What's it like to go through 100+ years of belongings? The Wisconsin Policy Forum is doing that now before moving to a new office

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- The biggest item on a table inside this downtown office immediately catches the eye; an atlas charting Milwaukee County as it looked in 1876 is one of the most prized possessions here.

It's the kind of item the Wisconsin Policy Forum is carefully packing as it prepares to move to a new location for just the third time in its 113-year history.

As the non-profit organization packs more than a century's worth of local government records, CBS 58 was able to view many of the documents before they're hauled to the forum's new home in the Walker's Point neighborhood.

These days, Wisconsin Policy Forum studies issues facing both state and local government, providing suggestions for elected leaders to consider.

However, the organization began with a focus solely on Milwaukee city government.

The forum's president, Jason Stein, said the records provide a valuable reference point today. Believe it or not, not everything is digitized, so the forum will sometimes turn to past budget outlooks from the 1920s or '30s for context when putting together its annual review of the city budget.

"How has the city's indebtedness changed over time?" Stein said. "How's the level of debt that it's carried changed over time? Well, if we need to do that, going back to the year that I was born, we could do it."

Over the span of more than a century, the forum expanding its research to covering the suburbs and surrounding communities.

When CBS 58 was at the office, our crew watched as Stein went through a report put together on Fox Point during the early 1980s.

After merging with the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, the Public Policy Forum became the Wisconsin Policy Forum in 2018.

While there's now a statewide focus, the work remains as it was in 1913.

"I think there's still very much the same spirit that existed then," Stein said. "Which is, at the time, it was the Forum was conceived of as something that would serve the public and improve government but not necessarily be in a junkyard dog mentality towards government. That, in other words, it would work with government to try to identify problems, identify solutions and improve the community."