SUN PRAIRIE RISING

By Bill Connors

Late last week, Governor Evers signed into law 2025 Wisconsin Act 173, which is known as the “truth in planning” law. It gives local governments two years in which to amend their Comprehensive Plans to identify areas where additional housing development is permitted, the levels of housing density permitted in those areas, projections for the number of housing units that need to be constructed in the community in the next 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, etc., and demonstration that the housing areas and densities will enable the production of the targets for additional housing. Then if a developer proposes a housing development consistent with the Comprehensive Plan, the law REQUIRES the local government’s governing body (e.g., the Sun Prairie City Council) to grant annexation and/or rezoning to allow the proposed housing development to occur–regardless of how many local residents vocally opposed the proposed housing development.

Before that two-year deadline arrives, it is likely that the Sun Prairie City Council already will have rezoned the entire city with zoning districts that include residential zoning districts that make it easier to produce more housing units, so there probably won’t be much need for developers to request rezoning in order to do housing development on land already within the city (unless that land was temporarily rezoned for agricultural use). But the new state law will impact land that could be annexed into the city for housing development.

As an inducement to the League of Wisconsin Municipalities not to oppose this bill, the law also includes a provision that says when a TID is shutting down after paying off all of its financial obligations, the governing body of a local government (e.g., the Sun Prairie City Council may extend the duration of that TID for two years (instead of the one year previously permitted).