The Notes: Week of January 31 - February 4, 2022

Welcome back to your alderman blog, neighbors!  Last week was a busy one but this coming week's Full Council Week is looking to be a relatively quiet one.  The one and only scheduled city government meeting is the Wednesday meeting of the full council.  But some of the most interesting and pressing committee agenda items discussed last week were held in committee so they won't yet see the light of a full council agenda just yet.  (I'll brief you a bit on those as we go along in this post.)  Here's what you can expect this week:

Wednesday, 02/02/2022, 7pm - Common Council    

The mayor will begin the night with the request for the approval of an appointment to the Appleton Housing Authority and five (count 'em!) proclamations including one for Black History Month (February 2022) in Appleton.  

At the last meeting of the full common council, no items were separated for further discussion... which made that meeting a short one.  This week's meeting may see the same sort of "action" though there may be some further discussion of the following items:

• An intergovernmental agreement between the Town of Grand Chute, Outagamie County, and the City of Appleton for a sanitary sewer service for the newly opening fourth cell at the Outagamie County Landfill at the corner of French Road and Northland Avenue (mentioned in last week's blog) will be up for approval.  At the Municipal Services Committee meeting last Monday, I made sure to ask city staff about the devastating effects that leachate from the landfill can have on sanitary sewer systems and how the city plans to mitigate that or later deal with the effects of it in terms of added expense for this service line.  I was pleased with the response that city staff is well aware of and has plans set up to deal with the leachate issue when and if this interdepartmental agreement is approved by council.  With that response in mind, I do not see any reason to oppose it so I expect to vote for it unless some new information in this regard comes to light at this meeting. 
  
  
• At last week's City Plan Commission meeting, there was a comment from Alderman Brad Firkus regarding some feedback that he had received from some of his constituents about too many car washes "in a row" on East College Avenue.  The suggestion was that this should perhaps preclude the commission from approving the special use permit for another car wash at the site of the old Applebee's location there.  Despite the comment, the special use permit was approved by the commission and is up for approval by the full council.  I expect to vote for the approval of this as well since I don't believe that city government should be in the business of deciding what kinds of businesses should be allowed within certain distances of like businesses and where business owners in the city should be able to place viable, safe, and generally unobtrusive businesses.  The mere fact that there are other car washes nearby is not grounds for the city to preclude this business owner from proceeding with his/her business plan.  The market will eventually dictate whether this is a wise location for this business.  City government should not.
  
  
• The Finance Committee last week took up a great many items of interest.  At full council, we will be asked to approve the $1.6M renovation project for the common areas in City Hall, the ~$700k Pierce Park ADA-compliance project, and the $35k moving of carryover funds to the Human Resources Department to pay for a "headhunter" to help the city fill the soon-to-be-vacated-due-to-retirement Department of Public Works (DPW) Director position.  The latter subject was discussed in depth at the Human Resources and Information Technologies Committee meeting last week as well.  Though all of these are weighty expenses, all are justifiable and budgeted expenses (except the latter which is being funded by a last year's budget carry over).  I expect to vote yes on all of these unless anything further comes to light in full council discussions of them. 
  
  What the Finance Committee didn't bring forward to the full council agenda are two inextricably linked items: the city's branding project and the Request for Proposal status of it and a new resolution regarding diverting funds from that branding project to other city initiatives.  I mentioned these things last week.  Sadly, the city's branding project was essentially killed in this committee meeting... which I think is extremely unfortunate as it had had the mayor's full weight behind it until this last week's Finance Committee meeting and was an initiative funded by vote of the full council in late 2021.  The fact that only those aldermen who attended that committee meeting (which includes your alderman) were able to weigh in on something that had been previously approved by the entire full council in previous full council meetings is, I think, a bad look for City of Appleton government.  And now this branding project has languished in committee as the action item for it was "held indefinitely" by this committee. 
  
  I feel this shows poor form by this committee as the issues surrounding the initiative should have had the chance to be fully discussed by all council members.  By the vote of only those five members of the Finance Committee, this initiative was handcuffed and, by all appearances, will not be able to be revived from the indefinite hold in this committee.  It should be noted that the essential "killing" of the branding project led to the further discussion of the resolution to divert funds to other projects such as more "enhanced crosswalks" in the city (perhaps beyond those already identified and budgeted for in the city's Five Year Capital Improvement Projects (CIP)).  It should also be noted that two of the council members who drafted what I will refer to as "funds diversion resolution" are two of the five voting members of the Finance Committee.  Thankfully, this resolution was not simply passed through the Finance Committee but rather was held for a two-committee-meeting period in order to obtain further information from city staff as to how to best manage the diversion of funds.  I expect to be in further contact with fellow council members and members of the Finance Committee in this regard as I am extremely uncomfortable about the turn of events at that committee meeting.  But we will know more about this issue when the "funds diversion resolution" returns to this committee's agenda on 02/21/2022.
  
  What are your thoughts in this regard?  Does this issue concern you?  What do you think should be done to address this small committee making large decisions for the city without District 13 constituents really having a vote? 
  
  
• Another committee item of interest from last week that won't be discussed at this week's full council meeting was the discussion of a proposed Intoxicated Bartender Ordinance.  At the Safety and Licensing Committee meeting last week, I argued against what I see as excess governmental involvement/excess municipal code language for what seems to be a rather minimal problem in the city.  The committee agreed to hold this item so that the language of the draft ordinance could go back to the city attorney's staff to be rewritten from a code violation (ticket/fine for an intoxicated bartender) to perhaps a more workable licensee violation/demerit point process.  I am anxious to hear how this gets recrafted by the city attorney staff and hope that we can both solve this small yet important issue in the city without excess litigiousness in city government.    

As you all know by now, I am happy to discuss any of these items or anything else city government-related with you.  I'm happy to listen and help in any way that I can.  Please contact me through email or via phone/text at 920.570.2873 any time.  I look forward to hearing from you!

I wish you a great start to the shortest (yet, in Wisconsin, seemingly longest) month of the year.  Happy February!