Appleton District 6

(Home Builders Association of the Fox Cities) Greetings District 6 neighbors, I’m writing a day late this committee week because I wanted to be able to watch the video of the Municipal Services Committee meeting to get some insight before I wrote about the action item they took up yesterday. More on that as we get into the committee agendas. I am happy to share the big news of yesterday’s announcement of the formation of the Appleton Housing Development Policy Task Force. The task force will be a collaboration   between  the City of Appleton, Home Builders Association of the Fox Cities, REALTORS Association of Northeast Wisconsin, the Fox Cities Chamber of Commerce, and Habitat for Humanity Fox Cities . I attended the press conference yesterday and heard Mayor Woodford, Community and Economic Development Director Kara Homan and representatives from all the partner groups speak on the importance of the city working with external stakeholders to reduce barriers to housing construction in

Greetings District 6 Neighbors,  I hope your day is going better than mine so far. I ran to Meijer after exercise class to pick up a couple of things and, while scanning at the self-check, my container of pineapple basically exploded all over the scanner. In my defense, the top was not on securely and the bar code was on the top, requiring the container to be turned over or at least sideways to scan it.  Other than that, it’s a beautiful day.  Before we get into the agenda for the council meeting tonight, a reminder that, if you haven’t had trash pickup yet this week, it’s the last day for bulk item pickup until the spring. Public Works folks will transition into leaf and fall yard waste pickup soon, followed by (NO!!!!) snow removal.  We’re also into the last couple of days for the open book at the city assessor’s office. If you have issues with your recent assessment, now is the time to present evidence supporting the difference in the assessment and what you believe to be valid.   

  Greetings District 6 Neighbors, Although it certainly doesn’t feel like it, we’ve entered (unofficially) the fall season. I hope everyone had a nice Labor Day holiday and I wish all the students, teachers and everyone involved in education a successful school year. I think all of our area schools have started (except Lawrence University which began Welcome Week for first year students yesterday, I believe). The Common Council had a really long “holiday” week as Labor Day followed the “fifth week” of August, where there are no committee or Common Council meetings. So, it’s back to work for us today as well. I assume that everyone has gotten their new assessment notices and I want to remind you of a couple of things: ·        An increased assessment does not automatically mean a property tax increase. Generally, if your assessment was an increase of over 40%, you could expect an increase with the millage rate (the city, county and school district budget) staying the same. If it i