Appleton Common Council District 6 Update for December 7, 2022

Hello District 6 Neighbors, 

It’s been a while since I’ve sent out an update – after budget adoption, things tend to get a bit quiet around City Hall until the end of the year. 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and that we’re not getting in too much of a tizzy over the upcoming holidays. (To be honest, that was directed more at myself.) 

The last Common Council meeting (November 16) was brief. Only two items were separated for individual votes. 

We voted to approve a special use permit for (another) car wash on E. Calumet St. I don’t love the idea that developers believe the best use of land around the city is for car washes, but the city and the Council have limited recourse when it comes to allowed uses of private property, as long as the plan meets legal requirements.  

The street reconstruction plan for Linwood Avenue between College Avenue to Summer St. was approved. 

The balance of the agenda included the recommendation to keep alder salaries the same for 2024. The salary will increase to $6750 in April of next year when the new Common Council is sworn in. This was from action taken in 2021. There had been a proposal to roll the amount of the parking pass into the salary and remove the parking passes as a benefit to alders, but that failed in committee.  

The recommended Community Development Block Grant allocations were also approved. These are federal funds administered by the City of Appleton Community and Economic Development Department, which receives a small fee for said administration. 

Prior to tonight’s Common Council meeting, we will have a special Human Resources and Information Technology Committee meeting to approve a request to “over hire” of a Professional Communications Specialist in the Police Department. These employees staff the front desk at the Police Department and are often the first contact with the public. The request is to retain the full-time employee for a short time to provide training to the two new part time employees. Funding will be from vacant salary dollars. 

The mayor has presented the recommendation to hire Kara Homan, currently the development and land services director for Outagamie County as the new Director of Community and Economic Development, replacing Karen Harkness who is retiring as of January 3. I am familiar with Ms. Homan’s work for Outagamie County and I believe that she will be terrific in this position. Her resume is linked here: http://cityofappleton.legistar.com/gateway.aspx?M=F&ID=a9797bf5-3ecc-4900-9d90-92bdfd468c8d.pdf 

There will also be a public hearing on the “Proposed Public Needs Assessment Amendment” tonight. This was a change to the “fee-in-lieu of land” schedule recommended by the Parks and Recreation Committee last month. In order to increase the amount of parkland as the city grows, developers either pay a fee based on the number of homes in a new subdivision or dedicate property to parkland. The current schedule has been in place since 2009. The new proposal is $1100 per single family unit or $925 per multi-family unit or 789 square feet of land per single family unit or 667 square feet per multi-family unit. 

An item I expect will generate some discussion is the expansion of the Outagamie County Northwest Landfill Expansion. The Siting Committee included members of all the affected jurisdictions and legal counsel. The agreement includes many mitigation measures – from the City Attorney’s memo to the Council:  

The Committee negotiated with the County with respect to many different factors relating to the future operation of the landfill in the expanded area. While the County is required to meet certain basic operation requirements as set forth in the Wisconsin Administrative Code and elsewhere, the municipalities were able to negotiate for additional mitigation efforts above and beyond those basic requirements. Some of those include the installation of a horizontal and vertical gas collection system throughout the northwest landfill that is intended to capture most of the gases created and process them onsite for renewable energy; implementation of a perimeter odor mitigation system using some of the most current and effective technology; and continued use of a predator bird service to assist with dispersing and repelling seagulls. In addition, the municipalities negotiated a $1.5 million grant from the County to be distributed over a 15-year period to the municipalities based upon percentage allocations to each municipality as detailed in the agreement. 

The full agreement is linked here: http://cityofappleton.legistar.com/gateway.aspx?M=F&ID=f6c9e7db-5e05-439f-b30c-e088a06aa79d.pdf 

Most committees will be meeting next week, but I suspect that we will have a limited schedule for the holiday weeks. 

A final note that alders in odd districts (1,3,5,7,9,11,13 and 15) could begin collecting signatures on December 1 for the spring election in April. I have seen a couple of my colleagues announce their intentions to run for re-election, but we will know the whole slate by January 3 when signatures or a notification of non-candidacy must be filed.