The Landmarks Commission met on Wednesday, July 1, 2026, at 6:00 PM in Council Chambers at Waukesha City Hall. Four members were present (Matt Retzak, Marty Larson, Linda Gourdoux, Mike Chrisien) and three were absent (Carmen De La Paz, Tony Lanza, Andrea Dorantes). The commission reviewed certificates of appropriateness, paint and repair grants, heard a presentation on a historic water utility building, and discussed a potential Certified Local Government subgrant for National Register nominations.
It's a new day. City of Waukeshaw Landmarks Commission. And looks like we have a quorum. Let's uh call to order and we'll do a roll call. Marty Larson. Linda Gordon. Mike Christine. Matt Retzak. Alrighty. Thank you. And looks like we have some people signed in for public comment, but uh most likely you're gonna want to talk about when uh city staff brings up your new business. So I'm gonna move on from public comment on to approval of minutes. Did you guys get a chance to look over and see if there's any errors? There's never errors. So I'm gonna motion to approve. Last month. June's I will make a second. Marty uh made the motion to uh and I second it for approval of minutes. All righty, let's put it to a vote. I aye. Aye. Aye. All right. That passes unanimously. All right. And let's uh turn this over to uh Charlie. Payton uh repair grant funds. All right. So as you know, uh paint repair grants are approved in an increasing scale. Uh typically 15% of the cost of a project, up to a maximum of $3,000. Uh Landmark submission uh may use discretion to change award amounts based on project scope, overall impact, fund availability, or any other circumstances. Um for 2026, we have a total of 25,000 of paint and repair grant funds. We as of this moment have 2,432 left over uh from one incomplete 2025 project. Uh the that project has been uh completed and they have submitted the uh the invoices. We just haven't gotten the checkout to them yet, so that's uh in process and will be done in the next week or so. Um so that will be zeroed out uh and we have uh the landmarks mission to this point in the year has approved twelve thousand two hundred and seventy-seven dollars and fifty cents in grants, so that leaves twelve thousand seven hundred twenty-two dollars and fifty cents available to uh for grants for this year. And as a reminder, the approvals have to be conditional on approval from Waukeshaw County in the SHIPO compliance. I just have a question for you, Charlie, seeing that I'm newer to this and this is like only my second year with it. But does it seem like the requests are coming in sooner this year than they did last year? Because last year it seemed like we had you know a lot of money towards the end of the season, and this year it seems like we're going through it pretty quickly. It seems like we've had a lot of requests, but a lot of them have been smaller than in past years. You know, usually we'll get a few roof replacements or you know big big projects that'll be at the maximum, and we haven't had many of those yet. Um a lot of the time July is a big month, and this is a fairly small agenda, so yeah. Um the other question I had for you is 25,000 something that's been fairly consistent. It it's been consistent for the last couple of years. We had uh previously it was around 10,000 and the landmarks commission was giving 10 percent grants. That's that was back in 2018-2019. It was you know, we and kind of over a couple years demonstrated that that uh there was you know a demand for larger grants, so we've increased the grant amount and um reduced the grants that go to some other projects. Uh but the 25,000 hours has been fairly consistent, at least assuming we get the same amount back from you know from the federal government. Okay, thank you.