Sara Monty- City of Brookfield Alderperson

09/11/2026

I cannot believe it has been 25 years. In some ways, it feels like it’s just happened still. I have visited the National Park where Flight 93 went down. It is incredibly powerful and I encourage everyone to go if possible. I hope to someday visit the museum in NYC.
The memories of the hero’s of that day shall live forever.

Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, 2001, the United States was forever changed. Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives in the terrorist attacks, including the 40 passengers and crew members of Flight 93, whose courageous actions thwarted a planned attack on our nation’s capital.

Today, places across the National Park System help preserve the stories, memories, and history of that day and its aftermath. Along with Flight 93 National Memorial, other national parks, memorials, and historic sites preserve stories of those who responded, served, mourned, and helped communities come together in the days and years that followed.

On this 25th anniversary, take time to remember, reflect, and serve. Visit a national park, learn a story, or volunteer in your community in honor of those who were lost and those who answered the call to serve.

NPS Photo

09/11/2026

Let’s talk money- specifically campaign financing as this seems to be of particular interest to some people.

Join me in the Time Machine, back to 2010. Prior to this year, campaigns were governed by bi-partisan campaign financing restriction laws that date back to one of my favorite presidents- Good Old Teddy Roosevelt.

But in 2010 a lawsuit brought by a conservative non-profit group called Citizens United made its way to the Supreme Court. The court decide 5-4 that the group had a first amendment right to be able to spend its money promoting and airing a film criticizing Hillary Clinton. The court also used the chance this case gave it to strike down other laws governing campaign finance for corporations, non-profits and labor unions. There are now almost no legal restrictions on fundraising and spending for groups that claim to be separate from the candidates and this has lead to Super PACS.

Super PACS allow wealthy people to give as much money as they would like and also frequently have “dark money” funneled into them. Dark Money is funds whose origin is not disclosed. They do not report to candidates or campaigns and can spend whatever they want, however they want. They often have generic names or even names that would lead you to think they are supporting the other side. They can publish lies, push money into races in other states and cities and attempt to influence the voter however they want. Candidates especially at the local level, DO NOT HAVE ANY INPUT on if they choose to spend money on their campaign and what they put out there.

Let’s repeat that one more time. CANDIDATES DO NOT HAVE ANY CONTROL IF AN “OUTSIDE” PAC CHOOSES TO SUPPORT THEM AND HOW THEY SPEND THEIR MONEY!!!!!

So is it right or wrong? Who knows? It just is. And the only way to change it is by a constitutional amendment or another Supreme Court decision. Sometimes I’m sure it helps a candidate. Sometimes I think it hurts a candidate- no voter likes to get 4 pieces of mail on the same candidate in the same day. And with the often generic names some of these PACS use - it would not surprise me to learn that some play reverse psychology. I’ll mail out a ton of things that look like I support a candidate but I’ll use bad AI images of their city and say they have power to do and change things that they don’t . No mayor or local official is going to fix healthcare for the nation or be able to change the fundamental nature of a town overnight.

Going forward, if this is something that concerns you, think critically. Look at the required legal notice of who paid for the commercial or mailing you got. Pay more attention to the ones that are sent from a group with the candidates name in it. Know people are trying to manipulate you and do research into issues you are concerned about . And if all of this disgusts you, talk to your federal representatives about proposing an amendment. It needs a 2/3 vote in both the house and the senate to have the states look at it. Or talk to your state representatives and ask them to call for a constitutional convention to make an amendment regarding this. It takes 34 out of 50 states to make that happen. But your local city and county representatives have very little power or ability to change any of this.

09/09/2026

🚨 Lights Out Alert—white-hot bird migration in Wisconsin on Sept. 9! 🚨

An estimated 29.8 million birds are expected to migrate over Wisconsin on the night of Wednesday, September 9! 💡Turn off your outdoor lights 💡 to help them safely get where they're going!

About 80% of migratory birds travel at night. Artificial light can disorient birds and draw them into brightly lit areas, increasing their risk of colliding with windows. Turning off unnecessary outdoor lights from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. can help reduce these risks during migration.

Not every migration night is the same. BirdCast forecasts help us know when the biggest movements are expected, so we can be especially mindful of our outdoor lighting on those nights. BirdCast alerts are sent for the top 10% of migration nights, about 8–10 nights each season that collectively account for roughly half of all migration.

👉Share this post to spread the word!

Sign up for BirdCast migration alerts at the link in the comments to know when these peak nights are expected in your area.

(📷: graphic reads: "Wisconsin Lights Out Alert September 9, 2026: 29.8 million birds forecasted to fly over Wisconsin. Turn off outdoor lights 11pm-6am." A map from BirdCast shows a map of the US with Wisconsin fully highlighted in white to show high migration activity.)

09/07/2026

Yes- I am one of the silly people who went and waited in line at 7Brew today. The Brookfield line while long was organized and efficient. Thank you to the Brookfield Police Department for always being willing to help with traffic and crowd control when promotions are more popular than perhaps expected.

Customers are lining up for a limited-edition Brew Doh, 7 Brew’s version of the popular NeeDoh squishy toy.

09/04/2026

Friends- the city is providing recaps of meetings now! Please show them some love and while mine will still be more fun- lol-what a great step forward for them.
Plus if you don’t like me and my sense of humor - you have options to get the information now and options are good.

Recap of the September 1, 2026, Common Council meeting:
- Approved alcohol-related licenses for Elbow Room events, the Elmbrook Rotary Club, and for Raised Grain Brewing Co. for Wagfest at Mitchell Park.
- Approved a revised City financial policy.
- Changed the City’s polling places temporarily for the special election for County Executive.
- Approved an Agreement with the railroad for the quiet zone improvements at Brookfield Road.
- Approved a new TID and Project Plan for Old Republic’s new corporate headquarters.
- Adopted goals and short-term focus initiatives for the next two years in the Comprehensive Plan Implementation Priorities.
- Assigned two legislative referrals: 1) Codify the steps to replace an alderperson in a vacant seat; and 2) Review the City’s participation with Flock Safety.

To learn more details, visit the City's Agenda Center to review the Agenda and Draft Meeting Minutes, and the Comprehensive Plan Goals. Link in comments.

09/03/2026

Here’s all the news and fun from last nights common council meeting.

First off, it was lovely to have Mayor Ponto back. We’re all so glad he is able to resume his responsibilities and role.

There were no public comments last night but mad props to the citizens who attended the meeting. Government in our country should be done in the light and it is important to have citizens making sure we dot our I’s and cross our t’s. Thank you for being there.

A public hearing was held regarding the desire to change section 17 of the code to add better definitions of types of buildings and the ability to require a sanitary sewer flow analysis for new development in the portions of our city where we can’t add more p**p nuggets to the pipes. It is estimated that if this level of analysis is needed, the developer would need to have a consultant spend 5-10 hours at about $200 an hour rate, so it should not be a series impediment to a developer and will provide helpful information for the city. Hey kids- fun career alert: be a p**p consultant for a development company. Seriously, the vast, vast majority of what we can build and do as a community comes down to how many p**p nuggets fit in the pipe on the way to the wastewater treatment plant. In fact, it will be a requiring theme in tonight’s recap.

The consent agenda passed unanimously. The most exciting thing was that there were no bills over $50,000 that we had to approve payment for. I have never seen that before. Construction season must be wrapping up.

Next up was an agreement with the railroad company regarding the crossing at Brookfield Road and the need to relocate slightly the sidewalks. This also passed unanimously.

TID #10 was up next and the council was asked to consider if we would give a $2.75 million grant to help clear the land and prepare it for building a new headquarters for Old Republic Risk Management at the end of South Executive Dr. this will be a pay/go TID which means that the company will have a portion of it’s taxes go into a special account for the next 18 years and be rebated the back. With the projected cost of financing, the total city investment will be $4.86 million.

TID’s can be controversial. Some members of the council think that they are never needed or warranted. Most members rely on the “But/for” test which states that if we don’t help somehow - there is no way the project gets done. And some are in favor of using the tool possibly more than we do. And to be fair- all of us can make good points as to why our philosophy is correct. This one was a tough one to decide. I ultimately voted for it for a number of reasons but there were strong reasons to not do it also. (If you want to read those better articulated then I am doing- check out Alderman Halliquest’s page. I’ll link in the comments.)

For full transparency, here is what I prioritized in my decision making process. They will be taking down two really, really ugly buildings. The Brutalist architecture style does not age well. The new building will be at the end of Executive Dr across from the world headquarters of Landmark Credit Union and visible from the highway helping to make Brookfield look beautiful and profitable for new businesses. That area of the city is the most challenging to redevelop due to the p**p nugget situation and this will not add any more of them. Office buildings replacing office buildings is all we really can do there. Old Republic has been in Brookfield for 40 years and employs 350 employees. They are estimate to add around another 100 employees in the next few years. Those are people who may own or buy houses here, eat in our restaurants, shop in our shops and drive economic growth. The state of Illinois was actively recruiting this company and offering much, much more incentives than we were so I felt the threat that they would leave was real. This is the smallest amount of a TID I have seen and is not creating a windfall for anyone. The independent assessor did not find that it was a slam dunk on the But/For test. However, they did state that given the unique constraints on this particular property and other factors, it was very reasonable for the city to grant. The vote to approve it was 10-4. Alders Blackburn, Hallquist, Fugleberg and Kahler voted no.

Next, we looked at the short term goals for the next 2 years and some amendments were made to those by different Alders. Alder Kahler proposed working on modernizing and enhancing our digital communication and establishing an internal communication policy. It passed 12 - 2 with Alders Bloom and Marquardt voting no.

I proposed researching new tech options and the cost to improve the quality of the livestream we broadcast and improving our abilities to troubleshoot when problems arise during our meetings and broadcast. We also discussed looking into being able to offer our broadcasts to be watched more easily at a later point in time. Ultimately we did not add that part due to concerns with meeting different guidelines but I do believe that we will continue to work towards that without it being on the plan. I know I will continue to push for it. The research and looking into the cost and different options to improve the broadcast passed 11-3. Alders Owen, Mahkorn and Marquardt voted no.

Alder Blackburn had a number of suggestions. We voted 14-0 to have the police department start to participate in planning processes for updating the Target investment area plans and in transportation and land use planning. We voted 11-3 to remove a line that referred to possibly someday to build an interchange at Calhoun road and the highway. There are NO CURRENT PLANS to do this. Alders Stoll, Mahkorn and myself voted to keep the line.

A referral to codify how to replace a vacant alderman seat was submitted by Alder Reddin and myself to the L and L committee. A referral to look at the city’s use of license plate readers was submitted by Alder Kahler and assigned to committee.

We ended the night in closed session regarding the ongoing lawsuits against at the city.

As always, please let me know if I can help with anything and thanks for being invested in our community.

09/01/2026

Sorry for the late update on tomorrow’s agenda… back to school time is no joke.

Tomorrow Ye Olde Common Council shall gather at City Hall at 7:45. Please come and join us or watch the live stream. I’ll link it below.

First up will be public comment- where you can come and talk at us about anything you want for 3 minutes. Now it is helpful if you are in the right city but feel free to rage against the Daylight Savings Time, sing 99 bottles of beer in the wall (someday someone will and I will be so happy), or share any concerns we can actually help with.

There will be a public hearing tomorrow so the one rule is don’t talk about that during public comment but talk about it during the special hearing time. The public hearing is about 2 of my favorite things- fixing weird things in the city code by adding definitions in Section 17.04.020 and sewage by adding a requirement for a sewer flow analysis - or how many additional p**p nuggets will you be adding to the pipe to the required submittals part of Section 17.

Then it’s onto the consent agenda… we will pay some bills, promise we I’ll fund the library so Waukesha County doesn’t tax us for not doing that, and approve the budget development policy for the city. Then we are going to approve some beer licenses and an ordinance about what polling places will be open for the election for county commissioner. We cannot have them all open because not all of them are available on the short notice we were given regarding this election.

The non-consent agenda is full of fun- lol. As part of the train quiet zone they are working on for Brookfield Road Rehabilitation, we need to move some sidewalks. We need to decide if we will be creating TID #10. This would be to keep the company Old Republic Risk Management in Brookfield and help them build a new world headquarters. The TID is for $2.75 million which would be used to help demolish the current office buildings at 400 and 440 S Executive Drive. Those buildings are super ugly. The Brutalist Style of Architecture was really not great. This is also the smallest TIF I have seen requested so it will be an interesting conversation no matter what is decided. These building are in a sewer basin where we are very limited in what can be built basically the only thing that can go in there is office buildings. Finally, we’ll get to what we skipped in last meetings marathon- updates to the comprehensive plan. At least 4 Alders, have updates they would like to see.

Mayor Ponto (He’s Back! In a non creepy movie way.) will let everyone know about the referrals and requests for service. Alder Reddin and I have one going in for codifying how we handle Alder vacancies to hopefully make sure that residents have a chance to vote when possible and that there is no confusion to the process in the future.

Finally, you guessed it - another closed session about Broomfield Square and their silly taxes and lawsuit. Will this one be down before midnight? Dear God I hope so. As always, please let me know if I can help with anything or answer any questions.

08/24/2026

Very happy to share staff and the common council received this email today stating that Mayor Ponto has returned to work form his LOA.

Thank you so much to Gary Makhorn for serving in a thankless role of Acting Mayor for the summer. He stepped up and led the city and we should all be grateful. And he did it without any additional salary even though it must have taken many more hours then he would normally spend on city business.

Thank you to city staff who worked so hard this summer and I’m sure had struggles I don’t even know about. Thank you to the members of the Common Council for keeping the city moving during this interesting time. Many people went above and beyond during this time and to me that shows how much we all care about our city.

08/22/2026

Meeting Recap- All the other drama from the world’s longest meeting….

Ok, when we left off we had accomplished item 1 on the agenda. I do have to go back because we did actually have some residents come and comment at public comment- wahoo!!!! First up was a gentleman who was upset about a $10 fee the fire department charged for a safety inspection. I’m so glad he was first because when I tried to follow up as to what the fee was I learned that we do not charge one and he lives in the town. I am trying to find a way to contact him and let the poor man know he complained at the wrong meeting. At least he did not have to wait long to do so. We heard from 7 citizens upset about the plan to appoint for district 7. 3 residents talked about the need for changes for Burleigh though there was a mix of thoughts on what they thought was best. The need to regulate E-scooters and E-bikes was also talked about. Alder Kahler is working on drafting something to get this process started. We also her from a resident about FLOCK cameras. THANK YOU to everyone who came and spoke. Whether I agree with you, it is always helpful and I learn things or see a side that I might not have.

Ok it’s like 9:45 and time for the consent agenda- item 5G and 6B were pulled and the rest of the consent agenda passed.

Item 5G was an ordinance that was being changed to allow the president of common council to change committee assignments at any time. Sounds good, right but the at any time was worrisome because sometimes people get petty and mean. An amendment was made to allow a person who had a change to bring it before the council and have it overturned if necessary. I believe it then passed unanimously. It was getting late and my note taking started to get real lackadaisical.

Next up 6B - this was an ordinance about moving Burleigh Place to one crosswalk vs two and installing no parking signs on the east side of Sleepy Hollow Lane and Harrigan Dr. There were questions about why a particular cross walk was chosen to keep over the other one and would the no parking just be for school hours. It was a good conversation except people kept bringing the other ordinance to reduce the speed up. It’s like a big no in Robert’s Rules to talk about things other then the strict topic you are on. I know we were all getting a little punchy at that point. I think I might have even been like “Dudes, can we please stick to signs and crosswalks as I have a speech for speed and I would like to follow the rules. Finally we voted and the motion for crosswalks and signs passed.

Onto possibly dropping the speed limit on Burleigh Place to 25. This item passed out of committee 3-2 so it could not be placed on the consent agenda. It’s around 11 and God bless the 3 brave souls who are hanging with us in the audience. I brought in my framed map of Brookfield- yes I am a dork. In prep for the meeting I had driven by each school in Brookfield and had made notations as to the speed of the road they were on. Burleigh is the largest elementary school in the state with 960
Kids enrolled this year. There are around 250 students in 4K and 5K. While we have been lucky without having many serious crashes on that road, we know of numerous close calls and little ones are more likely to survive an accident at lower speeds. I’ve had 5 year old who stepped I to the street without looking or who bolted away from me - I am hopeful this action will keep those kids safer and push drivers who wish to go faster to Capital or North. The motion passed 9-5 with Alder’s Stoll, Owen, Marquardt, Blackburn, and Fugleberg voting no. I drove the street on Friday and noticed that the changes have already been made. Some things take forever in this city and some things go fast.

Luckily the next 2 items moving our meetings in November and December and consolidating polling places for the County Executive election due to some being unavailable. Look for more information on this coming soon and posted at the general election in November.

Now it’s 11:45 and we still need to talk about the comprehensive plan and hopefully make a few suggestions to work on for the next 2 years. But we can’t have an open meeting going into another day because that might be an open meeting violation. So thank goodness we postpone that action to the next meeting, and we head into closed session. Finally at 12:25 we are done. Put a fork in me.

Probably the most frustrating meeting I have ever been a part of but it was clear that everyone felt passionately about numerous issues. I am frustrated with some comments that I felt were disingenuous and the refusal to answer who made certain decisions but I am glad we were able to do some good.

08/19/2026

Official Statement-

Last night, in front of a room full of engaged citizens and after receiving emails begging us not to, the Common Counsel voted to disenfranchise 1/7th of our cities voters. I condemn this decision and am furious that a group of 7 decided that they had the right to deny voters a chance to determine their representative for 3 years and 8 months.

How did we get here? The seventh district has had a vacancy for 127 days. I was told when I asked shortly after the vacancy happened that we needed to let things “cool down.” During that time, Alderman Eric Fugleberg has admirably represented the district. At some point on June 12th, the city released a statement saying they were accepting applications to fill the vacancy FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE TERM. At no point, were members of the common council asked for their thoughts or approval of this plan.

The Licensing and Legislative Committee interviewed 5 applicants and made a choice. Last night, Common Council members were given their first opportunity to discuss the issue. Due to open meeting laws, we must be careful what we discuss outside of meetings and with other members of the council especially if we are in committees together. Many speeches were given. Many opinions were offered. The main arguments for making the appointment for a full term boiled down to two: this is the way we have always done it and we said it would be a full term in the posting - it would be disingenuous to change it now. Both myself and Alder Hallquist asked who made that decision. No answer was given. I have asked this question in private to numerous people before I asked it in the meeting. No one has been able or willing to give me an answer. Residents and elected officials deserve the right to know who is really running the city and making decisions.

In the end, 7 Alder’s voted for a full-term appointment vs appointing until April 2027 and adding this seat onto the spring election. Adding it onto that election would have resulted in little to no cost to the city and Mr Poglitsch could have run to fill the seat for the rest of the term. Reminder, one of the stated reasons he was the selected candidate was based on his running previously so this does not seem it would be a burden to ask.

These are the seven who voted against the amendment to fill the seat until the spring election.
Acting Mayor/ 5th district Alder Gary Mahkorn
2nd District Alder Bob Reddin
2nd District Alder Rick Owen
3rd District Alder Tom Szews
3rd District Alder Jason Anderson
4th District Alder Chuck Bloom the 3rd
5th District Alder Dean Marquardt

In my 2 years in council, I have listened to many members state that residents are not engaged and we need to do better about engaging with and informing residents about issues especially before and after the failed referendum. Yet when citizens are engaged, we ignore their requests.As I stated last night- “When you know better, you do better.”

I will be working with Alder Reddin to change the code and make sure this never happens again.

Unfortunately it will come too late for residents of district 7. In the year we celebrated the 250th anniversary of our nations independence, Brookfield Wisconsin has citizens once again having to endure taxation with chosen representation.

Unacceptable.