The Notes: Week of May 2 - May 6, 2022

Well, it's once again a Full Council Week in Appleton, neighbors.  So thanks for tuning in on this May Day for a short summary of the one city meeting scheduled for this week.

The full Common Council will convene at City Hall -- in council chambers just off the elevators on the sixth floor of the City Hall building, in case you have ever wondered and I've not yet shared that tidbit -- on Wednesday, 05/04/2022, at 7pm.

The mayor will kick the meeting off with six -- count 'em, six -- proclamations.  Of note is that the first week of May 2022 is Municipal Clerk's Week.  Appletonians can and should be very proud of the job that our city clerk, Kami Lynch, and her staff do for this city.  They are all friendly, helpful, and courteous and Clerk Lynch is the consummate professional.  When the mayor mentions this proclamation during the meeting, he will likely echo my sentiment in this regard.

The meeting will continue with most of the committee agenda items from last week's Committee Meetings Week coming through for final approval by the full council.  The highlights are as follows:

• From the Municipal Services Committee:  The neighbor at 5500 N Providence Avenue did not appear in front of this committee during their meeting last week and as such, the committee could not hear his arguments for why the city should grant the property a variance for the ability to park a longer-than-26-feet RV camper in the front yard of the property or to have a driveway wider than twelve feet.  As such, the full council will be asked to deny the variance request.  If you are a concerned neighbor in the Emerald Estates subdivision and have any questions in this regard, please contact me so that we can discuss the situation. 
  
  The discussion on the city's involvement in Soldier's Square was held in the Municipal Services Committee so that will continue in committee at a later date and is not on the agenda for this full council meeting.
  
  
• From the Safety and Licensing Committee:  The full council will be asked to affirm the committee's approval of the Fire Department's request for a Public Education Specialist/Civilian Fire Inspector position.  I expect that we will see many more school-aged children's programs from the Fire Department aimed at fire prevention with this new position and that can only be good for the City of Appleton.
  
  
• From the Finance Committee:  Valley Transit is hoping that the full council will affirm this committee's approval of two line items -- one to add and hire a Safety and Compliance Specialist to their organization and one (a last-minute request) to approve a contract amendment requested by Lamers Bus Lines for the summer weekend trolley service in downtown Appleton.  I'm not pleased with (and I'm guessing there will be some further discussion about) the latter request as it seems that Lamers Bus Lines acted inappropriately in contractual agreements.  To read more about this issue, please see this All Things Appleton post. The additional cost to the city will likely be minimal should this item be council approved.  But it is an unfortunate additional expense for the city.  
  
  
• From the Human Resources and Information Technologies Committee:  This committee approved a change to the Information Technologies Table of Organization to allow for a shared Human Resources (HR) and Information Technologies (IT) Administrative Support Assistant.  This position is a slight increase in the IT budget but a much needed change to allow the higher-paid technology employees in IT to do more of the more specialized IT work and leave the paperwork (so to speak) and less specialized work to an administrative employee.

Two other special requests are on the agenda to round out this week's meeting of the full council. 

• First, the authors of the Clean Water and Treaty Rights resolution (mentioned here and the subject of discussion for a scheduled-and-subsequently-cancelled special session of the Common Council) have asked to withdraw this resolution.  As this resolution had no place in Appleton city government in the first place (in my opinion as mentioned in the alderman blog post linked above), it will be good to have it removed from further discussion in Appleton city government.  I believe that the initial submission of this resolution was a bit of a ploy to give the issue to which the resolution speaks some "publicity" in Appleton and the authors were perhaps disingenuous to present it as an issue for Appleton Common Council discussion and actual action by the City of Appleton government.  As such, I dislike that the request to withdraw the resolution is now being presented rather than the resolution being presented and subsequently voted down by the full common council.  Regardless, the request for withdrawal will likely be passed and the issue will disappear from any agendas in City of Appleton government... which is as it should be.  I wonder, though, how often in the future we will see things like this occur again.  
  
  
• Next, the full council will be asked to suspend the Council Rules to cancel the full council meeting scheduled for 07/06/2022.  As this meeting would be conducted during the week of Independence Day and much of the city's staff (and likely the city's aldermen!) will be vacationing on or around this date, it's not an unexpected or unreasonable request.  As such... I'm not planning on our seeing a full council meeting on July 7th this year.
  

So this was a short blog post (as promised in the first paragraph) but I'm so glad that you joined me back here again!  If you have any questions or concerns about the above items of mention or about any other City of Appleton government happening or action, please be sure to contact me.  I'm always happy to hear from you!

I hope your first full week of May 2022 is a beautiful one and that you'll back here again next Sunday for another update.