The Port Washington Common Council met Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025 in five closed sessions —many of them concerning potential developments in the city — after its regular open meeting.
The sessions were covered in a Dec. 4, 2025 story that appeared in the Ozaukee Press, which challenged the sessions. According to the story:
Four of the sessions were closed under an exemption to the Wisconsin Open Meetings Law that allows governmental bodies to meet behind closed doors to discuss and formulate negotiating strategies so the Common Council could deal with a potential development at 2326-32 Sunset Rd., the proposed Pier Street Landing apartments, land on the east side of Highway C at Sunset Road at the Prairie’s Edge subdivision and the potential sale of the city-owned police and fire stations.
The other session was to confer with legal counsel regarding litigation the city is or may be involved in.
In a letter sent to Mayor Ted Neitzke and City Administrator Melissa Gossett Monday, Ozaukee Press Editor Bill Schanen IV expressed “serious concerns” about the city’s use of the competitive bargaining exemption to close meetings “often to discuss interest to the public but have never been addressed in open session.”
The Wisconsin Attorney General’s Open Meeting Compliance Guide says government should look at the law as “restrictive rather an expansive” and agendas that say a meeting is being closed for competitive or bargaining issues “is inadequate because it does not reflect how the proposed discussion would implicate the competitive or bargaining interest of the body.”
Neither Gossett or City Attorney Matt Nugent would comment Tuesday on the closed sessions.
Details of at least two of the closed sessions can be gleaned from the agenda but it is unclear what the city intends to negotiate.
The city has received an application from Haley Dobre, owner of the Boerner Mercantile Builsing, for $2.9 million in tax incremental funding for the development of Pier Street Landing, a $20 million apartment building she plans to construct on a parking lot Dobre owns west of Franklin Street between Pier and Washington streets.
And in September the city received proposals from three firms — Ansay Development Corp., Fine Line Carpentry and Neumann Companies — to redevelop the properties currently occupied by the Port Washington police and fire stations once the departments move to the new public safety building in 2026.
Each of the proposals call for creating approximately 20 townhome or rowhouse units with homes fronting the street and incorporating green space, with the value of the developments estimated at $9 million to $16 million by the companies.
Ansay’s proposal included two different “development paths” for the property, one that would provide market-rate townhouses and the other for affordable housing that would necessitate TIF funds.
The Fine Line proposal specified it would not require TIF funding but assumed the City of Port Washington would pay to bury power lines along the perimeter of the property.
When the proposals were received, officials said they would be reviewed by city staff members who would make a recommendation on which firm to select for the Common Council to consider in October. The proposals were discussed in an Oct. 7 closed session but have not been presented in an open meeting.
“This is an issue of significant and legitimate interest to the public not only because it involved a prominent downtown development but also because it will require the sale of public lands, yet the council has yet to address the proposals in open session,” Schanen’s letter states.
The Open Meeting Compliance Guide states government meetings “may not be closed in a blanket manner merely because they may at times involve competitive or bargaining issues, but rather may only be closed on those occasions when the particular meeting is going to involve discussions which, if held in open session would harm the competitive or bargaining interest at issue.”
Schanen wrote that the proposals should have been presented in open session, and if aldermen offered comments or had questions about the proposals that were clarified by staff members, it should have been done in public “because such actions would not ‘directly and substantially affect negotiations with a third party’ and, in fact, constitutes the ‘blanket manner’ of closing a meeting the attorney general notes is not allowed under the law.”
The same might be true of the other closed sessions, Schanen wrote, “but it’s impossible to tell because those issues will not first be presented in open session and the language of the agenda is vague at best.”
Regarding the Sunset Road development and Prairie’s Edge sessions, Schanen wrote, “It begs the question, why wouldn’t the city present the proposals in open session, then convene to closed session if it must to develop a negotiating strategy as envisioned by the law?”
