Port Washington City Council candidates talk data center, development and city issues

Yahoo

11-03-2025

Two Port Washington natives are vying for the city's District 3 Common Council seat in the upcoming spring election on April 1.
Incumbent Michael Gasper is a civil engineer with over 20 years of experience working on roads and municipal projects, eight years of experience on the Common Council and a fascination with urban and city planning.
His challenger, politics newcomer Billy Schwalbe, spent several years working in finance before purchasing the Schooner Pub.
Both agree that the city is at a turning point, facing major projects, issues and decisions that will impact the city for years to come — chiefly, the development company Cloverleaf's incipient proposal to build a massive data center on town land that will soon be annexed by the city.
Responsible stewardship of those projects and careful evaluation of upcoming decisions are critical, they each said separately. They both have their own ideas on what that should look like.
It's Port Washington's only contested race.
The two candidates will face off at a forum from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 13, hosted by the City of Port Washington and sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Ozaukee and Washington Counties, according to a flyer for the forum. The event will not include a live audience, but those interested can livestream on the city's YouTube channel. A recording will remain posted to the channel for those who can't watch live.
Gasper and Schwalbe spoke with the Journal Sentinel about their experience and vision for the city:
Having spent over two decades as a civil engineer working on city streets, storm sewer water mains and sanitary sewer, Gasper said he's especially equipped with knowledge of the intimate mechanics of city services.
Gasper has worked at several different engineering consultant companies, including his current job as a senior project engineer with civil engineering consulting firm raSmith in Cedarburg.
His extensive work on municipal projects led to questions about how and why cities make certain decisions, which spiraled into a fascination with urban and city planning.
Gasper ran for alderman in 2017 after feeling dissatisfied with the approval process for The Blues Factory, a $4.75 million blues-themed restaurant, tavern and performance venue along Port Washington's lakefront, which he felt wasn't scrutinized enough.
He was elected that year and reelected again in 2021.
Within his first year of being elected, he joined a group of council members who convinced the rest of the council to create five-year capital improvement plans that would allow the city to better plan for future costs.
At the top of Gasper's list of priorities was redoing the city's zoning code, which he said "had the best ideas of 1964," but now was outdated. It took several years to come together, he said, but the city eventually included money for it in the 2023 budget.
The rewrite is still in progress, but Gasper said he's expecting to get the new zoning code over the finish line over the summer.
Gasper said the City of Port Washington is strapped for cash, and a data center campus could offer a rare opportunity to bring in as much tax revenue as the rest of the city currently does.
Years of frugal policy-making on the council before he joined locked the city in to a levy limit that can't increase at a pace needed to maintain the city's basic infrastructure and services, he said.
'It means that we cannot raise taxes at all for inflation. So essentially, every single year, we're in the challenge of having to cut our budget, or at least cut our spending power commensurate with what inflation is.'
And that infrastructure is aging, he said. The water main, installed during the mid-20th century, is falling apart, many streets are crumbling after years of neglect, and the city's previous public safety buildings were in need of a major update.
As a result, the city has needed to borrow more money lately, which adds interest, financing fees and debt service fees.
He said the data center proposal poses an opportunity to overcome those structural issues.
So far, he said most of his constituents have expressed either indifference or support, but he also said he understands the feelings of skeptics and town landowners who have spoken out vehemently against the proposal.
'There are a lot of challenges to look into, and we need to make sure this really is right for the city, but it is such an opportunity.'
He also understands those who are tentative about establishing a tax incremental financing district for a project that a large company with deep pockets will ultimately inhabit.
At the same time, a TIF, as discussed by Cloverleaf, would cover the cost of extending city utilities out to areas of the town and in Knellsville that currently don't have utility connections, which would allow more places for new businesses.
In Gasper's eyes, the data center campus proposal is an epitomic example of the primary solution to the city's financial bind: increasing development that brings in more tax revenue.
As a member of the council, Gasper said he and other members have been supportive of new developments, including new subdivisions on the outskirts of town and transforming parking lots downtown into more tax-productive businesses.
But there's more to be done, he said.
'A downtown needs to be the vibrant core of a community," Gasper said. "We need to be able to have that core of the city be vibrant. We have a great downtown around summer, but during winter we're pretty much dead.'
A characteristic aspect of Gasper's approach to being an alderman can be gleaned in Facebook comment sections.
He often drops into comment sections under posts about city issues to answer questions, explain decisions, clarify concepts and correct misstatements.
His main goals are to help keep people informed and build transparency, he said.
His willingness to engage directly with residents comes from confidence in his level of knowledge on city services and the history of the city, he said. Gasper has lived in Port Washington his entire life, and his family has lived in Ozaukee County since the 1850s.
Schwalbe was also born and raised in Port Washington, in District 3. Now, he owns and operates the Schooner Pub, the iconic Port Washington bar at 114 N. Franklin St. in the downtown portion of the district.
Schwalbe studied finance and management at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and obtained a master's degree in business there. He then worked at Northwestern Mutual in Milwaukee before moving to Florida in 2014 to work at O'Connell Financial, a quasi-subsidiary of Northwestern Mutual in Tampa.
He moved back to Port Washington in 2020 during the pandemic. Then-owner of the Schooner Pub, Chico Poull, a good friend of Schwalbe's, had been running the business since 1977 and was looking for a partner to transition the restaurant to before his retirement.
Schwalbe and his wife bought the pub in 2021 and are still operating it seven days a week, even living above it.
Local government became an interest of Schwalbe's after attending city meetings to obtain permit and license approvals to operate the pub.
He also discovered that the historic bar, a cornerstone of the city built in 1903 overlooking the marina and Franklin Street, was an ideal place to build knowledge on city issues.
He hears varying perspectives on the direction of the city and many of the common council's decisions from residents, especially during the slower tourism months when more locals visit the bar.
He said the bar's regulars consist of people of all ages and walks of life, representing a full array of perspectives.
Four years into running the restaurant, serving pints and chatting with guests, Schwalbe feels he's got the business operating smoothly enough to pivot his focus outwards toward city government.
One of the largest sources of pub commentary lately stems from the data center campus proposal. Schwalbe said he hears from both sides: customers who live in the town and have concerns, and excitement from others looking forward to expanding the city's tax base and utility coverage.
Schwalbe said he falls right in the middle.
While he does want to expand the tax base and bring more jobs to Port Washington, he believes the project could totally upend the city's institutions, gobbling up public safety resources and flooding schools with new students, for instance.
In comparison with the data center proposal, Schwalbe is much more enthusiastic about developing small businesses like his own and expanding tourism downtown.
'Small businesses are what makes downtown Port thrive,' he said. 'And I think Port Washington is at a monumental point in time to build that up.'
He's generally been supportive of the development the current council has pursued, but he has a problem with the way it's been communicated, he said.
Schwalbe often uses the phrase, "conflict is a result of poor communication or missed expectations." He feels that recent debates over big-ticket items like the public safety building and data center could have been avoided with a more solid public communication strategy.
Contact Claudia Levens at [e-mail]. Follow her on X at @levensc13.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Port Washington City Council candidates differ on data center proposal