Waukesha, WI Business Licensing & Operations: Massage Establishments (2026)

19, is short and direct: it bars any individual from engaging in activity requiring a license under Wis. 02 unless that individual actually holds the license, and it separately bars any person or business from employing or contracting with an unlicensed individual for the same activity. In practice this means the City runs no independent massage-establishment or massage-therapist permit process of its own; the licensing mechanism is entirely the state's, and Waukesha's ordinance exists to give city police and the municipal court their own local charge to bring against an unlicensed practitioner or the business that hired one.

28: violation draws a forfeiture of not more than $1,000 for each separate offense, and the code specifies that each day a violation continues counts as a separate offense, so ongoing unlicensed operation compounds quickly. 19 was enacted by Ordinance 2024-20, effective January 21, 2025, which repealed and completely replaced an earlier version of the section that had itself been repealed in 2015 (the original enactment traced back to Ordinance #22-75). The rewrite pared the section down to the state-license cross-reference and penalty language quoted above; it sets no separate business hours, zoning restriction or establishment inspection scheme of the kind found in the City's adult-entertainment and mobile-food-vendor ordinances.