Politics & Government

Resident Starts Petition to Incorporate Town of Brookfield as a Village

Town resident Jay Walt has started the formal paperwork to seek state approval for the Town of Brookfield to become a village.

Reigniting a decade-old battle, the Town of Brookfield is seeking for the third time to be incorporated as a village, a move that would prevent the cities of Brookfield, Waukesha and Pewaukee from annexing town lands.

But to do so, the Town of Brookfield would need to acquire about 288 acres of Town of Waukesha lands to meet the minimum 4-square-mile area required for incorporation.

Towns can not directly annex other town lands, but incorporation requests can include lands from more than one town, Brookfield Town Attorney Jim Hammes said.

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Town Administrator Rick Czopp said the proposed spurred the town to renew its battle for village status.

The limited powers of towns was hindering the project, in terms of financing needed to fund public improvements. The governor signed a bill Thursday giving the Town of Brookfield power to use an economic development tool only available to villages and cities — creating a tax incremental finance district to fund new roads, sewer and water lines to support the Poplar Creek project.

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But the town also needs to make sure its tax base isn't eroded to the point where it can't finance public improvements, Czopp said.

The town needs to become a village "so we can protect our tax base. So we can protect our boundaries. So we can have better zoning controls," Czopp said.

Longtime town resident Jay Walt, who filed the notice of petition to incorporate, said becoming a village also was a means to preserve the town's small government and "Music Man small-town feel."

"If I have a problem, I can just call the police or fire chief and talk to them directly, and that's not just me. Any resident can do that," Walt said. He said not only do town residents want to preserve lower property tax rates than adjacent cities, but the developers of the proposed Poplar Creek project also would prefer to be paying lower taxes.

"When you're looking at a $100 million project, the mill rate is very important," Walt said.

The Town of Brookfield, however, lost two previous attempts at incorporation in 1999 and 2001.

An agency in the state Department of Administration ruled the town's lands were too disjointed and minimal to become a village. The last ruling said the town no longer even had the minimum  required 4 square miles, after years of town residents winning annexation into adjacent cities.

The latest notice filed by Walt, which was printed Friday in the town's official newspaper, the Waukesha Freeman, calls for the Town of Brookfield to acquire 288 acres of Town of Waukesha land to reach a total of about 4.2 square acres. At the same time, the Town of Brookfield would remove some of its own town islands that caused earlier problems with the state. 

The Town of Waukesha lands area located south of Greenfield Avenue, west of Springdale Road and east of Highway 164. The lands represent about $35 million in tax base, and include the former Wal-Mart and Don Jacobs car dealership, Hammes said.

Waukesha Town Chairwoman Angie Van Scyoc could not be reached for comment Friday.

Brookfield City Mayor Steve Ponto said Friday he did not want to immediately oppose the petition merely because the city fought the town's previous attempts.

Ponto said he wanted to discuss the issues with the city's Common Council and "collectively determine what will be in the best interest of the City of Brookfield and the area overall. We want to carefully review it."

Ponto said he believed the incorporation would run counter to good public policies such as sharing municipal services and having fewer units of incorporated governments. The city a few years ago studied whether the city should merge with the town but no action was taken.

"Southeastern Wisconsin has too many governments and I think it's unfortunate to see the prospect of having yet another incorporated municipality rather than having them going to an existing incorporated municipality," Ponto said. 

"I think that's a bad thing for good government."

Ponto said the city has previously offered to provide the town's fire and emergency medical services. "We could clearly provide high-quality services at a lower cost to them, and they weren't interested."

Czopp said almost the same thing, saying the town offered to provide fire and emergency services to the city, but the city instead built a new fire station closer to the town's station.

Czopp bristled at any claim the town's services were inferior to those offered by the city. And he noted the town's property tax and sewer and water rates were lower than in the city.

Ponto said the lower rates were possible, in part, because of city services that the town taps, such as the city's library. 

Czopp disagreed.

"Why should there be any fights at all over this?" Czopp asked. "How does this affect the City of Brookfield at all?"

The petition might affect some Town of Brookfield residents who were left out of the area proposed to become the new village. What would happen to those town residents and businesses is yet unclear. Czopp and Hammes said they hoped to discuss that with those involved, as well as neighboring municipalities.

Walt said he hoped the issue could be resolved amicably by all parties "in a positive way, not through the press, not with insults."

Excluded from the map of the proposed village area are existing non-continguous Town of Brookfield islands near the Capitol Drive Airport of about 20 town homes and businesses, as well as a few isolated homes north of North Avenue and along Greenfield Avenue east of the former Silver Spur restaurant.

Hammes said he would recommend the Town Board approve a resolution agreeing to continue providing the same town services to those areas that would not be part of the new incorporated area. That would continue until or unless they petitioned to annex into the cities of Brookfield, Waukesha or Pewaukee, he said.

"These people will not be left hanging in the wind," Czopp said. "They're still town residents. We're not going to leave them hanging."

As for the Town of Waukesha lands, Walt said he recognized "the apparent irony of us trying to protect our borders while taking lands from the Town of Waukesha."

But he and Czopp and Hammes each said the Town of Waukesha's lands were an island already disconnected from the rest of the Town of Waukesha. 

Even if the Town of Waukesha ever sought incorporation, that island would not be included, they argued, and it could eventually become part of the City of Waukesha, which has a higher property tax rate than the Town of Brookfield.

Either way, those Town of Waukesha residents would receive services they currently do not have, such as full-time police and fire and sewer and water, Walt and others said.

Hammes — who said he recently voluntarily resigned from his role as the Town of Waukesha's attorney — said he was not aware of another case statewide in which land from two towns were included in an incorporation request. 

But he said he believed state statutes allow for the unusual move.

"An incorporation is not limited to one township," he said. 

Walt said he has to obtain about 50 signatures from town residents and file them in Waukesha County Circuit Court within six months. Between now and next fall, he said he hoped the region's municipalities could work out an agreement to make the town's incorporation possible.


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