Appleton Common Council District 6 Update for October 1, 2025

Greetings, District 6 Neighbors,

I confess I did not stay up for the whole Packer game Sunday night. Not much was happening in the first half, and I didn’t have opportunities to text my Cowboy fan brother, so I went to bed, only to find out that I missed a wild one.

A little housekeeping before we get into council business:

Public Works has switched to fall leaf collection mode. That means that there will be no more large item curbside collections until April. You can check with Outagamie County Recycling and Solid Waste for more information here: Outagamie County Recycling & Solid Waste Material Search.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had a chance to tour the recycling center. I had thought I knew a lot about the process, but I learned so much (including that it is VERY LOUD in there – we had noise cancelling headphones and a communications setup to hear and speak to our tour guide and each other). The sorting process is amazing, and it now makes sense to me that we need to flatten cardboard and make sure that containers are empty. Those containers don’t have to be dishwasher clean, but if they contain substantial amounts, they don’t get sorted correctly. We’ve all heard stories that recycled materials just get sent overseas and burned – this is not true for our recycling center. All of the paper products get sent to area companies to be made into new products. Plastic stays in Wisconsin as well. The furthest any material goes is aluminum, which is sent to a Coca Cola plant in Georgia. The recycling center breaks even financially on an operational basis – the revenue from recycled material pays for utilities and salaries.

For items that are in good condition, consider donating – Habitat ReStore accepts furniture and many types of building materials. They can arrange pickup as well. Appleton Habitat ReStore. Other non-profit organizations might be able to do pickups as well.

Fall leaf collection starts the week of October 19 and continues through November 16. Early snowfall may alter this schedule. There is a final pass scheduled for the week of November 24, but this is also subject to weather. All of District 6 is now in the vacuum zone, so we place our leaves on the terrace. Leaves should be loose and separate from bundled brush and bagged yard waste. Please don’t put pumpkins or plants still in pots out with yard waste. The vacuum process is getting better each year, but brush, sticks, etc., mixed with leaves prevents the vacuum trucks from efficiently removing the leaves. Complete information is in the Public Works Guide.

 

The Common Council meeting on Wednesday evening is the only scheduled city meeting this week since the Appleton Public Arts Committee has cancelled its scheduled Wednesday morning meeting.

The council meeting will begin with four mayoral proclamations:

• Diwali Awareness Day
• Indigenous Peoples' Day
• Fire Prevention Week
• Senior Center Month

 

Mayor Woodford will also present the City Star Awards which are awarded to city employees and citizens for “their outstanding contributions to the community and city government.” In a press release this morning, these winners were announced:

 

Friend of the City

• Mary Beth Nienhaus

Excellence in Service Delivery

• Kathy Luedtke, Department of Public Works – Parking

• Maureen Ward, Library

Excellence in Project Management / Coordination / Planning

• Eric Maggio, Department of Health

Excellence in Community Engagement and Outreach
• Lindsey Smith, Department of Community Development

City Champion

• Ryan Homman, Fire Department

 

Mary Beth Nienhaus has been a champion and a patron of so many things that make our city better – clearly Appleton has a friend in her. I can’t speak directly about any of the other winners except Lindsey Smith from the Department of Community Development. She has worked on community engagement for the update to the city’s Comprehensive Plan and on the New Avenue project, which will bring together the City of Appleton, the Town of Grand Chute and Outagamie County to work toward the revitalization of College Avenue from Richmond to the mall area. She is an example of the best our city has. Congratulations to all the winners who were nominated by their peers and others in the community.

 

Clearly the main event on the agenda for this evening will be the discussion of the resolution to reinstate a truancy ordinance for the city at the request of the Appleton Area School District. A much-amended version of the resolution was recommended for approval 3-2 by the Safety and Licensing Committee last week with Alder Van Zeeland and I casting the nay votes.

 

The amended resolution calls for a narrowed list of dispositions from the state statute, including: (I have added the full text as the resolution only lists the numbers from the state law.

• 118.2 (b) An order for the person to participate in counseling or a supervised work program or other community service work as described in s. 938.34 (5g). The costs of any such counseling, supervised work program or other community service work may be assessed against the person, the parents or guardian of the person, or both. Any county department of human services or social services, community agency, public agency or nonprofit charitable organization administering a supervised work program or other community service work to which a person is assigned pursuant to an order under this paragraph acting in good faith has immunity from any civil liability in excess of $25,000 for any act or omission by or impacting on that person.

• 118.2 (d) An order for the person to attend an educational program as described in s. 938.34 (7d).

• 118.2 (e) An order for the department of workforce development to revoke, under s. 103.72, a permit under s. 103.70 authorizing the employment of the person.

• 118.2 (g) An order for the person to attend school.

 • 118.2 (h) A forfeiture of not more than $500 plus costs, subject to s. 938.37. All or part of the forfeiture plus costs may be assessed against the person, the parents or guardian of the person, or both.

• 118.2 (j) An order placing the person under formal or informal supervision, as described in s. 938.34(2), for up to one year

The amended resolution also calls for AASD to provide evidence of the attendance supports provided before any court dispositions are levied on a student:

 

1) AASD will develop and enforce a policy of internal supports and tools which will be uniformly be applied to all students with truancy and chronic absenteeism issues, and

2) Said policy will include enforcement of this truancy ordinance to be used as a final measure should other supports be unsuccessful with a student, and

3) AASD will provide evidence of the supports that the district has offered to students with attendance issues before any court dispositions for truancy are levied upon a student. These include but are not limited to:

• Number of truancy citations issued in the past semester

• Number of truancy citations from prior semesters eventually expunged due to student compliance (include semester original citation was issued for each expunged instance)

• Number of truancy citation convictions from previous semesters (including the dispositions that were applied)

• Updated absentee and truancy rate numbers for the previous semester

 

My two concerns about the justice system and truancy have been the statistics showing that school districts in municipalities with a truancy ordinance which are similar in the makeup of the student population in terms of race, economic disparity, students with disabilities, etc., to Appleton have chronic absenteeism rates as high as or higher than Appleton’s and that the dispositions are economically punitive, especially given the fact that the chronic absenteeism numbers are much higher for economically disadvantaged students.

 

I have also felt that the school district has not been totally transparent in this process. The internal work group included a former alderperson and two alderpersons on the Safety and Licensing Committee along with representatives from the city legal department, the circuit court and the school district, but other members of the committee were not told and only found out when the question was directly asked during a meeting. We have been repeatedly told that only the 30 or so students who have been completely unreachable through the whole series of options available to AASD staff would be affected by a truancy citation, but almost all of the teachers and administrators I spoke to mentioned the risk of a citation as a key factor in getting some students back to school.

 

The superintendent often seemed dismissive about the concerns of members of the council. I was personally told that I was “short-sighted” about my concerns with the potential punitive economic sanctions that could be levied by a judge for a truancy citation.

 

I have been somewhat concerned by the fact that, while I have seen members of the school board at committee meetings, the listening session held by the district and at the listening session held by parents, the AASD board had not made any statement about the request to implement a truancy ordinance. The district is ultimately answerable to the board, not the Appleton Common Council.

 

However, I have never doubted the sincerity of the attendance coordinators, teachers and other AASD personnel about wanting what is best for students. I know that all the supports that can be offered for students who are struggling are only available if the student is present.

 

I have had long conversations with parents, teachers, administrators and the district’s attendance coordinators before and since the committee vote. The AASD board voted last week to include this language in their operational expectations:

 

The Superintendent will monitor and maintain programs and strategies intended to address personal and systemic barriers to attendance.

We will know we are compliant when:

10.5.1- The district will follow established procedures for monitoring and communicating about student attendance.

10.5.2- The district will establish and maintain an inventory of attendance intervention. The attendance of students receiving interventions will be monitored to determine the success of the interventions.

10.5.3- The district will solicit and collect feedback from the students who are struggling with consistent attendance and their families in the review of the effectiveness of interventions.

 

After very carefully considering the implications, I have become open to a short (one semester) trial of a truancy ordinance, with some very defined parameters including:

• The reporting defined in the resolution currently before council is expanded to include the demographic breakdowns that are reported to the Department of Public Instruction
• The district follows a number of recommendations of the 2018 Truancy Court Report, including maintaining a community task force that would report to the school board so that the information is public
• The Appleton Police Department and Legal services department provide data concerning their involvement in truancy cases

I understand that an amendment to the resolution will be presented tonight which defines all the additional parameters in detail. With the known objections of some alders to “doing committee work in council”, the resolution could be referred back to the Safety and Licensing Committee yet again.

 

Sorry for the length of this – it’s complicated and I wanted to lay out my reasoning.

 

What I see on the rest of the council agenda that might generate separate votes and discussion are the recommendation for denial of amusement machine licenses for the Mad Elephant for machines that the police department determined were gambling machines. The owners were represented by an attorney at the Safety and Licensing Committee meeting, and I would expect that they would be back before council even after a 5-0 vote at committee. These machines are illegal by state and local statute, but it’s undeniable that they are present in many places. More data available online has made it easier for APD to determine which machines would be illegal, but the state law has a large loophole for businesses with a certain liquor license that makes it difficult to remove machines once they are present.

 

I also understand that Alder Croatt is planning to request a reconsideration of the vote to increase alder salaries by $168.75 per year starting with the April 2027 term because he was excused from the last meeting. This will likely result in some discussion.

 

We may hear from some residents near the area of the proposed reconstruction of Badger Avenue, Eighth Street and Sixth Street because of their concerns about the 10-foot off street sidewalk/bike lanes proposed for the block of Sixth Street from Memorial Drive to State Street. Although the people who expressed concern don’t live in the affected area, they believe that the lanes might be extended further east on Sixth Street and to Prospect Avenue, in spite the Traffic Engineer stating that there are no plans to that effect. The lanes are planned on that one block of Sixth Street in order to navigate cyclists and pedestrians through the dangerous Badger/Memorial intersection.

 

Enjoy the last gasp (I hope) of summer. I’ll be keeping an eye on the baseball playoffs to see who the Brewers are playing starting Saturday and hope that the bye week for the Packers helps the defense. I’m very disappointed that I did not get to taunt some Cowboy fan family members after the last game.

 

Denise