Whitefish Bay’s Local Blog

Author: Adam Stoffel

  • Whitefish Bay celebrates the 40th Great Pumpkin Festival display in Schoolhouse Park

    Whitefish Bay celebrates the 40th Great Pumpkin Festival display in Schoolhouse Park

    The Great Pumpkin Festival, one of Whitefish Bay’s most beloved traditions, returns Wednesday, Oct. 28 through Saturday, Oct. 31. This year’s co-chairs are Matt DeLange and Stephanie Thompson-Gee. I caught up with Matt – while sporting my new Pumpkin Fest sweatshirt, naturally – to find out what’s new. The short answer: more room, a later night on Halloween, a chance to win some cash, and a potential contingency plan for the Brewers.

    As recounted by the Whitefish Bay History Facebook Page, this year marks the 40th time the Great Pumpkin Festival has lit up Schoolhouse Park, though the tradition started earlier in someone’s front yard. In 1979, Gordy Falk, known locally as “the Pumpkin Man,” began carving pumpkins for his Fox Point yard. When his family moved to a Tudor on Carlisle Avenue in Whitefish Bay in 1981, he brought the hobby with him and carved more pumpkins every October. He lined them along the house and across the lawn, and the crowds that came to see them caused traffic problems on Carlisle and the surrounding streets. In 1987, the village asked Falk to move the display to Schoolhouse Park, and the Civic Foundation and the village have run it there ever since. The Civic Foundation has previously estimated as many as 20,000 visits are made to the festival in a single year.

    A collection of carved Halloween pumpkins with various facial expressions, including a smiling face and a sinister grin, illuminated in the dark.

    The essentials

    • Hours: 6–9 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, and 6–10 p.m. on Halloween night. That last hour is new this year.
    • Live music: Pat McCurdy (Wed.), Thursdays on Oakland (Thu.), The WhiskeyBelles (Fri.), Steve Beguhn (Sat.)
    • Food trucks, all four nights: Pandl’s, La Empanada Truck, Milwaukee Pretzel Company and Flips Donuts
    • Beer tent: new this year, hard cider for the non-beer drinkers

    Get your free pumpkin

    If you haven’t done this before, the Great Pumpkin Festival depends on YOUR participation! Here’s how it works: The event is held at Schoolhouse Park (across from the library). Pick up a free carving pumpkin starting Friday afternoon the 23rd (weather/farmer timing dependent), take it home, carve it and bring it back by Wednesday the 28th to display on the shelves for all to marvel at your artistry. No experience required! The Civic Foundation provides the lighting to turn your creation into a spooky (or silly) Jack-o’-lantern.

    All of the pumpkins come from local farms, more than 1,000 in total. Volunteers, mostly board members and their families, unload them from a flatbed and set them up in the pumpkin patch. Village DPW crews bring in the big trucks to move the giant pumpkins, which the master carvers handle onsite. “The Civic Foundation is all volunteers, separate from the village,” DeLange said, “but we can’t do anything without the village’s cooperation and support.”

    Trick-or-treating moves to Halloween this year

    Village trick-or-treating is normally held the Sunday before Halloween, so it rarely conflicts with the festival. This year Halloween falls on a Saturday, and the village moved trick-or-treating to 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on the 31st to match the rest of the North Shore. DeLange’s suggestion: “Go enjoy trick-or-treating, go home and rally, and come back out.” Expect more costumes than usual!

    A variety of carved pumpkins with illuminated faces arranged on wooden shelves, featuring spooky designs, next to a large, uniquely shaped pumpkin resembling a clown face on the ground.

    A bigger footprint

    DeLange said the biggest change this year is space. “We know how busy and crowded it can get, particularly when it’s dark and a lot of little kids running around,” he said.

    Fleetwood Place has always been closed to cars during the festival. The food trucks used to sit on the north side, though, so the street itself wasn’t much use to the crowd. This year the trucks move to the south side so their lines can spill into the street. The beer tent will move to the corner of Fleetwood and Idlewild. There will also be cocktail tables on the closed stretch of Idlewild for people who want somewhere to stand with a drink.

    Sweatshirts: you can still get one

    Black sweatshirt featuring orange pumpkin graphics and the text 'WHITEFISH BAY Great Pumpkin Festival'.

    If you missed the September pre-order, you still have a chance. A merch tent will carry a limited supply of the Great Pumpkin Festival sweatshirts, along with beanies, necklaces and a few other items, while supplies last.

    New: a 50/50 raffle on Halloween night

    The Civic Foundation is running its first 50/50 raffle, on Saturday only. Tickets are $2 each, and they’ll accept both cash and card. To participate, you will have to buy your tickets that night, and you need to be present at the drawing to win, or have handed your ticket to someone who is. Sales close about 30 minutes before the drawing so volunteers can count the pot. Winners will be announced from the stage during Steve Beguhn’s break, some time between 8:30 and 9 p.m.

    The Brewers factor

    Yes, the Civic Foundation knows. If the World Series goes long, Game 5 falls on the festival’s opening Wednesday, and Games 6 and 7 fall on Friday and Halloween night.

    “We are fully aware and working with the village on how to make sure we can have something where people can watch it,” DeLange said. He has reached out to the village and expects to meet with village staff and the police department soon. There are no concrete plans yet. Watch the Foundation’s social media for updates, or hope the Brewers finish it in four!

    Also new: the Historical Society is back

    The Whitefish Bay Historical Society, which is restarting after over a decade of dormancy, will have a table near the beer and merch tents. Stop by to see what they’re working on and grab a cup of hot cocoa.

    So grab your pumpkin, sharpen your carving skills and we’ll see you at the park. It’s going to be a gourd time.

  • What the Referendum Buys Beyond the Middle School, Plus a Pleasant State Aid Surprise

    What the Referendum Buys Beyond the Middle School, Plus a Pleasant State Aid Surprise

    Key takeaways

    • State aid to the district came in $538,000 above July’s estimate. Whitefish Bay will get $16.3 million, up $828,746 (5.34%) from last year.
    • The $39.5 million of the referendum that isn’t the middle school. About $35.5 million would replace the high school’s entire heating and cooling system and add sprinklers. That includes temperature and humidity control in the Field House, Memorial Gym and auditorium.
    • Cumberland and Richards would get sprinklers for the first time in their original buildings. The $4 million would cover 100% of both schools and add new fire alarms with voice evacuation. Broader elementary updates would wait for potential future referendum.

    Two school finance topics that I found interesting ahead of the November 3 vote: peeling a layer back on where the non-middle-school referendum money would go and final state aid numbers that came in well above expectations.

    The referendum beyond the middle school

    Nearly all of the referendum conversation has been about the middle school, which makes sense since that’s $68.4 million of the plan. But another $39.5 million would go to the high school, Cumberland and Richards. When going back through the official scope language (“mechanical system replacement,” “building infrastructure and capital maintenance”), I realized I didn’t fully understand what most of it meant in practice.

    Here’s what that money buys, based on answers from the district and its construction team.

    Cumberland and Richards: $4 million

    • Sprinklers where there are none. The original portions of both schools were built before codes required sprinklers and still don’t have them. Only newer additions, like the 2009 Great Rooms, are covered. The referendum would put sprinkler coverage on 100% of both buildings.
    • New fire alarms. Aging alarms would be replaced with a system that adds voice evacuation, broadcasting emergency directions throughout the building.

    A June fire in Milwaukee points to why the sprinklers matter. Milwaukee’s Lincoln Avenue School was completely destroyed by fire and had no sprinkler system. Milwaukee’s fire chief said sprinklers would have spared the building.

    What’s not included: the broader elementary renovations from April’s plan, including HVAC updates amongst others. The board has said a future referendum will likely be needed to address those items.

    High school: $35.5 million

    • A complete HVAC replacement: boilers, chillers, air handlers, pumps, piping and controls, with air conditioning in all classrooms and core learning spaces.
    • Gyms and auditorium: The district confirmed the work would fix the heat and humidity problems in the Field House, Memorial Gym and auditorium, giving them more access year-round. The current setup has been especially troubling during the warmer months when humidity has rendered the floors in the Field House unsafe for athletic activity.
    • Better air quality: more fresh outside air and MERV-rated filtration, a hot topic during COVID. Ventilation and filtration upgrades like these have been linked to reduced spread of airborne viruses in schools.
    • Supporting work for HVAC: electrical upgrades, building automation controls, roof reinforcement for heavy new equipment, and plumbing tied to the mechanical systems.
    • Sprinklers and new fire alarms throughout the building, much like those in the elementary schools.

    If the referendum passes, expect about three summers of heavy construction for those items to be completed.

    The bottom line

    The total project costs $107.9 million. Voters are being asked to approve $90 million in borrowing, and the district would cover the other $17.9 million from reserves. The estimated tax impact is $125 per $100,000 of value, or about $857 a year on the village’s average home. More details can be found at wfbreferendum.org.

    State aid comes in $538,000 higher than expected

    This summer I wrote that Whitefish Bay was projected to get a modest bump in general state aid for 2026-27 – noteworthy because 60% of districts expected a drop in money from the state. The final numbers are in, and the bump is a lot bigger than expected.

    The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction certified aid amounts on October 15. Whitefish Bay will receive $16,346,606. That’s $828,746 (5.34%) more than last year, and $537,899 more than the July 1 estimate.

    What it means for taxpayers

    State aid doesn’t give the district more money to spend. Under Wisconsin’s revenue limits, the amount the district can raise is capped, so more aid means less has to come from the property tax levy.

    The $828,746 increase over last year works out to roughly $170 per residential property in the village, money that won’t have to come from local taxes. The school board sets its final levy later this fall, which will show what actually lands on tax bills.

    How the neighbors fared

    DistrictState Aid – October CertifiedChange, 2025-26 to 2026-27 certified
    Glendale-River Hills$2,189,901+14.29%
    Shorewood$7,113,364+5.84%
    Whitefish Bay$16,346,606+5.34%
    Nicolet UHS$731,670–11.43%
    Fox Point J2$1,432,138–15.00%
    Maple Dale-Indian Hill$73,571–15.00%

    Statewide, 151 districts gained aid, 261 lost aid and 9 were unchanged.

    Source: https://dpi.wi.gov/sfs/aid/general/summary

    Election day is Tuesday, November 3rd.

  • Recent History of Property Taxes in Whitefish Bay

    Recent History of Property Taxes in Whitefish Bay

    Key Takeaways:

    • The village levy grew 35% in fifteen years. Inflation grew 48%. In inflation adjusted dollars taxes have gone down about 9% since 2010.
    • The school district — the largest line on your bill — barely moved at all. Only a 4% increase over fifteen years. Adjusted for inflation, that’s a decline of roughly 30%.
    • That era appears to be over. Every one of the twelve sample houses saw its bill rise between 8.5% and 8.9% in December 2025, the first across-the-board real increase in the past 15 years.

    We all pay a lot in property taxes, right? That’s a fairly uncontroversial stance. But how much more are we paying than we used to? What does the recent history look like? Those are questions I’ve recently been pondering, so I went looking for those answers.

    Before we get too far into this, recall that our property tax bills include payments to five different entities: the village, the school district, Milwaukee Area Technical College, Milwaukee County and the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District. 

    Using Milwaukee County’s Public Portal, Whitefish Bay’s annual budget documents, and the school district’s levy summaries, I went back 15 years with three questions: how have the village and school district levies compared with inflation, and how have our total tax bills compared with inflation.

    First, the village levy

    In 2010, the Village of Whitefish Bay collected $10.2 million from property taxpayers. On the bill mailed in December 2025, it collected $13.8 million. That’s an increase of 35% over fifteen years.

    Thirty-five percent sounds like a lot right up until you set it next to inflation, which ran 48.1% over the same stretch. Measured in constant dollars — what the money will actually buy — the village is collecting about 9% less from us than it did in 2010.

    Here it is at five-year intervals:

    YearVillage levyChange since 2010Inflation since 2010
    2010$10,252,464——
    2015$10,762,595+5.0%+7.9%
    2020$11,820,885+15.3%+18.9%
    2025$13,841,152+35.0%+48.1%

    The village stayed under the inflation line at every checkpoint, but it hasn’t been a straight line. Between 2015 and 2020 the village very nearly kept pace — three-tenths of a point behind inflation over those years. Nearly all the ground was lost in two places: the early 2010s, and the stretch after 2021, when the levy grew faster in nominal terms than at any other point here (17.1% over five years) and still fell six points behind inflation.

    Second, the school district’s levy

    The school district is the largest line on your tax bill, and if the village’s levy looks restrained, the district’s barely moved at all. In 2010 the Whitefish Bay School District levied $21.5 million. For 2025-26 it levied $22.4 million — an increase of 4% in nominal dollars against that same 48.1% inflation.

    Tax yearSchool levyChange since 2010Inflation since 2010
    2010$21,543,990——
    2015$22,013,663+2.2%+7.9%
    2020$21,348,805−0.9%+18.9%
    2025$22,404,435+4.0%+48.1%

    Adjusted for inflation, the district is collecting about 30% less than it did fifteen years ago — more than three times the village’s real decline. Put another way, the village’s levy grew more than eight times as fast as the district’s over the same fifteen years.

    The recent movement is where the story has shifted. The district’s levy fell to $20.2 million in 2024-25, then jumped 11% in a single year to its current level.

    That’s a fairly exceptional stretch of fiscal efficiency, though it’s fair to say that it could be foreshadowing a need for community investment to keep up with aging infrastructure and rising costs.

    Finally, the household tax bills

    So two of the largest pieces of your bill both grew well under inflation, and the biggest one hardly grew at all. What did that add up to on an actual bill?

    The data isn’t sitting in a tidy spreadsheet anywhere I could get my hands on. So I took a more reasonable route: I pulled one house from each of the village’s twelve voting wards and tracked its total tax bill every year back to 2010.

    WardAddress20102025ChangeAt inflationReal change
    16100 Block Bay Ridge$10,772$12,004+11.4%$15,951−24.7%
    26100 Block Berkeley$16,986$18,814+10.8%$25,152−25.2%
    35500 Block Bay Ridge$5,764$5,983+3.8%$8,535−29.9%
    4600 Block Beaumont$8,057$9,653+19.8%$11,931−19.1%
    55300 Block Shoreland$6,590$6,408−2.8%$9,759−34.3%
    61100 Block Lexington$12,827$15,038+17.2%$18,993−20.8%
    75100 Block Kent$4,969$6,078+22.3%$7,358−17.4%
    84900 Block Wildwood$6,508$7,713+18.5%$9,636−20.0%
    94800 Block Hollywood$4,828$4,878+1.0%$7,149−31.8%
    104800 Block Larkin$9,959$10,356+4.0%$14,747−29.8%
    114700 Block Sheffield$5,576$6,233+11.8%$8,257−24.5%
    124700 Block Wilshire$20,530$18,598−9.4%$30,401−38.8%

    Twelve houses is a small sample, so don’t read too much into any single row. The trend is the point, and the trend is consistent: not one of them kept pace with inflation, and every one is paying less in real terms than in 2010 — by 17% at the low end and 39% at the high end in this sample.

    Two of them, on Shoreland and on Wilshire, pay fewer nominal dollars today than they did fifteen years ago! Not inflation-adjusted dollars. Actual dollars.

    Combined, these twelve bills grew 7.4% over fifteen years. You can check your own house’s taxation history at this link. Remember that everyone’s situation is a bit different. If there’s been an addition to your house or if the house has been torn down, you are going to see a very different number.

    The decade of declining nominal change

    One striking pattern in the data isn’t the endpoints. It’s actually the middle.

    From the December 2016 bill through the December 2024 bill, the combined tax on these twelve houses fell in nominal terms — from $118,777 to $111,383, a drop of about 6%. Over that same window the CPI rose 30.9%. Adjusted for inflation, these twelve households saw their tax burden shrink by over a quarter in eight years.

    At some point those costs would likely require some sort of catch-up, unless taxpayers decide to start demanding cuts in services (or we decide to ramp up density). And it appears that shift may have already started. Of the twelve houses above, every single 2025 tax bill rose between 8.5% and 8.9%.

    What to make of it

    Whitefish Bay has a reputation as an expensive place to own a home, and in absolute numbers that’s true — individual residential property bills run from a few thousand dollars to $104,000, though about two-thirds of the village paid less than $10,000 this year. But the fifteen-year trajectory is not the one that reputation necessarily implies.

    Assuming inflation continues at a decent pace as it currently is, it’s fair to say the next 15 years is unlikely to look like the past 15 — and it’s reasonable to say that trend has already changed as of the most recent tax bill. Between the potential school referendum, the cost of replacing aging water infrastructure, and the county’s courthouse project, just to name a few, there are likely to be more increases ahead. That may not help the sting of those increases, but a look back at how little our taxes have risen may help put into perspective how inevitable they may end up being.

  • Two Finishing Touches Coming to the Sendik’s Block

    Two Finishing Touches Coming to the Sendik’s Block

    Most of you have been inside the new Sendik’s by now. You’ve probably noticed that the big pieces are done. The store is open, the lot is striped, and traffic has started to settle into its new rhythm. You can also see that the landscaping, the traffic light at Silver Spring and Consaul, and the imminent opening of Tudi’s are still on the to-do list. Two smaller but noticeable items at opposite corners of the site are too: a pocket park, and a new “Village of Whitefish Bay” monument sign at Silver Spring Drive and Lake Drive.

    A little green in the corner of the lot

    A construction site featuring dug-up ground with gravel and dirt, marked with wooden stakes and colored flags. In the background, parked vehicles and residential buildings are visible under a clear sky.

    The first is what Sendik’s has called a small pocket park tucked into the northwest corner of the Sendik’s parking lot. The renderings show a triangle of lawn crossed by a small curving walkway, with a few benches set among low hedges and shade trees. A black fence separates it from the parking lot behind it, and a lamppost stands at the corner. For those wondering about the old weather vane atop the former store, that item will call this corner its new home.

    A 3D rendering of a shopping center parking lot with landscaped green areas, benches, and trees, showing parked cars and a pedestrian walkway.

    It won’t be a destination park, but it’ll be a place to sit for a few minutes with a coffee or wait for preschool to let out across the street.

    The sign: a gateway to the Village

    The second item generated significant discussion at the village level. The CDA, BID, ARC and Village Board all had input on the design (much of it differing!) and a final design has now been finalized. The sign will replace the former Whitefish Bay village sign at the intersection of Silver Spring and Lake Drive. A matching sign will also replace the current one at the corner of Silver Spring and Lydell when the Bank of America development is constructed in the coming years. 

    Negotiated alongside the infrastructure updates at both sites, the signs are being paid for by the private development projects, not by the village.

    The board settled on one consistent design for the village monument signs with a distinct look rather than one that matches whichever building sits behind each sign. The final design includes:

    • Red brick in a blended palette meant to complement nearby buildings, though not matching Sendik’s brick exactly
    • Pyramid-style caps on the columns
    • “Village of Whitefish Bay” centered on the sign face
    • A blue village logo in the Blue Dukes royal blue
    • “EST 1892” centered in the side column

    There could be additional sign updates in the coming years with potential revisions to Lake Drive as well as the Hampton and Santa Monica intersection.

  • Whitefish Bay Grad Bellore hung it up this summer: An improbable pro career ends after 15 NFL seasons

    Whitefish Bay Grad Bellore hung it up this summer: An improbable pro career ends after 15 NFL seasons

    While watching last week’s Packers-Jets game, I was curious whether former Blue Duke and ex-Jet Nick Bellore was still in the NFL. He’s been in the league so long that he’d become a kind of background fixture. Just a Whitefish Bay kid you’d spot on kick coverage in a Jets, 49ers, Lions, Seahawks and, finally, Commanders jersey. Surely, I thought, he’s still out there somewhere.

    Turns out, for the first time in 15 years, he isn’t. Not on the football field, at least, as he stepped back in July of this year.

    The Washington Commanders placed Bellore on the reserve/retired list in July, two days before the team’s first training camp practice (they signed former Packer Rasul Douglas to take his roster spot the same day). He had a year left on the two-year deal he signed with Washington in March 2025.

    A resume nobody predicted

    From his Pro Football Reference page, here are the numbers: 232 games, 17 starts at linebacker and fullback, 280 tackles, five tackles for loss, a sack, three forced fumbles, and six fumble recoveries. Two Pro Bowls, in 2020 and 2023, both earned on special teams. He logged 4,387 special teams snaps across his career, against 857 on defense and 235 on offense. Spotrac puts his career earnings a little north of $20 million. He never played fewer than 13 games in a season.

    Bellore holds the record for most NFL seasons played by any Central Michigan Chippewa.

    Now a quick rewind to April 2011.

    “They don’t always get found”

    Two weeks before that year’s draft, Journal Sentinel NFL writer Bob McGinn wrote a piece on Bellore under the headline “Whitefish Bay’s Bellore awaits the draft.” McGinn had polled eight NFL scouts on where the Central Michigan middle linebacker would go. Their guesses ranged from the third round to “seventh or free agent.” One AFC scouting director praised his production and toughness in the same breath as he flagged the problem: a 4.8-second forty. Smart, tough, always around the ball — but undrafted, when the weekend finally came.

    Bellore told McGinn he’d be fine either way, and closed the interview with a line that reads differently now than it did then. He said there were plenty of good players in Wisconsin, but “they don’t always get found.”

    It’s safe to say he went out there and made sure someone would find him. He signed with the Jets on July 26, 2011, and made the opening roster. He played in every game as a rookie and led the team with 31 special teams tackles. In 2012 he caught a pass off a Tim Tebow fake punt and gained 23 yards on it. By 2014, Pro Football Focus had named him an All-Pro special teamer.

    Then he just kept going. Four years with the Jets, two with San Francisco, two in Detroit, five in Seattle, two in Washington — most of it on one-and-two-year deals, every one of which he had to earn again the following August. Fifteen years of being the guy the roster cuts were supposed to reach and never did.

    Before all that: seven varsity letters and a Duke Pride Award

    Whitefish Bay has sent a handful of athletes to the professional ranks. It has not sent many like Bellore, and the school’s hall of fame bio makes the case plainly: one of the most decorated players in Blue Dukes history.

    He was a three-sport athlete — football, track and hockey — and collected seven varsity letters across the three. He started three years on the football team and captained it as both a junior and a senior. He won the Duke Pride Award in 2005 and again in 2006. He took first team All-Conference honors both of those seasons, and was named North Shore Conference Defensive Player of the Year as a senior in 2006, a year in which the Blue Dukes football program credits him with 148 tackles, 20 tackles for loss and six sacks.

    The Wisconsin Football Coaches Association named him honorable mention All-State as a junior and first team All-State as a senior.

    He also, as McGinn noted, played that senior season hurt — he tore ligaments in his hand in the first game after committing to Central Michigan the previous July, and played through it. He graduated a semester early, enrolled at Central Michigan in January 2007 with a 15-credit load, and was starting at middle linebacker almost immediately.

    The college career followed the same script. He started 51 of 52 games. He set the CMU freshman record for tackles with 102 and ranks among the top three tacklers in CMU history. He was the Chippewas’ Defensive Player of the Year in 2008 and 2009 and earned All-Conference honors from 2008 through 2010.

    So: a Whitefish Bay kid who went undrafted, ended up playing 15 years in the NFL, and made two Pro Bowls.

    Way to represent Whitefish Bay, Nick. Enjoy whatever adventures retirement has in store!