Appleton Common Council District 6 Update for January 8, 2024

Greetings District 6 Neighbors, 

First of all, a belated Happy New Year to all. I know I’ve been a little out of touch over the holidays and beyond – just when we got back from planned holiday travel, our newest granddaughter decided to make her appearance three weeks early, so back to Arkansas I went to help out. All are doing well, though big sister (2 ½) is struggling a bit with the adjustment. 

Luckily city business has been fairly quiet for the past few weeks. Before I get into the last Common Council meeting and this week’s committee meetings, I have just a quick note on the upcoming spring elections. As you might have read in the Post-Crescent, I do not have an opponent in the April 2 election for another term as your alderperson. As a matter of fact, we only have two contested races for Common Council – District 4, where Alder Del Toro is not seeking another term, and District 14, where incumbent Alder Croatt will have an opponent. District 4 has three candidates, so there will be a primary election for that seat on February 20. Neither Mayor Woodford nor City Attorney Behrens drew an opponent, so those races will be uncontested as well. While I would like to believe that I did not draw an opponent because my constituents feel that I am representing them well, I do have some concerns that our local elections do not draw candidates. While we hear a lot of criticism of our local elected officials, particularly on social media, we don’t see people stepping up to replace them. 

At the last council meeting, there were a few items that I expected to generate discussion based on the discussion and votes in the committee meetings in the second week of December. Two of those items were referred back to committees for this week’s meetings – Alder Doran’s resolution calling for a study of the parking utility, including potential sales of those assets,  and the revised fee schedule for Jones Park and Houdini Plaza. The Executive Director of Appleton Downtown, Inc. spoke against any proposed sale of the parking ramps. I did note that in the first Municipal Services Committee meeting where the resolution was discussed, Alder Doran was strongly opposed to amending the resolution to remove the language about potentially selling the ramps. I plan to attend the meeting to hear the discussion, but I do not expect that my opposition to privatizing the parking ramps will change. The city operates parking as a utility, where user fees pay the operating costs. A private entity would almost certainly need to raise rates substantially to make a profit. 

The other item that I expected to generate a lot of discussion was the proposal to allocate $25,000 of ARPA funding for ten additional Flock license plate cameras. I noted in the last update that I didn’t think that this amount was sufficient to fund the ten cameras, since the contract for nineteen was $54,000. In the Finance Committee meeting, the item was actually amended to take $125,000 from the ARPA funds designated for Community Wellness, Mental Health and Violence Prevention in order to fund those cameras for five years. Indeed, there was a lively discussion in the meeting, but the resolution failed 4 to 8. I was relieved to see this, as I feel that this was not the use of ARPA funds that the council agreed to in prior budgets and the council had already approved the number of cameras requested by APD in the 2024 budget. 

Moving on to this week’s committee schedule, we still have a number of cancelled meetings, including the Utilities Committee, City Plan Commission, Human Resources and Information Technology Committee and the Community and Economic Development Committee. On the agenda for the committees meeting this week:  

Municipal Services Committee – Monday, January 8, 4:30 p.m. 

The committee will again take up the resolution calling for the closure of the Whitman Yard Waste Site, which was held at the November 20, 2023, meeting. City staff prepared a memo with the answers to some of the questions that committee members posed. The proposal I find most intriguing was in answer to a question about reducing costs and duplication of services without major consequences – staff proposed to essentially have one site open every day during the summer and on weekdays during the winter: 

 

I would like to see both sites remain open under a schedule like this as the other main consideration is the agreement that the city has with the Town of Grand Chute where Grand Chute pays Appleton ($55,000 in 2019 with a 3% increase each year) to allow Grand Chute residents to use the Whitman yard waste site. 

The Parking Facility & Management Study resolution is back before the committee today as noted above. 

There are also a number of contracts before the committee, including bridge consulting (Collins Engineers - $26,190), Bridge Inspection Services (Collins Engineers - $42,000) and design and construction management services for repairs to the Red and Yellow parking ramps (Desman Design Management - $68,200).  

The final action item is an amendment to the Lawe St. design to include the storm sewers (Ayres Associates - $33,451.95). 

Finance Committee – Monday, January 8, 5:30 p.m. 

The committee will vote on several contracts, including the contract for library signage (Seating Concepts, Inc. - $195,994.61 with contingency). Other contracts are for various projects at the wastewater treatment plant:  

• Engineering for the L-Building HVAC replacement project (McMahon - $164,743 with contingency) 
• B-Building HVAC updgrades (Rohde Brothers, Inc. - $718,756 with contingency. This contract requires a budget transfer of $54,000 in unspent funds from the electrical distribution project. 
• Engineering and construction oversight for Motor Control Center replacement project (Donohue and Associates - $284,139). This project requires a budget transfer of $60,000 in unspent funds from the electrical distribution project. 
• Design, bidding and construction oversight for the 2024 Hardscapes Improvement Project (McMahon - $59,430 with contingency) 

The committee will also be looking at a change order for the Redundant Raw Water Line Project resulting from unexpected site conditions (and several items where the actual construction differed from the existing plans) in the amount of $176,232.54, which takes the contingency amount to 0. 

The Lightning Drive extension moves forward with the request to award a contract for Sewer & Water, Grade & Gravel and Bridge Construction (Peters Concrete Company - $1,660,853.12 with contingency). 

The final contract item is the request to award the contract for furniture upgrades in the Municipal Services Building (Norden Business Environments - $189,135.72). The contract was sole sourced due to the vendor being the only supplier of the specific workstation equipment, but discounted pricing was obtained by using a community government pricing contract. 

We will also be voting to approve the write off of $74,881.54 of accounts receivable invoices 

and $16,668.36 of personal property taxes (outstanding over one year). While the amounts will be written off to clear the books for the annual audit, attempts to collect the amounts owed will continue. 

Parks and Recreation Committee – Monday, January 8, 6:30 p.m. 

The only action items are the Houdini Plaza and Jones Park fee schedules that were referred back in the December 20 council meeting. 

Safety and Licensing Committee, Wednesday, January 10, 5:30 p.m. 

The committee will be looking at a recommendation for denial of an operator license for an individual with two criminal convictions. They will also be hearing of the Appleton Fire Department’s intent to apply for a grant (Firehouse Subs Foundation, $25,500) for video laryngoscopes. 

In information items, the City Clerk will have an update on spring primary elections and the Police Chief will report on recent hirings and promotions. 

Have a great week! 

Denise