The Notes: Week of September 5 - September 9, 2022

Howdy, neighbors, and happy long-weekend!  It's a protracted Full Council Week with the Monday holiday giving most of us Monday off from work.  A big thanks to those of you who do work on the holiday to keep the city's economy ticking.

Besides the full council meeting, there are a couple of others on the schedule for the week.  Here's your weekly rundown of what to expect:

Tuesday, 09/06/2022, at 1pm, the Appleton Redevelopment Authority Exhibition Center Advisory Committee will meet.  This committee doesn't meet terribly often (last meeting: March 2022) and when they do, they most often have only informational items (not action items) up for discussion.  At this meeting, they will hear updates on the tourism industry overall and in the Fox Cities and an update on the (newly Hilton) Appleton Paper Valley Hotel and their financials from the Fox Cities Exhibition Center.  The bad news on the latter is that the first half of 2022 was a losing proposition for the Exhibition Center; the good news is that the loss is not as substantial as one might guess (nearly $20,000 as opposed to hundreds of thousands of dollars). If you're interested in the information to be presented, tune in to the meeting online... or better yet, attend in person!  Otherwise, find the slideshows to be presented here and here.   

Wednesday, 09/07/2022 is a hoppin' meeting day.  Here's what's scheduled:

Appleton Public Arts Committee - 8:30am 

The committee will entertain approving a city-wide photo contest for the selection of new artwork to grace the welcome tower in Houdini Plaza in the near future.  If you are interested in entering a photo for this contest (assuming this committee approves the contest), check out the guidelines/rules here.  The proposed theme is "Images That Define Appleton" and the rules propose a new twist this year -- that there will be two age categories for judging, one for ages 18 and over and one for photographers 17 and under.  

Finance Committee (Special Session) - 6:15pm

One additional action item came through for this committee since they last met the week before last.  As such, these committee members will be asked to approve a 2022 budget amendment to record the acceptance by the city of an almost $200,000 paramedics training grant for the fire department.  This budget amendment comes with the caveat that in order for the city to accept the grant money, a certain amount must also be match invested by the city (10% or about $20,000).  The fire department proposes to use existing dollars budgeted for overtime pay to make this match investment. 

Safety and Licensing Committee (Special Session) - 6:30pm

The last scheduled meeting for this committee was last-minute cancelled so these committee members will take up all of the items that were last scheduled for discussion and any new licenses which might have come through for approval since two weeks ago.  (For a refresher on what was on that cancelled meeting agenda to be taken up on this date, see this previous blog post.)

And then comes the main event...

Appleton Common Council - 7pm

If you tuned in to last week's blog post (or, better yet, last week's and the post from the week before!), you know what to expect on this full council agenda.  Here are the highlights and links to where you can find out more on each item:

• Modifications to the municipal code to allow private citizen plantings in street terrace areas: see here and here for more and let me know your thoughts.  I've heard from some constituents that wild plants native to Wisconsin grow generally quite tall... so even those who are in favor of more wild and native plantings in the city are concerned about those heights being vision obstructions for traffic.  This is a concern for me as well and I'd like to see more discussion in this regard.  So I would hope that at the very least it's discussed further at council or, at best, is referred back to committee for further discussion.  I would love more feedback from you so please let me know your thoughts on this!
  
  
• Rejection of all bids on five budgeted and scheduled city projects and the potential approval to spend substantial city money on a consultant who will help us to spend the "free" ARPA money from the federal government: see here and here for more and again... let me know your thoughts!
  
  
• The potential approval of the mayor's recommendations for the 2021 general fund balance overages for emerald ash borer remediation, GIS aerial imaging for the city, information technology (IT) upgrades, etc: again, see here and here for more information.  I am open to any and all constituent suggestions for better ways to spend these funds ($1.175M) but am thrilled that the majority of the overage (about $3.6M) will be used to reduce the city's long term debt.  Share your suggestions with me or provide me some feedback on the mayor's suggestions as detailed in the referenced previous blog posts.  

I hope that today's blog post finds you in the middle of a beautiful long weekend filled with family and friends.  I look forward to hearing from you regarding any of the above topics or on anything else of concern to you (city government related). 

See you all back here for a new blog post next week!