Appleton Common Council District 6 Update for the Week of November 3, 2024
Greetings District 6 Neighbors,
Happy rainy Election Day! Actually, it seems that we had a break in the rain for most of the day. Polls are open until 8:00 this evening. If you are in line to vote at 8:00, you will be allowed to vote even if it takes a bit to make it to the front of the line.
We should have a leaf pickup in Zone 2 this week, with the final pickup occurring the week of November 18. There is the possibility of another pickup in the last week of November, weather permitting. Now that Halloween is over, remember that in the vacuum zone areas (most of District 6), you need to keep the leaves separate from brush and plant waste, including PUMPKINS. Spent annuals, pumpkins, etc., can be put in paper yard waste bags and placed on the terrace for pickup, while branches need to be cut to 4-foot lengths and tied with twine and placed on the terrace.
I’ve spent the last several weeks on my review of the city budget, which didn’t have any big surprises this year. The only significant increases were for the 3% merit raise for non-represented city employees. (Police, Fire and Valley Transit employees are represented by unions – their contracts are negotiated separately.) The City of Appleton avoided a large increase in health insurance costs – an estimated 3% increase compared to double-digits for surrounding entities. The city is self-insured other than a stop-loss policy for catastrophic claims, but the mayor and Human Resources Director point to innovations such as the Connecting Care Clinic keeping health care costs from increasing rapidly. The budget will result in a 1.6% tax decrease for property owners. Combined with a 6.6% decrease from the Appleton Area School District, and a 2.4% increase from Outagamie County, most of us should see a slightly lower property tax bill. We will see the $10 increase to the wheel tax when we renew our automobile registrations. I would like to see municipalities really lobby the state legislature to revamp the wheel tax so that large trucks which cause the most wear on our roads are subject to the wheel tax, which is currently only allowed to be assessed on cars and light trucks.
The budget does include a 9% increase in sewer rates, which the council will vote on at the regular meeting November 6. Utilities are enterprise funds, which means that they must be self-supporting – financed by customers rather than taxpayers, so the charges must bring in enough income to support current expenses and capital improvements. I did the math on my last quarterly invoice and the increase works out to about $6.00 per quarter, which is what utility leadership says is the average increase.
This Wednesday, November 6 at 6:00 p.m. will be the last chance for you to weigh in on the city budget, when we hold the public hearing. The vote to adopt the budget will be held at a special council meeting on November 13 at 6:00 p.m.
The regular council meeting will begin with a number of mayoral proclamations:
- Youth HOPE Month
- Native American Heritage Month
- Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome Awareness Day
- Appleton High School DECA Week
- Crash Responder Safety Week
- Small Business Saturday (November 30)
I expect several items to be separated for individual discussion and votes:
- Proposed changes to the Special Events policy that would result in organizers paying 25% of the actual costs of city resources for the event. In the discussion at the two Safety and Licensing Committee meetings where this was discussed, the mayor and city staff emphasized that there would be a negotiation with the organizers which could involve the organizations providing some of the resources (not public safety) previously provided by the city in order to reduce the payments to the city. As I stated in the committee meeting, these special events are important to the character of the city, but not everyone participates in them, and it seems fair not to ask taxpayers to pay all of the costs.
- Spending $985,000 of the ARPA funds allocated to Local Economic Recovery for a project to refurbish and reposition the Fox Cities Exhibition Center for tourism recovery. We were assured that the Fox Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau was on board with the proposal and would be a partner in the project.
- The wastewater rate increase noted in the discussion of the budget above.
- The contract for $69,000 (from ARPA funds) with Matrix Consulting Group for the organizational and workload study for the Appleton Police Department.
- Reconsideration of the modification of the non-smoking area around the transit center and the library. This item passed at the last meeting, but since there were alders absent, it did not receive a majority vote of the full council. Once of the absent alders submitted it for reconsideration.
The liquor license for the proposed coffee shop/bar downtown that was referred back to the Safety and Licensing Committee after neighboring businesses reached out with their concerns that the owner was planning to install gambling machines was held until our next regular meeting with the hope that the owner would appear. The City Attorney’s office advised that it was easier to deny a license initially than to revoke one, so we want to be sure that we have all the facts before granting this license.
As always, you can find meeting details and watch live or recorded videos here:
Have a great week!
Denise
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