The Notes: Week of March 25 - March 29, 2024

Thanks for joining me back here for another Committee Meetings Week alderman blog post, Neighbors.  It will be a hit or miss kind of week with a few cancelled meetings but a few meetings with long agendas as well.  Here is your regular rundown of what to expect in the week ahead:

Monday, 03/25/2024

Municipal Services Committee - 4:30pm  Allowed operating hours for street vendors (food trucks) is again on the agenda for this committee since the item proposing a limiting of their permitted hours of operation was held during the last meeting of this committee.  In an effort to stop violence and disturbances with post-bar-hours drunken and disorderly folks (and those not drunk and not disorderly, as is sometimes the case), there is a staff/Appleton Police Department (APD) request that the permitted hours of operation be amended so that these vendors must close at midnight rather than at the currently allowed 4am.  As has been stated many times throughout the discussion of this recommendation, food vendors are not at fault for the issues that arise between post-bar-hours patrons.  As such, I cannot agree with a limiting of the hours of operation for these small businesses.  There must be other potential solutions that can be explored.  I have suggested that a new committee (or task force or something of that sort) of stakeholders in this situation can be created to look for other solutions to the issue of downtown post-bar-time violence and disturbances.  What are your thoughts on this issue?  Do you have any recommendations?  

This committee will also look to approve a new and updated Complete Streets Design Guide to direct all future new and replacement street projects in the city and a request that the city accept a Wisconsin Department of Transportation (DOT) grant for traffic signal replacements in key parts of the city.  The latter will require American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds from the city's allotment and a small budget carry over from 2023 to complete.  I expect that both items will be approved but will garner some good discussion at this committee meeting.   

Finance Committee - 5:30pm  The last item noted above will also be discussed at this committee's meeting since the ARPA funds distribution and the carry over funds require Finance Committee approval as well.  There are also quite a few other items up for discussion and potential approval by this committee.  They include (but are not limited to)

• a request for approval of a contract to replace lighting fixtures in parts of the Appleton Wastewater Treatment Plant (AWWTP) for ~$81,500
  
• a request for approval of a contract for roof replacement in parts of the AWWTP for ~$1.1M 
  
• a request to award a contract for ~$500,000 for HVAC upgrades/replacements in two Appleton Fire Department (AFD) fire stations
  
• the acceptance of the Central Equipment Agency Committee report (mentioned here when it was up for approval by that committee)
• a request to approve the following ARPA funds recommendations for obligating almost all of the balance of ARPA funds the city received from the federal government (memo from staff in this regard can be found here):
  
  
  
  
  
• a request to accept a $279,800 donation from Goodwill for the replacement of the ADA surface of the Miracle League Field at Memorial Park.  This is a wonderful donation from Goodwill and will do such great things for those who need and utilize the Miracle League Field!
• a request to transfer $2M of ARPA funds from the general fund to the library project.  It is interesting to note that all along in the process of committing these funds to the library project, it has been specifically stated that these funds were for "broadband implementation" at the library.  This special designation made it seem as though the funds were to be used for a specific need in the library project, not just a way for the majority of the common council members (your alderman excluded) to increase the funds available for the library project.  That designation made the $2M transfer to this project seemingly acceptable under the ARPA funding distribution criteria (which includes increasing broadband connectivity and infrastructure investment).  In the memo for this transfer however, there is no mention of this "broadband implementation"... just that the project will receive the $2M.   

Parks and Recreation Committee - 6:15pm  This meeting has been cancelled due to lack of agenda items.

Tuesday, 03/26/2024

Fox Cities Transit Commission - 2:50pm  Transit folks are asking for an override on the originally approved amount needed for new furniture for the renovated Whitman Avenue transit facility.  The overage of ~$45k for furniture for "office space for the Mobility Manager, Travel Trainer, and future expansion of a demand response ADA dispatch" will exceed the contingency on the originally approved contract.  This seems excessive... but I will be interested in further information in this regard to be divulged at the meeting of this commission.  Commissioners will also review and look to approve the February 2024 payments and ridership and income statements. 

Utilities Committee - 4:30pm  Members of this committee will be asked to review and approve the purchase of some new instrumentation for water quality measuring and a sole source purchase of a wash press auger assembly to replace one which has been repaired by staff numerous times in the last year but continues to fail necessitating replacement.  

Wednesday, 03/27/2024

City Plan Commission - 3:30pm  There will be a public hearing on one item on this commission's agenda and then they will take up discussion on that item -- a proposed rezoning of a piece of property on Midway Road near Plank Road from Single Family to Multi-Family for a future housing development.   

Human Resources and Information Technology Committee - 4:30pm  This meeting has been cancelled due to lack of agenda items.

Safety and Licensing Committee - 5:30pm  This meeting will begin with an appearance by a liquor license holder (the owner of Pillow Talk-n-Wine on College Avenue) regarding recent demerit points the establishment accumulated for being open after hours.  That license holders for establishments acquiring demerit points appear before this committee to present their plans to avoid future demerit point violations is a relatively new requirement in the city.  I think it a good one, though, as it asks for a greater level of responsibility from liquor license holders.  Do you agree? 

There are also two requests of this committee to deny operator (bartender) licenses for two applicants -- one because the applicant has a long history of drug use and drug dealing and was convicted of sexual assault and battery and the other because the applicant has accumulated five convictions for Operating While Intoxicated (the first four within a five-year period).

In the informational items portion of this meeting, the committee will review the Appleton Police Department's 2023 Annual Report.  It is interesting to review the year's complaint counts and the main uses of APD service that are summarized in this report.  I'm disturbed to note that drug offense violations exceeded all others last year and that very large amounts of cocaine and methamphetamine were seized.  But in only one incident in 2023 was deadly force used... so APD must, in general, be doing things right.  

Community and Economic Development Committee - 6:30pm  This meeting has been cancelled due to lack of agenda items.

That wraps up this coming week's meetings.  I hope that you will write to me to share any thoughts or concerns you may have regarding these items or any others of interest to you.  

I would like to quickly share with you that your alderman did vote with the majority of the council to approve the latest development agreement between the city and US Venture for the redevelopment of The 222 Building (mentioned in last week's blog post).  It was a very complicated issue due to the city's history with US Venture and the so-called Bluff Site.  The newest leadership of US Venture has apparently been very much more willing to work with the city on this new agreement than past leadership was with the Bluff Site.  And, as your representative, I had to look at this agreement for the good it can contribute to the future of the city and divorce it from all of the past failings of both the city and US Venture in the Bluff Site debacle.  While I am not satisfied with the excess infrastructure (and other) spending that the taxpayers incurred with the Bluff Site in the past, I do think that this new agreement will be an overall positive for the city.  The TIF assistance, I think, was not needed and really comes down to what some refer to as "corporate welfare."  But it could not be removed from the agreement as that would not be accepted by US Venture leadership.  

The positive items that come with this new agreement -- increased business in the downtown area with an estimated 650 US Venture employees (not all of them downtown every day as US Venture allows for some off-site/at-home work some of the time for their employees) and the city's ability to sell US Venture many parking permits to help increase the bottom line for the city's parking utility -- could not be denied.  I expressed concern that the parking utility, and in particular the Green Ramp, might be overrun and its capacity exceeded with the addition of all of these extra employees in the downtown area.  But I was given assurances that there were studies and examinations of the expected need and increased demand within parking utility management.  They determined that there is plenty of capacity to accommodate the expected parking needs of the downtown area, especially due to the nature of "some of the time but not all of the time" at-home work allowances for US Venture employees.  The traffic engineers in the city, too, believe that the additional traffic in the area will be manageable despite the recent College Avenue "road diet."  That road diet project remains in its evaluation period so we will know more as this US Venture project moves forward. 

The agreement's TIF assistance -- the piece of this puzzle that I really do not agree with -- comes in the form of "pay as you go" assistance.  This means that, without the increase in value of the property, the TIF dollars will not be granted to US Venture.  In other words, they will have to perform in order to receive those dollars.  This is in direct contrast to what we saw with The Bluff Site.  US Venture did nothing there... yet the city was out the infrastructure dollars in preparation for what was supposed to happen.  Also, these TIF assistance dollars will not come directly from the city's (the taxpayer's) general fund.  They will be a portion of the added tax dollars that the increased investment in the 222 Building will bring.  Again, without US Venture doing something with the 222 Building (and doing enough to warrant an increase in value as was agreed upon in the development agreement!), there will not be TIF assistance to offer US Venture.

And lastly, this new development agreement provides incentives for US Venture to add even more to the tax rolls with the promised development of the additional lots that US Venture owns in the downtown area.  Either they will sell or develop them into something that adds tax value in the city or the small lots revert to city ownership.  The latter is sort of a worst case scenario as a city is not a property developer.  But the reversion to city ownership (at no cost to the city) is direct incentive to get US Venture to do something with these lots.  The two larger lots (which are now surface parking lots) are also tied to an incentive.  US Venture can earn the rights to purchase more parking permits from the city should they (or some other entity to whom they might sell those larger lots) develop these lots with some brick-and-mortar developments.  Development there would again increase the tax values of those properties.  

My statements here about the agreement are not meant to convince you that you should agree with the city entering into this agreement but rather a way to further explain and provide answers that I received for the questions that many of you posed to me (and to others via social media).  It's not something that I am completely happy with or convinced by as yet -- once bitten, twice shy as I mentioned in my last blog post on this topic -- but it will, I think, be more of a positive step forward than a negative step backwards for the city.  As always, I thank you all for your feedback in this regard.  I am available to answer any further questions you might have in this regard as well.  Just reach out to me!

I look forward to sharing more city government happenings with you next week.  I hope your week is a good one.  "See" you again soon!