Appleton Common Council District 6 Update for August 31, 2026

Greetings, District 6 Neighbors,

Clearly Mother Nature was just teasing us with those cooler days last week and the heat and humidity have returned with a vengeance just in time for back to school.

Speaking of back to school, the parochial schools have started and AASD starts tomorrow, so let’s all be a little more careful on the roads and allow for delays, especially when we add the road closures into the mix.

Last week was a busy one for a lot of the Common Council, despite the fact that the Municipal Services, Utilities and Community Development Committees did not meet. Monday’s Finance Committee meeting was fairly uneventful, with unanimous votes on all of the agenda items discussed in last week’s update.

Wednesday, however, my day started with a 2 ½ hour joint meeting of the Safety and Licensing Committee and Board of Health at 7:00 a.m. The only action item was Alder Smith’s resolution which 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.”

One of my colleagues pointed out that in drafting the response memo submitted by the mayor and the health department, the city had actually fulfilled the ask in the resolution by identifying some measuring devices and providing an estimate of the costs.

A number of people spoke at the meeting and listening to them reinforced my feeling that we know what the problem is and we generally know where the worst offenders operate. I don’t see how passive noise measurement is going to help with enforcement. Alder Smith referenced the city of Knoxville, Tennessee in his presentation, but Wisconsin does not currently allow tickets to be issued based on data from traffic cameras. In a time when citizens around the country are rising up against AI-enabled automatic license plate reader technology, it seems unwise to propose that kind of technology to ticket loud vehicles.

I took issue with statements that the city was doing nothing to enforce the existing noise ordinance. Below is a link to a report prepared by the police department and health department that outlines the city’s action on noise complaints.

Community Resources

The police department has already made changes in shifts and zone assignments to provide more noise enforcement downtown.

The concerns about noise are valid; it’s almost impossible to enjoy a coffee or a meal outdoors on College Avenue without hearing the vehicle noise. I don’t understand the people who find joy in making the most noise possible as they drive down our city streets and I silently applaud each ticket given for modified mufflers, etc.

However, as the representative of a district outside the downtown area (although we certainly can still hear noise from loud vehicles on Richmond, Northland and other streets), I am not in favor of diverting more of the police force to deal with noise complaints downtown while I have read multiple reports of stolen cars and car break-ins on the north and southeast sides of the city. Appleton police looking to find a pattern as vehicle thefts increase, Appleton Police warn of vehicle thefts after summer increase. Adding police officers is not an option unless we make big cuts somewhere else or go to referendum – public safety is one of the few areas where we could exceed the levy limit with a vote of the public. Appleton taxpayers have already approved two referendums for the school district. As I have noted before, we are almost certainly going to be facing a difficult budget for 2027. We have already had to reject all bids for a mini sewer project and for the second phase of the renovations to the Valley Transit facility on Whitman Street because all the bids exceeded the project budget.

I applaud what APD is doing to enforce the ordinance relating to excessive vehicle noise, but we have to prioritize protecting life and property when we have limited resources.

The combined committees each voted unanimously to recommend the resolution for denial. It will be before the full council Wednesday evening.

My next meeting last Wednesday was with Mayor Woodford, Information Technology Director Popp and Alder Meltzer regarding Resolution 9-R-26 Public Oversight and Accountability Standards for ALPR and Mass Surveillance Technologies. This resolution was held so that we could review amendments proposed by Alder Meltzer that would incorporate some of the language of the “citizen drafted ordinance” proposed by a number of community members. During this meeting, we determined that the city does not have the in-house resources to adequately determine if the very technical requirements of the citizen drafted ordinance are achievable by any vendor of license plate reader technology. The city has agreed not to pursue acquisition of any similar technology until the council has acted. I will be proposing at the next Safety and Licensing Committee meeting (scheduled for September 9) that city staff develop a Request For Proposals (RFP) to engage an expert consultant on an hourly rate to evaluate the proposed amendments from the citizen drafted ordinance to determine if any known provider meets the requirements.

My goal in submitting the original resolution and in the work I have done since then remains to protect the privacy of our citizens while allowing the police department to use the most effective crime-fighting tools.

The resolution that would place a moratorium on data centers larger than 20,000 square feet within the City of Appleton was on the agenda of the City Plan Commission later that afternoon. Alder Hayden and I signed on to that resolution written by Alder Firkus. The Plan Commission referred the item to staff in order to draft the ordinance language. They will take it up again at their meeting on September 23.

The Human Resources and Information Technology Committee held the item related to alderperson salaries, I suspect because two members of the committee were excused from the meeting. As I noted last week, I don’t expect any move to raise salaries as a small raise will go into effect when the 2027-2028 council is seated.

Moving to this week’s business, the Finance Committee will hold a special meeting at 5:30 this Wednesday before the full council meeting. There are two action items on the agenda, including the subdivision development agreement for the Wilden Portfolio Park development (the Thrivent property). Per the memo attached to the item: “Under the Agreement, the Developer will be responsible for the initial installation of public infrastructure, including sanitary sewer, water, storm sewer, stormwater facilities, streets, trails, grading, utilities, and related improvements. The Developer will also provide financial assurance to ensure completion of the project per Section 2.02 Of the Agreement. The Agreement further establishes responsibilities for stormwater facilities, easements, dedication and acceptance of public infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance obligations (per Exhibit 3). Of note, the City will own and maintain only stormwater facilities that are "regional" in nature consistent with our standard practice in recent years—in this case, Ballard Pond. The City will also own and maintain trails that align with the City of Appleton Trails Master Plan, negotiated in collaboration with Parks & Recreation Director Flick. Developer-owned and maintained trails will include easement language to ensure public access.”

The full agreement is linked here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/gateway.aspx?M=F&ID=d62c7a9c-8d07-40b9-8e67-69536b6ab2a7.pdf

The cost breakdown for each party is shown in Exhibit 6 of the agreement:

As is customary, the city will replace the developer installed asphalt on new streets with concrete and the property owners will be assessed – the estimate here is in 2032.

The committee is also being asked to approve the Fox Cities Exhibition Center sound mitigation project. There were no documents attached to this agenda item. I have reached out to the Finance Director for details. I expect that some of the grant money we received will be used for this project.

I expect that we will hear again from some of the proponents of Resolution #8-R-26 Excessive Vehicular Noise Data Collection at the full council meeting. I can’t guess what other items might be separated for individual discussion and votes, but I suspect that the late special event application might be so that some alders can express their concern that the committee and council keeps approving these late applications. We are almost two years into the new policy and there was some discussion about that being the cutoff. As I noted last week, I’m honestly OK with groups keeping the right to appeal the automatic denial of a late application to the Safety and Licensing Committee and Common Council as long as it does not create excessive workload for city staff. A couple of my colleagues have suggested a late fee, which I would be open to considering.

I attended the Sustainability Master Plan community input session at the library last Thursday and found it really interesting. The first part of the session was a review of the work that had already been done by our consultants at paleBLUEdot LLC, then the attendees were invited to share their ideas with post it notes on the various segments of the master plan. The study is generally divided into two sections:

• Sustainability – how do we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions?
• Resiliency – how to we withstand the consequences of climate change – heat, flooding risk, etc.?

The completed master plan will have recommendations, but any and all actions taken will go through review, approval and budgeting processes like any other city actions.

Here is a sample of the work – an analysis of the feasibility of installing solar panels on various city facilities:

You can find all the documents here: Research — Appleton Sustainability Master Plan

I am really impressed by the work that has been done so far. We used some carryover funds from a Parks and Recreation construction project to finance this work, which I believe will be important for the future of our city.

I’ll close with a couple of reminders about upcoming events.

On Saturday, September 12, the League of Women Voters of Appleton-Fox Cities is hosting a meet and greet with local elected officials from 10:00 until noon in the Mary Beth Neinhaus rooms of the Appleton Public library. This will be an opportunity for conversations over coffee and donuts. I’ll be there, along with a number of my city colleagues, county board supervisors and elected officials from all over the Fox Cities. I’m hoping to see some of you there.

The Neighborhood Programs Fall meeting will be held on Thursday, September 24 at the Appleton Police Department. From the meeting announcement:

This is intended to be an opportunity to foster discussion between Registered Neighborhoods and Neighborhood Watch Groups within the City and City staff. The meeting will include guest speakers from Appleton’s Community Development Department to share about bicycle and pedestrian planning efforts and from Police to discuss traffic safety and enforcement efforts. To RSVP for the fall meeting, please use the online sign-up form located here.

 This fall, the meeting format will be updated to include presentations from City staff on relevant projects and topics, followed by breakout sessions where participants can move freely between dedicated tables to engage in direct dialogue with City staff. During that time, the floor belongs to you to share your thoughts, ask questions, and report issues to City staff.

We have three registered neighborhoods within District 6 – Northland Downs, Summit Park and Erb Park.

However, new neighborhoods can register. Does it make sense to split the large Erb Park registered neighborhood into two or more smaller ones? That would seem to make it easier to hold block parties and to really get to know your neighbors. Let me know what you think.

Wishing all the students, teachers, staff and parents out there a great 2026-2027 school year and a great week to everyone.