Appleton Common Council District 6 Update for August 24, 2026

Greetings, District 6 Neighbors,

What a glorious day this was! I started my walk this morning in a light jacket, but when I passed by the Erb Pool on my way home this afternoon, it was clear that the cooler weather didn’t deter the folks determined to keep summer going until the last moment.

Last week’s council meeting went as I expected it, with only the special event permit for Appleton Area NOW’s Rally for Equality and the occupancy permit for the vegetation on Superior St. being separated for individual discussion and voting – both by me as I abstained from both votes. I am a member of the organization that applied for the special event permit, and I am personally acquainted with the person who applied for the occupancy permit.

I noticed that one of the local television stations ran a story on the special event application and there were a lot of comments implying that the council approves or denies late applications based on the organization requesting them. This is simply not the case. Since we enacted the new special events policy in 2024, we have actually approved all of the late applications that were appealed to the Safety and Licensing Committee and the Common Council. We recently denied the appeal of an application that was administratively denied on other grounds.  I did finally determine that any reservation for Houdini Plaza or Jones Park automatically qualifies as a special event. That information is on the Parks and Recreation site while the rest of the special event information is under the city clerk page on the main city website. People are free to gather in Houdini Plaza (and they regularly do so) to exercise their right to assemble and protest, but reserving the plaza requires a special event application. As with other applications (for a bartender license, a zoning variance, etc.) a citizen may appeal an administrative denial to the board or committee of jurisdiction, and the application can be approved by the board or committee.

Moving on to this week’s committee agendas:  

Finance Committee – Monday, August 24, 5:30 p.m.

The committee will vote on two contract awards:

·       Fire Station No. 1 Window Replacement Phase 1 Project (Tri City Glass & Door - $67,640 with contingency)

·       Unit O-26 Storm Sewer CIPP Lining (Insituform Technologies USA, LLC - $292,314.83 with contingency) The winning bid was within the project budget.

We will also look at change orders for a couple of projects:  

·       Unit W-26 Sewer and Water Reconstruction - Additional mini-sewer installation on Fourth Street due to no-award on the separate mini-sewer contract this year. (Kruczek Construction - $21,950 for a new not-to-exceed contract total of $2,740,050 and an unchanged contract contingency of $60,000)

·       Fire Station No. 4 (our District 6 station on E. Greenfield) Renovation Project – Authorize Martenson & Eisele to complete the remaining professional services for the project. The work includes architectural and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design; preparation of construction documents and specifications; plan review submittals; bidding assistance; construction administration; and project closeout. The change would increase Contract No. 55-26 from $5,800 to $41,200, leaving $158,800 available within the project budget for construction.

The committee will also vote on accepting a $300,000 grant from the Fox Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau Fox Cities Exhibition Center Capital Reserve Fund. This is in addition to the $100,000 grant previously accepted.

Finally, the Finance Department is asking to spend $112,000 in available salary savings, plus approved travel expenses, for professional consulting services with Baker Tilly US, LLP. $95,000 would cover consulting for a Finance Department modernization to strengthen its operational capacity, improve business processes, enhance financial reporting, and make more effective use of Tyler Munis. The other $17,000 would be used to update the City’s employee classification and compensation plan. The classification and compensation plan was last reviewed in 2022.

Information items include the Health Department’s receipt of a $10,000 grant from the State of Wisconsin Department of Health Services and a budget amendment to record the city acting as the purchaser of banners for the Appleton Northside Business Association. The ANBA has the money to repurchase these banners in a fund at the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region. This type of fund requires per IRS regulations that payment for products or services must be made to a qualified government entity or 501 (c)(3) organization. To support this improvement on Wisconsin Avenue the City of Appleton will need to issue the purchase order for the banners. A check will be issued to the City by the Community Foundation of the Fox Valley Region to cover the cost of the repurchase. The total amount is $3,177.40.

Fox Cities Transit Commission – Tuesday, August 25, 2:50 p.m.

The Commission’s agenda includes approval of the June and July 2026 payments and route modifications (no details were provided for this agenda item, but the changes might be related to the temporary terminal site discussed below). They will also vote on a recommendation to reject all bids for Phase 2 of the Whitman facility construction. Valley Transit was awarded a $15 million federal grant for this project, but all the bids received were substantially over this amount. The architects have recommended rejecting all the bids and reworking the design so that it is still functional but reduced in scope and cost. We have seen a couple of projects this year where all the bids were over the budget; I hope this is not a return to what we saw in 2020/2021 where costs were escalating so fast that multiple projects have to be cancelled or reworked because the bids were much greater than the budgeted amount.

The commission will also vote on locating a temporary terminal at 323 N. Kalata Place during the construction of the new transit center. Martell Construction is the recommended bidder at a cost of $53,053 with contingency.

Information items include the June and July financial statements, ridership report and 2^nd quarter key performance indicators.

 

Board of Health/Safety and Licensing Committee Special Joint Meeting – Wednesday, August 26, 7:00 a.m.

The Safety and Licensing committee members get to join our Board of Health friends in getting to work early on Wednesday to consider Resolution #8-R-26 Excessive Vehicular Noise Data Collection introduced by Alder Smith (District 4, which includes a large portion of the downtown area).

The resolution states that “Common Council directs the City of Appleton, in consultation with the Appleton Police Department and Health Department, to evaluate methods for collecting and analyzing vehicular noise data within the city, with an emphasis on identifying the number and frequency of extreme incidents that most disrupt the ordinary life of residents. The city should return to Common Council within 90 days a report outlining available options and estimated costs.” It further states that “the city shall investigate various methods for monitoring vehicular noise, including but not limited to fixed decibel monitoring stations, temporary mobile monitoring equipment, citizen reporting agreements, and automated noise-detection technologies.”

The mayor’s office and the Health Department issued a 393-page response, most of which consists of the articles cited in the discussion of noise measuring techniques. The Health Department does not recommend adopting any of the measures called for in the resolution.

The central issue to me in this resolution is that it attempts to have the Common Council take action that we are not authorized to take. The council is the legislative branch of city government. We can create policy through changes to the municipal code. As part of our work, we can ask city departments for information, but we do not direct the day-to-day operations of any city department. Per the health officer’s memo, this resolution would have to be amended before it would be actionable. As the alderperson representing a district outside of the downtown area, I have concerns about focusing too much of our law enforcement operations on what is certainly a nuisance (I hate the noise downtown as much as anyone, and we can hear the loud vehicles along Richmond and in other areas of the district) rather than a public safety issue. APD has already stepped up enforcement of reckless driving and modified vehicles creating excessive noise and I support continuation of those efforts, but not at the expense of dealing with criminal activity.

The Board of Health will review the June, July and August Health Department newsletters, along with approved noise variances and a dangerous animal declaration as information items.

City Plan Commission – Wednesday, August 26, 3:30 p.m.

The Commission will take up the Downtown Business Improvement District (BID) operating plan for 2027. Downtown businesses participate and are assessed to pay for improvements and activities in the downtown area. The plan must be approved by the Plan Commission and Common Council each year.

https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/gateway.aspx?M=F&ID=4c1ba0df-252f-4e0d-9b98-7128b948010f.pdf

The commission will also discuss and vote on Resolution #11-R-26 Hyperscale AI Data Center Moratorium authored by Alder Firkus who is joined by Alder Hayden and me in submitting this resolution which calls for an 18-month moratorium on data centers larger than 20,000 square feet to allow the city to create clear zoning requirements for data center land usage. The resolution also calls for buildings whose primary uses are as data centers to be classified for industrial zoned properties within the city of Appleton.

https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/gateway.aspx?M=F&ID=31061ce9-e4dd-4d2e-abbe-f1bb11db1d86.pdf

It is fairly unlikely that a company would try to locate a hyperscale data center in Appleton; there is not enough open land available for some of the giant facilities being proposed in other places. However, it makes sense to be proactive and make sure that our zoning would not allow such a facility to be located here. The size restriction and other language recognizes that smaller data centers exist and are vital to businesses that are important to our local economy, such as health care and banking.

The world has changed drastically since I first began my career in information technology. There were huge computer rooms in the places I worked, loud (the large printers were there, too), cooled to uncomfortable temperatures for humans, and with raised floors to accommodate all the wiring for the mainframes. When we got software for our home computers, we had to load it from CDs or even floppy disks. All of that is basically a thing of the past in most businesses. Businesses don’t maintain rooms full of servers since they have moved to “software as a service” (SaaS) where the programs reside with the provider and we access them via the internet. If you use Microsoft products, you have an app, but the actual programs don’t generally reside on your laptop. All of these servers that make up “the cloud” need to be somewhere, so companies do need to maintain data centers. We want to make the distinction between this type of data center which generally have “normal” power needs and the massive and expanding hyperscale AI data centers which will consume massive amounts of power, water and other resources.

Safety and Licensing Committee – Wednesday, August 26, 5:30 p.m.

The second part of the committee’s breakfast/dinner double header will feature a more normal agenda – an alcohol license demerit point hearing, a number of regular and temporary liquor licenses, and an appeal of a denial of a bartender license. This is one of the bartender licenses where the committee and council really don’t have any leeway to grant the license because of the nature of the applicant’s conviction.

We also have another appeal of a late special event permit application automatic denial. This application is for WI Lights of Hope, A Recovery Celebration & Memorial Walk to take place in Pierce Park. Per the application, the event has taken place the last seven years. At the time the agenda was published, all of the relevant departments had not yet approved the application, but we should receive updates before the committee meeting.

The committee will also review a request for a table of organization change for the Appleton Police Department. (the HR/IT Committee will also have this on their agenda.) APD wishes to move the Community Resource Unit (CRU) from the Investigative Division to the Patrol Division and the Threat Assessment Officer from the CRU to the Special Investigations Unit. The Public Information Officer responsibilities would be moved to the Downtown Captain.

Human Resources and Information Technology Committee – Wednesday, August 26, 6:30 p.m.

Three departments are requesting approval to overhire for positions being vacated by retirements. Overhires allow the outgoing person to help with training and orientation for the new hire. The Appleton Fire Department is requesting the overhire for the Fire Administrative and Financial Services Manager position; APD is requesting overhire for the Police Communications Specialist; Public Works is requesting overhire for the City Engineer/Deputy Director who will be retiring in January. APD and DPW specifically note that the funding for the overhires is available through vacant salary dollars.

As noted above, APD’s request change to their organizational table also appears on the agenda for HR/IT.

Finally, the agenda item that must be addressed every year – alderperson salaries – appears on the agenda. Although we are required to address it each year, we can only vote on salaries for the 2028 council year. A 2.5% raise (from $6,750 to $6,918.75) will take effect for the 2027 term. I don’t expect the committee to recommend any change for 2028.

Don’t forget about the Sustainability Master Plan Community input session on Thursday, August 27 at 6:00 p.m. in Mary Beth Neinhaus Community Room C at the Appleton Public Library. At this session you’ll learn about the planning process, key findings so far, and have the opportunity to share your ideas and help shape the plan. Your input is essential in creating a sustainable future for Appleton!