allegations from 20 additional whistleblowers, including claims that Veolia is falsifying equipment records and water-quality reports and failing to accurately document how much sewage is being dumped into Lake Michigan.

The whistleblowers, five of whom are publicly attaching their names to allegations, further allege there are unsafe working conditions at the district’s two water-treatment plants — Jones Island and South Shore — that they are running below capacity and operating with minimal oversight.

The new public whistleblowers are all retired or have left the company. They include 18-year treatment plant operator Pam Schultz, former treatment plant operator Jacob Holbert, 17-year powerhouse operator Robert Patterson, former Jones Island machinist Jim Robertson and Robert Blake, a 20-year plant employee who retired in 2015.

Veolia and MMSD have been facing public scrutiny for the operations of the two facilities since April, when Common Ground launched a campaign calling for an audit. The MMSD Commission, an oversight body largely appointed by the mayor of the City of Milwaukee, has since approved funding for a third-party audit. But MMSD is also in the final months of a long public bidding process for a new 10-year operations contract valued at $700 million. Veolia and the Dallas-based engineering firm Jacobs are both bidding on the contract.

Common Ground is now asking MMSD not to approve a new contract until the audit is finished and the results are made public. The district’s ad hoc committee charged with reviewing the bid proposals heard from Common Ground Thursday night during a public meeting on the procurement process, as well as from boosters for MMSD and Veolia representing local community organizations, businesses and nonprofits.

Based on information from whistleblowers, Common Ground charges that there is evidence Veolia is mismanaging the wastewater plants, causing them to run under capacity and contributing to a greater risk of basement backups and sewer overflows.

Dozens of Common Ground supporters packed a conference room at MMSD headquarters, 260 W. Seeboth St., for the public hearing Thursday. Also attending were officials representing Veolia and Jacobs.

Jennifer O’Hear, lead organizer with Common Ground, addressed the selection committee on behalf of Common Ground members Thursday. She noted that Common Ground has no financial relationship with MMSD or Veolia, unlike some organizations and individuals expected to express support for one or both.

“We came here tonight because we want the truth. We want to make sure that our tax dollars are not being wasted, and we want to protect our water and our lake,” O’Hear said. “Let’s be clear, we are here tonight to make sure the shit from our sewers does not end up in our lake.”

O’Hear asked the committee to consider the allegations brought by anonymous whistleblowers and former employees stepping forward publicly. “It takes courage for the workers to come forward. In many cases, they’re risking their livelihoods. Please do not dismiss them, and do not allow them to be retaliated against,” she said. 

The majority of the speakers who testified spoke to the valuable role of MMSD in the community, the competent leadership of Executive Director Kevin Shafer and did not express opposition to a third-party audit of the wastewater operations.

Dean Amhaus, founder of the Milwaukee Water Council, said an independent audit is a good idea and that MMSD is “an invaluable institution, and one that continues to exemplify excellence and stands among the very best wastewater management organizations in the world.”

David Fowler, a former MMSD employee, said he appreciated the “good-faith effort” of Common Ground, but said criticism of Shafer is “misguided” and that, “people can inexpertly argue how the plants are operated, but to allege that there has been mismanagement, incompetence, or wrongdoing, I believe flies in the face of all of MMSD’s great accomplishments.”

Representatives of Riverworks Development Corporation, including Executive Director Darryl Johnson and Community Development Manager Ruth Weill, praised MMSD’s work with their organization. Johnson said he thought an audit would “enlighten” the community on MMSD’s commitment to water quality.

Ted Chisholm, Executive Director of Bublr Bikes, said Veolia has been a generous supporter of the nonprofit. “They have stepped forward to help folks in our community access resources that would otherwise be unavailable, and they’ve done so over a substantial period of time and in a very consistent manner,” he said

Scott Royer, an operations consultant working for Veolia, said he is “disappointed in some of the assertions that have been made,” but he nonetheless said the audit is “a great idea” that will show MMSD is an “excellent organization with an excellent leader.”

Paul Keppler, a Veolia vice president and general manager working on the company’s bid proposal, said he takes the allegations against Veolia personally. Keppler said he has previously worked for the U.S. Navy on nuclear-powered vessels and that Veolia is the only other organization he has worked for with “this level of oversight, this level of detail and this level of professionalism.”

Veolia recently announced it would commission its own third-party audit to “supplement” the audit MMSD recently approved.

MMSD Commission Chair Corey Zetts authored the proposal for the MMSD audit. She told Urban Milwaukee she was unaware Veolia was now preparing its own audit.

Will audit be completed before new contract approved?

The ad hoc selection commission for the next contract is scheduled to issue a recommendation to the commission by Aug. 17.

The commission is chaired by trailblazing environmental lawyer Dennis Grzezinski and includes former Wauwatosa Mayor and MMSD Commissioner Kathy Ehley, former commission chair and CEO of Martinsek & Associates Kris Martinsek, former MMSD Commissioner and engineer Michael West and John Swan III, a union business representative for Laborers Local 113.

“We don’t know how long it’s going to take, and how much we’ll get through until we really go through scope negotiations with whoever is selected for the independent audit,” Zetts said.

Asked whether she would feel comfortable voting on a new contract if the results of the audit are still pending, Zetts said it will depend on what stage the audit is in and how much information it has produced for commissioners. “I think we’re going to have to take that decision before August,” she said.

Another commissioner, Glendale Mayor Bryan Kennedy, declined to say whether he would vote on a new contract with audit results still pending. “I wouldn’t confer with my other commissioners. I think at that point we would have to have a conversation as a commission, but I, as an individual, don’t get to make the decision,” he said.

After the ad-hoc committee adjourned, Grzezinski said the “comments and testimony were informative and not inflammatory and that was appreciated.” Asked whether he thought the selection process could be paused pending the outcome of the audit, as Common Ground is requesting, he said, “It’s interesting, I understand it, the committee will meet tomorrow, and we’ll decide how we should proceed.”

Asked whether he could vote on a recommendation if the results of the audit remain outstanding, Grzezinski said, “I can envision circumstances in which the answer would be ‘yes’ and I can envision circumstances in which the answer would be ‘hell no.’ It depends on a variety of things.”

Tim Hoelter (left) stands with a proclamation from Mayor Cavalier Johnson (right). Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

After 30 years on the Harbor Commission, Timothy Hoelter is setting sail.

Hoelter, the board chair since 2008, oversaw his final meeting Thursday morning.

“What’s been gratifying is to see how the importance of the port and its economic impact has grown over the years,” he said in farewell remarks.

Hoelter said that the city-owned port plays a crucial role in the “three pillars of the entire Wisconsin economy.” First, it’s a key link in importing and exporting materials for manufacturing. The port also plays an increasing role in agriculture due to the Agricultural Maritime Export Facility, the biggest investment in the port since the 1950s. “Wisconsin grain is being delivered to markets throughout the world, and that is a great new, opening market for Wisconsin farmers,” he said. “And then the last, but certainly not least, and maybe the most interesting and colorful to the general public, is the growth of the tourism industry … Port Milwaukee is now the gateway to the Great Lakes.”

The seven-member commission oversees the operations of Port Milwaukee, including approving large capital investments, setting fee structures and overseeing leases with its tenants, including Summerfest host Milwaukee World Festival, Inc.

During Hoelter’s tenure, the 467-acre port has changed dramatically. Coal, once the dominant cargo by weight, is gone, but new investments yielded the agricultural export facility, created the Great Lakes cruising industry and turned Henry Maier Festival Park into a permanent venue. The soon-to-be-completed Dredged Material Management Facility will, starting in 2028, be used as an essential part of a massive environmental cleanup.

Hoelter, 80, was first appointed in 1996 by then-Mayor John Norquist and proceeded to serve under the next three mayors. His tenure included working with six different port directors.

“That’s actually pretty impressive,” said Mayor Cavalier Johnson, who noted that the city doesn’t change mayors often.

Johnson made a surprise appearance to present Hoelter with a proclamation during Thursday’s meeting. June 11, 2026, was declared Timothy Hoelter Day throughout the city of Milwaukee.

“Visionary leadership, steadfast service and unwavering dedication,” the mayor said in praising Hoelter.

Hoelter was also lauded by his longtime fellow commissioners Claude Krawczyk and Craig Mastantuono.

Krawczyk said Hoelter never was flustered by a difficult issue. “You’re not flashy, but you got the job done,” said Krawczyk. He praised Hoelter for being just the type of person any board wants at the helm.

Mastantuono praised Hoelter for making sure all the commissioners were included. “Tim is the type of leader that knows he’s in charge, knows what needs to be done, but doesn’t hog the spotlight,” he said.

The mayor appoints the commissioners, who are confirmed by the Common Council. The part-time role is unpaid.

“The reason I took this job was not because of the big bucks,” joked Hoelter.

Hoelter is an attorney by trade. As outside counsel for Harley-Davidson, he was part of a group of 13 executives who purchased the motorcycle company from AMF in 1981. He would go on to become the company’s general counsel and vice president of government affairs.

Tim Hoelter gives a farewell speech to the Harbor Commission. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The outgoing president reminded port staff and the commission that the port is a joint effort and noted that more work remains.

“This is not a one-person operation,” he said. “It’s really the hard work and effort that everyone’s done makes the port what it is today and what it’s going to be tomorrow.”

As lease negotiations with MWF gear up, Hoelter suggested to his fellow commissioners that they ensure public access is a priority in any new agreement. “I know that the city will be calling upon the commission to play a very important role in the negotiations,” he said.

New Port Director Benji Timm thanked Hoelter for his years of leadership, consistency and commitment. Former port director Jackie Q. Carter, now the city HR czar, joined port staff, former Department of City Development Commissioner Rocky Marcoux, Harbor District Executive Director Tia Torhorst and multiple tenants in thanking Hoelter for his contributions.

Vice chair Diane Diel will serve as the new board chair. Mastantuono was elected vice chair.

215 W. Maple St., Unit 607. Photo courtesy of Corley Real Estate.

Experience urban living in Walker’s Point! This top-floor studio condo showcases soaring 12′ ceilings, exposed Cream City brick, timber beams, and original hardwood floors, blending historic character with modern updates. The open-concept layout features a spacious kitchen with quartz countertops, island, stainless steel appliances, subway tile backsplash, under-counter microwave, and on-demand hot water spigot. Additional highlights include a Murphy bed, updated bath, in-unit laundry, walk-in closet, and new Hunter Douglas remote controlled blackout blinds. Enjoy abundant natural light and sweeping views of the Harbor District, Kinnickinnic River, and Basilica of St. Josaphat. Includes assigned parking and storage. Pet-friendly! Steps away from dining, nightlife, and the riverfront!

Sponsored by Corley Real Estate

James Heffernan. Photo courtesy of Corley Real Estate.

The dream of downtown living is within reach. Corley Real Estate is a boutique firm specializing in downtown properties with a dedication to unparalleled customer service and personal and private attention, making each client feel one of a kind- just like their new home.

With an accomplished track record in residential real estate serving the Historic Third Ward and Greater Milwaukee Area, James Heffernan exemplifies unparalleled commitment to his clients and their success.

The Breakdown

• Address: 215 W. Maple St., Unit 607
• Size: 621 sq-ft
• Bedrooms: 1
• Bathrooms: 1
• Total Rooms: 2
• Year Built: 1921
• Parking: Gated surface parking
• Price: $222,900
• Condo fee: $253
• Taxes: $3,508
• MLS#: 1965573

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Photo courtesy of the Water Lantern Festival.

You know it’s summertime in Milwaukee when a majority of the events mentioned in this article have the word “festival” in their name. And while it can be difficult deciding which festival you want to go to, that’s where we come in. If you’re looking for delicious traditional Polish eats, check out Polish Fest, America’s largest festival of its kind. If you’re looking to spend your Saturday listening to Milwaukee bands, head down to the East Side for Summer Soulstice. And if you’re looking to spend some time by the lake, check out either the Lakefront Festival of Art or Water Lantern Festival.

June 12-14: Lakefront Festival of Art

The Milwaukee Art Museum’s galleries will extend to the outdoor grounds this weekend as part of the Lakefront Festival of Art. Set to the backdrop of Lake Michigan, 145 juried artists from all over the country will show off their work. The festival will also feature live performances from acts like Field Report and The Belle Weather, and guests can participate in art-making zones and pop-up markets. Lakefront Festival of Art will run from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. General admission is $27 and includes admission to the Milwaukee Art Museum. For more information, visit the Milwaukee Art Museum’s website.

June 12-14: Polish Fest

America’s largest Polish festival is back, bringing traditional Polish food, music, exhibits and more to the Henry Maier Festival Park. Enjoy a variety of Polish sausages and pierogies, participate in vodka tasting and purchase Polish goods from the Sukiennice Marketplace. There’s also plenty of live polka and a fashion show to check out. Polish Fest will run from noon to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and from noon to 7 p.m. on Sunday. To purchase tickets and for more information, visit the Polish Fest website.

June 13: Summer Soulstice

Six stages will pop up on the East Side as part of Summer Soulstice, a street festival that will feature over 25 performers. While past years have shut down a stretch of North Ave. for this festival, this year will be set up a little differently. North Ave. will be open to traffic, but N. Murray Ave., E. Ivanhoe Pl., Farwell Ave and E. Kenilworth Pl. will host live music, shops, activities and more. Stop by Black Cat Alley, where a lineup of DJs will keep the vibes up throughout the festival. Summer Soulstice is free to attend and will run from noon to midnight. To see the complete lineup, visit the Summer Soulstice website.

June 12-13: HartFest

Wauwatosa is celebrating 30 years of HartFest, a free outdoor party that takes place every year at Hart Park. HartFest will feature live music, food trucks, outdoor activities and more. Guests can catch performances by The LoveMonkeys and The Gufs and participate in cornhole and pickleball tournaments. It’s also the fourth year of Bunzel’s BBQ Cookoff, where guests can vote for their favorite eats (this is a separately ticketed activity). HartFest will run from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday. For more information, visit the Wauwatosa Village website.

June 13: Water Lantern Festival

Lake Michigan will light up with hundreds of lanterns this weekend as part of the annual Milwaukee Water Lantern Festival. Starting at 5:30 p.m., guests can arrive and receive a lantern kit. After enjoying live music and food, those lanterns will then be released onto the lake at sunset. Tickets to the event are $35 and include festival access and a lantern kit. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the Milwaukee Lantern Festival’s website.

June 14: VeganMania Milwaukee

Milwaukee’s best vegan restaurants will gather at Greenfield Park For VeganMania Milwaukee, a free event that raises funds for farm sanctuaries and other animal-focused nonprofit organizations. On top of enjoying plenty of vegan food, guests can shop handmade goods and learn from various nonprofits. VeganMania will run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

A map of the trail at Natural Bridge State Park on June 7, 2025, in North Freedom, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

Wisconsinites looking to renew their vehicle registration now have the option to buy a state parks admissions pass at the same time.

Gov. Tony Evers and leaders of multiple state departments announced the new program today at a press conference at Lake Kegonsa State Park. They said the change will be more convenient for those who simply need to renew their 12-month passes and that it will potentially encourage more visits to state parks, including from people who might not otherwise have purchased an annual pass.

The option is offered through the Wisconsin DMV website, and at all 80 physical DMV locations.

“We launched this service on June 2, a soft launch to the public, and in just over a week, we’re at nearly 5,000 state park passes customers have purchased via this online service,” Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles Administrator Tommy Winkler said.

The new service offers people the option of buying a Wisconsin State Park and Forest vehicle admission pass, which costs $28, at the same time as their annual vehicle registration renewal. Annual or day passes are required for all vehicles visiting state parks, forests and recreation areas.

There are 50 state parks across Wisconsin, and the State Park System protects more than 790,000 acres of state lands and offers over 6,500 campsites and more than 2,000 miles of trails, according to the DNR’s history of the WSPS.

“And here’s the one thing most people don’t know — Wisconsin State Park and Forest 12-month admission pass revenues go directly to operations and maintenance of these properties,” DNR Secretary Karen Hyun said.

Gov. Tony Evers speaks at a press conference Thursday, June 11 about a new way to purchase state park passes, as Tourism Secretary Anne Sayers looks on. Rob Mentzer/WPR

The program is a joint effort of multiple teams across state agencies, including the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, DNR and state IT teams.

Evers said he was glad to see the different departments collaborate to offer easy options for Wisconsinites.

“We’re not only streamlining the process and making it easier for Wisconsinites, but we’re also encouraging folks to get their park pass year after year, and as a result, that means consistent revenue coming into the state,” the governor said.

Winkler explained how the process functions. When it’s time to renew a Wisconsin registration, inside the application is an option to buy the 12-month parks vehicle admission pass. The renewal of the registration and the pass will be on one bill.

“Customers will receive one mailing with both the DNR state park pass vehicle registration stickers and your certificate of vehicle registration within about seven to 10 business days,” Winkler said.

WisDOT Secretary Kristina Boardman said 3 million vehicle registrations happen online each year.

“There’s just one payment, one receipt showing both purchases, and just one mailing,” she said.

The governor’s announcement came just a day after the state’s Department of Tourism announced Wisconsin tourism numbers are up for the fourth year in a row — with over 117 million visits generating billions in economic activity.

One of the largest draws to Wisconsin for tourists was outdoor recreation, according to the tourism department’s figures.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said over 20 million visits are made each year across the state’s parks, trails and forests and other public areas.

In the DNR’s five-year plan for outdoor recreation from 2025 to 2030, the agency said 88 percent of Wisconsinites headed out to do something outdoors — hiking, swimming, fishing, picnicking — in 2024. Researchers found most people wanted to improve their mental and physical health by being outdoors and connecting to nature.

For the first time, Wisconsinites can buy state park passes at the DMV was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.

Jones Island Reclamation Facility. Photo by Urban Milwaukee staff.

After initially resisting the suggestion that there was anything to look into, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) and its wastewater operator Veolia may end up subject to multiple operations audits.

On Monday, the MMSD Commission, an oversight body largely appointed by the mayor of the City of Milwaukee, approved an independent third-party audit of Veolia’s operation of the district’s two wastewater facilities, Jones Island and South Shore. On Thursday, the parent company of the local Veolia operation announced it would organize a “third-party” audit of its own.

The audits are a response to a public campaign by Common Ground alleging Veolia was intentionally mismanaging the district’s wastewater facilities — Jones Island and South Shore — to save money. The group’s claims are based on information from anonymous whistleblowers and former MMSD and Veolia employees who have come forward publicly. They charge that the French transnational corporation is failing to properly maintain machinery, causing the wastewater plants to run under capacity and contributing to a greater risk of basement backups and sewer overflows.

The organization launched the campaign in April, calling for an audit of Veolia operations.

Joseph Tackett, CEO of Veolia Municipal Services, sent a letter to MMSD Executive Director Kevin Shafer Wednesday committing to commission a “third-party review of its contract performance and environmental compliance, to supplement MMSD’s audit and provide transparency on our performance.”

The company will also set up a community advisory panel and begin collecting worker feedback for an annual workforce transparency report, according to Tackett. The company also agreed to invest in environmental protection and education efforts, as well as workforce training and programming for the local community. The commitments will last through the end of the current contract, which expires in February 2028. Veolia is calling them the “Milwaukee Standard.”

“Milwaukee and MMSD have trusted us with work that matters,” Tacket wrote in his letter to Shafer. “The Milwaukee Standard is a public declaration of the work already underway and a commitment to carry it forward with the same care and accountability this community deserves.”

MMSD is near the end of a long public bidding process for the next 10-year wastewater operations contract, which is valued at approximately $700 million. Veolia is bidding on the contract against Jacobs Solutions, a Dallas-based engineering services firm. It is the first public bidding process since Veolia was awarded the contract in 2008. The company received a no-bid extension in 2016.

Veolia’s planned audit was announced publicly just ahead of a public meeting of MMSD’s ad-hoc committee charged with reviewing the bid proposals.

There’s a chance Veolia’s audit will end up as one of three separate audits of the wastewater operations since Common Ground launched its campaign. Sup. Jack Eckblad has authored a resolution requesting that the state Legislative Audit Bureau conduct an audit. The state agency previously audited MMSD in 2002. A majority of the county board has already co-sponsored the legislation, which formalizes a public statement supervisors released in May calling for a state audit.

Eckblad is chair of the Milwaukee County Board’s Committee on Audit. He told Urban Milwaukee, “conversations with MMSD are ongoing, and our primary concern has been ensuring a transparent and independent audit. So far, MMSD has been increasingly responsive, and we are grateful for that increase in responsiveness around such serious and foundational concerns.”

Bryan Porter, dean of the graduate school at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, speaks about the mental health effects of traffic accidents during the Vision Zero Summit. (Photo by Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)

The city’s first Vision Zero Summit, held Wednesday, explored the big “how” questions around the goal of ending traffic deaths and life-changing injuries by the end of 2037.

Eliminating traffic deaths is the main goal of Vision Zero, an initiative that includes a multi-sector approach to help increase traffic safety.

Jessica Wineberg, Vision Zero policy director for the City of Milwaukee, said the community asked for more places to learn and share ideas during the development of the Vision Zero Action Plan, which was fully launched in 2025.

Wineberg said more than 300 people registered for the summit, which took place at Centennial Hall, 733 N. 8th St. They participated in panels, walks, tours, a mobility fair and other interactive sessions.

She added that community members could apply to be part of the Vision Zero Community Advisory Committee to support the plan’s implementation.

Milwaukee firefighters demonstrate a car extraction during the Vision Zero Summit. (Photo by Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)

Jodie Dunbar, Milwaukee Recreation supervisor, talks about teen driver education and safe driving habits. (Photo by Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)

“Seeing the community show up for this and be engaged is the most important part of this work because the more of us that are together saying that safety matters and there should be zero deaths, the more we can do and the faster we can do it,” Wineberg said.

Community members, transportation professionals and speakers from other areas dealing with similar traffic-related challenges gathered to discuss safety, mobility and accessibility for walking, biking, riding transit and driving in Milwaukee.

What is Vision Zero?

The City of Milwaukee unanimously adopted Vision Zero as a policy in 2022 and Milwaukee County committed to Vision Zero and developed its own project in 2024.

According to the city’s Vision Zero annual report, traffic deaths declined from 70 deaths in 2024 to 54 deaths in 2025, although the preliminary 2025 data will not be confirmed until July.

Milwaukee Police Department reported a 43% increase in reckless-driving-related arrests in 2025, according to department data. Part of the Vision Zero approach is to support accountability in the justice system with a focus on prevention.

“Our Vision Zero approach where we layer on lots of different strategies to improve safety has been working in Milwaukee, and that’s really what I think we can see in our fatality numbers,” Wineberg said.

The city and its collaborators have accomplished some of the plan’s 100 action items, including the Milwaukee Department of Public Works changing how they design streets to focus on safety over speed, Wineberg said.

She said there is still more work to be done.

Changes to the built environment

Engineers from the city and state shared examples of small and large-scale projects they use to improve safety during a session at the summit. Examples included raised crosswalks for pedestrians and lighting up “wrong way” signs on interstate entrance and exit ramps.

Jesse Jefferson, civil engineering project manager for the Milwaukee Department of Public Works, said the city is moving toward building “human-scale” streets instead of the large, multi-lane roadways like Capitol Drive that can be difficult for bikers and pedestrians to navigate.

Jefferson and Isabel Gunderson, a civil engineer for the Department of Public Works, said their teams work to find common ground with residents who have questions about how streetscaping projects could impact their access to parking and other concerns.

“I think it really helps to center the conversation around shared goals,” Gunderson said.

Becky Rabatin, an advocate for persons with disabilities and former Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator for the City of Milwaukee, said after the session that it’s important for planners to engage with the disabled community early.

“Because even though you may have a design that works, it may not be the best design for persons with disabilities, who have the hardest time as pedestrians,” she said.

Rabatin, who also spoke on a panel, said everyone at the event was concerned about safety at different levels.

“It’s showing that people’s wheels are turning,” she said.

Personal experiences shape change

Jerrold Wellinger and his sisters, Mariah Johnson (center) and Kassie Gaspardo, enjoy a day at the lake in 2021. He was killed by a reckless driver later that year. (Photo provided by Mariah Johnson)

In the breakout session, “Families for Safe Streets,” advocates for reckless driving victims shared their personal experiences and how it may affect future policy. Mariah Johnson’s brother, Jerrold Wellinger, was on his way to the gas station nearly five years ago when he was struck and killed by two reckless drivers speeding at 120 miles per hour.

Since then, Johnson has taken to social media, where she shares her story to over 65,000 followers on TikTok. She also featured in a City of Milwaukee social media and billboard campaign that urged motorists to slow down.

“What I really would like to see is the community take it as serious as we do,” said Johnson, a 53218 resident. “I feel blessed to represent my city, because I feel like so often people that look like me don’t get to represent our city.”

Erin Mogenson was eight weeks pregnant when a speeding driver going over 100 miles per hour killed her just four blocks from her home. After the tragedy, Mogenson’s mother and mother-in-law banded together for change.

Their action sparked ‘Enough is Enough – a legacy for Erin,’ a foundation committed to raising awareness and supporting legislative actions for public safety against speeding. The foundation created ‘Court Watch,’ which monitors, records and publishes court cases and verdicts for reckless driving.

“We wanted to create some transparency about what was happening in court,” Lupo said. “We couldn’t change what happened to Erin, but we could help shine a light on what happens afterward.”

How to learn more?

Find a form to apply for the mayor’s Vision Zero Community Advisory Committee and more information on the city’s Vision Zero website.

Meredith Melland is the neighborhoods reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.

Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

This article first appeared on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Fixture Pizza Pub, 623 S. 2nd St. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

After months of uncertainty, Fixture Pizza Pub is back to serving customers in Walker’s Point.

The restaurant resumed service at 623 S. 2nd St. over the weekend, though diners said it is currently operating with a limited menu.

Customers crowded in for a taste of their favorite pies following the hiatus, dining in or toting pizza boxes for carryout as the last of the Milwaukee Pride Parade marched past Fixture’s newly reopened doors.

Business was brisk Wednesday evening, too, with guests gathered around square-cut pizzas and plates of eggplant fries as the NBA Finals drew eyes to TVs mounted above the packed bar.

Fixture, operated by brothers Josh  and John “Jake” Taylor, has shared little in the way of updates since its sudden closure in early February, which came amid financial challenges for the 10-year-old restaurant.

At that time, public records showed the business owed more than $100,000 in state taxes dating back to 2022. Online court records indicate that almost all of the debt has since been paid in full. However, two delinquent unemployment tax warrants remain as of June 11, totaling just over $14,000. Schmidt Custom Floors, Inc. filed a $9,950 construction lien on the property owner, JD Commercial Properties LLC, earlier this month.

In March, Fixture posted a notice on its front door attributing the closure to renovations and improvements and said it planned to reopen in April. However, the month came and went without further communication.

Fixture confirmed its early 2026 closure in a voicemail message stating the restaurant has “closed indefinitely.” A call placed Wednesday afternoon went unanswered, and the outgoing message remained unchanged.

As Fixture settles back into regular operations, it is expected to return to its full menu in the coming weeks.

Fixture’s posted hours are 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday, 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.

The Taylor brothers have not responded to multiple requests for comment.

Photos

Nadi Plates owner Nadia Santaniello Bucholtz. Photo courtesy of Nadi Plates.

Nadi Plates is changing course on its proposed East Side restaurant more than a year after its initial proposal.

The business, which currently operates as a food truck and event vendor, will not move forward with plans at 2238 N. Farwell Ave., the former Crossroads Collective space, and instead plans to launch a brick-and-mortar location nearby at 2163 N. Farwell Ave., the former home of Pomona Cider Company.

“We are cooking up exciting plans to transform the space into the new Nadi Plates, and we can’t wait to share them with you as details are finalized,” the owners shared in an online post Thursday morning.

Nadi Plates was announced as an incoming tenant at 2238 N. Farwell Ave. in April 2025, shortly after the sudden closure of Crossroads Collective. In the following months, the business secured a series of construction permits and, in March, applied for a sign permit.

Plans called for the 7,025-square-foot commercial space, formerly divided into individual vendor stalls with shared kitchens, to be restructured as a full-service restaurant, complete with a spacious dining area and standalone espresso bar. Branded paper has covered the building’s large street-facing windows, obscuring progress on the buildout.

Nadi Plates originally aimed to open its brick-and-mortar last fall, but later pushed the date back to spring 2026. An official opening date was never set. Nadi Plates said it is ending its agreement with property owner New Land Enterprises on amicable terms.

“We’ve mutually agreed with the owners of 2238 N. Farwell to discontinue our previously planned location at that address and are now focused on the new project,” Austin Santaniello, head of administration at Nadi Plates, said in an email.

Nadi Plates is now targeting the former cidery building, which is much smaller at 2,100 square feet. Its previous occupant closed in late December after just under three years in business.

“We’re moving operations into the space beginning this week, and we will have more to share as we finalize concepts and timelines for this new space,” Santaniello said. “We are very excited to remain on the East Side and welcome our neighbors to our table.”

Initial plans for the restaurant included a selection of Italian small plates, cocktails and wine, with an emphasis on plant-based and gluten-free options. Santaniello said the new concept is still being finalized.

“Our vision hasn’t changed,” he said in an email. “It will still feature Italian food rooted in our family’s tradition, served in a space that brings guests more intimately into the kitchen, which has always been at the heart of how we want people to experience Nadi Plates.”

An in-house espresso bar, Il Grande Bambino, will be incorporated into the space, rather than operating separately, Santaniello confirmed.

Nadia Santaniello Bucholtz is owner and executive chef of Nadi Plates, which specializes in modern riffs on traditional Italian cuisine. A first-generation Italian-American daughter of two restaurateurs, Santaniello Bucholtz now runs the growing business alongside her three adult children: Austin, Zachary and Bianca.

The business has encountered financial challenges in recent months. Public records show at least $30,000 in delinquent tax warrants across four separate filings in 2026.

Nadi Plates has not yet announced a prospective opening date for the new restaurant. In the meantime, the business continues daily operations at Zócalo Food Park. It also operates at American Family Field during every Milwaukee Brewers home game.

New Land recently filed to open Star Bar in a portion of the former Crossroads space.

Two Democrats will compete in the August primary to challenge Republican state Treasurer John Leiber in November’s election. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Two Democrats are running to challenge state Treasurer John Leiber, the only Republican who currently holds a constitutional office in Wisconsin, in November.

The Wisconsin State Constitution established the office of state treasurer, which is the state’s chief financial officer. The treasurer serves on the Wisconsin Investment Board, the Public Employee Trust Fund and the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands (BCPL). The BCPL also oversees the Common School Fund, which is the fund used to purchase library books and other instructional materials for schools and has grown into a $1.6 billion trust.

Leiber, first elected in 2022, is running for his second term in office this year. During his first campaign for the office, Leiber committed to not expanding the scope of the office’s responsibilities and has said he plans to continue that in another term.

John Leiber official headshot.

“You can count on me to continue administering this office without growing government and without using it as a stepping stone to another office,” Leiber states on his campaign website.

Leiber’s commitment was a change from the previous treasurer, current Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski. Godlewski fought a Republican campaign to pass a constitutional amendment eliminating the office before she was elected and sought to expand its scope while she held it.

“As a fiscal conservative, I’m proud of my work safeguarding and growing our investments,” Leiber said in his reelection announcement. “The Common School Fund distributes money annually to K-12 school libraries for materials and technology. This is the only dedicated funding for school libraries statewide and my top priority is to ensure the fund continues to thrive in the future.”

Leiber was endorsed by the Republican Party of Wisconsin at its convention last month. He was brief in asking for the endorsement.

“I want to keep working for you. I know I can win. I did it four years ago and I want to keep working for every Republican,” Leiber said.

Yee Leng Xiong, a Marathon County supervisor and school board member, and Dylan Helmenstine, a Black Earth village board trustee and local school board member, are seeking the chance to oust Leiber. Voters will decide in the Aug. 11 primary which of them will advance to the general election.

Xiong says office “isn’t ceremonial”

“Most people don’t know what the State Treasurer does — and that’s exactly the problem,” Xiong said in his campaign announcement. “This office isn’t ceremonial. It’s a responsibility. The Treasurer helps oversee Wisconsin’s school trust funds, supports low-interest loans that help communities build infrastructure, and works to return unclaimed money to families. Wisconsin deserves a Treasurer who has actually managed public budgets and understands how every dollar affects real people.”

Xiong has served as a member of the Marathon County Board since 2016 and currently serves as the vice chair of the public safety committee and on the county’s health and human services committee and the board of health. Xiong also currently serves as treasurer of the DC Everest School Board.

Yee Leng Xiong, a Marathon Co. supervisor, is running to challenge Leiber. (Photo courtesy of campaign)

Xiong lost a campaign for the state Assembly in 2024 against a longtime Republican incumbent.

If elected, Xiong would be the first Hmong American to serve in a statewide position in Wisconsin. He previously served as the executive director of the Hmong American Center.

According to his campaign website, Xiong’s priorities for the office include protecting and growing the school trust fund, strengthening efforts to return unclaimed property to Wisconsinites and promoting financial literacy programs.

Xiong has been endorsed by U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin as well as other Wisconsin Democrats including former Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton, state Reps. Christine Sinicki, Jodi Emerson, Lori Palmeri, Andrew Hysell, Tara Johnson and Brienne Brown.

Baldwin said in a statement that Xiong has spent his career “managing public dollars responsibly and delivering for the people he serves.”

“He brings real budget experience from the school board, the county board, and the nonprofit world, and he understands that the Treasurer’s job is to be an independent watchdog for Wisconsin taxpayers,” Baldwin said in a statement. “He’ll protect our school trust funds, return unclaimed money to families who earned it and bring accountability to an office that demands it.”

Helmenstine calls for school voucher transparency on tax bills

Helmenstine launched his campaign in November, saying that he’ll use the office to boost transparency, including for schools, and help people stay informed about the state laws and finances.

Dylan Helmenstine. (Photo courtesy of campaign)

According to his campaign website, Helmenstine would seek to create a publicly available digital budget dashboard, work with other leaders to establish task forces to address healthcare costs, housing affordability, datacenter impacts and educational opportunities. He also said he wants to employ interns and fellows in the office to help them gain experience in government transparency and accountability. He said he views Godlewski’s time in office as “the gold standard” and wants to “carry on that mission to always be working to build a better future for working people in Wisconsin.”

Helmenstine supports local efforts to give taxpayers more information about how much of their tax bill goes to support the state’s school voucher program. Green Bay became the first municipality in the state to add the cost of private voucher schools as a line on residents’ property tax bills in 2025.

“Green Bay built the blueprint for how we can be transparent with taxpayers. People should know how much of our money is going towards public education and how much is going to private vouchers,” Helmenstine said in a statement. “We are already in a moment of crisis for school funding. With enrollment caps ending, Wisconsin schools are facing even more pressure. When the majority in the state legislature fails to act, statewide offices need to work with our local communities and fill the gap.”

Helmenstine, who grew up in Black Earth, serves as a village board trustee and also served on the Wisconsin Heights School Board. He was appointed in 2024 by Gov. Tony Evers to serve on the Teacher’s Retirement Board, which oversees the Employee Trust Funds and the State of Wisconsin Investment Board staff.

Helmenstine is endorsed by state Sen. Tim Carpenter, Rep. Alex Joers and Milwaukee Ald. Peter Burgelis, who is running for Congress.

Two Democrats seek to challenge Treasurer John Leiber, Wisconsin’s only GOP state office holder was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.

Wisconsin Superintendent Jill Underly speaks during a press conference Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, at the Tommy G. Thompson Center in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

A new lawsuit from the conservative Institute for Reforming Government alleges the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction violated open meetings law when it held a conference in the Wisconsin Dells in 2024.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Adams County Circuit Court, focuses on a four-day conference at the Chula Vista Resort where DPI met with educators and Data Recognition Corporation, the vendor for the Forward Exam, to work on standard setting.

During the meeting, the vendor worked with a group of 88 educators on new testing standards for students, and recommended cutting scores to divide students into four performance levels.

“The standard setting was required because of recent changes to the tests,” according to a report from Data Recognition Corporation.

However, the lawsuit alleges DPI violated Wisconsin Open Meetings Law.

“The meeting was not noticed to the public, was not open to the public, and participants were required to sign blanket non-disclosure agreements,” a Wednesday statement from the Institute for Reforming Government said.

“Information about the meeting only came to light after IRG and the Dairyland Sentinel sought the release of public records after a 12 month delay.”

DPI’s “Standard Setting Committee and Standard Setting Sub-Committees” were named in the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges the conference was “shrouded in secrecy.”

Jacob Curtis, general counsel at Institute for Reforming Government, said the lawsuit is not focused on the fact that the meeting was held.

“What we are claiming in this lawsuit is that public notice should have been issued such that any concerned individual in the state — whether it be an individual or somebody within an organization like IRG — that we would have been able to … have notice that the meeting was taking place and attend,” Curtis said.

Republicans have been critical of the updated testing benchmarks. Republican state lawmakers have also questioned the department on if open meetings laws were violated, while raising concerns about the price of the conference, which was $368,885.

Responding to lawmakers earlier complaints, Rich Judge, assistant state superintendent for government and public affairs, told a legislative committee in April that the conference did not violate open meetings law, saying it was attended by educators and facilitated by the vendor rather than being a quorum of public officials.

In an email Tuesday, DPI spokesperson Chris Bucher said, “Throughout this process, the DPI has openly and transparently participated in legislative hearings related to this matter, which the Republican co-chair of a legislative committee called ‘routine.’”

“However, more than two years after the fact, a special interest group with a well-documented political agenda continues to recycle unfounded accusations, diverting public resources and agency time away from the work that matters most: supporting Wisconsin students, educators, and schools,” Bucher wrote.

Wisconsin’s Open Meetings Law says that, “all meetings of all state and local governmental bodies shall be publicly held in places reasonably accessible to members of the public and shall be open to all citizens at all times unless otherwise expressly provided by law.” The law also says that meetings of a governmental body, “shall be preceded by public notice” and “shall be held in open session.”

The complaint said that although the Standard Setting Comittee did not vote, it, “reached its decisions via ‘consensus’ and acted upon those decisions by forwarding its recommendations to DPI.”

The lawsuit asks the court for a judgement declaring that DPI violated the open meetings law and that any action that resulted from the meeting be void.

Lawsuit alleges Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction violated open meetings law  was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.

Visitors take in the view at Ellison Bluff in Ellison Bay. Door County saw a 5 percent increase in economic impact from tourism in 2025. Photo courtesy of Destination Door County

Wisconsin’s tourism economy is marking another year of growth. The state’s Department of Tourism released new figures on Tuesday showing that Wisconsin broke its tourism record for the fourth consecutive year in 2025, with more than 117 million visits creating $27 billion dollars in total economic impact.

“These numbers are a big deal for our state, our economy, and the countless hardworking folks in the industry who make it all happen,” Gov. Tony Evers wrote in a press release announcing the four-year streak of record tourism numbers.

Around the state, local events saw a surge in attendance last year. The EAA Airventure in Oshkosh brought in more than 700,000 visitors, breaking the previous year’s record by 18,000. In Chippewa Falls, the Northern Wisconsin State Fair saw its highest single-day attendance in 17 years.

And with more visitors came more dollars spent in local communities throughout the state. Spending in Door County was up more than 5 percent last year, said Jon Jarosh, interim president/CEO and chief communications officer of Destination Door County, a nonprofit tourism organization.

Jarosh told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that the peninsula continues to be a vacation mainstay for families around the state.

“We’re close to so many Wisconsinites, and yet when people are here, they feel like they’re really farther away than they might be,” he said.

A windy stretch of Highway 42 near Gills Rock in Door County. Photo courtesy of Destination Door County

Natural resources, cultural events continue to be a draw

Outdoor recreation continues to be a big driver of Wisconsin tourism. In March, the state’s Office of Outdoor Recreation announced that the industry contributed a record $12 billion in economic impact for the state in 2024, the most recent year with data. Top activities include riding motorcycles and ATVs, boating and fishing, hunting, hiking, camping and cycling.

Cultural offerings and events can also be a “huge selling point for the state,” said Tanner Knorr, who directs the Tourism Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

Eaux Claires, the indie music festival put on by Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon, is set to return to Wisconsin this summer after an eight-year hiatus. The festival brought in an estimated 25,000 visitors each year it was held from 2016 to 2018.

Door County saw an unexpected bump in winter visitors last year during the filming of the holiday movie “A Cherry Pie Christmas.”

And intrepid “troll hunters” have been flocking to Wauwatosa to see Mama Rose, a giant troll sculpture by Danish artist Thomas Dambo. Mount Pleasant is set to get its own Dambo troll next year, with one visitor from Ohio telling WPR she would definitely “be back” to check it out.

High gas prices may change tourist behavior

Whether Wisconsin can pull off a fifth year of breaking tourism records remains to be seen. Consumer scientists are watching as vacationers respond to high gas prices, currently sitting around $4 per gallon throughout most of the state.

However, if long drives and plane tickets remain more expensive than usual, that might boost the number of Wisconsin locals who stay close to home. Jarosh said he is not too worried about Door County’s prospects.

“Door County historically has not seen as big of a drop-off when gas prices, in particular, have been higher because of our proximity to so many Wisconsinites,” Jarosh said. “We may be a backup location instead of traveling across the country for a longer road trip.”

Knorr echoed the sentiment, saying that it might be “really favorable” for the Wisconsin economy to have more residents taking vacations here in the state.

“Being a tourist is more so a mindset,” Knorr said. “It’s going somewhere to experience a place for the first time, to experience a new perspective on life, even if that’s a town away.”

Wisconsin sees record-breaking tourism for fourth year in a row was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.

231 E. Wisconsin Ave. Photo taken June 10, 2026 by Jeramey Jannene.

Pita Pit, a fast-casual Mediterranean chain, has closed its downtown location after more than a decade in business.

Signage has been removed from the corner storefront at 231 E. Wisconsin Ave., which is now being marketed for lease by Colliers International.

A phone call to the business went unanswered Wednesday and the restaurant’s Facebook page is no longer active.

Opened in 2015, the restaurant occupied a space in the base of the Railway Exchange Building, where it served a health-focused lineup of custom pita sandwiches, grain bowls and salads.

The downtown restaurant was Milwaukee’s last Pita Pit location; another previously operated at 2224 N. Farwell Ave., the current site of Tsaocaa. Though no longer present in the city proper, Pita Pit continues at more than 90 locations nationwide.

Pita Pit’s U.S. headquarters are in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. The chain also operates in Canada.

Although it’s known for Mediterranean flavors, Pita Pit also features globally-inspired options such as the hula teriyaki bowl and cheese-filled “quesapita.” Its lineup of classic pitas includes falafel, hummus, gyro and Philly.

The former restaurant is being listed by Blake Gaffney and Matt Salamone, both real estate advisors with Colliers. The commercial space includes 2,469 square feet, with an additional 1,000 square feet available.

The ground-level storefront was previously home to a Quiznos sandwich shop. For more information, view the online listing.

Andrew Culp, the location’s registered agent, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Railway Exchange Building is owned by PK2group.

Seventh district congressional candidate Jesse Ebben speaks during an interview Saturday, May 16, 2026, during the Republican Party of Wisconsin State Convention at Kalahari Resorts & Conventions in Baraboo, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

A Republican running for Wisconsin’s deep red 7th Congressional District has lost her attempt to keep two GOP challengers, including one endorsed by President Donald Trump, off the primary ballot in August.

Jessi Ebben claimed a new state law and an old form invalidated thousands of signatures for fellow Republicans Kevin Hermening and U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s son-in-law, Michael Alfonso, but the commission unanimously disagreed.

Ebben’s campaign manager Tom Schroeder filed three challenges with the Wisconsin Elections Commission against the campaigns of Republicans Alfonso and Hermening and Democrat Fred Clark. He argued thousands of their signatures, needed to get on the primary ballot, should be struck because the forms they were written on were outdated. Specifically, Schroeder claimed those forms don’t comply with a new law enacted in April that bars out-of-state residents from collecting signatures.

The Republican primary for the seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany as he runs for governor stands out because Trump’s endorsement of the 26-year-old Alfonso didn’t clear the field. Aside from the president, Alfonso has also received significant help from a new political action committee running ads on his behalf that received a $1 million donation from the campaign account Duffy used when he represented the district between 2011 and 2019.

During a Republican primary debate in May, which Alfonso skipped, Ebben and Hermening criticized Alfonso’s connections while also pledging their loyalty to Trump.

In order to appear on the 7th Congressional District primary ballot, candidates needed to collect at least 1,000 valid signatures. A memo from Elections Commission staff show Ebben’s campaign only challenged 24 of Clark’s signatures, which isn’t enough to put him below the threshold. Ebben challenged 954 signatures collected by Hermening and all 1,482 signatures collected by Alfonso.

Elections Commission staff said Ebben’s campaign didn’t show any evidence suggesting individuals gathering signatures for the rival campaigns weren’t Wisconsin residents or unable to vote in the state. Also, they noted the commission itself issued guidance to campaigns in April stating signatures collected via the older forms would not automatically strike them.

Before the Elections Commission’s vote, Attorney Matthew Fernholz argued the Alfonso, Hermening and Clark campaigns failed to comply with statute that requires their signature forms to have language certifying that they are qualified electors.

“The question is not about whether the signature gatherers violated by not being eligible to vote in Wisconsin,” said Fernholz. “The issue is whether the candidates’ nomination papers include language that is at odds with the statute.”

Wisconsin Elections Commission Chair Don Millis followed up by asking Fernholz if he had any evidence that any signature collectors for the campaigns weren’t eligible to vote in Wisconsin. He said he didn’t.

Hermening, who joined the meeting by phone, told commissioners that his campaign printed its signature forms before the law changed in April. He said he agreed with the commission’s legal opinion that the old forms should still be allowed. And he said they were prepared to submit affidavits from campaign staff who collected signatures attesting to their Wisconsin residency and eligibility to vote in the state, if necessary.

It wasn’t. The commission voted unanimously without discussion to reject the three complaints from Ebben’s campaign and place Alfonso, Hermening and Clark on the August ballot.

In an interview with WPR, Clark said his campaign didn’t bother to respond to the challenge of the 24 signatures Ebben tried to have struck because they would have had more than enough either way. He said it appears the Republicans in the 7th District race “weren’t happy with each other” but “that’s up to the Republican candidates to sort out.”

“I think the people who are going to be voting have a lot bigger concerns than whether the right technical language was on a form,” said Clark. “So I think that the Election Commission ruled in favor of common sense, and I applaud them.”

Jessi Ebben fails to keep GOP, Democratic rivals off 7th Congressional District primary ballot was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.

Midtown Center Walmart. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

As community meetings get underway about the proposed redevelopment of the long-vacant Midtown Center Walmart, one of the project’s co-owners is pushing back on the notion that the computing component is anything like the large data centers that are drawing opposition elsewhere in the state.

“You’ll never know that we would exist in the back of this building,” said Trent Overhue, co-owner of Affordable Family Storage, in an interview in advance of the first open house meeting.

Overhue’s firm has sought since 2022 to redevelop the former Walmart at 5825 W. Hope Ave. But after being initially rejected, it has crafted a plan that has a more likely chance of gaining the support of Ald. Mark Chambers, Jr. A relocated Capitol Library and city-controlled community center would be located in the front, self-storage and a computing facility placed in the back of the store and 200 affordable apartments built atop the parking lot.

But an initial zoning review for May was canceled due to concern about the computing component.

The rear 19,000 square feet of the 158,000-square-foot building is proposed to house what Overhue calls a “computational research” facility — a term he uses to distinguish it from the hyperscale data centers that have drawn scrutiny over water use, noise and energy consumption.

What It Is — and Isn’t

Overhue is deliberate about the distinction. “There’s a lot of different uses,” he said. “You have data storage, cloud storage — this is solely utilized for research.”

The facility would serve tenants running specialized computing workloads. Overhue said the first tenant would be in the medical research field, though he declined to name them.

“All you’re doing is solving complicated equations,” he said.

In practical terms, the facility would operate at an IT electrical load of roughly seven megawatts, with a cooling load of about two megawatts, for a total draw of nine to ten megawatts. AFS plans to expand the building’s electrical service from approximately three megawatts to seven to support that capacity. We Energies has the available power, he said.

For context, Overhue noted that hyperscale data center campuses — like the Microsoft facility under construction in Mount Pleasant — operate at thousands of megawatts and can exceed a million square feet. The Midtown facility’s IT room would occupy less than 10,000 square feet.

Closed-Loop Cooling, No Noise

One of the concerns raised about large data centers is heavy water consumption. Overhue said the facility would use closed-loop cooling systems, similar in concept to a car’s radiator, in which the same conditioned water circulates continuously without significant replenishment.

“That water stays in there forever,” he said. “It virtually uses no water.”

He also pointed out that the same type of condensers used in the facility are already in use at the neighboring Pick ‘N Save grocery store. As for noise, he said the operation would be “not noisy” and “as clean as it comes.” The city’s noise ordinance would restrict the noise from being audible across 60th Street.

The facility’s cooling equipment was recently repositioned to the rear of the building. It was a recommendation from the city, said Overhue, made to further minimize any noise impact on neighbors.

AFS as Operator

Overhue clarified that AFS is not simply leasing space to a third-party data center operator. The company handles the infrastructure side, including air handlers, UPS systems, and cooling distribution units, and brings in tenants to operate their own equipment within that environment.

“We are the operators of the equipment,” he said. “We work with tenants on the equipment side.”

He acknowledged that AFS has done similar retrofits at other facilities but declined to identify them, citing confidentiality agreements with tenants. “A lot of our tenants are under pretty strict NDAs” — nondisclosure agreements — he said.

Overhue said several traditional data centers already exist in Milwaukee. Potawatomi, the Milwaukee School of Engineering and several other institutions operate small facilities within larger buildings.

Part of a Bigger Vision for Midtown

Overhue framed the computing facility as just one piece of a broader effort to reinvigorate the Midtown neighborhood. The full redevelopment plan calls for a replacement Capitol Library branch, a community space in the former garden center, 89,000 square feet of self-storage and 200 units of affordable housing on the parking lot — the latter being developed by Gorman & Company.

“The foot traffic — in the commercial world, if you have households and foot traffic, that starts to attract better tenant quality,” Overhue said. “With that, we’ll help kind of bring in new life and new tenants into Midtown.”

He said AFS has also been working with Gorman and Chambers on concepts for the parking lot that he believes could further accelerate the area’s recovery.

“Some of the stuff that we’re working with the city on has the potential to really put Midtown… back in the right direction,” he said.

Community Meetings Continue

Three open-house-style community meetings are being held at the former Walmart to give residents the opportunity to ask questions about the project. Representatives from AFS, the Department of City Development, Milwaukee Public Library and Gorman & Company are expected at each session.

• Wednesday, June 18 — 5:30 to 7 p.m.
• Saturday, June 27 — 12 to 1:30 p.m.

AFS acquired the former Walmart in 2022. A previous attempt to rezone the building, centered on self-storage, was denied in 2023.

“‘Data centers’ are a couple of very bad words these days,” said Chambers in a May press release. “They conjure images of gray buildings covering thousands of acres, creating nuisance levels of noise and taxing local water supplies and other resources. The development proposed for the Midtown Center includes nothing even close.”

Former Walmart

New Walmart interior layout. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Computational research place sign. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Initial Walmart site plan. Image submitted to CPC by KORB.

Update: Chambers stance has been clarified

Jones Island Reclamation Facility. Photo by Urban Milwaukee staff.

The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) Commission recently approved an audit of how well the district’s private contractor, Veolia Water Milwaukee, was operating the sewerage system. But just three years ago, Veolia and MMSD were in talks to extend their contract — and without a public bidding process.

MMSD has been under public pressure to audit Veolia since late April, when the community organization Common Ground began levying public accusations that Veolia was intentionally mismanaging the district’s wastewater facilities — Jones Island and South Shore — to save money. The group charged that the French transnational corporation is failing to properly maintain machinery, causing the wastewater plants to run under capacity and contributing to a greater risk of basement backups and sewer overflows.

Common Ground’s allegations are based on information provided by more than two dozen whistleblowers, two of whom have come forward publicly. One of the public whistleblowers, Greg Gryskiewicz, released a 37-page document detailing all the problems he witnessed at the Jones Island and South Shore plants, including the 2018 permit violation when excessive sewage was discharged into Lake Michigan. The event was “months in the making” and caused by “abysmal” conditions at the facility, he said.

Initially, MMSD officials, including Executive Director Kevin Shafer and MMSD Commission Chair Corey Zetts, pushed back on Common Ground’s claims and maintained they were unaware of the problems described and would need more information from the group before they could proceed to an audit. MMSD is in the final stages of a public bidding process for a new 10-year contract valued at approximately $700 million. Veolia is up against Jacobs Solutions, a Dallas-based engineering services company.

However, Urban Milwaukee has learned that MMSD discussed a potential no-bid contract extension with Veolia in 2023, before ultimately deciding to move to a public bidding process in 2024. A report from MMSD Executive Director Kevin Shafer informed the MMSD Commission in July that year that the district was talking to Veolia about a contract extension as it re-evaluated taking the operations back and putting them under the control of a public workforce employed by MMSD.

“In 2016, an Extension Agreement was signed for the term of March 2018 through February 2028,” according to a public report from Shafer’s office to the MMSD Commission in July 2023. “Recently leadership from Veolia North America has indicated an interest in providing the District with a proposal for a contract extension… A contract extension at this point may provide benefits to the District and VWM in allowing both parties to plan future costs on a more long-term basis.”

The two options — extending Veolia for another decade versus taking back public operation of the system —  would be compared side by side. “District staff is directed to report back to the Commission to advise on the status of negotiations, results of the take back analysis, and recommendations for future action,” the report states.

Shafer’s report to the commission said that Veolia “has indicated an interest in providing a proposal for a further contract extension.” But in a recent interview with Urban Milwaukee, he downplayed the discussions, saying the potential contract extension was pursued only for the purposes of comparing public and private costs.

“We were trying to decide if we wanted to go back to a public operation or private operator,” Shafer said. “The only thing we had to compare a public option to was the Veolia contract at that time.”

Adam Lisberg, Veolia senior vice president of external communications, confirmed that MMSD discussed extending the contract with the company in 2023. He said informal discussions started while Veolia and MMSD were negotiating amendments to their existing contract. “They discussed extending it to implement beneficial changes more quickly.”

But ultimately “MMSD proceeded instead with a competitive bid process, and Veolia welcomed the opportunity to participate,” Lisberg said. “We are confident our experience, institutional knowledge and proven performance demonstrate that we can best serve MMSD and the people of the Milwaukee area into the future.”

The contract was first awarded in 2008 and renewed for another 10 years in 2018. This was a no-bid contract, said MMSD communications director Bill Graffin, because “the contract was generally viewed as working as intended and demonstrating a high level of environmental compliance” and because “industry consolidation meant it appeared Veolia might not have a competitor” in a public bidding process.

Mergers and acquisitions among companies in the market meant that as recently as 2022 the top three competitors had all been subsumed, in one way or another, by the Veolia corporation, according to a report that year by the Wisconsin Policy Forum titled “Testing the Waters.” The only other viable option was returning the operations to a public-sector workforce. But MMSD continues to see upside to the private-contractor model, according to Graffin. MMSD estimates the first Veolia contract saved the district $20 million to $30 million compared to estimates for an in-house operation, down from the $165 million saved when the operations were first taken private in 1998.

“More broadly, during the first two contract terms, the district realized substantial savings compared to in-house operations,” Graffin said.

But the difference in costs between private and public operations has greatly diminished since, Graffin conceded. 

“While those savings are now more difficult to quantify and may no longer be as substantial,” he said, “the private-operator model still offers benefits, including risk-sharing for ongoing costs, rate stability over a 10-year term and access to additional resources for day-to-day operations such as procurement, safety, and human resources.”

A Harley-Davidson motorcycle is displayed at the Wisconsin Drives Manufacturing Summit on June 2, 2026, at Lambeau Field in Green Bay. Joe Schulz/WPR

Harley-Davidson is bringing some motorcycle production back to Wisconsin.

In a statement Tuesday, the company said it plans to bring production of its Revolution Max motorcycles back to the United States, with that manufacturing moving to Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. That includes Harley’s Pan America, Sportster S, and Nightster models.

Harley plans to produce more than 100,000 motorcycles at its York, Pennsylvania plant in 2027, according to the company.

The company’s announcement did not specify what type of production it would increase in Wisconsin or how many jobs would be added in both states. Harley, based in Milwaukee, currently has an 849,000 square-foot powertrain factory in Menomonee Falls.

Harley-Davidson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, Harley said it has built motorcycles in the U.S. for more than a century. The company says its announcement “reflects our commitment to strengthening Harley-Davidson’s manufacturing base for the long term.”

“This move returns machining, powertrain assembly, painting, and final vehicle assembly work to our facilities in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, supporting dozens of additional American manufacturing and union jobs,” the statement reads.

The plan to boost manufacturing comes after Harley laid off workers earlier this year. At the time, the company did not say how many employees were laid off or where they worked.

Harley-Davidson had an operating loss of $29 million in 2025 and its global motorcycle sales fell 12 percent that year compared to 2024, according to the company’s fourth quarter earnings report.

That’s as tariffs cost the company $67 million last year, said Jonathan Root, the company’s chief financial officer.

“In 2025, the global tariff environment was more volatile and uncertain than we had expected at the beginning of the year,” Root told investors during a February earnings call.

Harley’s sales rebounded slightly to start the year, up 8 percent in the first quarter compared to the same period last year, according to figures from the company.

Last month, the company announced a plan aimed at improving its profitability, framing it as a back to basics approach.

“This strategy is intentionally grounded in our core strengths,” Harley-Davidson CEO Artie Starrs told investors last month.

Harley has said its plan to bring work back to Wisconsin and Pennsylvania is part of that strategy.

Bill Davidson, the great-grandson of one of the company’s four founders, said in a statement that his family “spent generations working in this company” and they’re “incredibly excited” about the announcement.

“Bringing this work back home is another important step in getting back to the bricks, investing in American manufacturing, and building on the values that have made Harley-Davidson one of the most iconic brands in the world,” Davidson stated.

The White House also praised Harley’s announcement on social media, saying it would boost manufacturing jobs and ensure more American-made bikes.

In its announcement, Harley-Davidson said changes the Trump administration made to trade policy and “shifts in the global trade environment” created opportunities for companies to invest in domestic manufacturing.

During Harley’s earnings call last month, Root said the administration included a tariff exemption on certain motorcycles, as well as parts and accessories used to make motorcycles.

“Three of our four manufacturing centers are U.S.-based and 100 percent of our U.S. core product is manufactured in the U.S.,” Root said. “This change will serve in helping mitigate the impact of tariffs to Harley-Davidson, Inc. and enable us to strengthen our commitment to U.S. manufacturing.”

Root added that Harley anticipates tariffs will cost the company between $75 million and $90 million in 2026. He says the company’s “expected tariff amount will decrease consecutively as we work our way across the remaining quarters in 2026.”

Harley-Davidson to bring some motorcycle production back to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.

Marcia P. Coggs Health & Human Services Center, 1230 W. Cherry St. photo taken June 13, 2025, by Graham Kilmer.

A longtime county official has been selected to run Milwaukee County’s Behavioral Health Services (BHS), after the former administrator, Mike Lappen, was unceremoniously pushed out of the job in March.

Amy Lorenz, the former BHS deputy administrator of operations, was tapped to lead the mental health system, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) announced Wednesday. Lorenz was chosen from a pool of 19 candidates who began interviewing for the job less than three weeks ago.

Lorenz has served the county for more than 20 years and brings extensive experience with the county’s community-based behavioral health system to the role, as well as expertise in budgeting and resource management, according to DHHS. Lorenz is also involved with community organizations such as the Trans Center for Youth and the Milwaukee Coalition on Housing and Homelessness.

She took over on June 8. The office had sat vacant since March, after the administration forced Mike Lappen, the long-serving administrator of Behavioral Health Services, out of his job. He had served in the role since 2016 and was well-regarded by members of the board and other professionals in the field of health and human services.

DHHS Director Shakita LaGrant-McClain and County Executive David Crowley‘s office have refused to explain Lappen’s departure to the public or the Mental Health Board tasked with oversight of the behavioral health system. After Lappen left, the administration maintained that Lappen resigned. But Lappen told a different story, saying he was given a choice between resigning and being fired and he chose the former.

The abrupt separation was a source of tension between the Crowley administration and the Mental Health Board, which had been kept in the dark. The tension snapped at a meeting of the Mental Health Board when Crowley’s Chief of Staff told the board to get behind the county executive or consider resigning their seat.

The administration has since sought to mend fences, inviting members of the board to join hiring panels for the new administrator.

“The Milwaukee County Mental Health Board is pleased to have been part of a collaborative process to select a strong leader with impeccable experience who will lead the county’s behavioral health services,” said Kathy Bottoni, board chair, in a statement released by DHHS. “Amy has a deep commitment to the community and we look forward to working with her in the future.”

BHS is the largest service area in DHHS, with an annual budget in 2026 of approximately $215.9 million. The agency is responsible for the county’s Mental Health Emergency Center, crisis intervention services, youth mental health services and substance abuse recovery services.

DHHS also announced the hiring of former City of Milwaukee Health Department official David Comer as Administrator for Child Support Services.

“We look forward to the experience, vision, and transformational leadership they will bring to our department and to the communities we serve,” LaGrant-McClain said in the DHHS announcement Wednesday.

Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Less than two months after going public with its southside safety plan, Common Ground Southeastern Wisconsin has scored what its lead organizer said is a “big victory.”

The Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) is changing its practices on designating “nuisance” properties, after seeing a 66% reduction in such designations in the past decade.

“Our message is to use and improve the 80-10 nuisance ordinance to make our neighborhoods safer, to hold corporate landlords accountable and to recoup funds for MPD,” said Gabriela Dieguez, a member of Common Ground and psychotherapist at the Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers, to the Steering & Rules Committee Monday afternoon. The community group packed the meeting room with supporters.

80-10 is the city ordinance number for a nuisance designation that includes fines of up to $5,000 for owners of property that trigger three or more qualifying calls for emergency services in a one-month period. It also requires implementation of a formal abatement plan.

Dieguez said Common Ground analyzed data from August 2018 to August 2025 and found that MPD issued 991 nuisance letters, but that the annual volume fell from 150 in 2018 to 46 in 2025.

“In our analysis, Common Ground found thousands of properties that theoretically met the 80-10 threshold but were not declared such. Probably not all of those should have been declared nuisances, but we suspect hundreds should have. How much money could MPD have recouped, how much safer could our neighborhoods be?” she said.

Police Chief Jeffrey Norman, using a five-year window reflecting his tenure, shared figures showing a similar two-thirds reduction in nuisance designations.

“We understand the importance of using nuisance as a tool,” said Norman.

Norman said it was important that MPD not only use the nuisance designation but also issue pre-nuisance letters to warn the relevant property owners of the issue. “People do listen,” he said. “What we want them to do is abate.”

“Many times, once you put somebody on notice, problem abated and we don’t have to take it any further,” said MPD Chief of Staff Heather Hough.

She credited Common Council President José G. Pérez and Common Ground for pushing for a change in MPD practices. Pérez, Mayor Cavalier Johnson, District Attorney Kent Lovern and others signed a pledge to work with Common Ground on safety issues in late April.

“One thing we weren’t doing, and this has been addressed in meetings with President Pérez, was systematically reviewing our data to say, ‘What are properties that have three or more calls for service a month?’ and looking at those calls for service to see whether they qualify for a nuisance designation.”

A new policy, said Hough, requires each of the seven district captains to review each candidate for designation and, if the property isn’t designated, declare why not.

“That’s now a directive for our district staff to do that each month,” said Hough.

Norman and Hough stressed that not all calls for service count for nuisance designation purposes. Police need to verify the issue, and it can’t be related to domestic violence or mental health incidents. “We don’t want people using it to target one another,” said Hough. Serious crimes, such as shootings, do not require three calls for service in a month to make the property eligible for a nuisance designation.

She said that the city can use video and other evidence submitted by residents in court, but the incidents must not be reported anonymously.

A nuisance designation, with a written notice, triggers a 10-day requirement to submit an abatement plan. For larger properties, changes can include infrastructure improvements such as lighting, fencing or security systems.

Pérez said he would still like to see the city further improve its processes. He noted that two properties in his district were billed for $9,000 and that the property management firms are out of business, but he said a lot of harm was done along the way.

Norman said MPD was rebuilding after a stressful period. “I will admit, sometimes you take your eye off the ball,” said the chief.

“2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 were some hard years for us,” said Norman of a surge in homicides. “2020, 2021, 2023 and 2022, we were looking at some non-fatals [shootings] that were in the stratosphere. Doesn’t make it an excuse, just trying to level set.”

Pérez requested that MPD establish a practice of sharing data with the council and ensure it collects data to track the ordinance’s effectiveness.

“I want to make sure we have a commitment that goes beyond when we have lights and cameras here,” said Ald. Scott Spiker, the Public Safety & Health Committee chair. He endorsed an idea from Ald. Milele A. Coggs to have MPD report the data to the safety committee on a regular basis.

Ald. Marina Dimitrijevic suggested that MPD explore a specific portal or phone number for reporting nuisance-related complaints.

Ald. Robert Bauman, who is pursuing separate legislation to raise fines for code violations for large landlords, suggested the city may need to raise fines associated with nuisance designations. “To many deep-pocketed landlords, it’s just the cost of doing business,” he said.

Norman said MPD would support a city attempt to change penalties under state law.

The current forfeiture, said City Attorney Evan Goyke, is for $1,000 to $5,000 per instance, a “fairly substantial forfeiture.”

“Some of this seems to be a paperwork problem. I don’t know how you address that,” said Bauman of the city failing to act on its own data. Spiker suggested MPD explore using software tools, including artificial intelligence, to improve the designation process.

“We got a big victory,” said Kevin Solomon, associate organizer with Common Ground, after the hearing. “We appreciate that the chief of police and Common Council members have committed to tracking nuisance properties systematically, and that any ones that meet the threshold, they’re making sure that if they’re not a nuisance, why.” Solomon’s press conference was then derailed by the surprise appearance of David Tomblin, an out-of-state landlord Common Ground is targeting.

Site of Punta Cana, 2000 S. 13th St. Photo taken May 17, 2023 by Sophie Bolich.

Punta Cana, which opened in 2023 with promises of relaxation and tropical-themed drinks, has closed.

The tavern at 2000 S. 13th St. surrendered its licenses Monday rather than contest a revocation hearing brought by the Milwaukee Police Department.

MPD’s May 27 complaint points to a pattern of violence at the southside bar, based on three years of police reports documenting physical fights, gunfire and a fatal shooting. The department said recent incidents contributed to the premises’ designation as a nuisance property on April 21 and argued the licenses “must be revoked” because of negligent operation and a failure to follow state statutes.

On Tuesday, the Milwaukee Common Council Licenses Committee heard testimony from one neighbor before unanimously accepting the surrender and ending the revocation proceedings.

“A man got murdered right in front of my face,” said Nalani Gomez, a neighbor who appeared in support of the revocation. “I don’t foresee it changing — it’s going to get worse with summer coming.”

The shooting Gomez referenced took place in the early hours of April 20, when a fight between two women escalated outside the bar. A police report says surveillance footage showed the victim and suspected shooter — later identified as Richard Ortiz-Robles and his brother-in-law, Daniel Muñoz — briefly struggling before Muñoz shot Ortiz-Robles at close range.

Ortiz-Robles was pronounced dead at the scene, and Muñoz has been charged in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.

A witness, one of the women involved in the fight, told police that both men had firearms inside the bar despite security measures. A bouncer told police he typically pats down male patrons but does not search female patrons unless a female security guard is present to do so, according to the report. The witness also said Ortiz-Robles was her husband and that the couple were regular patrons of the business.

Punta Cana owner and licensee Maritza Pica Fuentes was not present for the hearing Tuesday but later told Urban Milwaukee in text messages that she believed the city treated her unfairly.

“I’m not guilty of any of that,” Pica Fuentes said in Spanish, attributing the fight to pre-existing tensions between brothers-in-law and their spouses. “My security was doing its job at the door.”

Pica Fuentes recalled that she originally envisioned Punta Cana as a “laid-back and welcoming” destination. “I’m not someone who wishes bad things on anyone — my family and I loved [Ortiz-Robles], he was a good, humble and happy person,” she said, also noting that some customers “take advantage of the business’s good intentions.”

Pica Fuentes expressed frustration that Alderman José G. Pérez did not contact her directly to discuss the incident. “All of the businesses around there have problems — some even more serious than mine,” she said. “But they’re still operating.”

Previous Discipline

A string of incidents during Punta Cana’s first year led to an extended closure in 2024 after the license expired and Pérez declined to issue a provisional one.

The bar was permitted to reopen after a 72-day closure. Its license was last renewed on Dec. 17, 2025, with a warning letter noting expectations that Pica Fuentes “take appropriate action to ensure incidents … do not reoccur.”

Because the Licenses Committee accepted the surrender, Pica Fuentes may reapply for licensure at a different address immediately. Had a revocation been successful, she would have been required to wait one year before applying for a new license.

Jim Troupis, a Republican attorney and former judge, center, makes his initial appearance in court Dec. 12, 2024, at the Dane County Courthouse in Madison, Wis. Troupis, Kenneth Chesebro and Michael Roman were arraigned for charges related to their roles in the 2020 fake elector scheme that aimed to overturn Donald Trump’s Wisconsin loss to Joe Biden. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)

Attorneys for Jim Troupis, who served as President Donald Trump’s 2020 Wisconsin campaign lawyer, are arguing that Troupis cannot receive a fair trial in Madison. They’re asking for his criminal trial to be moved out of Dane County.

In briefs filed to the court on Tuesday, Troupis’ attorneys also argued that one of his felony forgery charges should be dropped, because Troupis — along with dozens of other people involved in Trump’s efforts to overturn the outcome of his failed second bid for the White House — received a federal pardon.

Troupis faces 11 criminal counts of forgery for his role in developing the false electors scheme, in which Republican delegates for Trump in Wisconsin and other swing states submitted official-looking documentation attesting that Trump had won their states, even though he had lost.

Troupis and former Trump campaign attorney Ken Chesebro, who will also stand trial in Wisconsin, have been accused of developing that scheme, using Wisconsin as a testing ground. They argue that they were maintaining all of Trump’s legal avenues while his challenges to state outcomes moved through various courts.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice brought criminal charges against Troupis, Chesebro and Mike Roman, a 2020 Trump campaign aide, in 2024.

These briefs are Troupis’ team’s latest efforts to move off the trial, after a judge in December found probable cause for the case against him to move forward. They’d previously argued that the judge presiding over the case had engaged in misconduct. That argument was unsuccessful.

In one brief, Troupis’ attorneys argued that the publicity that has surrounded the case for the last half-decade has irreparably hurt Troupis’ ability to get a fair trial. They argue that Dane County public figures including state Supreme Court justices and Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes Conway disparaged Troupis, and that local media has tainted public opinion.

It also argues that the state Department of Justice’s argument, that Troupis’ actions harmed all Wisconsin voters whose ballots were challenged, would mean that nearly every eligible Dane County juror counts as a victim of Troupis’ alleged crimes.

“This case is headed to trial. No question. Neither side is going to blink. And when we get to trial, Troupis has the right to a fair and impartial jury,” reads the brief. “To make sure that he has that, the jurors must be free of bias and contempt, they can’t be victims and they can’t identify with them. That, plus provocative and emotionally-charged pretrial publicity, necessitates a change of venue.”

In the other brief, Troupis’ lawyers say that one of the 11 counts against him should be dropped, because he was on a recent Trump pardon list of people involved in the false electors scheme. Chesebro and Roman were also on that list.

Federal pardons have no impact on state investigations. But in the brief, Troupis’ lawyers say that the document that the false electors signed was a real document, not a forgery. It also argues that the state cannot prosecute over the casting of electoral votes, because that is a federal process — and, therefore, Trump’s pardon does apply here.

The other 10 criminal counts are tied to each of the 10 false electors, whom prosecutors allege were defrauded by Troupis, Chesebro and Roman.

Those electors previously settled a civil lawsuit against them for signing those documents in December of 2020, in which they admitted that their actions were “part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results.”

Troupis and Chesebro also separately settled that civil lawsuit.

Jim Troupis argues he can’t get a fair trial in Madison over false electors criminal charges was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.

Vote here sign. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission met Tuesday to adjudicate more than a dozen challenges to the nominating signatures of candidates for the Legislature, U.S. Congress and Secretary of State.

During Tuesday’s more than three-hour meeting, the commission largely rejected the candidacy challenges and approved candidates’ efforts to place their names on the ballot. The challenge process gives opponents and political parties a chance to disqualify a candidate before any votes are even cast. Anyone is able to challenge a candidate’s nomination papers — usually on the grounds that the signatures are missing information, not collected from within the proper district, that the forms include errors or the candidate did not fully comply with the nomination requirements.

Because the challenge process represents a chance for candidates to reduce their competition, challenges are sometimes made to try to winnow out potential primary candidates or get an opposing party candidate off the November ballot.

Earlier this week, right-wing radio host Dan O’Donnell reported that in a “highly unusual move” the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee had filed challenges against two incumbent Assembly Democrats — Milwaukee Reps. Russell Goodwin and Sylvia Ortiz-Velez.

Both Goodwin and Ortiz-Velez have at times been at odds with the rest of the Assembly Democratic caucus. Goodwin voted with Republicans on anti-trans legislation while Ortiz-Velez has frequently clashed with Democratic leadership in the chamber.

The ADCC denied that it challenged Goodwin’s candidacy and records show that the challenge to his nominating papers came from his primary opponent Jordan Roman, who alleged that Goodwin’s papers included addresses that didn’t exist and forged signatures. The commission found that those allegations couldn’t be proven and approved Goodwin’s candidacy.

However Morgan Hess, the ADCC’s executive director, did file and then withdrew a challenge to Ortiz-Velez’s nominating papers, WEC records show.

Hess also filed challenges against Republican candidates in the suburban Milwaukee Assembly Districts 9 and 21 and in the Stevens Point area Assembly District 71. The only successful challenge was against Veronica Diaz, a Republican attempting to run in AD 21, who was disqualified from the ballot because 10 of her signatures came from people outside of the district and she didn’t file the proper paperwork declaring her candidacy and disclosing her financial information with the state Ethics Commission. Diaz’s papers were also challenged by her primary opponent Zach Pfaffenbach.

Challenges were also made in a number of congressional races.

In the 3rd Congressional District, where Democrats are seeking to unseat incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden in a closely contested race, the state Republican party filed a challenge against Rustin Provance, who is running for the seat as an independent.

The party argued that Provance should be disqualified because he used the state’s standard declaration of candidacy form, which includes a line in which candidates swear they’ve never been convicted of a felony — because state law prevents convicted felons from holding state or local office. There is no similar prohibition for federal candidates, and Provance has been convicted of a felony and has publicly referenced his conviction on his campaign materials.

In the challenge, the party argued that Provance had falsified his information by signing and filing the declaration with the non-felony conviction line included. WEC denied the challenge and granted Provance access to the ballot.

In the 6th Congressional District, Brian Norby, the chair of the Jefferson County Republican Party, filed a challenge against Democrat Elizabeth Anne Fitzgibbon — arguing that her invalid signatures included college students at UW-Oshkosh whose address was only listed as the residence hall they live in.

WEC denied the challenge on the grounds that those students’ mail can be delivered with just the dorm listed instead of a street address.

In the 8th Congressional District, the Republican Party of Brown County and Democratic primary candidate Rick Crosson filed challenges against Democratic candidate Mark Scheffler, arguing that Scheffler’s signatures were collected on the wrong forms and listed the wrong election date.

WEC denied the challenges and granted Scheffler access.

In the 2022 election, Democrats challenged the ballot access of Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels because of confusion over which municipality should be listed as his residence on the papers. Michels was allowed to get on the ballot.

In this year’s governor’s race, no official challenges were made against any candidate’s nominating papers. But left-wing political gadfly and Minocqua Brewing Company owner Kirk Bangstad was officially denied access to the ballot Tuesday after the commission voted to certify that he only turned in 1,504 of the required 2,000 valid signatures.

Bangstad’s initial nominating papers had a number of problems, including circulators omitting their municipality of residence and missing or incorrect dates. Bangstad filed 15 affidavits in an effort to correct his errors, but WEC did not agree that the errors were fixed.

This year, the only statewide race to see nomination challenges was the contest for Secretary of State. Challenges were made against Republicans Nathan Pollnow and Cindy Werner and Democrat Eileen Newcomer. Pollnow and Werner were approved but Newcomer was denied access to the ballot because her papers included a number of duplicated signatures.

WEC is scheduled to meet again Wednesday afternoon to consider more ballot challenges in races for which the incumbent is not seeking re-election but didn’t file a declaration of non-candidacy.

Hess, the ADCC’s director, filed a challenge against Jon Aleckson, a Republican running to replace Rep. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon) in south central Wisconsin’s Assembly District 50. In the race to fill Rep. Tom Tiffany’s open 7th Congressional District seat, Republican Jessi Ebben filed challenges against Republicans Michael Alfonso and Kevin Hermening and Democrat Fred Clark.

WEC is scheduled to meet at 3 p.m. Wednesday.

Elections commission hears challenges to candidates’ ballot access was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.

Rep. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison) said at the press conference in the state Capitol Tuesday that the right to contraception is in the “crosshairs” right now. (Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

A pair of Wisconsin Democratic lawmakers and reproductive rights advocates called for state protection of birth control on the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that protected married couples’ ability to use contraception. State laws are necessary to protect Wisconsinites from potential actions by the Trump administration and the Supreme Court targeting access to birth control, they warned.

Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 decision that established a right to privacy for married couples, has long prevented state restrictions on contraception. But Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe v. Wade, that Griswold and other privacy-related precedents should be reconsidered in the future.

Rep. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison) said at the press conference in the state Capitol Tuesday that the right to contraception is in the “crosshairs” right now and lawmakers, who are out of session for the rest of the year, need to take action.

“We’re looking at a really different America, we are looking at an America run by Donald Trump. We are looking at MAGA politicians who want nothing more than to take away our reproductive freedom, to take away our freedom to make our own decisions about when and if we have children, when and if we start our families,” Subeck said. “This is a scary situation. I can remember the days when people said Roe would never be overturned.”

While the U.S. Supreme Court has not taken up the issue of birth control of late, it has continued to rule on cases related to abortion, including recently pausing a ban on mailing of abortion pills while litigation continues in the lower courts. A recent national Marquette Law School poll found that 57% of Americans agreed that the Supreme Court should allow shipments of mifepristone to continue, while 43% said the ban should remain.

A 2020 Supreme Court decision sided with employers who wanted to opt out of a mandate to cover birth control in health insurance plans due to religious objections.

State Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), one of the Democrats in a crowded gubernatorial primary field, said at the press conference, “There are extreme forces in the state and in the country that are very powerful, that have a lot of political influence and are well-funded that would like to see birth control made illegal.”

Roys mentioned the Trump administration’s plan to burn birth control devices and pills worth millions of dollars meant to be distributed as aid in other countries as the Trump administration began shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The administration called common birth control methods abortifacients.

Given the federal government’s hostility to contraception, lawmakers and advocates said the state should take action to protect Wisconsinites.

Nicole Safar with Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin said that every branch of Wisconsin’s state government, including the Legislature, the governor and the state Supreme Court, needs to play a role in protecting people’s access to reproductive health care as the federal government may restrict that access.

Subeck and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) have introduced a bill that would have established a statutory right for patients to access contraceptives and for healthcare providers to provide contraceptives and related information. It never received a public hearing in the Republican-led Legislature.

Subeck called her bill the “first step” in undoing some of the actions related to public health that were taken over the last decade and a half under Republican control.

“We have a chance in Wisconsin, a real chance, to move into our governing era, passing policies and implementing systems that protect our rights and support our families,” Safar said. “It’s time for Wisconsin to pass the Right to Contraception Act, the Reproductive Freedom Act, which also codifies affirmative right to abortion, and for our elected officials in every branch of government to be accountable to prioritizing the values that we know we share and the needs of women and people in Wisconsin.”

Barbara Hostetler, who retired as an OB-GYN over a year ago, said she has never been more concerned about women’s health. She said lawmakers not taking action are “complicit” and are “causing real harm.”

“I have a daughter. I have two granddaughters. They have a right to privacy. They have a right to contraception because nobody knows better than them what they need in their life and when and how they make decisions about when they have a family. No one knows their health better than they do. They are the ones who have the right to make this decision,” Hostetler said. “The least the Legislature can do is take a vote.”

The legislation likely won’t be discussed until lawmakers return next year after a November election that could shake up control of the Legislature and the governor’s office. Democrats, who have not controlled the Senate or Assembly since 2010, are aiming to flip both chambers.

Roys said “threats from the federal government” and the “economic chaos that’s being created by the Trump regime” are part of why the issue will continue to be important to voters this year.

“There is nothing that impacts your finances more than whether or not you have a pregnancy or a child, so reproductive freedom is fundamental to economic security and well-being for women and for families,” Roys said. “Contraception is the ability to decide your own future whether that’s your economic future, it’s your personal future, it’s your career, it’s your family, and that is, at the core of this election cycle.”

Democrats and advocates call for state birth control protections was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.

Cars drive through a flooded South 43rd Street across from Jackson Park, heavy rainfall caused flooding throughout Milwaukee. Heavy rainfall and flooding could hit the area again later this week. (Photo by Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)

After storms in August and April caused flooding, downed trees, property damage and road closures across Milwaukee,  some residents question what is being done to protect them from future weather-related damage.

With more severe weather expected this week, including the potential for flash floods, we asked local leaders and officials about their preparation plans.

According to the National Weather Service, Milwaukee could experience severe weather, including heavy rainfall on Wednesday and Thursday.

Some officials said both August’s historic floods and April’s severe weather are not typical. Others encouraged residents to stay prepared as severe weather becomes more common.

What’s being done

People ride scooters toward several stuck cars underneath the railroad crossing bridge on West Burleigh Street after heavy rainfall caused flooding throughout Milwaukee on April 16. (Photo by Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)

According to a Milwaukee County spokesperson, its Office of Emergency Management is working in coordination with the members of the Extreme Weather Task Force to monitor the upcoming storms and prepare for any potential safety issues that may arise.

Bill Graffin, public information manager for the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, or MMSD, said MMSD is always doing everything possible to ensure plants are good to go.

“If there are things we can do like pause construction or something to prepare then, we’ll do that,” he said. “Both August and April’s flood were pretty out of the ordinary for the Milwaukee area.”

The Department of Public Works is preparing for severe weather by looking into spots known to flood excessively.

Tiffany Shepherd, marketing and communications officer for the Department of Public Works, said that the significant flooding experienced in Milwaukee resulted from rainfall that were not typical, but she also acknowledged more frequent and intense storms.

“Ahead of potential storms, the Department of Public Works is performing its typical underpass inspections and cleanings,” Shepherd said. “We are also investigating and cleaning several known trouble spots as needed to help ensure stormwater can move through the system as efficiently as possible.”

‘Know how to prepare yourself’

Jene Tate works on illustrating notes during day two of the Milwaukee Justice Strategy Blitz at the Wisconsin Black Historical Society, on May 28. (Photo by Meredith Melland)

Shalina Ali, a member of the Milwaukee Justice Strategy Blitz on Flooding and Resilience, said practical preparedness measures remain important while larger infrastructure solutions are pursued.

The Milwaukee Justice Strategy Blitz is a coalition examining flooding through the lenses of infrastructure and policy, grassroots advocacy and services, and community education and resilience.

“At this point, the biggest lesson we can take away is to know how to prepare yourself,” she said. “There’s so much work that needs to happen and a lot of work is starting to be done to address flooding. But we’re not necessarily there yet.”

Right now, Ali said, residents who know their homes are vulnerable to flooding should take precautions ahead of storms, including protecting valuables from water, monitoring forecasts and identifying family members, neighbors or services that can provide assistance.

“Trash pickup is critical,” Ali said. “Having a support system ready so that you can have immediate help is going to be critical. Making sure in the areas that tend to flood, like your basements, that you pick things up off the floor and move them to another area, that’s going to be critical.”

Looking ahead

Ali said the Milwaukee Justice Strategy Blitz is working to address weather emergencies on a larger scale.

“We want to help figure out how to support increased services and emergency response systems so that people have immediate support when they’re experiencing flooding,” she said. “What people are experiencing as a result of flooding is very adverse. It’s not a one-story-fits-all situation.”

She said city officials, the Department of Public Works, community organizations and residents all have a role to play in improving resilience against future floods.

Looking ahead, Ali said conversations must include housing conditions, roof maintenance and access to resources that help homeowners protect their properties.

Advocates are also using art and public engagement to keep attention on the issue. Through the Milwaukee Justice Strategy Blitz and TRUE Skool, artists are developing a public mural inspired by stories, concerns and ideas shared by residents during recent community discussions on flooding and resilience.

“We believe that art is one of those vehicles to make sure that the conversation continues and stays at the forefront for our city,” said Ali, who is executive director of TRUE Skool, a nonprofit that uses art to engage youth and others in social justice education.

The coalition plans to share recommendations and strategies developed through the Milwaukee Justice Strategy Blitz during TRUE Skool’s Summer Park Jam weekend on Saturday, Aug. 15, near the one-year anniversary of last year’s historic floods. That event will take place at the Marcus Performing Arts Center, 929 N. Water St.

Other recommendations from the community

Teens and young adults from Flood Hope 500 prepare to assist North Side residents with disaster relief after the August flood. (Photo provided by Vaun Mayes)

Vaun Mayes, founder of the ComForce MKE-Disaster Relief Division and an organizer of the grassroots group Flood Hope 500, said residents have thoughts on what could help.

“I’ve seen residents suggest maybe lights or alarms that flash and warn people before approaching flooded and unsafe areas,” he said. “Which I believe is a great idea.”

Flood Hope 500 organizers Mayes, Aziz Abdullah, Montreal Cain and JaQai Ali have helped residents with water pumping, debris removal, mold remediation and provided other flood recovery support in prior weather emergencies.

“I also believe the city should prioritize auditing and assessing MMSD and their ability to manage and handle storms and water to those levels so back ups aren’t as prevalent of an issue,” Mayes said. “I’ve seen whistleblowers raise concerns about the conditions and management of that facility.”

Here’s more recent flood coverage from NNS

Here’s what you can do if you experienced damage from the storms in Milwaukee.

Here’s how Milwaukee’s sewer system functions, and why we flooded in August and April.

Did we really have to dump 2 billion gallons of sewage into local waterways after the April floods?

A worker with the Milwaukee Department of Public Works unclogs a storm drain after heavy rainfall caused flooding throughout Milwaukee on April 16. (Photo by Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)

This article first appeared on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

A failing ceiling at a Highgrove Holdings property. Photo by Sophie Bolich.

It was a major slap-down for embattled landlord David Tomblin and his firm, Highgrove Holdings.

On Wednesday, Judge Michael Hanrahan granted U.S. Bank‘s request for a receiver to take control of 86 properties owned by Highgrove Holdings. The bank, which holds an unpaid $6.8 million mortgage, filed a foreclosure case in January 2025.

Highgrove had until May 29 to raise funds to recapitalize its operations, which total more than 260 properties. Court records indicate the firm was seeking up to $30 million.

But Highgrove’s attorney, James Barton of Barton Cerjak, argued Wednesday that Highgrove’s ability to raise money was imperiled by the City of Milwaukee and Common Ground Southeastern Wisconsin going public on March 29 with nuisance lawsuits against Highgrove’s other properties for their alleged poor condition and by a tenant organizing campaign.

“Guess what? Where did the investors go? They got a little bit shaky,” the attorney said.

But Barton didn’t object to the agreement his client previously made allowing the receiver to be installed. “A deal’s a deal,” he said. Hanrahan gave Barton one day to review the final order for its conformity with the earlier deal.

U.S. Bank’s attorney, Kelly M. Smith of Phillip A. Norman Attorneys, said the mortgage was made in August 2023 and was only in good standing for about eight months. “We had several repayment plans fall through,” she said.

Smith said Highgrove has repeatedly said it was close to raising money to stabilize its business. “That’s something we have heard several times before,” she said. She noted that U.S. Bank has paid the property taxes on the properties even as Highgrove quit paying its mortgage.

The receiver covers approximately one-third of the properties Highgrove and its affiliates own in Milwaukee.

“We look forward to the next two-thirds being taken from [Tomblin] too, because Milwaukee is not going to tolerate slumlords,” said Kevin Solomon, Common Ground lead organizer, outside the courtroom after the ruling.

The receiver, attorney Rebecca DeMarb of law firm Swanson Sweet and consulting firm Kali Resolution Partners, will take control of the properties, collecting rent, making repairs and attempting to improve the overall operation of the properties, a collection of single-family and duplex rental homes on Milwaukee’s North Side.

According to a Common Ground canvass, 37% of the properties subject to U.S. Bank’s foreclosure case are alleged to be vacant.

“We trust that the court will enter the order appointing a receiver tomorrow, and are hopeful that working with the receiver will make it more likely that the property taxes and municipal court judgements are paid to the City and the problematic property conditions are abated,” said City Attorney Evan Goyke in a statement. A March court filing says the 86 properties are associated with about $20,000 in property tax debt and $40,000 in municipal court judgments.

Solomon said Common Ground is hopeful that the receiver will make improvements to the properties. “These properties have had ceilings collapsing, mold, broken water, people not able to use their own bathrooms. The first thing is these properties need to be fixed up,” he said. “We would hope to see changes in the next few months.”

But the current cash flow could imperil the repairs. Solomon said Common Ground isn’t concerned and wants the bank to focus on people, not profits. Common Council members, during a meeting Monday afternoon, expressed concern that the lack of cash flow could impede the success of the receiver.

The city’s lawsuits, now combined into a single case, seek another receiver. The city, with Highgrove’s approval, is now inspecting the properties. Both receivers are precursors to either the conditions being improved or the properties being sold.

Hanrahan’s decision starts a clock where U.S. Bank would gain full ownership of the properties within six months. Highgrove could regain control of the properties if it makes a full reinstatement payment, estimated by U.S. Bank at $2.5 million as of early June.

Both parties have 90 days to file dispositive motions to end the case without a trial.

“In David Tomblin’s world, money is always around the corner,” said Solomon. “Today is the decision day to prove he’s full of lies.”

Tomblin, in a February court filing, said his firm was aware many of the properties were vacant when it purchased the properties, and it planned to make repairs. But inflation associated with the COVID-19 pandemic “tripled our renovation costs.”

Barton, the only representative of Highgrove present Wednesday, declined comment after the hearing.

Tomblin made a surprise appearance at Milwaukee City Hall Monday, briefly engaging with the media, Common Ground and council members. He also appeared at a community event Tuesday.

Properties tied to foreclosure case

• 1511-1513 W. Burleigh St.
• 1518-1520 N. 34th St.
• 1617-1619 W. Mitchell St.
• 1631-1633 N. 36th St.
• 1846 N. 40th St.
• 2111-2113 N. 41st St.
• 2135 N. 37th St.
• 2142 N. 36th St.
• 2221 N. 39th St.
• 2225-2227 N. 40th St.
• 2228-2230 N. 42nd St.
• 2252 N. 42nd St.
• 238 E. Chambers St.
• 2411 N. 53rd St.
• 2429-2431 N. 41st St.
• 2434-2436 N. 40th St.
• 2435-2437 N. 40th St.
• 2438-2440 N. 40th St.
• 2439 N. 53rd St.
• 2444-2446 N. 44th St.
• 2451-2453 N. 41st St.
• 2456-2458 N. 50th St.
• 2464 N. 48th St.
• 2501-2503 N. 38th St.
• 2520 N. 40th St.
• 2543-2545 N. 12th St.
• 2555 N. 36th St.
• 2555 N. 49th St.
• 2562 N. 36th St.
• 2562-2564 N. 38th St.
• 2618-2620 N. 1st St.
• 2655 N. 15th St.
• 2658 N. 55th St.
• 2712-2714 N. 41st St.
• 2724 N. 38th St.
• 2745-2747 N. 41st St.
• 2751-2753 N. 40th St.
• 2802 N. 41st St.
• 2878 N. 41st St.
• 2936 S. 16th St.
• 3009-3011 W. Clybourn St.
• 3012 W. Michigan St.
• 3017-3019 N. Sherman Blvd.
• 3076-3078 N. 39th St.
• 3118 N. Buffum St.
• 3145-3147 N. 6th St.
• 3163 N. Holton St.
• 3166 N. Palmer St.
• 3205 N. 13th St.
• 3211 N. 13th St.
• 3219 N. 13th St.
• 3248 N. 12th St.
• 3520 N. 9th St.
• 3522 W. Linden Pl.
• 3635 N. Port Washington Ave.
• 3707 N. 6th St.
• 3719 N. 6th St.
• 3721 W. Garfield Ave.
• 3731 W. Garfield Ave.
• 3738 N. 6th St.
• 3820 N. 13th St.
• 4020-4022 W. Lisbon Ave.
• 4103 N. 6th St.
• 417-419 E. Burleigh St.
• 4328-4330 N. 26th St.
• 4419 W. Burleigh St.
• 4425 N. 38th St.
• 4459-4461 N. 27th St.
• 4530 N. 28th St.
• 4555 N. 37th St.
• 4600 W. Eggert Pl.
• 4612 N. 39th St.
• 4631 N. 35th St.
• 4701 N. 20th St.
• 4739 N. 35th St.
• 4917 W. Fairmount Ave.
• 5019 W. Fairmount Ave.
• 5027 N. 58th St.
• 5131 N. 60th St.
• 519 W. Ring St.
• 5320 N. 48th St.
• 5350 W. Leon Tr.
• 5416 N. 56th St.
• 629 W. Hadley St.
• 7108 W. Sheridan Ave.

Kirk Bangstad holds a can of “Nope, Not My President” sparkling water at the Minocqua Brewing Company Taproom in Madison, Feb. 4, 2024. Bangstad’s business and his political action committee are entwined. Rob Mentzer/WPR

The Wisconsin Elections Commission has denied Minocqua Brewing Co. owner Kirk Bangstad a spot on the ballot for the upcoming primary in the governor’s race.

The commission voted unanimously Tuesday to deny ballot access to the liberal firebrand and 67 other candidates for offices across Wisconsin. It comes after Elections Commission staff found that Bangstad only turned in 1,504 valid signatures, about 500 signatures short of the 2,000 required.

Earlier this month, the Elections Commission found that around 40 pages of signatures were invalid because they listed incorrect dates or were missing required address information.

After those findings from the commission were released, Bangstad took to social media to say that his campaign had a shot at fixing some of the mistakes that invalidated signatures, attacking the media in several of his posts about the issue.

At the time, he said he had until June 7 to cure the mistakes.

In materials prepared for Tuesday’s meeting, commission staff recommended denying Bangstad ballot access.

According to a Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesperson, Bangstad was denied a spot on the ballot because his campaign did not file enough correcting affidavits to cure errors in his nomination papers.

No challenge was filed against his nomination filings, so the commission didn’t explicitly talk about issues with his papers on Tuesday. The vote denying Bangstad ballot access came as part of the commission’s vote to certify candidates for the primary and general election.

Bangstad launched his bid for governor last month in a crowded Democratic primary field.

His announcement came just days after he was questioned by federal agents over comments he made on social media in April about an assassination attempt on President Donald Trump.

In the April post, Bangstad wrote, “Either a brother or sister in the Resistance needs to work on their marksmanship or he faked another assassination to get a positive news cycle.”

His comments were condemned by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Bangstad has often courted controversy and engaged in legal and social media disputes. They have included a civil defamation judgment over false claims about a publisher, zoning and legal disputes with local officials and scrutiny over how his political PAC spends donor money.

In an email sent Tuesday before the commission’s vote, Bangstad said his campaign submitted more than 2,000 signatures and corrected as many as possible, arguing he should be on the ballot.

“If we’re still not allowed on the ballot, we’ll pursue any possible avenues still available to us to get on it,” he wrote. “These decisions by the election committee staff are subjective and don’t reflect that work that we’ve done to collect the required amount of signatures to get on the ballot. We did the work, we deserve to be in this primary.”

According to a memo from Wisconsin Elections Commission, agency staff reviewed candidates’ nomination papers in accordance with state administrative rules and struck signatures for a variety of reasons, many of which related to missing information.

The memo states commission staff reviewed hundreds of thousands of signatures.

The document adds that staff recommended denying ballot access to candidates who did not get the minimum number of valid signatures, did not file all necessary documents and did not meet other legal requirements.

Controversial liberal Kirk Bangstad denied ballot access in bid for Wisconsin governor was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.

City leaders gathered at Clarke Street School to celebrate the inaugural year of Adopt-A-School. Photo taken June 9, 2026 by Sophie Bolich.

From Milwaukee City Hall to Milwaukee Public Schools, more than 100 workers spent time in classrooms over the past nine months as part of a new initiative aimed at improving academic outcomes and student well-being.

Adopt-A-School held 62 events across nine schools during its inaugural year, yielding a 1.7% attendance increase and a 7.4% decrease in disciplinary actions compared with the previous school year.

City leaders gathered at Clarke Street School on Tuesday morning to celebrate the results.

“Student attendance has increased by nearly 2% over the last year, and that’s no small feat,” said MPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius. “When students feel connected and they have trusted adults in the schools, they’re more likely to show up, and they also are more ready to learn.”

City workers from 14 departments participated in Adopt-A-School’s monthly events, ranging from literacy initiatives to community cleanups. “Every single month, their dedicated team brought laughter, energy and a true heart to serve us here at Clarke,” said principal Shunda Davis. “They didn’t just show up, they transformed our culture.”

Volunteers contributed a total of 326 hours at sites including Clarke, the Barack Obama School of Career and Technical Education, Dr. Benjamin Carson Academy of Science, the Benjamin Franklin School, Elm Creative Arts School, Hartford University School, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School, the Milwaukee Sign Language School and Sherman Multicultural Arts School.

The program comes from the Kids Cabinet, a group of city, district and community leaders formed in 2025 that meets quarterly to coordinate efforts between city departments and public schools. Mayor Cavalier Johnson and Cassellius are co-chairs of the group.

“Our partnership doesn’t always make headlines, but it shows up in the places that matter the most for our kids — in attendance and literacy, and with students who know we believe in them and that we believe in their future,” Johnson said.

Canyla Cassidy, an eighth-grader at Clarke, said she felt “happy and appreciated” while working with city volunteers. “It makes the students feel better, and it also makes them want to be here more every day.”

Tuesday’s event also highlighted the Milwaukee Health Department‘s lead remediation efforts in MPS schools, the City of Milwaukee Election Commission‘s “I Voted Early” sticker design contest and the City’s Hello Summer initiative, which connects families with free and low-cost summer opportunities throughout Milwaukee.

Health Department Commissioner Mike Totoraitis, Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman, Milwaukee Election Commission Deputy Director Maricha Harris and representatives of the Milwaukee Public Library gave brief remarks. James Ferguson II, vice president of the Milwaukee Board of School Directors, and Brian D. Litzsey, senior director for Milwaukee Recreation, were also in attendance.

Cassellius said she looks forward to continued results next school year as the program grows.

“We are excited to continue — and potentially even expand — this Adopt-A-School partnership so that we can reach even more students next year,” she said. “On behalf of the district, I want to express my incredible gratitude to the dedicated City of Milwaukee employees who consistently showed up for our students and made a real difference in their lives.”

Photos

New World Screwworms plagued American cattle through the mid-twentieth century. Their larvae burrow into the skin of cattle and other mammals, causing infection, disease and death – and they are moving from Panama toward the United States. The flies have advanced approximately 400 miles northward since November 2024. Photo by Judy Gallagher, (CC BY 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons

Wisconsin veterinary officials are closely watching the northward progress of a parasitic fly affecting livestock.

Six cases of New World screwworm have so far been confirmed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Most of the cases have been in cattle from Texas, but officials also found the parasite in a dog from New Mexico.

The parasitic fly feeds on the flesh of warmblooded animals, causing severe and potentially fatal infestations, according to the USDA.

It was previously eradicated from the U.S. in 1966, and later eliminated in Mexico, Central America and Panama. But the recent outbreak started in Panama in 2023, with the flies making their way north ever since.

State Veterinarian Dr. Darlene Konkle said Wisconsin officials are monitoring the joint response of USDA and Texas agriculture officials. The agencies have so far set up a quarantine zone and deployed sterile flies in the area to slow the fly’s ability to breed.

The New World screwworm uses open wounds to infest an animal, which Konkle said is typically a mammal but can be a bird. In cattle, the parasites often infect the healing umbilicus of new calves. Infestations of humans are rare, Konkle said, and are typically detected much more quickly than in an animal.

She said Wisconsin has an advantage because the parasite prefers warm temperatures.

“The fly, from all accounts, will not be able to survive one of our winters up here,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t see a case. Certainly, animals move from other states and other countries all over the U.S.”

Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostics Laboratory, said if Wisconsin sees a case, it will likely be from animals or goods being trucked into the state rather than the flies themselves moving north.

He said beef cattle face the biggest risk, because their calves are less closely monitored compared to dairy cattle.

“That’s one good example of why our risk really is lower,” Poulsen said. “We could see it, but it’s probably because people or trucks brought it in, and then it would probably be self-limiting.”

It takes at least 21 days for the New World screwworm to go from an egg to a full-grown fly, which then lives about a month. So responding to the parasite is different from other animal health threats such as avian flu.

“Those viruses move a lot faster,” he said “This is something that we need to watch, but not panic over.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture continues to respond to confirmed cases of New World screwworm in Texas. Source: USDA

Konkle said Wisconsin already requires livestock coming into the state to be inspected by a veterinarian. But the state has the authority to impose additional restrictions on animal movement if the threat increases.

Dogs and cats moving to shelters in the state are also required to receive a veterinary inspection, according to Dr. Sandra Newbury from the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine.

She said actively treating any wounds can also help lower the risk for pets and animals in shelters, as well as staying current on topical flea and tick medications.

“There are a couple that are already known to protect against (New World screwworm),” Newbury said.

She said the level of threat to pets is relatively low, but shelters and pet owners should be aware of the pest’s movement north.

As New World screwworm heads north, Wisconsin experts say monitoring is critical was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.

Rep. Francesca Hong, third from left, speaks to the audience during the year’s first Democratic gubernatorial candidate forum, Jan. 21, 2026, at The Cooperage in Milwaukee. The candidates are, from left, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Hong, Sen. Kelda Roys, former Wisconsin Economic Development Commission CEO Missy Hughes, former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)

These are good days for Mandela Barnes.

The former Lt Governor and losing candidate for U.S. Senator in 2022 has by far the most statewide name recognition in Wisconsin’s Democratic primary for governor, and the sleepy nature of this race has to delight his campaign team. No one except socialist Francesca Hong looms as a possible threat, and she has had a stumble or two lately, all of which means Barnes can stay the course with his solid statewide campaign and quite possibly coast to victory.

But recent ads supporting three of his opponents — Sara Rodriguez, David Crowley and Joel Brennan — aim to win voters. Are they likely to change the campaign?

The ad for Rodriguez, who currently serves as lieutenant governor, connects her prior job as a nurse to “standing up for Wisconsin families” by fighting against the rise in health care prices and for reproductive rights. The ad uses a cartoon-like and graffiti-ish style — trying to appeal to younger voters? — that may help it stand out while also annoying some viewers. But it’s a third-party or independent ad and thus can’t mention she is running for governor. And the amount spent for TV ads — $600,000 to date — won’t have much impact.

The ad for Crowley is more traditional in tone and style, more pleasing for viewers but an immediate tipoff it’s a political ad, which can be a disadvantage. It contrasts Trump’s wars and tariffs raising prices with “County Executive David Crowley,” who is “fighting back to make life more affordable for Wisconsin families.” Compared to Rodriguez, whose ad promises she will do something for voters, this ad shows Crowley is already doing something for families, a stronger message. But this, too, is a third-party ad, so we never learn Crowley is running for governor. And the spending on this is small, just $100,000. Definitely not a game changer.

The Crowley ad, argues longtime political pundit and former legislator Mordecai Lee, also misses a chance at a potent symbol. His black-frame glasses “are the perfect trademark,” Lee told Urban Milwaukee. “The campaign committee could offer as merch those (empty) black frames, lawn signs with just a graphic of the glasses and his name, etc.” It’s a missed opportunity, he says.

The most recent ad was released today by Brennan, the former head of Discovery World and top official in the administration of Gov. Tony Evers. Unlike the ads for Rodriguez and Crowley, this was released by his campaign and can hit hard that he’s running for governor, though it doesn’t maximize that opportunity. It’s a charming ad with his children talking about his strengths and weaknesses, and Brennan comes through as he is: a nice guy and down-to-earth fellow with a strong résumé. But the kids are almost more dominant than the dad. And the buy isn’t big: his campaign has booked about $110,000 in TV ads in Milwaukee, Green Bay and La Crosse markets. That won’t move the needle much.

Last week Brennan released a list of endorsements by 20 former legislators, which had some observers puzzled: These were all white people, some of whom hadn’t served in the state Legislature in nearly half a century. The conservative Heartland Signal offered a takedown calling it “A who’s who of… who? Joel Brennan’s endorsement list features retired legislators from the 80s and 90s, none of whom have served in the last decade.”

The assumption about Brennan was that his wealthy brother-in-law might pay big for third-party ads dominating the airwaves. But as one Democratic consultant told Urban Milwaukee, “realistically, they should have started two months ago.”

Brennan is in the same position that former Milwaukee Bucks vice president Alex Lasry was back in 2021, a promising candidate with little name recognition who ran for the 2022 Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator. Lasry spent $17 million trying to overcome the favorite Mandela Barnes and finally withdrew from the race after a 17-month effort.

Barnes is not as strong in polls as he was back then. Even so, Brennan would need to spend at least $10 million and start immediately, the consultant says, if he has any chance to contest the name recognition of Barnes and surpass the current support among Democratic voters for Hong and Barnes. They were 8 points (Barnes) to 11 points (Hong) ahead of any of the other candidates in the most recent Marquette poll.

Hong has been the biggest surprise of the campaign and didn’t help herself by how she handled her past statements calling for defunding the police. This is unlikely to faze her supporters, who are socialists and far-left progressives, but it might limit how much she can grow her support. But the more recent controversy, that she owed credit card debt from her restaurant business, might actually help her. As Hong noted, the debt allies her with the many Wisconsin people who are struggling to get by “while billionaires and corporations are making record profits off of our hard work.”

“Her campaign is the only one running a post-Trump, post-Mandami style campaign,” argues Milwaukee attorney and longtime political observer Dan Adams.

Barnes, meanwhile, has run a smart, largely error-free campaign. When President Donald Trump traveled to Wisconsin for a campaign speech declaring his love for Wisconsin farmers, Barnes released a plan to protect farmers by enforcing antitrust laws to break up out-of-state monopolies that are pricing out farms and investing in family farms by providing tax credits and down payment assistance.

Barnes also used this situation to wangle interviews on CNN and MS Now talking about how Wisconsin farmers have been hurt by Trump. Barnes doesn’t blow you away in these appearances, but his passion comes through and his campaign continues to look more opportunistic than others.

This weekend all seven candidates for the nomination will give speeches at the state Democratic convention. It presents an opportunity for a candidate to stand out in a new way, though that rarely happens, Lee notes.

“It’s hard to imagine that the speech to the convention can be a breakout moment,” he says. “It would have to be a claim or attack that is so over-the-top it would dominate the media coverage of the convention and have a lasting impact on several news cycles.”

And if no one succeeds in doing this, the campaign will be right back where it’s been for the last five months or so, with little to separate the candidates and slumbering toward the August election.

Marty Brooks (right) leads Mayor Cavalier Johnson (left) and an aide on a 2022 tour of the Baird Center expansion project. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Money will be changing hands as a result of revelations that Wisconsin Center District CEO Marty Brooks used a district credit card to make political campaign contributions and other unauthorized expenses.

The district, which operates the Baird Center, Miller High Life Theatre and UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena, is funded by a combination of hotel, sales and rental car taxes, as well as earned income, with the tax revenue potentially making Brooks’ political contributions subject to criminal charges, according to one attorney.

By a unanimous vote of those who participated, Brooks was terminated for cause Monday morning. It followed a two-hour closed session discussion, the fifth such discussion the 17-member board has held about Brooks in 2026.

In a statement, the board said the “major findings” in its investigation of Brooks center on misuse of WCD funds, violations of the bylaws and the employee handbook, and misrepresentation to the board.

After the vote, Ald. Robert Bauman, a district board member, said Brooks misspent at least $50,000 “and the investigation has not been completed because they’ve only gone as far back as 2023.”

Now politicians and their campaign consultants are scrambling to determine whether they received money from Brooks and, if so, whether it was via a credit card.

At least three area politicians have identified contributions made by credit card.

According to several individuals familiar with modern political fundraising, because many campaign contributions are now solicited and accepted online, including through platforms like ActBlue, it is unlikely those receiving the contributions knew or would have been able to tell that Brooks used a Wisconsin Center District card.

Such is the case for Mayor Cavalier Johnson, whose campaign team at Nation Consulting has identified that Brooks made contributions using three different cards, but isn’t able to tell whether any are WCD cards. The political consulting firm is awaiting word from the district.

Nation has also identified that another candidate it works with, David Crowley, received contributions from Brooks. A $2,000 contribution to Crowley’s gubernatorial campaign was made with a WCD card. Nation said it is still awaiting word on whether a $500 contribution to Crowley’s county executive campaign was made with a corporate card.

A potential legal issue also could complicate returning the money. Nation confirmed that if state statutes prevent the money from being returned directly, it would be donated to a charitable organization.

Council President José G. Pérez, the lone WCD board member to abstain from voting on the termination, announced that he received a contribution several years ago from Brooks via credit card. Urban Milwaukee’s Political Contributions Tracker, which is in the process of being substantially overhauled, shows a 2024 contribution for $250.

“Also, today I learned that Mr. Brooks made a contribution to my political campaign several years ago using a WCD credit card (not appropriate). I have begun the process to return that campaign donation,” said Pérez in a statement Monday.

Pérez said he abstained from voting on Brooks’ termination to avoid the appearance of a conflict. After a November fundraiser for Crowley, Pérez reported Brooks to the police for allegedly pinching his buttocks. The district attorney’s office did not charge Brooks because it did not believe it could “prove the elements of the referred crime beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Attorney Michael Maistelman, who frequently represents politicians on campaign finance-related issues, said the Milwaukee Police Department or another entity could subpoena the records of WCD or ActBlue, a popular fundraising platform used by Democrats, to determine the extent of the contributions.

“His office is considered quasi-governmental. He can’t be using it for political purposes,” said Maistelman. “You can’t give public money for political purposes. You can’t give money in somebody else’s name. You can’t give corporate money.”

The attorney also raised the question of why the district’s internal controls and auditing processes didn’t catch the contributions earlier.

Brooks’ termination is not immediate, given his employment contract, but instead starts a 30-day period during which Brooks can contest the termination. Brooks is formally on administrative leave, but already cleared out his office last week and told the media he was working from his second home in Florida.

Brooks, 69, was hired to lead the district in 2018. He led the $456 million Baird Center expansion. He is paid a base salary of more than $400,000 on a three-year contract that runs through early 2028. If he was terminated for convenience, he would be owed his base salary through the duration of the contract. By terminating him for cause, the board is not required to pay Brooks. But Brooks could contest the termination in court.

Alex Brower and electrical infrastructure. Brower photo from campaign, electrical image in public domain.

Alderman Alex Brower‘s proposal to replace We Energies with a publicly owned utility is about to take a major step at Milwaukee City Hall.

The concept will have its first public hearing on June 24.

“Necessities like electricity and natural gas should be provided for the collective benefit of all, not for the profit of shareholders,” wrote Brower in a letter to his colleagues. “While the process is long and may be difficult, our city will be better served by a utility that, like the Milwaukee Water Works, we own.”

The meeting will discuss the legal framework under which such a proposal could be implemented. The American Public Power Association is expected to participate.

The discussion will be held before the Public Transportation, Utilities and Waterways Review Board, a seldom-used entity chaired by Ald. Robert Bauman.

Brower, in his 2025 campaign, made the creation of a public electric utility his top campaign issue. He has long participated in the Power to the People campaign, which has advocated for a public takeover for several years.

He spoke at length about the plan in a March 2025 interview with Urban Milwaukee.

“As a Common Council, we can collectively begin the steps necessary to replace We Energies, as outlined in Chapter 197,” wrote Brower in his letter, outlining the key state statute.

Brower said the time was right given the company’s repeated raising of its rates in the last four years. “We Energies has failed the residents of Milwaukee and it’s time that we look to other operations,” he wrote.

We Energies defended its record in advance of the meeting.

“Energy bills for customers in Milwaukee remain below the national average. As part of a larger network, We Energies can draw on experienced crews, modern equipment and a depth of technical expertise to restore power quickly and maintain reliable service. This has resulted in customer savings and reliability that has been recognized by independent experts across the country,” said a spokesperson. “In addition, We Energies is aggressively supporting the climate goals of the city. In fact, We Energies is partnering with the city on numerous solar projects that create local jobs and power the local grid with clean energy. These benefits would be virtually impossible to replicate through municipalization.”

The meeting, open to the public, will be held in Room 301-B at City Hall at 9 a.m.

Image courtesy of Laughing Liberally Milwaukee.

For Urban Milwaukee members, we have a limited number of free tickets available for Laughing Liberally Milwaukee’s June 13, 2026 show.

Laughing Liberally Milwaukee is hosted by comedian, cartoonist and satirist Matthew Filipowicz. Matthew’s work has been featured by CNN, NPR, PBS, HBO, BBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Nation, the London Times, Ain’t It Cool News, and the Huffington Post. Matthew also hosts the creatively titled Laughing Liberally Milwaukee Podcast.

Comedians on the June 13th bill include Ton Johnson, Dana Norris, Aaron Chase, Breanne Wilhite, and sketch comedy troupe The Accountants Of Homeland Security.

In addition to some of the finest progressive comedians Milwaukee has to offer, each Laughing Liberally Milwaukee features a special interview with a local activist, journalist, or political figure. The guest on June 13 is Peter Rickman from the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization.

Urban Milwaukee members may reserve up to two tickets, worth $8 per ticket, while supplies last.

Members can visit the product page to reserve ticket(s), while supplies last, for the Saturday, June 13 show at 8 p.m. at ComedySportz Milwaukee, 420 S. 1st St., Milwaukee.

Members must be logged in to claim tickets. Your ticket(s) will be available at will call.

Not a Member, But Still Want To Go?

Urban Milwaukee offers the city’s most robust membership program, with many perks like this one. By becoming a member, not only will you help support Urban Milwaukee’s journalism, but you’ll help us continue to grow our publication, which publishes more than 75 stories and 100 press releases per week.

This event is only one of the great perks of becoming an Urban Milwaukee member. Here are just a few others:

• Completely ad-free content on our website and a configurable email newsletter
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All of this is just $9/month, or $99 per year. Signing up is easy, and you are welcome to cancel at any time. Join us today.

Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee. Submitted photo from the Islamic Society of Milwaukee

Attorneys for Salah Sarsour, a Milwaukee resident arrested by federal immigration agents in March, say his health is deteriorating in detention, as he is being denied adequate health care and nutrition.

Sarsour is a Palestinian immigrant who came to the U.S. more than 30 years ago. He is the president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, a local businessman and a vocal critic of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people.

He was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on March 30. He was then brought to Indiana and detained in the Clay County Jail. Since his detention, Sarsour has lost about 30 pounds and is not receiving adequate medical treatment for his diabetes, his attorneys say.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims Sarsour was arrested for allegedly “funding terror organizations and lying on immigration forms.” His family and supporters say the federal government is not telling the truth and that he is being persecuted for his support for Palestine.

Sarsour was born in the West Bank under Israeli military occupation, according to his family. As a teenager, he was arrested and convicted in an Israeli military court. His family says the charges were fraudulent. He later came to the U.S., claiming he was tortured by Israeli security forces. DHS has said this arrest in the U.S. stems from this decades-old conviction in Israel. His family and friends have said the U.S. government already knew about the Israeli conviction.

His attorneys are currently fighting two legal battles on his behalf. One is in immigration court, where they are attempting to stop his deportation. The case was recently moved to the deputy chief immigration judge sitting in Kansas City, Judge Jayme Salinardi, ACLU of Illinois attorney Sam Cole told Urban Milwaukee.

In federal court, they are challenging his ongoing detention and asking U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon to release him pending an official grant of a writ of habeas corpus. His attorneys are arguing that Sarsour’s detention is illegal, and if the court agrees, a writ will be issued. Hanlon was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump in 2018.

During a status conference Monday, Hanlon ordered jail officials to present medical staff with a letter from Sarsour’s doctor explaining the need for daily monitoring of his blood sugar, Cole said.

“His doctor had ordered daily glucose monitoring and he’s just not getting that,” Cole said. “The jail is offering monthly monitoring of his blood glucose, and that creates a substantial [health] risk for him.”

Sarsour was already on a restrictive diet for Type 2 diabetes, Cole said. One of the food options he was offered in jail as a supplement was pork rinds, which he cannot eat because of his religious observances, Cole said.

Sarsour’s treatment in detention is overly punitive and furthers his case for release from ongoing detention, according to his attorneys.

“We’re not only fighting now for my dad’s legal right to be here, but also for his health—and basic due process guaranteed by his constitutional rights to speak up about injustice,” Sarsour’s son, Kareem Sarsour, said in a statement.

The Everett. Rendering by VJS Construction Services.

A long-dormant riverfront development site in the Harbor District is once again moving toward construction.

The City Plan Commission on Monday unanimously recommended approval of a detailed planned development zoning designation for The Everett, a proposed 12-story apartment building at 234 S. Water St.

The project, led by Minnesota-based Kaeding Development Group, would bring 200 market-rate apartments and 198 structured parking spaces to a narrow site along the Milwaukee River that has eluded multiple developers over the past two decades. An affiliate of VJS Construction Services owns the property and is a development partner on the project. VJS is also leading the building design.

“It’s been a challenging site for a lot of people,” said developer Carl Kaeding during Monday’s hearing.

The proposal represents a significant revision from the most recent plan for the property. Developer Ryan Bedford, working with VJS, previously secured approvals in 2019 for Admiral’s Wharf, an 11-story, 133-unit apartment building. Despite receiving city approvals and public assistance for environmental cleanup and riverwalk construction, the project never advanced to construction. The zoning approval expired after five years.

Kaeding Development filed for a zoning change in April after emerging as the latest developer to pursue the site.

The new proposal calls for four levels of structured parking topped by eight residential floors. Amenities would include a fifth-floor outdoor deck with a swimming pool and grilling areas. The top floor would include a rooftop lounge with a hot tub and sauna. A mix of tenant amenities, including a coworking space, a yoga studio and fitness center, and a leasing office, would be located on the second floor.

The building would include a mix of studio, one- and two-bedroom floor plans. A single three-bedroom unit is planned.

The building would also include a new public riverwalk segment along the Milwaukee River, with public gathering areas at both ends. Eighteen boat slips are planned for residents. Developers would construct a stub extension of E. Oregon Street to serve as a loading zone and parking access off of S. Water Street.

The 32,600-square-foot property is currently used for boat storage.

Project representatives said the site presents unique development challenges, including a steep grade toward the river and floodplain restrictions that reduce the buildable area. Kaeding said the larger unit count was necessary to make the project financially feasible.

“Street activation was a large topic of conversation with multiple iterations on the site,” said VJS architect Brian Griebl. “We did our best to keep that Water and Pittsburgh corner as activated as possible. There are some difficulties with grade in there.” The corner, a key entry point to the Historic Third Ward, is six feet above the first floor of the building.

The design of the parking structure has been a challenge for multiple design concepts for the site. The Bedford proposal relied on a valet concept to increase the number of spaces. The Everett plans show “tandem” spots where residents would park vehicles front-to-back in a single stall.

The commission hearing drew opposition from two nearby residents, who argued the building’s height was out of scale with surrounding development and could increase traffic congestion.

Residents pointed to the nearby six-story Water Street Lofts condominium building and questioned whether a 12-story structure fit the neighborhood.

“I do have opposition that this building is twice as big as everything else around it,” said Stephanie Ludovic.

Her neighbor, Hannah Cazzola, said the height would cause their building to lose 2.5 hours of sunlight.

City officials pushed back on traffic concerns.

Department of Public Works civil engineer Dawn Schmidt said the project does not generate enough vehicle trips to require a formal traffic impact analysis.

“It may feel like a lot of traffic to folks in the area,” Schmidt said. “However, the fact of the matter is … there’s not actually a lot of traffic on a daily basis on South Water or on West Pittsburgh compared to other streets in the city.” She said already planned traffic-calming projects, including a protected bike lane, would also mitigate concerns about reckless driving and make it easier for pedestrians to cross.

Tanya Fonseca, city planning manager for the Department of City Development, recommended approval. She said the project aligns with city planning that encourages high-density residential development, pedestrian-oriented design and expanded public access to the riverfront.

The commission approved the project with several conditions, including additional staff review of building materials, landscaping, bicycle parking and the location of a loading area.

The Everett would be the latest major investment by Kaeding Development in the area. The company opened the 261-unit Evoni Apartments, 615 E. Corcoran Ave., in the Historic Third Ward in 2025. Last November, Kaeding said leasing was going well at the complex.

The development seeks to end a long history of unrealized plans for the property. In addition to Admiral’s Wharf, proposals have included Robert Schultz‘s Rivianna tower concept in 2009, an apartment proposal from David Winograd in 2015 and a condominium project from Peter Renner in 2017.

Kaeding said construction could begin shortly after the project receives its remaining city approvals. The proposal next heads to the Common Council’s Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee before advancing to the full council for final consideration.

Renderings

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Site Photos

Prior Project Renderings

1137 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Photo taken Aug. 15, 2023, by Sophie Bolich.

A vintage-inspired sports bar and grill, The Spread, is slated to open at 1137 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, replacing LP, or Local Pub, in a historic building near Fiserv Forum.

Owners Aaron Ohlsson and Paresha Pesqueira head up the proposed business, promising wall-to-wall TVs, sports-themed decor, casual pub fare, draft beer and craft cocktails, according to its website.

Ohlsson and Pesqueira each hold a 50% share of Local Pub LLC, which they purchased from LP co-founder Edward DeShazer in March.

“I was excited for the vision that they had for the space,” DeShazer told License Committee members during a Tuesday morning hearing, noting that he plans to transition away from the service industry after nearly two decades of involvement.

The incoming owners bring extensive hospitality experience. Pesqueira owns Revel Bar in Bay View and serves as registered agent for Vick’s on Van Buren, the proposed replacement for Victor’s. Ohlsson previously owned SITE, a Historic Third Ward nightclub, and is also the registered agent for The Miramar Theatre.

DeShazer, who opened LP with business partner Mike Edler in 2023, said the process took a lot of money and time. “As we were making decisions on what to do next, it was important for me to find people and partners who would not let that go to waste and who would be a good fit for the street.”

LP’s food program shifted several times during its three-year run, moving from American fare such as smashburgers and cheese curds to Thai and Lao dishes from pop-up concept Thip Khao before later returning to sandwiches, tacos and other handhelds. The restaurant also offered Southern-inspired brunch for a period.

A proposed menu for The Spread aligns closely with LP’s American options, offering chicken wings, walking tacos and a variety of smash burgers — including a vegan version — alongside shareable appetizers such as mac-and-cheese bites, spinach artichoke dip and beer-battered Cajun fries.

The beverage menu features local craft beers and macro brews on tap, specialty shots and canned seltzers. Signature cocktails could include The Full Court Press Bloody and Peach Madness, a tequila-based drink spiked with Red Bull.

The Spread also plans to serve champagne towers and mimosa pitchers. Rather than beginning the application process from scratch, Ohlsson and Pesqueira applied to renew the license for Local Pub LLC with a change of agent and trade name. Thomas Ashley will serve as registered agent for The Spread.

The Licenses Committee unanimously recommended approval for that application Tuesday, and it’s now pending a final vote from the Milwaukee Common Council.

LP is marked permanently closed online pending the transition. Before LP, the building was home to The Loaded Slate.

Gardasil vaccine, trade name for Human Papilloma Vaccine (types 6, 11, 16, 18), prefilled syringe. Photo by Whispyhistory, (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons

Wisconsin pediatricians are celebrating two decades of a cancer-preventing vaccine. But state data shows nearly half of the state’s teenagers aren’t getting the shots.

A vaccine for human papillomavirus, or HPV, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on June 8, 2006.

HPV infections are very common, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with about 13 million Americans, including teens, becoming infected each year. The virus is spread during sex or other intimate skin-to-skin contact, and most infections go away by themselves.

But some can lead to cancer of the cervix, genitals and throat, affecting both women and men. These cancers take years to develop, the CDC reports, and there is no way to know who will develop cancer from an HPV infection.

It’s what prompted the creation of the vaccine, which has been proven to prevent 90 percent of HPV-related cancers.

Dr. Liz Hansen, pediatrician at Emplify Health in Onalaska, said she was in her second year of residency as a doctor when the vaccine was approved 20 years ago.

“Now we know that the actual cases of cancer have declined as a result of the HPV vaccine,” she said. “The impact that it’s had on our patients as they age and on our young adults has been noticeable, so it’s pretty cool over my relatively short career to have seen that change so significantly.”

HPV infections among teen girls across the U.S. have dropped 88 percent since 2006, according to the CDC. Among vaccinated women, the percentage of cervical pre-cancers caused by HPV has dropped by 40 percent since the vaccine was approved.

The vaccine’s success story deserves more celebration and promotion, said Dr. Megan Yanny, pediatrician at UW Health.

“We are always looking for a cure for cancer, and that’s what a lot of our research goes into,” she said. “But we have something even better right now, which is this vaccine, because it prevents cancer.”

Yanny said she starts recommending the HPV vaccine for kids starting at age 9, following the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines. She said it can be confusing or even unsettling to parents and caregivers, who often aren’t thinking about their children being sexually active.

But Yanny said she wants to separate the cancer-preventing shot from conversations about sex.

“We want to protect kids at a young age, when we can reach everyone equally,” she said.

There are other benefits to starting the two-dose vaccine series at age 9, according to Hansen. Younger children have a stronger immune response to the shot than teens and adults, making the shot more effective. And starting the series early gives families and their doctors more time to make sure kids are getting both shots before they turn 15 years old.

Just over half of Wisconsin’s 13- to 18-year-olds had completed the HPV vaccine series in 2025, according to data from the state Department of Health Services. Nearly 65 percent of teens had received at least one shot last year.

The state’s rates are significantly lower than national averages. CDC data show 78 percent of 13 to 17-year-olds had at least one dose in 2024, the latest data available, and nearly 63 percent had completed the series.

Hansen said she sees the disparity between HPV vaccination rates and other types of shots at her own health system. She said internal data shows around 92 percent of their pediatric patients get two other shots given during the teenage years: a tetanus booster and a meningitis vaccine. But only 85 percent of the department’s patients get the HPV vaccine.

It’s hard to know why Wisconsin kids and teens are not getting the shot, she said. It could be affected by limited access to preventive care, or parents’ perception of vaccines.

“The thing that does kind of come to mind is we have a pretty permissive (school) vaccine exemption allowance in Wisconsin,” Hansen said. “HPV is not a required vaccination for school attendance, but folks might be opting out of vaccines in general for that 11 to 12-year-old age range.”

Yanny theorized the shot may also be getting deferred if doctors and families are focused on addressing other health problems or getting caught up with school-required shots. But she thinks providers should be prioritizing conversations about the HPV vaccine to reduce future rates of cancer.

“I think we can just do a better job of making sure we’re doing it every single time, every family, and really promoting this because it is such an incredible thing,” she said.

Wisconsin doctors say HPV vaccine has cut cancer rates. Only half of teens get the shots. was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.

Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman talks to attendees during a panel discussion at Sherman Phoenix on May 21. Norman’s administration has overseen an increase in the number of cameras and camera networks used by the department to conduct surveillance on residents. (Photo by Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)

Even as the Milwaukee Police Department backed away from facial recognition technology earlier this year after strong public criticism, records obtained by NNS show the department’s overall surveillance infrastructure continues to grow.

The number of cameras, license plate readers and other surveillance technologies available to the department has increased in recent years, along with the amount of money spent on these systems.

Community activist Vaun Mayes is wary of cameras being used by law enforcement for surveillance of residents. (NNS file photo)

As was the case with facial recognition technology, MPD leaders say the tools help solve crimes and can make investigations more efficient

Critics, however, warn that an expanding surveillance infrastructure could make future monitoring technologies more powerful and raise concerns about privacy, oversight and civil rights violations – the same concerns raised over facial recognition technology.

Vaun Mayes, community activist and violence interrupter for the city’s Department of Community Wellness and Safety, says the cameras are a problem.

“People don’t want their rights or privacy threatened or infringed on,” Mayes said.

Critics are also questioning whether the department has produced evidence showing the surveillance expansion has led to measurable improvements in crime-solving or public safety.

More cameras, more systems

MPD has access to 390 squad-car cameras, according to data obtained by NNS. (Photo by Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)

As of June 2026, MPD had access to 1,749 cameras, according to department records. Included are 1,200 body-worn cameras, 390 squad-car cameras and 159 fixed cameras.

While many of the cameras serve general surveillance purposes, a growing number are part of automatic license plate reader, or ALPR, systems.

MPD risk manager James Lewis said the department currently uses three separate ALPR platforms operated by different vendors: Flock Safety, Genetec and Axon.

The Genetec system includes 39 fixed ALPR cameras.

Officers can also access a cloud-based Flock Safety network consisting of 35 ALPR cameras.

Axon ALPR technology is also installed on 80 MPD patrol vehicles, allowing officers to capture and compare license plate data while on patrol.

Records show MPD’s surveillance infrastructure – and the amount spent on it – continues to grow.

MPD’s first Flock contract, approved in 2022, authorized up to $25,000 in spending.

By 2025, the department had entered into a new Flock contract worth up to $52,500, which grew to $182,900 through three amendments that added cameras, extended the contract term and expanded services.

Similarly, MPD added Axon ALPR technology in patrol cars in 2025 through a contract amendment that increased the contract by roughly $136,000.

How the technology helps police

The systems can notify officers when they detect a vehicle being sought by law enforcement.

ALPR systems can alert officers when a scanned plate matches a vehicle on a “be on the lookout” list, according to MPD policy,

Department policy also allows officers to conduct searches of stored ALPR data collected around the time and location of a reported crime.

Lewis said the systems are used in a range of investigations, which can include shootings, homicides, child abductions and sexual assaults.

In time-sensitive cases, like the abduction of a child, this technology can make crucial contributions to the investigation, said MPD Inspector Paul Lough, who has provided public testimony about the investigative value of facial recognition technology.

Lewis cited a homicide case in which surveillance footage showed a suspect getting into a vehicle after a shooting.

“We entered that plate into Flock, and were able to locate and apprehend that suspect,” Lewis said.

But Lewis repeatedly emphasized that surveillance technology is only one part of larger investigations.

“You can’t boil it down to simple, ‘Hey, Flock is the only reason why this happened,’” he said.

He described the systems as tools that complement traditional investigative work.

“We don’t have to stop every red car in the vicinity,” Lewis said. “We can stop the exact make, model and description of the vehicle that we’re looking for.”

He added that the technology can provide pinpoint locations of vehicles they’re searching.

Ongoing concerns about misuse of technology

When asked whether more cameras had resulted in more solved crimes, Lewis said the relationship was difficult to quantify.

“I don’t know that I’m able to correlate it exactly like that,” he said.

Emilio De Torre, executive director of the nonpartisan civic engagement organization Milwaukee Turners, advised careful consideration about the connection between increased surveillance resulting in increased safety.

He said there is no indication of the safety benefits of systemwide surveillance.

“That’s rhetoric without any data to back it up,” De Torre said.

Other concerns about MPD’s camera systems follow well-worn lines about privacy, over-policing and unjust surveillance practices – concerns also raised about facial recognition technology.

A network initially built to collect images can later be paired with software capable of identifying people, analyzing behavior, searching databases or sharing information across agencies, De Torre said.

“The public is only just learning how Flock and ALPRs are part of a much larger, more insidious web of nonstop surveillance,” De Torre said. “They can too readily determine where any of us are going at all times and what we’re doing.”

Mayes voiced similar concerns.

He said many residents view surveillance through the lens of previous experiences with policing and government monitoring.

“We see things like the multiple stories of officers being investigated for abusing those tools against people,” Mayes said.

Concerns about surveillance oversight intensified this year after a Milwaukee police officer was charged with misconduct for allegedly using the department’s Flock system to track a person he was dating and that person’s former partner.

In response, MPD reduced the number of employees with access to the system, required additional training and user agreements and expanded auditing procedures intended to detect misuse.

Safeguards exist, police say

Lewis rejected the notion that the department is building a surveillance state and emphasized that ALPR systems may only be used for legitimate law-enforcement purposes.

“The balance that we do is making sure that those reads and those queries can only be accessed when connected to a case or an investigation,” Lewis said.

He said officers cannot simply browse the systems without a criminal investigation or lawful purpose.

“If somebody does misuse it, there’s accountability for it,” Lewis said.

MPD policy states that employees who knowingly violate the directive are subject to discipline, and violations are investigated through the department’s internal affairs process.

Up next

Contracts can be amended after they are approved, allowing agencies to add equipment, services or funding.

The records reviewed by NNS show MPD’s surveillance technology contracts have been expanded through multiple amendments. This possibility is still present.

Since 2025, the department has amended its Flock and Axon agreements to add cameras, deploy license plate reader technology in patrol vehicles and increase spending.

De Torre said he thinks MPD is following a fundamentally flawed path that does not make us safer.

“I think they’re spending too much time looking for an easy solution to address wrongdoings and crime, and they’re moving away from the real answers,” he said.

Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

This article first appeared on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

A sign outside of a house advertises units for rent Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026, in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

A projected decline in Wisconsin’s working-age population means the state needs to build fewer housing units than previously expected, according to a new report.

The report from Forward Analytics argues that building just enough homes to match that demographic trend could make it harder for the state to grow its economy.

In 2023, Forward Analytics projected the state needed to build 140,000 housing units by the end of the decade to meet current demand. Now, researchers have revised that number down to around 84,000 housing units.

Forward Analytics is the research arm of the Wisconsin Counties Association. Their new report updated expected housing needs based on revised population projections from the Wisconsin Department of Administration using 2020 Census data.

Research analyst Jacob Anderson, who worked on the report, said the previous estimate was based on the expectation that more people would stay in the state.

But he said the new demographic data showed the state’s prime working-age population — those aged 25 to 64 — is expected to decline faster than researchers previously believed.

“As a result, we need less housing than we initially thought,” Anderson said. “Not because we’ve built more to become more affordable, but just because we project that there’ll be less people demanding housing.”

Wisconsin’s prime working age population is expected to decline by around 200,000 between 2020 and 2030, according to the report.

That age group already declined by more than 25,000 from 2020 through 2024, and the trend is expected to accelerate through the end of the decade as more baby boomers age out of the workforce, the report said.

While those shifts helped reduce Wisconsin’s projected housing need, Anderson said that’s not actually a good thing.

“It’s signaling greater demographic pressures and challenges,” he said.

To reverse those trends, he said, Wisconsin may need to build more housing than current population projections suggest, both to retain younger residents and attract new ones.

Brad Boycks, executive director of the Wisconsin Builders Association, said housing is something companies look at when deciding where to expand or relocate, which in turn helps bring residents and jobs to an area.

“If there are a lack of available homes, that is going to be a detriment to that company coming into our state, or the current company looking to expand,” he said. “If all things are tied, but a site in Indiana has a lot more housing available, more than likely we’re going to lose out on that equation.”

The report said a high-end target of building 228,000 housing units “would allow for the full reversal of working-age population loss.”

In that high-growth scenario, 155,084 of those would be single-family homes, according to the report. Meanwhile, in the status quo growth scenario, 57,202 of the 84,000 units would be single-family.

The report also points to signs of “pent-up demand” among younger adults in Wisconsin, noting around 13 percent of the state’s 25- to 34-year-olds live with their parents or in-laws.

David Clark, an economist for the Wisconsin Realtors Association, echoed that finding.

A national survey of recent homebuyers released in 2025 showed millennials and GenZers made up 32 percent of buyers between July of 2023 and June of 2024.

The survey also showed first-time buyers, who tended to be younger, made up 24 percent of those purchasing homes, down from 32 percent the previous year.

“That’s an indication that there’s significant obstacles to buying a home for first-time buyers than we’d seen in previous years,” Clark said. “It hasn’t been unusual in previous years to find first-time buyers accounting for more than 40 percent of home purchases in a given year.”

Clark also said Wisconsin had a seller’s market in April, the most recent month with available data. He said inventory would need to increase by almost 62 percent to get to a balanced market, where supply and demand are roughly equal.

“We certainly need more homes available on the market,” he said.

As baby boomers leave owner-occupied, single-family homes and move into other living arrangements, that will help move Wisconsin toward a balanced market, Clark said.

New construction plays a role as well.

Housing starts have been trending upward since 2022, according to data from the Wisconsin Builders Association.

In 2025, 13,335 single-family permits were issued across the state, up 3.9 percent from the previous year, Builders Association data shows. Permits in the first three months of 2026 were up 5.8 percent from the same period last year, data shows.

Boycks said homebuilders are “much more comfortable” shooting for the Forward Analytics report’s high-growth housing projection than shooting for the status quo projection.

“We need more homes of all types,” Boycks said. “We see this as further proof that we can’t take the foot off the gas, and that we need to continue to build.”

Report: Wisconsin’s shrinking working-age population reduces projected housing need was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.

MCTS bus on W. Wisconsin Avenue. Photo taken Thursday, June 4, 2026 by Graham Kilmer.

Following the release of a scathing audit of the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS), the county’s top transit officials say they are working to improve financial and governance transparency.

The independent Office of the Comptroller recently released an audit report detailing major gaps in MCTS financial oversight, a confusing governance structure, and a lack of transparency in decision-making and budgeting.

The audit was initiated in 2025 after MCTS shocked elected officials, announcing in June the system was running over budget by $10.9 million and cutting service in the fall to close the gap. The announcement came without any warning, and emails later obtained by Urban Milwaukee showed top officials sought to conceal the existence of the deficit until it grew too large to contain and they had to inform the county board and the transit workers union, the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 998 (ATU).

In the wake of the deficit, the director of the Milwaukee County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) and the interim president and CEO of MCTS both resigned. Former county budget director Joe Lamers now leads MCDOT, and former Chicago Transit Authority official Steve Fuentes leads MCTS, which is technically a nonprofit controlled by MCDOT and the county.

During a meeting of the Milwaukee County Board’s Committee on Audit on Monday, Lamers said MCTS has been making an effort to increase communication with elected officials, and that under new leadership the system has made progress on a number of fronts, including the development of a “more appropriately conservative budget in 2026 than they had in 2025.”

Lamers said efforts are already underway to bring MCTS in line with the rest of the county’s financial reporting systems. Any changes to the governance structure will require approval from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA).

The Milwaukee County Board adopted a 2026 budget that included a $9.4 million cut to transit service. Beginning in 2020, the transit system budget was propped up with federal pandemic stimulus funding. The funds have now been exhausted, but the system is on track to stay within its budget in 2026 and may finish the year with a surplus.

“I think we’re making progress,” Fuentes said.

Fuentes took the helm of the transit system in the fallout from the budget scandal. Since he was hired, much of the top leadership at MCTS has turned over. He told supervisors he doesn’t think failures of the past were entirely structural or policy-driven.

“I think personnel matters, who is in the position matters,” Fuentes said. 

Fuentes noted MCTS has already negotiated amendments to the contract with TransDev to reduce budget overages. The French multinational corporation runs the county’s paratransit service, which provides mass transit for people with disabilities. The TransDev contract was a primary driver of the 2025 budget deficit.

In response to questions by Sup. Jack Eckblad, chair of the Committee on Audit, both Lamers and Fuentes agreed to work on the recommendations for improvement outlined in the comptroller’s audit. Lamers noted some of the items, like beginning to report out the findings of federal and state reviews and investigations of MCTS, he considers “low-hanging fruit.”

The lack of transparency from MCTS was the problem that precipitated the budget scandal and the subsequent audit, Sup. Shawn Rolland noted. He said it remains concerning that a similar problem could occur again if financial information is withheld and that he would like to see county officials given greater, real-time access to MCTS financial data.

Sup. Caroline Gómez-Tom said that, while she does not fault current leadership for past mistakes, she is nonetheless disappointed that an audit was required to learn about problems with MCTS oversight and governance.

Ahead of Audit Release, Crowley Said More Work to Be Done

In the week before the audit meeting, transit officials held a press conference with Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley to promote action taken on transit over the past year, including a successful reduction in fare evasion and plans to redesign the bus network for financial sustainability. Crowley also announced the system was on track for a $400,000 budget surplus.

Reflecting on the year since the transit budget scandal, Crowley told Urban Milwaukee there has been “significant progress” since changes in leadership, but that the work remains “incomplete” and efforts to improve the system are ongoing.

“I’m glad that we are making progress, but I want folks to know that we are not out of the woods yet, and so we still have to secure some dedicated funding,” Crowley said. “We’re one of the largest bus systems in the entire country that doesn’t have a dedicated funding system.”

“I would say it’s still incomplete, right? I mean, we have been making some significant progress. I’m glad that we’re going to be ending this particular year with a $400,000-plus surplus, and a lot of this is due to the leadership that we have.”

Push for Transit Funding

Lamers told supervisors MCDOT and MCTS are currently working on a major advocacy campaign for greater transit funding from the state.

“We are working on what will be one of the most robust advocacy efforts for transit in the upcoming year,” Lamers said. 

MCTS is currently working with the transit consultant Jarrett Walker & Associates to redesign the bus network for fiscal sustainability. The system is projecting a $15.7 million budget deficit in 2027.

File photo by Dave Reid.

Members of the Milwaukee Reading Coalition say the Department of Public Instruction promised to help fund an initiative to train teachers in early literacy, but has reneged and the project is now in jeopardy.

Fewer than 10 percent of children in kindergarten through third grade attending both private and public schools in Milwaukee are meeting reading targets.

In May 2025, Milwaukee Public Schools, charter schools, private schools, philanthropic and business groups came together to create the Reading Coalition.

The group wanted to raise an undisclosed amount of private and public money to do three things: train early education teachers and principals in Milwaukee on the science of reading, pay for the training materials, and give a $1,500 stipend to educators who completed the training.

Long-time education activist Howard Fuller has been leading the charge.

He says DPI has repeatedly indicated there was a pathway to support the work through literacy grant funding. Based on those assurances, the coalition secured private donations and recruited an executive leader, Fuller said.

But DPI has abruptly changed course, Fuller said.

“We got rolled, gaslighted, whatever term you want to use,” Fuller said.

DPI spokesperson Chris Bucher says improving literacy outcomes and closing achievement gaps for all Wisconsin students, especially in Milwaukee, remains a top priority for the agency.

“We have consistently engaged with the Milwaukee Reading Coalition and communicated about funding delays and timelines, reimbursement requirements under Act 20, and the steps that must occur before any work with outside entities can move forward,” Bucher said. “Additionally, any programs that expand Act 20 require a detailed implementation plan and approval that includes a legislative process. (Milwaukee Reading Coalition) is explicitly aware of all these challenges.”

In 2023, a bipartisan law was passed known as Act 20, requiring schools to teach the science of reading.

Act 20 mandates changes to early literacy education in public schools for students in pre-kindergarten through third grade. It requires schools to use approved curriculum, provides professional development to teachers in science of reading and tests students on their ability.

As part of the bill, the legislature budgeted $50 million to fund initiatives it required. But the Republican-led Joint Finance Committee withheld the money as part of a dispute with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, leading to a lengthy legal battle. Last June, the committee released $9 million of the funds to pay for reading coaches.

DPI announced in April that literacy coaches will be placed in 50 public and four private schools over the next two years beginning next school year.

Fuller says in Milwaukee, where most kids can’t read and most of the teachers have never been trained to teach reading, they have to start with the basics.

That is where the Reading Coalition came in.

Fuller said the Reading Coalition drafted a bill last session to ensure funding from DPI. According to Fuller, DPI told the group a legislative bill wasn’t necessary so the bill never came forward.

But over the last several months, when the money wasn’t coming from DPI, the group continued to question the state.

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, who is part of the Milwaukee Reading Coalition, sent State Superintendent Jill Underly a letter on May 18 asking for her support and investment. 

Underly responded May 26, saying DPI’s responsibility is to award funds “in the way the legislature mandated to support the requirements of Act 20.” Underly continued, “The Legislature did not authorize the DPI, or any of its partners to forward fund a program like the Milwaukee Reading Commission is describing.”

Fuller says that response is a contradiction to what the group was told when it wanted to draft a bill to the legislature.

“This is DPI finding a way not to help Black children in the city of Milwaukee,” Fuller said during an interview with WPR on Monday.

Underly recently appointed Milwaukee educator Kaylee Jackson to head the state Office of Literacy.

Fuller says the Milwaukee Reading Coalition had offered Jackson its executive director job, but could not hire her because it did not have funding from DPI.

In her May 26 letter, Underly told Mayor Johnson DPI would continue to monitor how reimbursements are proceeding.

“While we continue to reimburse schools, there is nothing standing in the way of the Milwaukee  Reading Commission partnering with schools to support Act 20 implementation,” she wrote. “That includes finding creative solutions to provide support to private schools that requested to be exempted from Act 20 during its development and are subsequently not eligible for many of the reimbursement programs.”

But Fuller is not holding his breath. “Although we have this absolute disagreement right now, we are on pause,” Fuller said. “I guess we wait to formally hear back from DPI. There is nothing that has happened so far that will give me an, ‘Oh yeah, we can work this out still.’”

Milwaukee education leaders frustrated with DPI over funding for reading initiative was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.

David Tomblin. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The California-based head of Highgrove Holdings, the large landlord being sued by the City of Milwaukee for the alleged poor condition of its hundreds of properties, has kept a low profile since the case became front-page news in late March.

Then he walked into Milwaukee City Hall Monday afternoon.

Highgrove President David Tomblin intentionally entered into Common Ground Southeastern Wisconsin‘s pre-meeting rally in the rotunda.

Just two months ago, Common Ground members stood side by side in front of a dilapidated Highgrove property to announce their campaign against the landlord, alongside the city’s lawsuit.

On Monday, Tomblin stood near the center of the crowd as lead organizer Kevin Solomon fired up several dozen people.

Then he went with the crowd up to the third floor for the Steering & Rules Committee meeting, where the Common Council was to discuss nuisance landlords.

After the Milwaukee Police Department announced it was changing its practices to ensure nuisance properties with three or more complaints wouldn’t go unprosecuted, Solomon told the press it was a “big victory.”

But with Tomblin standing nearby, Urban Milwaukee asked Solomon whether the two sides were now aligned.

“We’re not,” said Solomon quickly.

Then Tomblin entered the press scrum, standing in front of the cameras.

“It’s unfortunate. We tried. We used to send reports to Mr. Solomon on different things,” said Tomblin. “I was sick for one meeting. We were never able to get together.”

But Solomon said that Tomblin had not responded for more than a year.

“Do you have nuisance properties?” asked a reporter.

“We have [Department of Neighborhood Services] nuisance properties,” said Tomblin, trying to draw a distinction on an issue where Common Ground has spotlighted multiple tenants living in dilapidated homes owned by Highgrove. “But the reason we have so many empty properties when we buy is because we kick people out.”

An earlier canvass by Common Ground of Highgrove’s more than 200 properties yielded an estimate that about 40% of the properties are vacant. Highgrove is currently attempting to raise $30 million to recapitalize while a foreclosure case is pending on 87 of its properties.

“You’re being sued by the City of Milwaukee for having issues at your own properties that you’re not addressing,” said a reporter.

“Well, we are addressing them,” said Tomblin. “At the proper time we will be doing press conferences and so forth, and we will be addressing all those issues.”

“How long does it take you to fix a collapsed ceiling where tenants are living in dilapidated properties?” asked another reporter.

“We did that,” said Tomblin.

“No. You didn’t,” said Solomon, who suggested he would call a tenant with a collapsed ceiling.

Tomblin insisted he had proof.

“Why does it take you being sued by the city to address the problems your tenants are experiencing?” asked a reporter.

“We didn’t need to be sued by the city,” said Tomblin.

“Why are you here today?” asked a reporter.

“This is a public hearing,” said Tomblin.

“Mr. Tomblin, we’re happy to meet with you at any time. The invitation has been open for a year and you haven’t responded,” said Solomon.

“I have,” said Tomblin.

“And you said no. You canceled,” said Solomon.

“I don’t want to embarrass Common Ground. I don’t want to embarrass the city attorney,” said Tomblin. “I don’t want to embarrass…”

“I think the tenants are feeling embarrassed themselves having to live in dilapidated properties,” said a reporter.

Tomblin said 85% of his tenants had signed a declaration that they liked his properties.

“That you had a paid staff member going door to door asking them to sign under duress,” said Solomon.

Tomblin, after a four-minute back-and-forth, walked back into the meeting room, where he remained for the duration of the meeting.

“It’s political. It shows that our pressure is clearly getting under his skin,” said Solomon of Tomblin’s surprise appearance.

David Tomblin stands with Common Ground. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Site of future Star Bar, 2011 E. Ivanhoe Pl. Photo taken June 30, 2023 by Sophie Bolich.

A prominent East Side building could soon be home to Star Bar, an astrology-themed lounge aiming to bolster neighborhood nightlife with cocktails, dancing, and a touch of celestial superstition.

The proposed business, led by New Land Enterprises, would occupy a 698-square-foot space at 2011 E. Ivanhoe Pl., joining existing tenants, including Poppy Bakery and Shanghai, a speakeasy-inspired cocktail bar.

Unlike Shanghai, which has a long, narrow layout with a hidden entrance off Black Cat Alley, Star Bar would have a more open footprint facing Ivanhoe Plaza. Floor plans show an L-shaped bar lined with stools, along with banquettes and tables arranged around a dance floor and DJ booth. The business would also feature a 167-square-foot sidewalk patio with several two-top tables for outdoor seating.

New Land, which owns the property, is working with Korb Architecture on the buildout, according to a license application.

Tim Gokhman and Ann Shuk, New Land’s managing director and human resources director, are the project’s co-owners. Gina Gruenewald, special projects administrator for New Land, is the bar’s registered agent.

Gokhman and Shuk did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Emily Chirillo, director of hospitality operations for New Land, declined to share additional details until a later date.

“It’s true — Star Bar is coming…but we’re not ready to pull back the curtain quite yet,” Chirillo told Urban Milwaukee in a text message. “I promise the reveal will be worth the wait.”

Star Bar has requested permission to host DJs and instrumental musicians. The business anticipates about 95% of revenue will come from alcohol sales, with the remainder coming from entertainment and food.

While the application does not include a beverage menu, a sample list of bar snacks includes frozen pizza, cookies, popcorn, trail mix, olives, nuts and chips with dip.

Star Bar would be the latest addition to the East Side building at 2238 N. Farwell Ave., which formerly housed Crossroads Collective. A new restaurant and cafe, Nadi Plates, is planned for the food hall space but has pushed back its opening several times and remains under construction.

New Land recently completed an expansion of Shanghai, which now seats 45 guests, including parties of up to eight.

Construction at Star Bar is expected to continue through at least mid-June, and the business’s liquor license is pending city approval. Proposed operating hours have not yet been finalized, though ownership has indicated plans to remain open until bar closing times in Milwaukee.

500-506 E. Burleigh St. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The City of Milwaukee is moving to demolish two attached commercial buildings on a key intersection linking the Riverwest and Harambee neighborhoods. The buildings, 500-506 E. Burleigh St., have drawn the ire of neighboring institutions for their poor condition. From the sidewalk, bricks can be observed falling off the facade, and at least one hole can be seen in the roof. According to complaints submitted to the Department of Neighborhood Services (DNS), the front steps have also become a gathering place for loiterers.

While problems mounted, so did tax debt.

Longtime property owner John Bagrowski accumulated more than $250,000 in unpaid tax debt, an amount that ultimately exceeded the assessed value of the property.

But because of possible environmental contamination, the city placed the buildings on its Do Not Acquire list. Despite having the legal authority to foreclose on the properties, the city did not because of the potential legal liability of cleaning the properties.

That changed in December, when the city seized the 0.16-acre property via tax foreclosure.

City ownership has not ended the problems. The property, according to DNS records, has been subject to five complaints or code violations in 2026 and nine in 2025.

“People sleep on the steps and use the corner as a toilet then sit at the bus stop and drink all day swearing and yelling there are 3 families and 2 school/daycares on this block and kids have to see that everyday,” said a 2024 complaint.

A raze order was issued the same year, though buildings with an open order can be rehabilitated and demolition can often be delayed several years in favor of more severe cases.

The STRONG Milwaukee Center, a day treatment center for children with behavioral or mental health issues, is located immediately to the east at 510 E. Burleigh St. Several other tenants, including the J.K. Lee Youth Martial Arts program, lease space in the building, which was previously home to the Holton Youth and Family Center. Child care center Lil Dinks Bubbles Academy is on the eastern end of the block.

Mario Costantini, who co-founded and philanthropically supported the Holton Youth and Family Center and whose business La Lune Collection is located down the street, previously told TMJ4 that the complex has been a problem for at least 20 years.

Other steps have been taken in an attempt to reduce the issues. The bus shelter cited in the complaint, used by the Milwaukee County Transit System Route 66, was removed.

The situation has now deteriorated to the point that the city plans to demolish the 7,907-square-foot complex.

The city will pay Firebird Construction $89,900 to level the complex. Firebird, as revealed in a bid opening Monday morning, was the lowest qualified bidder. Two companies bid on the project.

History

The oldest of the two buildings was constructed in 1906, according to assessment records.

The complex is best known for its two glass tenants: Burleigh Glass and Schneiders-Vetter Glass Co.

Bagrowski operated Burleigh Glass in the property. Schneiders-Vetter Glass Co. operated for multiple decades in the eastern building.

Don and Lolita Schneiders of Menomonee Falls sold the property to Bagrowski in 2005. Lolita was a Republican state representative and former member of the UW Board of Regents.

The western building was formerly a Spic and Span dry cleaner, a common source of environmental contamination. Historic newspaper records indicate the business operated in the building from the 1960s until at least the 1980s.

Prior to its use as a dry cleaner, it was a drugstore, which classified ads indicate lasted until 1966. During its drugstore period, it was known as Romanik Pharmacy. In the 1940s, it was home to True Art Beauty School.

Photos

Sophie Bolich contributed to this report

2686-2690 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. and 2721 S. Howell Ave. Photos by Sophie Bolich and Jeramey Jannene.

Amid a pre-summer wave of bar and restaurant openings, two existing businesses are planning formal celebrations to mark their arrival in Bay View.

Jasher’s Organic Tea House, 2690 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., will host a three-day grand opening from June 11 through 13, while nearby Brew-Jas Coffee House will welcome guests for an all-day celebration at its new location, 2721 S. Howell Ave., on June 20.

At Jasher’s, married couple Jack and Rumi DeDecker have been behind the counter since November 2025, serving an all-organic lineup of nearly two dozen teas, hot cocoa, pour-over coffee and an assortment of snacks. The menu spans herbal and caffeinated loose-leaf teas — available hot or iced — alongside ceremonial matcha and traditional masala chai made with black Assam tea, fresh ginger, whole spices and jaggery.

Jasher’s grand opening will kick off Thursday with a loyalty card launch and a ceramic teapot set giveaway. Friday’s programming includes a tea-tasting competition at 7 p.m., with prizes for the top three participants. On Saturday, musicians Braden Higgs and Priscilla Joy will perform from 1 to 3 p.m. The final day will also feature giveaways of tea boxes and gift cards.

Free samples will be available each day of the grand opening. The cafe will also debut a new line of iced teas, and its pet-friendly patio will be open throughout the event.

The cafe’s hours of operation are 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.

Brew-Jas Coffee House

Elsewhere in Bay View, Brew-Jas owners Marissa Lopez and John Reed are winding down their soft-opening phase in preparation for the cafe’s official launch.

It’s the couple’s second such event in two years, following the October 2024 opening of Brew-Jas’ flagship at 3062 S. 13th St.

“What started as a dream has grown into a second space built for community, connection, culture, and of course, great coffee,” the owners shared in an online post.

Like its sister location, the new Brew-Jas features local art, a full range of coffee, espresso and tea drinks and a selection of snacks. The spacious Bay View cafe offers plentiful seating and a back lounge area designed for longer stays.

The grand opening, beginning at 10 a.m., will include local vendors, coffee and opportunities for community connection.

The cafe’s regular hours are 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.

Jones Island Reclamation Facility. Photo by Urban Milwaukee staff.

The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) Commission voted Monday to approve an audit of the district’s private wastewater operator.

The audit comes less than six weeks after the community organization Common Ground launched a public campaign calling for an audit of Veolia Water Milwaukee, alleging the contractor is mismanaging the sewerage district’s two wastewater treatment facilities, Jones Island and South Shore,

Common Ground is working with more than two dozen whistleblowers, two of whom have come forward publicly. The group charges that Veolia is mismanaging and failing to maintain equipment at the plants, leading them to run under capacity and contributing to the risk of sewer overflows and basement backups.

The audit, brought forward by MMSD Commission Chair Corey Zetts, will be conducted by a third-party contractor and overseen by an independent advisory committee made up of members without connections to MMSD or Veolia.

When the allegations were made public, MMSD Executive Director Kevin Shafer pushed back against Common Ground and the whistleblowers, and said more information was needed before an audit could occur. The sewerage district is in the final stages of a public bidding process. Veolia, which has operated the plants since 2008, is competing for the $700 million contract against Jacobs Solutions, a Dallas-based engineering services company.

Common Ground has demanded that an audit be conducted without involvement from MMSD staff and that the results be publicly released before a new contract is finalized. MMSD is planning to select a new contractor in September.

The MMSD Commission is an oversight body for the sewerage district. A majority of commissioners are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council. All are paid a $10,000 annual stipend. Commission Chair Zetts drafted the audit proposal after initially criticizing the Common Ground campaign.

Local elected officials on the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors and the Milwaukee Common Council added their voices to the call for an audit.

The commission unanimously approved the audit Monday. Immediately afterward, the commission went into closed session to discuss the likelihood of litigation related to the audit, the procurement process, and Veolia’s operations.

The MMSD Commission will direct the scope of the audit through an independent advisory committee made up of experts in water policy and engineering and local community members, Zetts said during the meeting Monday. MMSD Commissioner Jeff Stone, a consultant with Kapur & Associates and a former state representative, is Zetts’ choice to act as the liaison between the commission and the advisory committee.

The names of advisory committee members have not been released. Zetts said members will be drawn from across the state to ensure no one has any ties to MMSD or Veolia.

“We know some community members have been told or have heard that MMSD or its operator may be part of the reason for flooding in their community or their backups,” Zetts said. “We really want to make sure that this whole process is technically rigorous, future thinking, and also accessible and meaningful.”

Veolia has previously stated it would cooperate with the audit. “If MMSD wishes to pursue an audit with clear parameters and objectives, we will cooperate as a good partner and professional operator,” Senior Vice President of External Communications Adam Lisberg told Urban Milwaukee.

Common Ground has said it will support the audit if it is truly independent and if it protects workers who come forward to share their experience with the alleged problems at the treatment plants.

After the meeting Monday, Common Ground Founder Bob Connolly said Common Ground should have a representative on the advisory committee. “The reason this audit is taking place is because Common Ground brought it forward,” he said.

The organization would be able to bring information from whistleblowers to auditors and the advisory committee while protecting their identities, Connolly said.

“Common Ground needs to be represented on this thing,” he said. “We don’t have an ax to grind, we can be independent. We didn’t get into this for any reason other than getting to the truth.”

Children at Forever Young childcare center in suburban Green Bay engage in “parachute play.” (Photo courtesy of Cindy Veeser)

In the eight years that Cindy Veeser has operated her childcare center in the Green Bay suburb of Bellevue, Forever Young, she has provided an essential service — but she has also faced almost constant challenges.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic a few years ago, things got a little easier. Federal pandemic relief funds gave childcare providers like Veeser a new safety net — support and stability that they hadn’t known previously.

In Wisconsin the money went to thousands of providers, including Veeser, through Child Care Counts, a $20 million-a-month childcare stabilization fund that paid providers a monthly stipend.

The money helped childcare centers stay open and increase pay for childcare teachers, all without increasing costs for the parents depending on childcare so they could work.

“Federal stabilization funding prevented system collapse, supporting 5,762 programs, 75,740 educators, and more than 430,000 children, while helping reverse a decade long decline in licensed child care,” the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association states in a report issued in May.

“It made everything possible,” Veeser says of Child Care Counts. “My teachers were getting paid a little bit closer to what they should have been making at that time.”

The money didn’t just go to wages. “There wasn’t one thing that it didn’t help cover,” Veeser says.

At the end of this month, however, providers will lose the last vestige of that support. One year of “bridge” funding from the 2025-27 Wisconsin state budget ends June 30, and childcare providers across Wisconsin are unsure what happens next.

“We’re holding things together the best we can now,” Veeser says. “I just see us falling behind.”

One in four centers could close

More than a year ago one out of four Wisconsin provides told researchers that without Child Care Counts funding they could close down entirely.

More than one in three said they would probably reduce the number of hours they could provide child care. And nearly three out of four said they would have to increase the fees they charge parents.

The survey results were reported in March 2025 by the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty. At the time, Wisconsin child care experts were looking ahead to June 2025, when the federal funds that paid for Child Care Counts would run out.

Providers, advocates, Gov. Tony Evers and Democrats in the Legislature had hoped for $480 million in the 2025-27 state budget to continue the stabilization program. What they got was less than 25% of that: $110 million for one year of stabilization funds that ends June 30.

WECA’s May report looked to the 2025 UW survey to forecast what could follow, and solicited new comments from providers.

“I believe that the numbers we reported on, which are the most recent data we have, are going to be much higher in reality,” says Paula Drew, WECA’s director of early care and education policy and research.

“Every provider is talking about the cost of what they’re paying for everything.” in comments submitted to WECA, Drew says. “Many, many, many of them said, ‘I will price parents out and I will likely close,’ or ‘I’m planning on closing because there’s no way I can pay my teachers less.’”

Increased fees and families dropping out

As fees rise, some families drop out of childcare programs. “There’s a huge, growing trend of under-enrollment due to parents not being able to afford the increases that they already have in tuition,” Drew says.

In The Beginning Child Care and Preschool operates centers in Boscobel, Prairie du Chien and Dodgeville, each licensed for 50 children.

“Child Care Counts was a huge difference in our operations,” says director and owner Beth Markut. “We were able to give the staff a minimum of a $2-an-hour raise. We were able to afford new supplies. It was a game changer for us.”

It also helped Markut and her husband, Patrick, open the center in Dodgeville, where they live, in 2023.  “I don’t know if we would have done that if we hadn’t had Child Care Counts, but my guess is probably not,” Markut says.

When Wisconsin cut Child Care Counts payments in half in 2023, In The Beginning increased tuition by 2.5% to 3%, Markut says, and she expects a similar increase after the bridge payments end.

In The Beginning’s increases have been modest compared with those in a state survey, which reported increases for infant care ranging from 11% to 14%, according to WECA.

Nevertheless, Markut says, “I’ve had four families leave our Dodgeville center because it’s cheaper for them just to stay at home” instead of both parents working.

Markut says she’s confident that In The Beginning can keep operating, but she also hopes that lawmakers will come around to the need for ongoing childcare support.

“I don’t think they understand what our profession does through day in and day out,” she says. “If they really understood they would support us, but they don’t. It doesn’t just affect us, it affects the broader economy.”

Shelly Boelter has operated a family child care program in the community of Hager City in northwestern Wisconsin for 23 years.

The family care license is limited to eight children at a time. Boelter built her home with the lower level as childcare space designed into it from the start. “When I was 12, this was what I dreamed of doing,” she says.

Child Care Counts enabled her to take a better wage, cover expenses and put some money away for retirement. That ended when the stabilization stipend was reduced.

To keep going, “I’ll be spending less on things that we could use, to try to just keep it affordable,” Boelter says.

She says she tries to avoid raising rates for families who already have children enrolled, however, because “I don’t want money to be an issue for them to leave.”

As a result, fees vary from one family to another. In the coming months, she expects to raise her rates for new clients, however. “Probably a 25% increase would not be unrealistic,” Boelter says.

She would need even higher increases to fully cover escalating costs, “but families would not be able to afford it,” she says. “I have some families with three children here. They can’t afford that cost for themselves and actually make a living, either.”

‘It’s going to get worse’

With the bridge funding ending and a significant number of programs at risk of  shutting down, advocates say their focus now is on the 2027 state budget, which will be hammered out by  a new governor and a new  state Legislature.

And the childcare economy is likely to become even more precarious.

“The stabilization funding in Wisconsin did some really remarkable things, and it’s really, really sad that we’re just going to see those things roll back,” Drew says.

“There’s a lot of different ways to approach the next budget,” says Ruth Schmidt, WECA executive director — from a new system of direct payments like Child Care Counts to new tax policies or tapping a revenue source, such as legalizing cannabis and then taxing it as a dedicated childcare funding stream.

“The bottom line is, this all is revenue. There’s no way to fix childcare to make it affordable for families, to make it stable within an economy without paying for it,” Schmidt says.

“So, is it going to get worse? We anticipate it’s going to get worse,” she says. “We anticipate it getting significantly worse. And every possible strategy needs money. We can’t just rely on providers to continue to sort of take this on their backs, and it’s not good for them, and it’s not good for kids and families.”

Childcare providers are about to lose a safety net was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.

Fiserv Headquarters. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

America is running out of superlatives to describe average CEO pay. Call the average pay level astonishing, incredible, call the ever-rising compensation meteoric or stratospheric, and the words seem barely adequate to the job.

The New York Times used to give this splashy annual coverage, with front-page headlines and long, detailed stories on the rise in executive pay. In the last couple of years it’s left the issue to its business columnist Jeff Sommer, and his column Sunday wasn’t even the lead headline in the business section. Is the newspaper suffering from corporate greed exhaustion?

Back in the late 1970s it was front-page news in America when Chrysler executive Lee Iacocca earned $1 million. In 2025 the highest-paid CEO, Elon Musk, received $132.3 billion. Yes, that’s for one year. The average worker at the top 100 companies, who is paid $101,322, would fall short of that pay if the employee had begun working at the dawn of human history.

Ah, but that’s just Musk, you say. Yes, his pay is way ahead of most others on the list of top CEOs. But it is a precedent that other CEOs can point to, and clearly having an impact. Dylan Field, CEO of Figma Inc., was second on the list with $864 million in pay, and Shankh S. Mitra, CEO of Welltower Inc., was third with $821 million. These are jaw-dropping numbers, or would be if your jaw hadn’t already hit the floor at the pay for Musk.

The annual roundup of pay was done by Equilar, which reported that median compensation for the top 100 chief executives “surged 35.8% to $39.4 million in 2025, representing a record high in this study’s history.” But nearly every year since 1980 has seen a new record for executive pay.

And as it did in most of the years since 1980, the gap between CEO and average worker pay grew ever wider. The median pay ratio expanded by 36.5% in 2025, with CEOs now earning 475 times more than the average worker, up from 348 the prior year. Meaning the average worker would have needed to start working in 1550, back during the Hapsburg-Ottoman War, to equal the annual pay of the boss.

Ah, but these are just national figures; surely things are not nearly as bad in the unassuming, flyover land of Wisconsin. Alas, no state is an island anymore, as proven by the pay for Michael P. Lyons, CEO of the Milwaukee-based company Fiserv Inc., who received $70.3 million in 2025. This was 798 times the average employee’s pay at the company.

It is also more than three times higher than the $23.8 million paid to Fiserv’s previous CEO, Frank Bisignano, in 2024, which was then the top pay in Wisconsin, as Urban Milwaukee reported. And these astounding payouts to the two CEOs were awarded despite dreadful five-year (-57%) and one-year (-68%) stock earnings for the company.

Sommer’s NYT column notes that Peter Drucker, the influential economist, management guru and Wall Street Journal columnist, used to suggest it felt “about right” when chief executives received up to 10 or 12 times what workers earned. And he said chief executives should voluntarily limit their pay, keeping it no higher than 20 times what the rank-and-file earned. Well, it’s now 475 times higher and there’s no reason to think it won’t keep rising.

As Sommer puts it, “the sky is no longer the limit.” Even that description seems understated.

Vote here sign. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Don Millis, the new chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, says only potential orders from judges in pending cases could change the rules for the next two partisan elections — the Aug. 11 primary and the Nov. 3 general election.

There have been several attempts to make major election changes that did not happen.

President Donald Trump‘s order requiring a photo ID and proof of citizenship to vote has been blocked by federal judges. Absentee ballot drop boxes used by Wisconsin municipalities will still be used. And the Legislature and governor could not agree on allowing local clerks to count absentee ballots before the 8 p.m. closing of polls, despite repeated calls for that simple change to become law.

What changes in election laws did pass the Republican-controlled Legislature and were signed into law by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers?

“Not much of substance,” Millis said in an email. The Republican appointee to the six-member commission, elected as its chair last month, has worked with election laws for decades.

New state laws require the circulators of nomination papers to be Wisconsin residents, make it easier for third-party presidential candidates to nominate electors, allow some candidates — including presidential hopefuls — to withdraw from the ballot, and permit judicial candidates to not publicly disclose personal information.

Millis said Trump’s order requiring a photo ID and proof of citizenship to vote, if approved, would have been the greatest change in this year’s elections.

But, Millis added, “There are cases challenging the president’s executive order. While implementing the proof of citizenship would be very challenging on such short notice, based on what we have seen it seems the federal judiciary is likely to [rule] such a change cannot be accomplished via executive order.”

Still, Millis said he worries about the potential of judicial orders resulting from pending court cases.

“The case that has the greatest likelihood to impact voting in August and in November is likely the disability rights case pending in Dane County,” he said. “In that case, the plaintiffs are seeking a court order requiring that the Commission make it possible for disabled persons to receive ballots and cast votes over the internet.”

It would be very difficult — and maybe impossible — to comply with that order, Millis said.

“While Wisconsin has made great strides in making the voting process available to people with disabilities and plaintiffs’ motivations are laudable, Wisconsin law is not set up for internet voting,” Millis said. “The Commission would have no guidance as to how to set up internet voting.”

“Moreover, the Commission lacks the technology to accomplish this in such a short time and to get the necessary approvals from the federal government,” Millis added. “In my opinion, there is no vendor who has the technology that will guarantee voter confidentiality, so if the Commission is ordered to make internet voting available, we would have to develop the capability in-house.”

“The Dane County judge handling this case issued a temporary restraining order in 2024 mandating ballots be emailed to disabled persons,” Millis said. “That temporary restraining order was reversed by the Court of Appeals.”

Now, Millis noted, “The case is before the same judge.”

Another potential court ruling that the Commission and local clerks could have to deal with involves how absentee ballots are treated that arrive after the 8 p.m. election night deadline. Local clerks say the U.S. Postal Service has failed to deliver some absentee ballots by that 8 p.m. deadline and, in the April 7 election, 23 ballots that were to be hand delivered to Madison polling sites also missed that deadline.

Although the Elections Commission ordered the city of Madison to not count those 23 ballots, a Dane County judge ruled that they should be counted. Two pending lawsuits resulted from the city’s error.

“It is possible one of the cases will result in an order directing clerks to count ballots that, under certain circumstances, don’t reach the polling place by 8 p.m. on election night as mandated by state law,” Millis says. He hopes that, if judges set a new standard for how late arriving absentee ballots are treated, that the new rule “will not lead to future litigation.”

Although officials say that letting local clerks start counting absentee ballots before polls close would make results known earlier, especially in Milwaukee County, legislators have refused to make that change.

Steven Walters started covering the Capitol in 1988. Contact him at stevenscotwalters@gmail.com.

Image courtesy of Laughing Liberally Milwaukee.

For Urban Milwaukee members, we have a limited number of free tickets available for Laughing Liberally Milwaukee’s June 13, 2026 show.

Laughing Liberally Milwaukee is hosted by comedian, cartoonist and satirist Matthew Filipowicz. Matthew’s work has been featured by CNN, NPR, PBS, HBO, BBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Nation, the London Times, Ain’t It Cool News, and the Huffington Post. Matthew also hosts the creatively titled Laughing Liberally Milwaukee Podcast.

Comedians on the June 13th bill include Ton Johnson, Dana Norris, Aaron Chase, Breanne Wilhite, and sketch comedy troupe The Accountants Of Homeland Security.

In addition to some of the finest progressive comedians Milwaukee has to offer, each Laughing Liberally Milwaukee features a special interview with a local activist, journalist, or political figure. The guest on June 13 is Peter Rickman from the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization.

Urban Milwaukee members may reserve up to two tickets, worth $8 per ticket, while supplies last.

Members can visit the product page to reserve ticket(s), while supplies last, for the Saturday, June 13 show at 8 p.m. at ComedySportz Milwaukee, 420 S. 1st St., Milwaukee.

Members must be logged in to claim tickets. Your ticket(s) will be available at will call.

Not a Member, But Still Want To Go?

Urban Milwaukee offers the city’s most robust membership program, with many perks like this one. By becoming a member, not only will you help support Urban Milwaukee’s journalism, but you’ll help us continue to grow our publication, which publishes more than 75 stories and 100 press releases per week.

This event is only one of the great perks of becoming an Urban Milwaukee member. Here are just a few others:

• Completely ad-free content on our website and a configurable email newsletter
• Bypass the paywall and get access to all Urban Milwaukee stories
• Free access to News Bulletins with insider scoops of interest to anyone following the Milwaukee scene.
• A chance to provide the support that assures Urban Milwaukee can continue focusing on smart, substantive news coverage rather than clickbait
• Free tickets to concerts, festivals, and other great events as they become available through our partners
• A 10% discount on all merchandise at Urban Milwaukee: The Store
• The ability to comment on articles
• A faster photo browser

All of this is just $9/month, or $99 per year. Signing up is easy, and you are welcome to cancel at any time. Join us today.

Pano AI cameras are mounted hundreds to thousands of the feet in the air to detect wildfire smoke and hot spots. Photo courtesy of Pano AI

High above tree lines in Wisconsin, artificial intelligence cameras work 24/7 to spot smoke and wildfires.

“We can alert public safety officials and they can take quick action on those fires,” said Greg Bento, Wildfire Command Center manager for Xcel Energy.

He told WPR “Morning Edition” Host Alex Crowe that San Francisco based-company Pano AI reached out to Xcel Energy about its wildfire detection cameras. And last year, the utility company installed eight cameras in Wisconsin. Each can monitor about 70 miles of land.

“These cameras were a tool that did not exist before,” he said. “When we started understanding the capability of what their cameras can do, it became a responsibility as stewards of the public lands that we have right of ways through.”

Since 2022, the average number of wildfires in Wisconsin has increased to more than 1,000 annually, costing more than $1 million. Ahead of the summer wildfire season, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources reports more than 620 incidents.

Now, Xcel Energy is considering locations for a new camera in Eau Claire County. It’s expected to be in place by  early 2027.

Bento said adding detection cameras to its service area in northwestern Wisconsin is based on fire risk. So far, cameras are installed in Birchwood, Cumberland, Hayward, Luck, Mercer, Spooner, Tomah and Manitowish Waters.

A map of northwestern Wisconsin shows the location of AI-powered cameras detecting wildfires. Map courtesy of Excel Energy

“We share our cameras with local fire departments, the Bureau of Land Management and parks and wildlife agencies,” he said.

Xcel Energy currently operates panoramic cameras in Minnesota, Colorado, Texas and New Mexico. The utility company is footing the annual bill of $50,000 per camera.

To date, Bento said the cameras have detected hundreds of ignition events in those states. In Wisconsin, local fire departments are already taking advantage of the AI resource.

“Sometimes [fire departments] call us and we will workshop the smoke detections,” he said. “Volunteer fire departments don’t have a lot of those resources.”

Bento said a 12-person team from both Xcel and Pano AI watch the cameras 24/7 to validate all smoke and hotspot alerts. While false reports can happen with AI, he said every notification is reviewed.

DNR resources work to fight spring wildfires in Wisconsin in 2025. Image courtesy of Wisconsin DNR

“AI helps to rule out things like chimney smoke or steam or dust particles,” Bento said.

Bento said he understands the public’s sensitivity to having AI cameras always watching. But he assures people the angle and height of the cameras result in low-resolution images.

“These cameras are very high up, they have very wide angle cameras,” he explained. “A very tight, controlled group of people at the power company can see them. And then we also share all of the camera views with public safety organizations. The resolution is not a concern for me as a landowner.”

“If there is a residential structure that is within the view, it’s immediately pixelated by the camera itself,” he added.

As summer begins, so does the concern over air quality due to Canadian wildfires. Bento said if smoke crosses the border, Wisconsin agencies now have more situational awareness.

“It could potentially obscure some of the view,” he said. “But we make meteorological observations from our cameras to see what clouds are doing to help inform our decision making.”

AI-powered cameras watch for wildfires in Wisconsin  was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.

Rep. Francesca Hong, third from left, speaks to the audience during the year’s first Democratic gubernatorial candidate forum, Jan. 21, 2026, at The Cooperage in Milwaukee. The candidates are, from left, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Hong, Sen. Kelda Roys, former Wisconsin Economic Development Commission CEO Missy Hughes, former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)

The state’s most devoted Democrats are scheduled to gather in Madison this weekend for the party’s annual convention where the seven-way race for the Democratic nomination for governor is likely to take center stage.

Democratic caucus and county party leaders told Wisconsin Watch they are hopeful the convention could be a clarifying moment in the primary campaign on who has enough support to make it to the August primary. None of the main contenders dropped out ahead of last week’s filing deadline, so seven names will appear on the Aug. 11 Democratic primary ballot.

When Democrats convene at the Monona Terrace Convention Center on Saturday, there will be less than 45 days until early voting starts in late July.

“If their message does not ring true to the delegates at the convention, they better listen to the applause because people will be honest with them,” said Susan Chandler, the 1st Congressional District chair and vice chair of the Walworth County Democrats. “Everybody who goes to the convention is a highly engaged Democrat, and for every one of those highly engaged, we all know 10 people who are not. We’re bringing a lot of background to that convention and critically listening to these candidates.”

After Democratic Gov. Tony Evers decided not to run for a third term, seven Democratic candidates submitted the signatures to make the ballot. They include former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Madison state Rep. Francesca Hong, former Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. Secretary Missy Hughes, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and Madison Sen. Kelda Roys.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin Republicans have coalesced around U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who received the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s endorsement at their annual convention in May and was endorsed by President Donald Trump in January. Tiffany has just one primary opponent, Andy Manske, a 27-year-old medical service technician.

“We want to know who is best situated to make bold sweeping change here in Wisconsin to provide a better life for Wisconsinites, and who is best situated to beat Tom Tiffany in a head-to-head,” said Brett Timmerman, the chair of the Milwaukee County Democratic Party. “I think that people are going to the convention looking for somebody to stand out in a meaningful way to deliver that message of why they think they are the best person to carry the torch forward.”

The closest comparison to this year’s field is the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary when 10 candidates ran for the opportunity to unseat then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Two dropped out in June before the primary that year.

Evers, who had statewide election experience as the superintendent of public instruction, won the Democratic primary that year with 42% of the vote and later defeated Walker in the general election. Evers didn’t win a majority of primary voters, but his closest opponent only mustered 16.4% of the vote.

A large primary, like the one in 2018, forces candidates to explain why voters should support their campaign, said Martha Laning, who served as the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin during the 2018 election cycle.

At the 2018 state Democratic convention, the candidates all had the opportunity to make a three-minute pitch to party die-hards on what they would do for Wisconsin, Laning said. A spokesperson for the state party said all seven of the Democrats who made the ballot will also have a chance to speak this weekend.

“I think it’s great to put all of the candidates up there and to just let people know what their options are,” Laning said. “Again, any of them will be better than Tom Tiffany, so the more people talking about how they would do things and how they would improve people’s lives in Wisconsin is a good thing for us.”

Negativity and consolidation

It’s been a quiet primary among the slew of Democratic candidates over the last six months, with few events that set the campaigns apart. Hong led the field with 14% in the most recent Marquette University Law School Poll in March. The poll also found that 65% of voters were undecided on who to vote for in the primary.

It’s worth watching if the convention is a place where candidates take negative swipes at each other with the August primary on the horizon, said Anthony Chergosky, an associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

“This has been a remarkably chill campaign, and I’m wondering if we’re going to see things heat up a little bit,” Chergosky said.

Hints of discord are emerging in the primary. Hughes last month was the only candidate to publicly support the failed $1.8 billion bipartisan surplus deal negotiated between Evers and Republican legislative leaders. After the deal failed in the Senate, Hughes posted unnamed criticism of “certain self-serving Democratic candidates for governor who would rather boost their own personal political ambitions than serve our kids and taxpayers.”

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week reported that Hong was sued in May by Capital One for nearly $30,000 in credit card debt, which her campaign said had already been paid. Hong in a video posted on social media said the story showed her “opponents are scrambling.”

“They are scared of what we’ve built, our platform that’s resonating with working class people all across the state who feel left behind, our organizing infrastructure that’s being built stronger every day,” Hong said. “They want to pull me off track and how dare they.”

The convention could also serve as a milestone for consolidation in the race in the coming weeks, Chergosky said. A fractured field means one of the candidates could win with just 30% of the vote, but the math changes if someone drops out, he noted.

For Gloria Hochstein, the chair of the party’s Rural Caucus, the circumstances of a large field of candidates make her wish ranked-choice voting was an option for this primary.

“The problem is that there are some really good people running, and the thoughtful voter is really going to have to decide where his or her vote should be,” Hochstein said.

But the convention could “turn the tide” for some candidates who might drop out if they see they don’t have the statewide reach among the party’s most faithful, she said.

“I think that’s the realization, some of the candidates, I hope they come to sooner rather than later,” Hochstein said.

This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Marty Brooks at the 2024 opening of the Baird Center. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

After months of meeting in private about the future of Wisconsin Center District CEO Marty Brooks, the organization’s board voted in public Monday morning to fire him.

The reason, according to one board member, was misuse of district credit cards for more than $50,000 in expenses, including political contributions.

In a unanimous vote of those participating, Brooks was terminated for cause. One board member abstained.

Brooks has been embattled for months, first with accusations that he pinched the butt of board member José G. Pérez at a fundraiser late last year and then with board concern over a $145,000 study that Brooks entered into unilaterally, which recommended replacing the Miller High Life Theatre with a convention center hotel.

But according to board member and downtown alderman Robert Bauman, neither of those things led directly to the firing.

“Serious misappropriation of funds involving credit cards,” said Bauman, describing the reason for the firing.

The board spent more than two hours in closed session Monday morning, the fifth time in 2026 it’s met about Brooks in private.

Bauman said the total misuse of funds by Brooks “totals $50,000 to $60,000 — $50,000 at least — and the investigation has not been completed because they’ve only gone as far back as 2023.”

Brooks, 69, was hired to lead the district in 2018. He led the $456 million Baird Center expansion. He is paid a base salary of more than $400,000 on a three-year contract that runs through early 2028.

Bauman said Brooks used district credit cards to make political contributions to Mayor Cavalier Johnson, Council President Pérez and others.

The district is funded by two hotel taxes, a sales tax and a rental car tax.

Pérez abstained from voting on Brooks’ termination but did not respond to an inquiry as to why. Bauman said the alleged pinch didn’t factor into the termination.

Brooks, according to Bauman, also used a district credit card in 2023 to purchase a pair of shoes for himself and another employee. The total cost was more than $2,000. Urban Milwaukee is not naming the employee because the person is not accused of wrongdoing and no longer works for the district.

Brooks was not present at the meeting. He cleaned out his desk last week and was reported to be working from his second home in Florida.

The termination is not immediate. Under the terms of his contract, he is being given 30 days’ notice to contest the move.

But by invoking the for-cause clause, the district stands to save several hundred thousand dollars. If he was terminated for convenience, Brooks would have been owed the remainder of his base salary through January 2028.

Board chair Jim Kanter was appointed interim chief of staff. Kanter and Sen. LaTonya Johnson abstained from voting on the appointment. Kanter is a longtime brewing executive and the current chief commercial officer at Central Standard Craft Distillery.

About an hour after the board vote, Kanter read a brief statement to the media members present and did not take any questions. It confirmed that Brooks was “placed on administrative leave” and said the “major findings” center on misuse of WCD funds, violations of the bylaws and the employee handbook, and misrepresentation to the board. “Most importantly, we want employees, customers, partners and stakeholders to know that the Wisconsin Center District remains focused on its mission and the important role it plays in our community,” he said.

An attorney for Brooks did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

Visit Milwaukee, which is funded in part by the WCD, issued a statement an hour after the vote. “We have tremendous confidence in the Wisconsin Center District Board, in Jim Kanter as chief of staff, as well as the WCD leadership team and their staff as they navigate this transition. We also have full confidence in the Wisconsin Center District and Levy teams to continue delivering the exceptional level of service, hospitality, and execution that our convention, meeting, and event clients have come to expect in Milwaukee,” said Visit CEO Peggy Williams-Smith. “Visit Milwaukee’s operations, leadership, and work on behalf of our partners, clients, and community continue as normal, and we remain focused on supporting the success of meetings, conventions, and tourism throughout Milwaukee.”

A private property sign and rope is seen here next to Lion’s Den Gorge Nature Preserve in Ozaukee County on June 3, 2026. Evan Casey/WPR

Julie Shiff has been walking the trails at Lion’s Den Gorge Nature Preserve in Ozaukee County for over 20 years. The Grafton resident said she goes to the 73-acre park once or twice a week.

She was there with her friend on Wednesday.

“This is our spot,” Shiff said. “This is where we’ve been coming forever.”

But recently, she saw a post on social media about “private property” signs that had gone up on Lake Michigan’s shoreline just past the preserve.

She called that “ridiculous.”

“That lake is for everybody, that shoreline is for everybody,” Shiff said.

The signs and rope fence are to the left of the trail that leads to the beach. One sign reads “private property, no trespassing, violators will be prosecuted.” Another states “Please respect our neighbors by not trespassing and enjoy the over half mile of beach behind you.” There is also a camera and a sign that reads “24 hour video surveillance” just past the rope.

The private property signs are a short walk to the left of the trail that leads to the beach. Evan Casey/WPR

Megan Birkett of Glendale said she comes to the park to walk her dog by the water. But she said they only walk along the portion of the shoreline that is next to the preserve on county-owned land.

“Right when you get down there, it’s like, denied left,” Birkett said. “That really kind of sucks.”

Neighbors complain about garbage, people walking up bluffs

Grafton resident Mark Harris and another neighbor put up the signs and rope fence. Harris lives a few houses down from the preserve.

He grew up in the home and moved back last summer with his family to take care of his mother. That’s when he said he started to have some issues. He complained about dog poop and garbage on the beach, and people climbing up the bluff next to the home.

“If people could just simply walk back and forth, I probably would have had no issue with that,” Harris said. “But people don’t do that, they don’t take care of things the way that they should, so a smaller group ruin it for the larger, greater good.”

Harris said he is one of seven families who live next to the park, just north of the preserve. Susie Rieck moved into a home next to the preserve in 1995. She said her house is around 50 to 75 yards away from the bluff that overlooks Lake Michigan.

She said she’s not bothered by people walking on the beach, as long as they “treat it carefully.” But she said “dozens” of people have walked up the bluff. She’s worried about liability issues if anyone gets hurt.

“People don’t treat it carefully,” Rieck said. “People climb up my bluff all the time.”

Earlier this year, a dispute over beach access near a public park ended up in court. A Shorewood municipal judge ruled against Paul Florsheim after he got a $313 trespassing citation for walking past a public beach along Lake Michigan.

Florsheim has appealed that case to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court. He has high hopes that the Wisconsin Supreme Court will take up the appeal, so the state’s highest court can weigh in on the issue.

In the original ruling, the Shorewood judge cited the 1923 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling, Doemel v. Jantz, which found that private property owners have exclusive rights to the area of the shoreline between the ordinary high water mark and the edge of the water.

Harris brought up the same ruling when talking about his signs and rope blocking the beach.

A portion of the shoreline along Lion’s Den Gorge Nature Preserve is seen here on June 3, 2026. Evan Casey/WPR

Ozaukee County Sheriff’s Office, Wisconsin DNR weigh in

Travis Schroeder, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Waterway and Wetland Field Supervisor for the Southeast region, said the DNR became aware of the signs and rope through their tip line.

“The department is trying to verify that any navigation that happens in the water, or folks keeping their feet wet, is allowed,” Schroeder said.

Schroeder said the ordinary high water mark has not yet been determined at the site. He said the DNR hopes to stake that mark sometime in the next two weeks and he said the department is asking that any portion of the sign or rope that is in the water to be removed.

On its website, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources says the ordinary high water mark is defined as, “the point on the bank or shore of a waterway up to which the presence and action of the water is so continuous as to leave a distinct mark either by erosion, destruction of terrestrial vegetation or other easily recognized characteristic.”

Schroeder said when the DNR visits a site to determine that mark, they often look for things like vegetation, debris lines and where the water touches the shoreline regularly.

“From there, we put all of those things together, and we flag where the water is on an average time,” Schroeder said.

Schroeder said the DNR is, “committed to working with Mr. Harris.”

“There is a process that if there are structures that were to be placed below the ordinary high (water mark), landowners can apply for that, similar to placing rock on your shoreline or placing out any sort of pier,” Schroeder said, adding that permits and exemptions are available.

Harris said he’s also looking to get clarification as to where the ordinary high water mark is. He said he’s been in touch with the Ozaukee County Sheriff’s Office and the DNR.

“And as far as the fencing, it’s going to remain until, by law, we are told that we need to take it down,” Harris said.

In an email, Ozaukee County Sheriff’s Office Undersheriff Marshall Hermann said his office has been in touch with the property owner and with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources about the signs.

“The area of the ordinary high-water mark is generally available for public use, including walking along the shoreline,” Hermann said. “Individuals walking along the beach should remain within the area below the ordinary high-water mark and avoid entering private property.”

“Because shoreline conditions can vary, a practical guideline for the public is to remain on the wet sand or in the water when walking along the shoreline,” he added.

Lake Michigan’s waters crash on the beach near Atwater Park and Daniel Domagala’s property, Jan. 8, 2026, in Shorewood, Wis. Joe Timmerman/Wisconsin Watch

Shorewood case could go to the Wisconsin Supreme Court

In Shorewood, Florsheim had walked past a no trespassing sign next to Atwater Beach. He has argued that the part of the beach where he was walking was public land, and he was allowed to be there.

The public trust doctrine protects the public’s rights on navigable waterways in Wisconsin. Florsheim believes that the public trust doctrine protects his right to walk along the shoreline up to the ordinary high water mark.

David Strifling, a law professor and director of Marquette Law School’s Water Law and Policy Initiative, said the state’s highest court could take up the case.

“I would be pretty shocked if this doesn’t go at least as far as the Court of Appeals, and possibly all the way to the (Wisconsin) Supreme Court,” Strifling said.

Similar cases have been decided in Indiana and Michigan, two neighboring states that border Lake Michigan. In those states, Strifling said the public has the right to walk along the beach below the ordinary high water mark.

Rob Lee, a senior staff attorney at Midwest Environmental Advocates who is representing Florsheim in his case, said they expect a decision on the appeal in August.

Lion’s Den Gorge Nature Preserve is a 73-acre park. Evan Casey/WPR

Private property signs go up along shoreline past popular nature preserve in Ozaukee County was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.

Sam (left) and Alyssa Wisneski. Photo courtesy of Sam and Alyssa Wisneski.

There’s a cold front rolling in at Milwaukee Public Market.

Chillwaukee will be putting the pop in pop-up this summer, bringing an array of popsicles and Hawaiian-inspired shaved ice to the market’s patio at 400 N. Water St. on weekends throughout the season.

The bicycle-powered business has been a prominent presence at local markets and festivals since its 2017 launch under founders Collin Wallace and Danielle Dahl, and now continues with Sam and Alyssa Wisneski at the helm; the married couple purchased Chillwaukee in 2023.

Last summer, the Wisneskis expanded the brand with a trailer serving shaved ice. The treats feature housemade syrups and toppings such as fresh fruit, mochi balls and popping boba.

Chillwaukee’s ever-changing list of popsicles includes flavors such as strawberry mango, chocolate-dipped peanut butter banana and blue moon. Gluten-free and vegan options are a regular part of the rotation.

Following its launch at the market this summer — an official date has not yet been announced — Chillwaukee will be open Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

For updates and additional information, visit Chillwaukee on Instagram or Facebook.

Third Ward Could Get New Chicken Chain

Char’d, a modern Korean restaurant located in the Historic Third Ward, announced its closure last weekend after just over eight years in business.

In an online post, owners Choonghoon Lee and Lane Kim shared gratitude for customers who “embraced our food, our culture, and our little corner of this city,” while also teasing a new concept proposed for the restaurant space at 222 E. Erie St.

They plan to reopen next month as part of the Korean-style barbecue chain bb.q Chicken. “We’ve been cooking up something new, and we can’t wait to share it,” the owners wrote in the post.

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The Return of Milwaukee Dumpling Fest

Empanada, pierogi, shumai, momo — any and all combinations of filling and dough are welcome at Milwaukee Dumpling Fest, which returns June 28 for its fourth year.

ElevAsian and Visit Milwaukee sponsor the annual event, which brings together local chefs to riff on the humble — and highly versatile — dumpling for a chance to win the coveted Golden Gyoza trophy.

“Every culture has a form of dumpling,” ElevAsian said in an online statement. “Whether it’s steamed, fried, boiled or baked — if it’s a delicious filling wrapped in dough, we are celebrating it.”

This year’s festival will take place at a new venue, Prairie Springs on Park, 1420 E. Park Pl., with participants including chef Alex Lyskowicz, Amilinda, The Bartolotta Restaurants, Benson’s Restaurant Group, Chao’s Kitchen, Cute Robot Japanese Kitchen, EsterEv, Lucky Ginger, Mezcla Fusion Revolution, Mosaic Catering, Noble Catering, Phat Dumpling, Saffron, Semolina MKE, Serious Sanji and Sinta.

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Milwaukee Restaurants Go Halal For Annual Restaurant Week

On the heels of the major Islamic holiday Eid al-Adha, Halal Restaurant Week returns to Milwaukee June 5-14, with 11 participating restaurants offering specials ranging from brunch and brisket to lobster and lamb chops.

Chefs across the area will present their takes on halal dishes, prepared in accordance with Islamic dietary guidelines, throughout the 10-day event.

Best-known restrictions include the prohibition of pork and alcohol; however, halal also informs how permissible meats are slaughtered and processed.

Though it may sound daunting, preparing halal food in a restaurant setting can be as simple as swapping vendors or special-ordering proteins, while being mindful of cross-contamination and missteps, such as using wine to deglaze a pan.

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Bay View Piggly Wiggly Unveils Renovation

Piggly Wiggly in Bay View is set to debut a multimillion-dollar renovation this weekend, welcoming shoppers for the first time to its freshly revamped store at 123 W. Oklahoma Ave.

The project, guided by feedback from neighbors and store employees, includes aesthetic updates such as new flooring, paint, signage, aisle markers and displays, along with a revised layout and expanded inventory of products.

“We’ve really been trying to make it a little bit more modern, more relevant and overall a better shopping experience,” said Terry Goins, director of marketing and advertising for Piggly Wiggly Midwest.

Among major changes, the store’s in-house bakery, Panaderia Azteca, now occupies a more prominent space near the main entrance, while the deli and butcher displays have been rebuilt with visual appeal and accessibility in mind.

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Southside Bar Eyes New Location

After just over a year of operation in the Forest Home Hills neighborhood, Dulce Diabla Bar is planning a new southside location.

Owner Gilari Cortes Reyna recently applied for an occupancy permit at 1537 S. César E Chávez Dr., a commercial space currently home to Don Julio’s Bar & Club.

The existing business has operated for a decade at the location, most recently under Ruben Medina Perdomo. It has an active license that is set to expire in November, though city records indicate a transfer is pending.

According to the application, Cortes Reyna plans to transform the 1,295-square-foot tavern into a bar, dance club and sit-down restaurant, doing business as Dulce Diabla Bar.

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Alderman Complains of ‘Parking Chaos’ at Delivery-Focused Food Hall

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Southside Food Truck Suspended Over Parking Violations

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Fire Closes Burnham Park Tavern

Lucky’s Ice House Bar & Grill is closed until further notice after a June 1 fire damaged the building at 4238 W. Orchard St.

Owner Thomas Schweiger shared an update on social media Monday afternoon, confirming that nobody was injured in the blaze. “Everyone is safe,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, we will not be opening or shuttling to games until further notice.”

Photos of the scene show emergency vehicles parked along Miller Park Way and Orchard Street while crews worked on the ground and roof to extinguish the fire, which reportedly spread from the building’s basement into its walls and upper floors.

The Burnham Park building sits near the border of Milwaukee and West Milwaukee and has served as a neighborhood watering hole under various names and owners for more than 100 years.

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Mexican Food Truck Plans Brick-and-Mortar Restaurant

A new restaurant, La Flamita, is slated to open at 2100 W. Hopkins St., filling a standalone building once home to Pizza House.

It would mark the first permanent location for the business, which has operated for years as a food truck.

Efrain Jimenez Mendoza is behind the proposed restaurant, which would serve Mexican dishes including tortas, tacos al pastor and handmade huaraches, according to a license application.

The menu could also feature chimichangas, birria, gorditas, quesadillas and tacos wrapped in freshly prepared tortillas, alongside snacks such as loaded Dorito nachos. Meat options would include pastor, asada, chorizo, chicken, tripe, tongue, ground beef and cabeza.

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New Bars and Restaurants That Opened in May

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At Bad Moon Saloon, Comfort Food Gets A Not Bad Upgrade

Bad Moon Saloon has met its match. A new food trailer, Not Bad Foods, is soon to join the rock-‘n’-roll tavern as a resident vendor, offering a menu of comfort food with ingredients that “make it interesting.”

The custom-built trailer made the journey from Texas to Milwaukee. The business is led by Scott Zajork, an industry veteran with years of experience at local standouts including Goodkind, St. Paul Fish Company, DanDan, Snack Boys and The Vanguard, where he spent the past four years overseeing menu development and specials.

Zajork said his previous roles helped him build a network of peers and shape his development in the kitchen.

“A lot of these guys — all the owners and chefs of these restaurants — have been friends of mine for years,” he said. “I was really trying to explore different cuisines and learn new things from different chefs.”

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Takeout-Focused Hmong Buffet Planned for Milwaukee

A new restaurant proposed on the Northwest Side would make it easy to grab a heaping plate of roast duck, noodles and spring rolls in just a few minutes.

Sam Vang and his partner, Choua Lor, plan to open Asian H Express at 3902 N. 76th St., bringing new life to the shuttered Jackie’s Cafe space, while continuing their family’s presence in Milwaukee’s dining scene.

The “H” in Asian H Express stands for Hmong, which will represent the majority of dishes at the all-day restaurant, though Thai and Lao cuisine will also be offered.

Vang said the business will emphasize efficiency, offering a broad range of ready-made foods. Customers will select their preferred items, which will be plated, priced by weight — $12.99 per pound, according to Vang — and packaged for carryout. Dine-in service will not be available.

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