The Notes: Week of May 24 - May 28, 2021

Here we are in the last week of May 2021.  It's committee meetings week for the city!  

By scheduled dates and times, these are the highlights of committee meeting agenda items for the week:

Monday, May 24, 2021:

• 4:30pm The Municipal Services Committee will take up some variances and right-of-way permits.  One Richmond Street neighbor would like to widen his driveway slightly into his front yard which is a no-no by city ordinance as it makes for a "concrete jungle" look in the city.  But this particular request looks to be acceptable as the proposed concrete won't be in front of his house.  Another item of interest here is that Appleton Downtown, Inc. is requesting a street occupancy permit for June14-18, 2021, for Street Music Week.  It's *so* good to know that we will have so many opportunities for outdoor gatherings this summer.  

• 5:30pm The Finance Committee will vote on awarding construction bids for various city street repairs and water/sewer construction projects.  They'll also be voting on the city acquiring some land off of Spartan Drive for stormwater management (retention ponds).  This land acquisition was budgeted for 2022 but will likely be better as a 2021 purchase due to the current state of the real estate market. 

• 6:30pm The Parks and Recreation Committee will take up a proposed resolution expressing support for the Wisconsin DNR's Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program.  You may have seen recent reports about the delayed payment that the City of Appleton will finally be receiving from this program.  While I wholeheartedly support this program and it's been very advantageous to the City of Appleton, I have a couple issues with this resolution.  

First, I view this resolution as another "send it up the food-chain" statement which is not what I believe city government is meant to do.  A city's governmental body exists to make changes and execute programs within the city to help its citizens, not to be advocates to larger governing bodies on behalf of all of the citizens of the city.  As representatives of a voting majority of people in the city, not *all* of the citizens of Appleton, we cannot possibly speak for all of Appleton to higher-level governing bodies.  I believe that private individuals and groups/organizations should express to their state and federal representatives their support for or opposition of a program to piece of legislation on the state or federal level.  It is not the place of a city governmental body to do that.  That said, though, I do very much think that our city could benefit from the extension of the Knowles-Nelson program so I could make an exception for this particular resolution... with one caveat.   

I would request that the second-last clause be amended.  It states that the City of Appleton supports the reauthorization of the Knowles-Nelson program (which I do believe would be advantageous to Appletonians!)... but it goes on to express that the City of Appleton supports consideration of Governor Evers's request of $70 million per year budget for the program.  I have an issue with going as far as to include that $70 million consideration.  No City of Appleton common council members have a good grasp on what goes into state of Wisconsin budget negotiations.  What if the consideration of this $70 million/year price tag comes with cuts somewhere else in the state budget which greatly negatively affect the City of Appleton?  The current annual budget for Knowles-Nelson is $33 million.  While I might support an increase of that amount, I cannot imagine that a more-than-double increase in this program's budget would come without costs/tradeoffs elsewhere.  I will be requesting that this clause be amended to either remove this "consideration" portion or change this "consideration" portion to include something to the effect of "consideration of an increase in the current $33 million per year budget."

Tuesday, May 25, 2021:

• 3:00pm The Fox Cities Transit Commission will vote to approve April 2021 payments and review ridership, revenue, and the financial report from April as well.

• 5:00pm One of the main topics of conversation for the Utilities Committee will be secondary clarifier drive updates for the wastewater treatment plant.  The committee will discuss awarding a contract for the parts and labor required for the removal, rebuilding, and reinstallation of the city's six secondary clarifier drives (whose function it is to separate settled solids for additional treatment in the wastewater treatment process).  The rebuilding of these secondary clarifier drives (rather than the purchase of brand new replacements) makes this project bid come out to 52% less than what was budgeted for the project and will give the clarifier drives 20-25 more years of life which is comparable to new replacement drives.  Who's not "all in" for saving 52% of the budgeted price of a project?! 

Wednesday, May 25, 2021:

• 3:30pm The City Plan Commission will take up one item - the approval of Phase 2 of the Broadway Hills Estates Final Plat. 

• 4:30pm The sale of about 30 acres of Southpoint Commerce business park land and the extension of a planning agreement for a mixed-use development near City Center downtown are two "critical timing" issues on the agenda for the Community and Economic Development Committee.  Both seem like projects that will only benefit the city of Appleton.  

• 5:30pm The Safety and Licensing Committee meeting rounds out the week with  discussions of issuing and renewing liquor licenses of various kinds, including temporary ones for the Trout Museum (for Art in the Park), Appleton Firefighters Local 257 (for a softball tournament), Appleton Downtown, Inc. (for the Summer Music Concert Series!), and the Appleton Area Jaycees (for the Appleton Fireworks Celebration July 3, 2021 - hurray!).  

Other items of interest for this week include my open invitation to you, District 13 neighbors, to contact me with any ideas or thoughts you might have on a concept plan for Lundgaard Park.  There will be a neighborhood/community meeting in the near future.  But as your alderman, I will get a 1:1 meeting with the landscape design company on June 2 to share initial thoughts from the neighborhood with them.  The designers are meeting with the Lundgaard family and members of the Fire Department as well to get their input before the real work of planning the park begins.  This is exciting for our District and will be a great way to further honor Driver Engineer Lundgaard.     

Last, as promised in comments on Facebook, I will be giving a little rundown on the status of the construction of a fourth cell (hole/pile/site) of the Outagamie County Holland Road Landfill on the corner of French Road and Northland Avenue.  Below is a very broad overview and I'll be happy to talk with any of you in greater detail if you want more information.  Just give me a call!  

Outagamie County is a party to a tri-county agreement (with Brown and Winnebago Counties) for landfill services.  The agreement as originally laid out was that the Outagamie County Holland Road facility, which currently has three cells, would be completely closed when the third, currently active cell reached capacity (which was projected for 2022).  At that time, the new landfill being built in Brown County was to be the new landfill site to be used by the three counties.  Instead.... Outagamie County chose to petition the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to open and begin a new (fourth) cell in the northwest corner of the landfill site.  This action was taken years ago (2017, I believe) by the Outagamie County Board of Supervisors through recommendations from the county's Highway, Recycling, and Solid Waste Committee and the County's Solid Waste Director, Brian VanStraten.  The fourth cell has since been opened (ground broken) and the DNR just last month granted an air pollution control permit to the county, essentially giving the county the last bit of permission required to begin using the new cell once the third cell is full.  

This is a part of the reason that the County's dog park has shrunken in size in the last year.  They had to close the northern portion of the dog park area to fence off the area for the new (fourth) cell.  The eventual plan is to close the dog park in that location completely.  But I've been assured that that will not occur until the county has procured another location for a county dog park.  

At this point, there is little that can be done by District 13 citizens to stop the progress of this fourth cell opening and usage.  You can contact your County Board representative; but I've contacted mine and she's essentially stated that "that train has left the station."  Many citizens of Little Chute who live much closer to the borders of the landfill have expressed grave concern over the neighborhood impact of this expansion and some have formed a group to try to combat the issue of the expansion and its ill effects on the surrounding area.  You can join Citizens for an Odor Free Environment on Facebook.  They've planned a town hall style meeting on Monday, June 7th, at Van Leishout Park to discuss the issue and ways to move forward.

The City of Appleton does not have much say in what happens in this regard as the landfill is not within the city limits; but I intend to stay involved for the neighbors of District 13 so that we can all keep abreast of the changes in the landfill moving forward.  I suggest that everyone keeps up with Outagamie County government goings-on as the activities of the County Board of Supervisors and the County Executive greatly affect our neighborhoods as well.

Have a great week and I'll be back with more next week!