Appleton Common Council District 6 Update for January 7, 2023
Happy New Year, District 6 Neighbors!
I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and are headed into the New Year refreshed and ready to keep at least some of those resolutions.
We’re settling back in after a LOT of holiday travel and time with family. It is wonderful to share the holidays with loved ones, but also nice to settle back into a routine.
The Common Council also took some time off – we canceled the normal January 4 meeting as there were no committee meetings on Christmas week.
During the last meeting of the council on December 21, the mayor presented, and the council confirmed seven nominees for the new Advisory Panel on Sustainability and Climate Resilience. I served on the original task force with two of the nominees and am impressed by the qualifications of the others and look forward to seeing the ideas that this panel brings to the city. We also confirmed new appointments and reappointments to several other boards and commissions. I am grateful to members of our community who share their time and expertise in these important volunteer positions.
We also recognized retiring Director of Community and Economic Development Karen Harkness and Police Chief Todd Thomas for their years of service to the city. I wish them the very best in whatever comes next. I was happy to attend the swearing-in ceremony for new Police Chief Polly Olson. Chief Olson began her career with APD in 2001 and rose steadily through the ranks, becoming Assistant Chief in 2021. I wish her the greatest success – I also consider her an honorary District 6 resident as her in-laws became residents of the district after last year’s redistricting.
There were a few items separated from the agenda for individual consideration. The proposed new fee schedules for Parks and Recreation programs was amended to remove the fee increase for a youth summer swim pass, and the “early bird” date for summer swim passes was moved back to the first Thursday in June. After hearing from the Parks Department that they did not feel that these changes would have a significant impact on revenue, I was happy to vote in favor of the change. Other increases in fees were passes as discussed in the last update.
The item that caused the most discussion was a resolution that proposed (yet again) to eliminate parking passes for alders. There were a couple of attempts to do this during the budget process – the last being to reduce the amount by 90% and institute a (cumbersome, in my opinion) reimbursement system. Alder Firkus proposed an amendment that would allow the funds for any parking pass turned in by an alder to go to the Police Department budget to “aid officers in assisting homeless persons with challenges caused by winter weather and related community safety expenses.” I voted for this amendment because it retains the parking passes for alders who need and use them. The $7200 amounts to .14% of the 2023 concrete paving budget, while that amount has the potential to make an actual difference to the police department. Alder Firkus actually got the idea for the amendment when he saw a story about Appleton police officers purchasing hand warmers and clothing for people out of their own pockets. I turned in my city parking pass this week and purchased one on my own, which I will keep just for the winter months.
Before I move to next week’s committee agendas, I’d like to discuss an email that I received from a neighbor. This appears to have been sent to a number of area residents, including some of you on this email list. The email was in regard to the reconstruction of Alvin Street, which was originally scheduled for 2023. The storm sewer work was done this year. The postponement of the street reconstruction was actually done in the 2022 budget:
2021 budget:
2022 budget:
2023 budget:
Unfortunately, a few street reconstructions got moved out over the past couple of years. The delays are the result of budget constraints. As I’ve noted several times in these messages, we are trying to reduce the rate of growth in the city’s debt, and the failure of the operating budget to keep pace with rising costs of construction have causes us to move from financing over 80% of street construction with operating funds in 2005 to just over 20% in 2020. The Department of Public Works has to make decisions based on the availability of funding and the relative condition of the streets.
The wheel tax funds about 13% of street construction – it was never intended to fully fund construction, but to replace street assessments where the residents were billed for reconstruction of their street. The city did engage in a study of a transportation utility, where street construction would be treated like the water or stormwater; i.e., user fees would be the source of financing. In the initial presentation, it appeared that residential properties would tend to pay less than under the wheel tax under a transportation utility because the fees would be based on a trip calculation. Businesses (who often escape a wheel tax because it is only assessed on cars and light trucks and because they can register vehicles in other jurisdictions) would pay a larger share because of the greater number of trips they generate. However, as the writer notes, other municipalities have been sued by business groups and the study has been halted pending the outcome in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
While the budget is public and there are listening sessions and a public hearing on the budget each year, I understand that it is a lot to go through – getting through all 679 pages of detail took me many hours. For my part, I will make a better effort to highlight changes that will affect our district when I write about future budgets.
I, along with the mayor, am always open to hearing from district and city residents about your concerns. However, given that the city is being squeezed by the failure of revenue sharing from the state to keep pace with income tax collections while the state is sitting on a $6 billion surplus, I would also suggest contacting your state representatives. If the state passes a small income tax cut while cities are being forced to increase property taxes and reduce services or pass referendums to fund public safety and schools, our citizens are not better off. To me this is a non-partisan issue.
Appleton’s District 6 is split between Wisconsin Assembly Districts 56 and 57 and we are all in Senate District 19. You can confirm the district by putting your address into the “My Property Info” section of the city website and checking the “Voting” tab:
Rachael Cabral-Guevera, Senate District 19
(608) 266-0718
Sen.Cabral-Guevara@legis.wisconsin.gov
Dave Murphy, Assembly District 56
(608) 237-9156(888) 534-0056
Rep.Murphy@legis.wisconsin.gov
Lee Snodgrass, Assembly District 57
(608) 237-9157(888) 534-0057
Rep.Snodgrass@legis.wisconsin.gov
Moving to next week’s committee meetings:
Municipal Services Committee – Monday, January 9, 4:30 p.m.
The committee will be voting to approve the sole source purchase request for traffic equipment and technology, including signals and control equipment, traffic cameras and LED street lighting. City policy requires competitive bids, but the proprietary technology used in much of this equipment makes it impossible to get these bids, so we have to approve the exception.
They will also be voting to award the materials testing contract to Westwood Infrastructure, Inc. ($100,000) as the fifth year of a five-year contract. Work under this contract includes the following:
• Material testing for concrete, asphalt, and soils,
• Contaminated material response, analysis, and permitting,
• Emergency response to illicit discharges,
• Styrene testing for cast in place pipe (CIPP),
• Performing environmental investigations,
• Performing geotechnical investigations
Information items include the building permit summary for 2022 and the announcement of the Sidewalk Poetry program for 2023. https://apl.org/sidewalk-poetry/
Finance Committee – Monday, January 9, 5:30 p.m.
The one action item is to approve a contract for storm sewer CIPP lining for 16 areas of storm sewer with Visu-Sewer, Inc. ($685,933). I had to look this up – CIPP is “Cured in Place Pipe” where existing sewer lines can be repaired without digging by blowing a resin/textile liner into the existing pipe.
Utilities Committee – Tuesday, January 10, 4:30 p.m.
The committee will be voting to award contracts for the purchase of a sludge pump for the wastewater treatment plant from Crane Engineering ($133,876) to replace a failed pump and for repair of the failed pump (August Winter and Sons - $26,450).
Information items include a report on an incident that occurred at the wastewater treatment plant on December 26. In brief, a polymer chemical used in wastewater processing was off-loaded into the Waste Hauling Station. This caused equipment and pipe plugging, disrupting plant operations. The biodigesters had to be bypassed after getting regulatory approval. The digester is still offline at this point, resulting in solids having to be sent to the landfill. Treated water flowing into the Fox River is not affected. Remediation is ongoing, as is the investigation of the cause. Everything I have heard indicates that this was an error and not any kind of deliberate act.
City Plan Commission – Wednesday, January 11, 3:30 p.m.
The plan commission will be taking up changes to the municipal code chapter related to subdivisions. These include updates to the “Fee in Lieu of Land Dedication”, including language regarding trails in the dedication process and simplification and clarification of the language around the land dedication process. In simpler terms, when subdivisions are developed, the developer is required to either set aside a certain amount of land for park and trail development or to make a payment to allow the city to acquire other land. These changes update the fees and land amounts and make clarifications to the process.
Community and Economic Development Committee – Wednesday, January 11, 4:30 p.m.
The committee will address a request from Merge, LLC. to delay the acquisition of the Blue Ramp site from February 2023 until September 2023. This is the location of Phase II of the project, but Phase I has been delayed due to supply chain challenges, interest rates and labor shortages.
They will also vote on a plan by Lofgren Properties 6, LLC and Oshkosh Investment, LLC. to develop the Chase Bank building on College Avenue (TIF District #1) that they purchased in October of last year.
The plan is for retail on the first floor and 24 market rate apartments on the upper floors. The city would invest the lesser of (18.43%) or $745,185 of the Tax Increment Value. The estimated incremental value of the project is $4,044,300.
The information item is an update to the Housing Affordability Report. The report is linked here: http://cityofappleton.legistar.com/gateway.aspx?M=F&ID=e61b609a-e19a-4f82-b1db-47348b6d9d7d.pdf
The shortage of affordable homes and rentals in the city continues to be a concern, as is the number of people considered “housing burdened” – those who spend more than 30% of their income on housing.
Safety and Licensing Committee – Wednesday, January 11, 5:30
In addition to the normal license approvals, the committee will be voting on a resolution to move the polling place for District 12 to St. Pius X Catholic Church due to St. John United Church of Christ selling their building and relocating. Ironically, District 12 will now vote in District 6 and District 6 continues to vote in District 14 at the Scheig Center. Getting polling places is complicated and takes time and Memorial Park/Scheig Center WAS in District 6 before redistricting, but I know a lot of us in the Erb Park area would love to be able to walk a couple of blocks to vote.
Finally – does everyone have their Christmas trees down? Curbside pickup will start next week (Jan 9-13). You can still take them to the Glendale yard waste site through the 23rd and get a coupon for a white pine seedling to be picked up in the spring. Please remove all lights and decorations first. The Habitat for Humanity Restore location in front of Costco takes non-working lights for recycling, FYI.
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