Building Plans/Tax Rolls

The plans maintained in City Records are received from the Development Center, which reviews plans as part of the approval process for permits for new construction, additions, or alterations. Not every type of permit requires plan submission, and not every building within City limits will have submitted plans for original or modified construction. You are much more likely to find plans submitted before the mid-1980s for commercial buildings, and especially for "public assembly"-type buildings such as theaters and houses of worship.

For some older or historically-significant buildings, the Wisconsin Architectural Archive in the Zeidler Humanities Room of Central Library may have plans or drawings.

Yes! The records of the Historic Preservation Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals case files often include building plans or architectural drawings as part of their supporting evidence. City Records staff can help you identify related files that have been scanned and added to the City's electronic document management system. Historic Preservation shares a suite with City Records, so they may also be able to assist you!

The answer to all of the above lies in the Secure Structure Ordinance, itself a local implementation of Wis. Stat. § 101.12(5). These statutes create two primary mandates for inspection of building plans:

1. All persons seeking to inspect plans must submit an application for each building to be inspected; this application must be transmitted to the property owner and plan submitter (if applicable) as notice.
2. In the case of  "secure structures" (a building determined by the City, State, or County to have 'extraordinary security requirements'), City Records staff may restrict access to plans based on a determination of possible harm which may result from inspection. (See the Secure Structure Policy for examples of secure structures.)

If a structure is determined to be "secure" under these statutes, the potential inspector may view the plans via provision of written permission from the plan owner. Depending on the type of plan to be inspected, City Records staff may also provide limited access to plans of secure structures (e.g. the requester may view, but not copy or photograph, the plans).

Because of the application requirement for viewing all plans, City Records regrettably is unable to make digital plan images available online to the general public at this time.

We have a limited number of surveys for properties which submitted them to the Development Center as part of the permitting process. Surveys may be provided for any property, regardless of whether the building itself is considered "secure", withouta letter of permission. However, a location or reproduction fee may still be incurred.

Additional surveys may be maintained by the Development Center's Property Information Section, or may be downloadable via the Milwaukee County Land Information Office's interactive mapping tool. If no survey exists at any of these sources, you may have to commission one with the assistance of a professional land surveyors. City departments, including DNS and City Records, do not provide surveying services, and are unable to provide recommendations for commercial surveyors. 

Depending on the time frame in which you are looking, there are three possible places to find building permits issued by the City of Milwaukee. You should always go to the Development Center first for access to permits:

• 1888-1999:  Permits created during this time period are available on microfiche at the City Development Center. City Records staff are hard at work digitizing our copies of these permits for ease of access and searchability, but the full scanning process is projected to extend through 2022. To be sure of access to permits of this era, head to the Development Center first!

• 2000-2016: Permits created during this time period are available digitally via E-Vault. City Records staff can verify that a specific permit has been captured by our system, but requestors must obtain copies from the Development Center directly.

• 2016-Present: All permits created after 2016 are stored in the Land Management System under the Building section of the database. Consult DNS staff for assistance searching LMS.

City Records will, as a rule, not have the most recent information about your tax bill or obligation. Please use the City Treasurer's MUNIS self-service system to view this information.

We have the following tax records available for inspection or copying at City Records:

• Tax Rolls (Real Estate and Personal Property), City of Milwaukee, 1958-2009 (Microfilm) and 2010-2018 (Electronic)
• Payment History Files/Purge Reports, City of Milwaukee, 1992-2015 (Microfilm and Electronic)
• Tax Rolls (Real Estate and Personal Property), Town of Granville, 1848-1956
• Tax and Assessment Rolls, Town of Lake, 1868-1954
• Tax and Assessment Rolls, Town of Wauwatosa, 1867-1956

Whether you need the Tax Rolls or Payment Histories (Purge Reports) depends on what information you are trying to ascertain.

• If you need to know how much tax was assessed on property for a given year, you want Tax Rolls.
• If you need to know how much tax was actually paid on property for a given year (including special assessments, interest and other fines), you want the Payment History Report.

If the property was assessed tax for the year in which you are searching, it still may not appear in the Payment History that year if the property owner or trustee had outstanding payments (property tax or special assessments) for that year, or if a lien had been placed on the property for any reason. The Payment History for that year will appear at the end of the Payment History file (if paid later that year), or in the Payment History file for the year in which the overdue payment or lien is resolved.