Appleton District 6

Greetings District 6 Neighbors, Shana Tova to all who celebrate and happy first official day of autumn to everyone.  ...and Happy NL Central Championship to Brewers fans! I’m writing this while watching the rain fall outside my “office” window and being grateful that the weather (mostly) held off for all of the events happening in and around the city this past weekend – opening night for the Fox Valley Symphony season, Irish Fest, Rhythms of the World and the Fox Cities Marathon races just to name a few. After recent years’ weather-related cancellations, I know the organizers and thousands of volunteers were holding their breath as race weekend approached. The entire area is involved – the full marathon course runs through seven different communities. I volunteered at a water station for the 10k race on Saturday and participated in the half marathon competitive walk on Sunday. It was humid, but not brutally hot as it has been in past years. It’s honestly one of my favorite weekends...

Greetings District 6 Neighbors, I confess – this return to summer is my fault. I needed some warmer gear for an early walk while we were having fall weather, so I hauled my winter clothes up from the basement. That, plus my plans for the Fox Cities half marathon this weekend almost guaranteed that we will have more hot weather. Enjoy it, all you summer people! I’ll start the discussion of tonight’s full council meeting with what is NOT on the agenda. The Safety and Licensing Committee held the school truancy resolution last week because, even after almost two hours of discussion, the committee members still have questions for the school district, and because a substitute resolution was introduced late in the meeting by Alder Hartzheim, and the chair wanted to have sufficient time to discuss this version, plus an amendment to that version proposed by Alder Firkus. My initial concern with the substituted resolution is that is simply calls for the city to adopt the state statute, which co...

  Greetings, District 6 Neighbors, On days like we’ve had recently, I’m reminded of one of the reasons I live in Appleton. I had flown in for a job interview on a September day like today – blue skies, sunshine and just a hint of crispness in the air. The joy of that weather, particularly for someone used to dealing with heat and humidity well into October (or later!), made me forget what I know about Midwest winters. I still have no regrets! We had a bit of a surprise during the Common Council meeting last week. After the fairly contentious license revocation hearing at the Safety and Licensing Committee meeting the week before, I expected that the owners of Mr. Frogs would appear to contest the committee vote in favor of revoking the license. City Attorney Behrens informed us before we began discussion on the license revocation that the owner/agent had voluntarily surrendered the license that afternoon. The voluntary surrender makes the license available for another establishment...