A lawsuit challenges Delafield's fire protection fee.
According to Greater Milwaukee Today/The Freeman, the suit challenges Delafield's fire fee.
At issue is whether Delafield's fire fee is lawful.
The Fee Dispute
The lawsuit puts Delafield's fire fee under legal scrutiny.
The suit contests Delafield's fire-fee policy.
The dispute preceded the lawsuit. Fabick GB LLC had previously filed a notice of claim against the city, which Delafield denied in April. That denial appears to have set the stage for the lawsuit.
How Delafield's Fire Fee Came to Be
Delafield's fire fee is the subject of a legal challenge.
A Legal Theory Already Tested Down the Road
Fabick GB LLC isn't the first Waukesha County property owner to make this argument — and it arrives with a recent precedent on its side. A Waukesha County judge, Zachary Wittchow, ruled in September that similar fire and EMS fees imposed by the villages of Pewaukee and Dousman were unlawful, according to TMJ4. That ruling held that residents could only be charged for emergency services they actually use, not services they might potentially need someday.
Wittchow reportedly said the fees were unlawfully imposed taxes. That case had been brought by a group of landowners and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, who challenged the fire fees in both Pewaukee and Dousman.
The Pewaukee and Dousman case offers a window into how uneven these fee structures can get. In Pewaukee, senior-living housing units were charged 475% more than single-family homes, according to the same Freeman reporting. Plaintiffs in that case — which included Hawthorne Place, a senior-living apartment owner, residential apartment owner KKNN Quail LLC, and commercial property owner Lee Bleecker — argued the fees amounted to taxes the villages had no legal right to impose, as detailed by WisBusiness. Dousman's fee, for its part, had been created after voters there rejected a 2022 referendum to raise property taxes for the Western Lakes Fire District, prompting the village to pass an ordinance charging properties based on size instead.
Attempts by the newspaper to reach Kathryn Sawyer Gutenkunst, an attorney representing the City of Delafield, were unsuccessful; calls placed Thursday and Friday were not returned. It remains to be seen how Delafield will respond to a legal theory that has already found traction elsewhere in Waukesha County.
