All right.

Good evening.

We'll call the July 14th, 2026 meeting of the Finance Committee to order.

We do have a quorum this evening.

Alderman Anderson is out of town.

Next on our agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance.

Please rise.

One nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Next item on our agenda is public comment.

Are there any members of the public that wish to address the finance committee this evening?

All right.

Seeing none, we'll move to item number 4A, which is approval of minutes for the meeting on the 30th.

Are there any changes to those minutes from the committee?

All right.

Seeing none, those minutes are approved through unanimous consent.

Our business item tonight, item number 5A, is a matter of report.

And this is a shared revenue presentation by Representative Scott Allen.

Scott approached me a couple months ago and asked to come in to speak to the Finance Committee to give the committee a little bit of background on shared revenue and give give us an opportunity once Scott is done with his presentation to certainly ask questions that we may have around funding formulas and perhaps things that we'd like to see changed as it relates to how municipalities are funded.

The mayor is also here this evening, so thank you for joining us, Alicia.

So with that, Scott, you are our sole agenda item this evening.

The floor is yours, and like I said, once you're done, we'll certainly take it take any questions from the committee as we have them.

So thank you for coming this evening.

And again, the floor is yours.

Oh, thank you.

And uh is your mic on, Scott?

I don't know.

Is there a way to turn it on?

Should be a button at the base.

There we go.

There we go.

Testing.

There we go.

Well, thank you.

And thank you for your hospitality.

Uh thank you for certainly putting me on the agenda.

I never expected to be the only item here.

Um, but that's great.

And uh hopefully uh this begins a conversation, uh, begins to spark some ideas where some there can be a broader conversation, uh, not just within the city hall confines, but uh maybe throughout our state, because uh certainly uh there's a there's a need for awareness of what's going on.

Uh this uh this presentation is titled Walkshaw is getting squeezed out of shared revenue formulation formulations, which you guys are all very familiar with.

Um I don't think I need to introduce myself.

Uh I think you all know me, uh, but there are extra handouts over here, so if anybody wants to take another one, feel free.

Uh I'm about to give you a uh about 175 years worth of Wisconsin history compacted into about 20 minutes.

So you can imagine it's pretty high level.

Uh this is the history of shared revenue in the state of Wisconsin.

Wisconsin as a state has been sharing revenue with its local units of government since 1911.

It was a challenge to get to that, and it's been a challenge ever since.

There are primarily five eras to uh the shared revenue funding and sharing of revenue in our state, but we have to go back really before that to understand how we got to this point.

And we all know our nation's history from the Boston Tea Party to today.

Uh we as a country revolted against taxation without representation.

From our founding, we have had a disdain for large administrative states who exert authority through taxation, whether it be the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, or the Townsend Act, from the very beginning, we have disliked taxation and the administrative state that comes with it.

Since its founding in 1848, Wisconsin started with taxation only at the local level and taxed all personal property.

What resulted was a disaggregated taxing system that experienced, quite frankly, discrimination against foreigners, uh, biased valuations, and ineffective tax collections.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, we had in this country an overall progressive shift.

Perhaps it was accelerated by the panic of 1893, in which we saw a four-year depression with unemployment rates reaching as high as 25 percent.

The Republican Party was largely split between traditional conservatives and progressives at the time, or progressive Republicans.

The re progressive Republicans believed it was the government's responsibility to create jobs.

As a result, we saw a coalition between the progressive Republicans and the Social Democrats around the topics, including taxation and redistribution of wealth.

During this era, Wisconsin's governors served, if you recall, a two-year term.

In 1894, Nils Haugan, who you see on your screen, was the candidate for the progressive Republicans.

Robert LaFollett was the candidate in 1896, 1898, winning the elections in 1900, 1902, and 1904.