Franchise Opportunities in Milwaukee, WI

Unhappy with paying property taxes for a dormitory, Wisconsin Lutheran High School has filed a lawsuit against the city of Milwaukee with the hope that a judge will grant them a tax exemption after denial from city officials.

The school has tried this before. In 2017, a judge sided with the city and told Wisconsin Lutheran it had to pay up, as its property didn't meet the state legal standard for exemption: land owned by a religious organization for educational purposes.

School leaders contend that this time is different. Since 2017, they've built a new dorm for international and domestic students, Honey Creek Hall, and they're only seeking the exemption for that building. Previously, they wanted the exemption for buildings that also rented to non-students.

The dorm is on the northeast side of the school, south of Bluemound Road between 84th Street and Honey Creek Parkway. The school building is already tax-exempt because of its educational purpose.

The $9 million dorm was built in 2019 as the school sought to recruit more international students, hosting about 70 international students at the time. These students pay up to $41,300 for housing, schooling and other activities.

The school paid about $106,000 in property taxes for the dorm in 2021, after city officials rejected their new request last year for an exemption. The school then sought a refund, which the Common Council rejected in March.

Now taking the fight to court, the school has pro-bono representation from conservative law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. They filed their suit in circuit court Wednesday, arguing that the full services of the dormitory make its purpose "educational" and therefore eligible for exemption.

"We are praying that our money can be restored to us so we can use it to further the ministry of our school," said Rev. Ken Fisher, president of Wisconsin Lutheran High School.

In the 2017 case Judge David Borowski found that in considering how the building was actually used, the educational activities in the dorm were "merely incidental" to their primary function as housing.

In its new suit, the school argued the students there use the space for educational activities like studying, tutoring, Bible study, worship and learning English.

The school is seeking reimbursement for its $106,000 tax payment on the dorm, plus interest. The property was last assessed at about $4 million.

Greater Milwaukee had some of the healthiest communities and the Midwest had more than half of the healthiest counties in the U.S.

WISCONSIN — The greater Milwaukee community has some of the healthiest counties in the United States, according to a ranking by the U.S. News & World Report.

Wisconsin has 32 out of 500 healthiest counties in the country, according to a report released in collaboration with CVS Health. The Midwest had more than half of the healthiest communities, with 269 counties.

Greater Milwaukee had three of the healthiest counties: Ozaukee at No. 7, Waukesha at No. 23 and Washington at No. 38, the report said. Dane County was still in the top 100 at No. 90, home to the University of Wisconsin Hospital System.

The following Wisconsin communities made the cut.

Communities in walking distance to parks, tree canopy cover and natural amenities tended to have lower rates of obesity, the report said.

To rank the counties, U.S. News looked at how nearly 3,000 U.S. counties performed in 89 metrics across 10 health-related categories, including an environmental category new to this year's list. The new category was included to help account for the growing threat of climate change.

The categories were based on factors key to evaluating community health that were identified by the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics — a policy advisory board to the head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — as part of its Measurement Framework for Community Health and Well-Being.

U.S. News collected data for its rankings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Census Bureau, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, among others.

Read more about the rankings' methodology.

Using data on natural disasters from the National Risk Index by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. News found in this year's analysis that Indigenous people were at the greatest risk from natural hazards. They had higher risks from sustained periods of colder temperatures, droughts, flooding in rivers and streams and wildfires compared with other racial and ethnic groups, the analysis showed.

Black people were more at risk from heat waves, hurricanes, tornadoes and coastal flooding than any other demographic group, according to the analysis, and earthquakes posed the highest risk to Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders.

Tornadoes posed the highest risk to the overall population in the United States and were a particular threat to white, Black and Hispanic populations, the analysis found.

The ranking also revealed connections between top performers on the list and COVID-19 health outcomes. Communities with higher cumulative COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people had lower rates of post-secondary education, lower life expectancy and lower shares of adults who have recently engaged in leisure-time physical activity, the analysis showed. Communities with higher vaccination rates also had lower rates of death due to COVID-19.

These were the top 10 healthiest communities in the United States, according to the ranking.

U.S. News also ranked several subgroups of communities, including high-performing and up-and-coming urban communities, as well as high-performing and up-and-coming rural communities.

Other key findings in the 2022 report included the following.

See the full ranking for this year's top 500 healthiest communities.

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Brief

Members of a Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors committee voted to recommend the rejection of the creation of a housing insecurity, eviction and racial equity subcommittee. In a vote Friday, June 17, the health, equity, human needs and strategic planning committee voted to reject a proposed ordinance change establishing the new subcommittee. The subcommittee would have focused on housing insecurity and developed eviction prevention strategies while attempting to protect racial equity.

“I am disappointed by the result of the vote,” said Supervisor Sequanna Taylor, the proposal’s lead author. “This proposal was brought forward by the community.” Taylor added that “as elected officials, we need to ensure that the will of the people can impact how Milwaukee County allocates funds. Having community members serve on subcommittees and provide recommendations to the board would do just that.”

The subcommittee’s recommendations would have been forwarded to the board of supervisors for budget consideration. Consisting of the health, equity, human needs and strategic planning committee’s chair, two housing experts, at least one person who had been served with an eviction notice, and at least one person who had experienced housing insecurity or homelessness, the subcommittee would have helped Milwaukee hone its responses to housing insecurity. The resolution was previously unanimously recommended for adoption by the judiciary, safety and general services committee. The Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors will take up the item when it meets Thursday at 9:30 a.m.

Housing insecurity, and rising rates of evictions, have weighed on the minds of officials in the Milwaukee area for a long time. Since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, the number of evictions has remained high. The trend carried into 2021, and by the end of the year tent communities were growing in local parks. Activists and outreach workers started sounding the alarm.

The housing outreach group Street Angels reported a rise in the number of unhoused Milwaukeeans they were encountering to 500 a week. In November, the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ) had filed a lawsuit against Berrada Properties, which owns 8,000 units in Milwaukee and Racine. The lawsuit alleges that the company wrongly forced tenants out and confiscated their belongings. In April, a report released by the online resource HelpAdvisor found that nearly half of African American renters in Wisconsin were behind on rent. The report drew from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, which included March 2-14 of this year. The survey found that 13% of Wisconsin’s Black renters were “not at all confident that they will be able to pay their rent next month.”

Policy solutions are in demand. “Both the number and the dire effects of evictions and precarious housing in Milwaukee County are a crisis,” said Supervisor Ryan Clancy. “That crisis demands a forum where residents and stakeholders can share their experiences, develop and advocate for strategies to reduce the harm done and fix or replace the systems which allow that harm to continue.”

Supervisor Pricilla E. Coggs-Jones echoed that sentiment. “We cannot continue with the same practices and policies and expect different results,” she said. “I applaud the author and cosponsors for attempting to be proactive rather than reactive as we attempt to address the ongoing eviction crisis in Milwaukee County.” Coggs-Jones sits on committee, and voted in favor of the new subcommittee alongside Supervisor Sheldon Wasserman. Supervisors Anthony Stskunas, Deanna Alexander, and Shawn Rolland voted against the proposed ordinance.

The longest day of the year turned out to be the hottest so far as well, with Milwaukee hitting 100 degrees on Tuesday as Wisconsin baked under hot, humid, sunny skies.

At 5:10 p.m., Milwaukee Mitchell hit 100 degrees, said Taylor Patterson, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Sullivan.

The highest heat index for the day was 107 in Sheboygan, with Lake Michigan providing no relief from the searing temperatures, Patterson said. The heat index reached 106 in Milwaukee on Tuesday afternoon.

All that heat and humidity was bringing the chance for a few strong storms to pop up across the state into the evening hours, forecasters said.

But the story of the day is the heat.

The hot weather caused two lanes of I-94 to buckle in Waukesha County on Tuesday afternoon, snarling traffic on the busy freeway, according to a statement from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

Two eastbound lanes had to be shut down at Calhoun Road while repairs were being made. Freeway cameras in the area showed big traffic backups and motorists were being advised to take alternate routes during the evening commute.

Eastbound I-94 on-ramps at Highway F and Highway 18/Goerke’s Corners were closed.

The day began warm. Just before 8 a.m. on Tuesday, the temperature at Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport had already hit 80 degrees. That means that before 8 a.m., Milwaukee had already topped its normal high temperature for June 21, which is 79 degrees.

The record high temperature for June 21 in Milwaukee is 101 set in 1988. Weather service meteorologists were closely watching the temperatures to see if the record would be matched.

The notion of "cooler by the lake" didn't happen on Tuesday.

"There is no lake breeze," Patterson said. "Our hottest places right now are all along Lake Michigan."

A heat advisory is in effect for much of Wisconsin, including Milwaukee, Waukesha, Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh, Fond du Lac, Sheboygan, Madison and La Crosse into early Tuesday evening.

Tuesday also happens to be the summer solstice — the longest day of the year — for the Northern Hemisphere.

"It's the official start of summer today," Stumpf said. "It's not too often that you get possibly the warmest day of the year that falls on the solstice."

We'll have more than 15 hours of daylight today

The solstice marks the official change of seasons and it's the day of the year when we have the most daylight.

Here's how NASA explains it:

"Earth orbits at an angle, so half the year, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun — this is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and winter in the Southern Hemisphere," according to the space agency. "The other half of the year, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the sun, creating winter in the north and summer in the south.

"Solstices happen twice per year, at the points in Earth’s orbit where this tilt is most pronounced. These days are the longest (in the summer hemisphere) and shortest (in the winter hemisphere) of the year, and mark the change of seasons to summer and winter, respectively."

Sunrise was 5:13 a.m. and sunset tonight is set for 8:34 p.m. That's 15 hours and 21 minutes of daylight on Tuesday. (That compares with the winter solstice in December when we have about 9 hours of daylight between sunrise and sunset.)

Watch for strong to severe storms later Tuesday

Thunderstorms love heat and humidity and with so much of it around Wisconsin on Tuesday, forecasters say there is a chance for a strong to perhaps even severe storm popping up across the state on Tuesday.

More:It's tornado season in Wisconsin. Here's what you need to know to help keep you and your family safe.

"With how hot and humid it is, it's possible we could see a few stronger storms today," Stumpf said. "They would be more typical summertime storms," where they pop up and drop brief heavy rain and maybe bring brief gusty winds and perhaps some small hail, but nothing overly severe, Stumpf said.

Forecasters are calling for things to cool down with less stickiness in the air for the remainder of the workweek after Tuesday.

"Wednesday will be a nice day as high pressure gradually builds into the area with high temperatures only getting into the mid-80s which will feel much better than today!" the weather service said in a statement.

Rain chances return on Saturday.

Contact Joe Taschler at (414) 224-2554 or jtasc[email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @JoeTaschler or Facebook at facebook.com/joe.taschler.1.

MILWAUKEE — Wisconsin is in an endemic area when it comes to ticks.

Cases of Lyme Disease, transmitted by ticks, have also increased steadily across the state.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Associate Professor of Health Science, Dean Nardelli, said just about every year there are a significant number of reported cases. Several thousand that are actually reported and, according to Professor Nardelli, many more go unreported.

“We’re in this area where there’s this perfect storm of ticks that would carry the bacteria that causes Lyme Disease, the different animal reservoirs; deer, small mammals and all of that,” Nardelli said. “It’s just sort of an ecological fact that we’re in one of the hot zones.”

Nardelli said over the past 20 years or so, the number of reported cases of Lyme Disease has increased dramatically.

“It sort of leveled off the last couple years, with several thousand cases, but then again, the last couple years have been atypical.”

He believes the numbers reported are way under actual cases and also said, “the CDC has even stated that nationwide the number of cases of Lyme Disease has been grossly underestimated.”

Bottom line: the best way to protect yourself is to avoid contact with ticks. If you’re headed to a wooded area or a spot with shrubs or tall grass, make sure your skin is covered. Wear long sleeves, pants and a hat. And don’t forget the insect repellant. Once you get inside, do a thorough check for ticks. Showering can also wash off any ticks not yet embedded.

Symptoms of Lyme Disease are about the same for adults and children.

“About three-quarters of the cases [...] will manifest initially in the days to weeks afterward with this expanding rash from the site of the tick,” he said.

The rash doesn’t always develop; Nardelli said some people will just have flu-like symptoms.

He warned if untreated, the microbes spread through the body and cause an inflammatory response, which can lead to arthritis, affect the nervous system and potentially the heart.