Sara Monty- City of Brookfield Alderperson

10/10/2026

Just another amazing service the library is offering. Stop by today from 2-4 and pick out a costume. You DO NOT need to return it or have donated one to participate. Save your money this year for gas and hit the easy button.

It's Halloween Costume Swap Day! Please drop in any time from 2-4 pm. We have costumes in all sizes, and you do not need to have donated a costume to take one! https://brookfieldpl.librarycalendar.com/event/halloween-costume-swap-9442

10/07/2026

lol- it would be really cool…..

This made me laugh out loud so sharing the joy.

10/07/2026

Common Council meeting 10-6 Recap

2 residents took advantage of their right to speak during public comment which was great. I highly encourage everyone to take advantage of this. Your government should know what you think and you should know what is going on. Come to a meeting and see with your own eyes how your elected officials think and act while representing you.

The first resident talked about FLOCK cameras and not getting held up on just that company but the need for serious discussions on mass surveillance and tracking. She also raised a good point on looking at the cost as how many more detectives could we hire if we were not spending the money on this.

The second resident talked about the city and elected officials needing to communicate with residents more. Whether through making the website easier to navigate, using social media more or another method - we need to do better then the quarterly newsletter. If we are going to insist on continuing to use that, it needs helpful and pertinent information in it.

We did use a different timer this week to let people know when their 3 minute were up. It was a bit aggressively loud. I legit jumped the first time. Maybe we can switch to a gentle chime or
something.

Elmbrook School District gave a presentation on their referendum. There are still opportunities to tour the buildings in question and I would highly encourage voters to do that. Hard to be an informed voter if you have not looked at the buildings. Pilgrim Park is tonight, 10/7 from 6-7. October 12 there is a virtual event from 6-7. Swanson is 10/14 from 6-7. Tonawanda is 10/15 from 6-7 and WHMS is 10/20 from 6-7. If you can only do one, Tonawanda and PPMS make the biggest impression in my opinion.

The consent agenda passed with item 4B being removed for discussion. This item is the one that establishes pay rates and titles for the upcoming year. A lengthy discussion occurred with concerns being expressed whether the combination of City Attorney and Director of Administration was the creation of a new position or a reclassification. What happens when a conflict arises or a potential ethics violation when our attorney is also in charge of many departments. Were what we were discussing even in the ordinance? Why is the organizational
chart not reflective of what they are saying and how will future decision makers and residents know what the vision is if it is unclear. There were
amendments and it was all a necessary in-depth look in my opinion. I’m not sure everyone else on
council agreed but we were never going to be home in time for the game with or without this discussion. The motion carried 11-3. Alders Hallquist, Kahler and myself voted no.

Onto closed sessions which I can’t talk about.

However, around 11:45pm, we came out of closed session and had a public vote to enter an agreement for the right to purchase portions of Brookfield Square. This passed 13-1 with Alder Blackburn voting no.

This is all I can say at this time.
The Brookfield Common Council has approved an agreement that gives the City the right to purchase the portion of the Brookfield Square mall noted in the attached property map. The agreement gives the City the ability to buy the notes property. It doe not obligate the City to buy it. The agreement includes a review period. During that period, the City will complete its due diligence on the property. It will also work closely with potential development partners to decide whether a redevelopment plan is workable. The City will move forward with the purchase only if that work supports it. Financing for any purchase would require further action by the Common Council.

Really would love to hear thoughts even if I cannot respond.

10/06/2026

The link to follow along is in the comments.

A Common Council Meeting for the City will take place today, Tuesday, October 6, at 7:45 p.m. in the City Hall Council Chambers.

10/06/2026

Edited cause I made an inaccurate statement about the elimination of the assessors department. I was not paying attention and the error was my fault.
My bad. Sorry.

Agenda for 10/6 meeting-
This is one jam packed meeting with an ending that confounded the part of my brain that loves logistics.

We will begin as we always do with Public Comment. This is your chance to say anything you want for 3 minutes. We don’t get to respond. If you want to tell me all the ways Diet Pepsi is superior to Diet Coke- you can. You would be wrong but you can. Your public officials are literally begging you to let us know what you think and your thoughts. If you just cannot do it in public, emails are always helpful also.

Elmbrook School District will give us a presentation on the referendum. Fun fact- city and school district are completely separate entities. We do have a mutually symbiotic relationship though. When one is doing well, it helps the other. A lot of people move to Brookfield because of the schools. Hopefully, they stay because we have made a great city for them.

Next up is the consent agenda-
The planning committee has a resolution denying a variance request.

Finance has some bills to pay- lots of road construction bills and bills for the improvements being done at Wirth Park. We also have to pay some consultants and for the mosquito spraying. We have a contract to approve that will hire a firm to deal with all the permits and inspections needed for Gateway Fiber to build out their fiber network. We don’t have staff or time for that and Gateway pays for it so they don’t have to wait forever to get their project started and completed. We also have a contract for a new firm to supply informs and mats. This new vendor is expected to result in savings of around $11k a year for the 3 year contract. Finding more money on the couch cushions - lol.

HR and Public Safety are up next- first is a resolution approving the insurance program for the year. Next is an ordinance establishing rates of pay. No pay raises for alderman. We make $9911 and have since at least 2008. I could not find records past that. The mayor’s once every 4 years pay raise took effect in May so he will stay making $137,568.46 a year until May of 2030. A lot of moving around of different departments areas of responsibilities are being proposed due to the upcoming retirement of 3 department heads and retirement at the end of last year of 1 more. Full disclosure- you should really try not to lose all your senior staff at once. It seems a bad idea. A pox on whoever set this up 25-30 years ago and sorry future council members that we have no choice but to screw you in 25-30 years. The proposed action is to make/reclassify a new position of Administrative Services Director/City Attorney. This would be the highest paid position in the city which it probably should be if we pass it because they have to do almost everything to make sure the city functions. We will also be cutting the city assessors department and contracting that out. It is estimated this will save quite a lot and solve a problem with the fact that it is hard to hire and keep assessors. You can read the memo with all the nitty gritty in the agenda if you want. I’ll link it underneath. I am sure there will be a lot of discussion around this and it’s probably going to be awkward.

L and L has alcohol licenses and fireworks permits to be approved. They are meeting at 7pm to discuss some of the referrals they have backlogged. Maybe something exciting will be coming out soon.

The Board of Public Works wants us to fix the library roof. Probably should do that.

Some alderman are getting moved to different committees now that we are a full horseshoe again.

And that’s the consent agenda. Once we are through with that the real fun is going to start.

3, yes 3, closed sessions. Here is the logistically crazy part we have to vote to go into and vote to come out of each one separate because they all have different people allowed to be in them.

Up first is talking about the lawsuit filed against us for FLOCK Cameras. I think they are suing everyone in Waukesha county or something.

Then we are talking about some negotiations that are going to or are happening in regards to our fire dept helping other municipalities. Makes sense- our fire dept is amazeballs.

Finally and Dear God please let it not be 2am, we do it all again to talk more about Brookfield Square and their lawsuit against us and maybe, just maybe we might go back into open session to vote on something.

It’s going to be a long one but at the end of it, your city government organizational chart or other things maybe more different then they have been for a long time so it’s a super important one. I’ll have a recap on the flip side for you.

10/05/2026

Glad that our amazing fire dept was able to stop this fire before it spread more.

09/29/2026

So it’s time for a Terrifying Things That I Learned and am now sharing with you…

I’ve spent a large majority of the past few years trying to navigate the increase of adult group homes in our neighborhoods. It is incredibly frustrating in that there are not many things a municipality can control these homes and the potential is great for harm to a very vulnerable population.

Here’s how we got here. So people who needed more intensive care due to addictions or medical reasons in the past were placed in institutions and often forgotten about. Obviously, the potential for mistreatment was great and this was not always an appropriate level of care. Following the growing awareness of problems with this method in the 60’s and 70’s and the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest novel and movie- states and the federal government started to move to a more community based care model. Options were divided based on how many people they could service. If 5 or more unrelated people live together it is a Community-Based Residential Facility. This post is not about those.

If a home is serving 4 non-related individuals it is classified as an Adult Family Home aka group home. These are monitored by Wisconsin Department of Health Services Division of Quality Assurance. Municipalities do not have any ability to limit where these facilities are located or any ability to license or legislate against them. Prospective home buyers do not have to disclose they are planning to turn a single-family home into a group home. Most of the individuals who reside in these homes need support and 24 hour supervision or care. The state is incentivized to place individuals in these homes as they are often less expensive than staying in a hospital situation. The majority of people utilizing these facilities are on Medicaid. While attempts are made by the state to monitor and make sure that appropriate care is given, there is simply not enough money, employees and community urging to make sure that we meet our obligations to these people.

I have heard horror stories from neighbors, police officers, realtors and first responders. I can only imagine I have not heard from residents as they do not have the ability to raise alarms or the belief that things will change. When one of these homes is not being managed appropriately, it effects so much. Neighbors must put up with houses that are not always maintained to standards. There are also frequent disturbances and disruptions. Property values may be affected. EMS and Police are dispatched at a higher rate to deal with issues and health emergencies. In addition, because of HIPAA, first responders cannot always communicate with the state department what they are seeing in these facilities. Finally, patients are often not given the care they need and deserve. The care we are often paying for them to receive with our taxes. This is morally wrong. I believe we have a responsibility as a community and country to care for people unable to care for themselves.

So what can we do….. this is the part that hurts. At the local level, very little. As neighbors, we need to make sure we are supervising these facilities and reporting when we see problems. Reports of mistreatment or something that might need to be looked into can be filed at this link-

https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/4488026/DQA-Complaint-Intake-Survey

Reports can be filed anonymously. We need to pressure our state and federal representatives to work towards making it less easy for people to fall through the cracks. We need to find a way to make sure that neighborhoods are not destroyed by these homes. We need to provide more funding and authority to our first responsders and supervisory agencies to work together and move quicker when problems arise. And if you have a loved one that needs this sort of care- RESEARCH! Stop by often and make sure that they are getting the care they need and deserve.

There is one other level of care which maybe the best for some people. There are 1-2 bed homes. Often someone becomes qualified to open one of these just to care for a family member in their home. That is a wonderful thing to do if you are able to. However, there is no agency providing inspections or supervising this type of situation so the possibility of abuse is high. Again, please keep an eye on your neighbors and if you think abuse maybe happening- report it. I would love to see more accountability for maintaining proper care in these situations also.

This is a big problem and it is not going to go away. If anything as our population grows we can expect more of these to open up. They make money and the ability to abuse the system is great. Take 4 people who cannot advocate for themselves and hire someone who probably has no skills or background in caregiving and just make sure someone does not die. As a community and as human beings - we need to do better. Look out for each other. File reports if something seems off. Contact state and national representatives and demand better.

Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me- Matthew 24:40

We’re all in this together. - High School Musical.

09/17/2026

September 15th Common Council
meeting recap

Here’s what went down at the common council meeting.
We had 3 citizens speak to us. Thank you to all of them. I learned a lot. Terri- talked about the problems that have been occurring with 7Brew and traffic. It is for sure something the city needs to look at and try to resolve. Thank you to her for speaking out and to everyone who shared about it in my post. Scott O spoke very eloquently about FLOCK cameras and brought up some things I had not thought about. He posted his speech under my post with the agenda. Hopefully, he will do it here also. It is worth a listen. Finally Jim H who is the chair of the Waukesha county board introduced himself.

The consent agenda passed unanimously with nothing being pulled out.

The resolution allowing sharing of information for navigation apps to update faster with closed roads passed. Alder Hallquist has a nice post on what prompted that work and how it will make life better for us all.

For the resolutions regarding updating TIF 9 and approving the sale and means of operation for the public market- they all passed 11-1 with Alder Blackburn voting no on each. Alder Blackburn has strong feelings about TIFS. He is consistent in his feelings on them and I respect that. I think that sometimes development needs some help or nothing with happen. He is a firm believer that it will happen eventually without help. I appreciate how he always explains his opinions, is willing to talk about what he thinks and stays true to his beliefs. You know how he will vote in these manner and you know why.

We went into closed session around 8:15 so we were back to our efficient ways.I continue to be less than impressed with the people who own the mall but can say nothing else at this time.

09/15/2026

If you want to follow along tonight

Did you know that the City’s Common Council meetings are live streamed on our Youtube channel?

Subscribe here: https://youtube.com/?si=kIaelyuvRCHcUlaO

Recordings are available upon request from the City Clerk’s Office.

09/15/2026

I would highly encourage residents to tour the facilities they are looking at fixing for the school referendum. Touring Tonawanda and PPMS was eye-opening for me in regards to seeing the inability to provide safety and all the services we need to provide at an appropriate level at these schools.

We will have a number of opportunities this month for our community to tour facilities, and ask questions regarding the upcoming November 3 .
Learn more at elmbrookschools.org/referendum