The Notes: Week of October 6 - October 10, 2025

Happy Sunday, Neighbors!  Thanks for joining me again for another Committee Meetings Week alderman blog post.  This looks to be a busy one with only a couple of cancellations on the schedule.  Check out the summary below for more information.

Monday, 10/06/2025

Municipal Services Committee - 4:30pm  Something we've seen in this committee for many years is back up again for potential approval -- the annual request by Appleton Downtown, Inc. (ADI) for non-enforcement of (read: "free") downtown Appleton metered and ramp parking for Small Business Saturday.  And as the council has allowed for many years, I can see allowing metered parking for free.  The problem I still see, though, is allowing ramp parking for free.  The complication in this is that anyone parked in the ramp at the end of a "free parking day" will not have a ramp ticket in their car to allow them to exit the ramp once the blocking arms come down and enforcement begins again.  As such, I don't see a way to make this part of the ADI request happen.  That is, of course, unless there is some new solution to this conundrum that we will hear about during this committee meeting (?). 

This committee will also be asked to approve what looks to be a significant change in the costs to the city for reconstruction of the Olde Oneida Street Bridge (an increase from a roughly $500,000 cost to the city to a cost of over $2M!) and the basic street parameters for the road design for the new subdivision (called Comet Ridge) north of Crossing Meadows Drive between Richmond Street and Haymeadow Avenue.  I'll be interested in hearing more about the proposed significant increase in the bridge construction during this meeting.  I'll let you know what comes of it!   

Finance Committee - 5:30pm  Two contract changes (one requiring a budget adjustment to move funds from two under-budget projects and the other requiring a the use of the entire project contingency fund for an unexpected increase to the project) are up for approval by this committee.  The third action item is a request to approve an under-budget bid contract for some water tower boosters.

Parks and Recreation Committee - 6pm This meeting has been cancelled.

Tuesday, 10/07/2025

Fox Cities Transit Commission - 2:50pm  Commissioners will be asked to approve the September 2025 payments for Valley Transit and to review this year's version of the Valley Transit Public Transit Agency Safety Plan (a requirement of the federal government).  This week, the commission will also review the proposed 2026 budget for Valley Transit.  We will see much more of this type of committee/commission review of segments of the budget in each of the committees/commissions of jurisdiction this week and in the weeks to follow before the full budget adoption scheduled to take place in early November.  See the end of this post for more 2026 budget information.  

Utilities Committee - 4:30pm  Two big items come up before this committee this week -- a request to approve a rate increase for the city's wastewater utility and a request to approve one of three city staff recommendations for drainage/flood changes/upgrades for the Providence Trails neighborhood here in District 13. 

There is a 4% wastewater rate increase proposed.  There have been increases proposed and implemented as follows in the past five years: 2021 = 20% increase, 2022 = 4% increase, 2023 = 7% increase, 2024 = 7% increase, and 2025 = 9% increase.  What are your thoughts on this proposed fee increase?

And two weeks ago, three alternative plans for drainage corrections needed (primarily in the Fall Creek Lane area) in the Providence Trails subdivision were presented and discussed.  Those three plans are 1) a plan that is the least expensive but also mitigates the least amount of potential flooding in 100-year flood projections, 2) a plan that mitigates the greatest amount of potential flooding in the 100-year flood projections but comes with a very large price tag ($1.6M) which will eat up a large portion of budget dollars for proposed drainage issues in the portions of the city which were most affected by the July 2024 flooding, and 3) a plan that comes in in the middle of those two -- with a lower price tag ($330,000) -- but which does not completely solve some of the potential flooding issues for a few properties which are most at risk due to the construction of the homes (with low/exposed basement windows).  The city staff recommendation to committee and council members is the third option as it does the most good without "breaking the bank."  An unfortunate issue with number 3 is that there will still be a small number of homeowners who will be faced with some personal expense to address the particular issues on their properties if they want to avoid future flooding in the 100-year flood projections.  There were quite a few affected homeowners at the last meeting where these alternatives were presented.  I hope that we will see you all again this week as this is further discussed.  

Further discussion on the ongoing analysis and study of the Northland/Bellaire watershed in the city will also take place at this meeting.  The latest staff memo predicts that another formal update to the committee will be scheduled sometime in January 2026 at which time I expect that we'll see some potential plans for mitigation and the estimated costs for implementation of those plans.  And for this, we all know there will be substantial taxpayer expense involved.  

Wednesday, 10/08/2025

Board of Health - 7am  Early-riser board members will be treated to only informational items this week.  They will review the proposed 2026 budget and projected grant funds for the Health Department, a wastewater "virus surveillance" report, noise variances granted by the department, and the department's October 2025 newsletter.  

City Plan Commission - 3:30pm  There are three public hearings to start this committee meeting.  Each is related to an action item which this commission will discuss and potentially approve.

• Text and map amendments for a new zoning code for shoreland-wetland zoning.  This item was discussed the last time this commission met; but there were some amendments to verbiage suggested so the item was held until this week. 
• The proposed rezoning of two properties on Melody Lane which were recently annexed into the city.  All newly annexed properties come into the city with an Agricultural zoning.  But the properties should be rightly zoned as Residential.  This is a bit of a formality and expect this rezoning to pass with little discussion or concern from the commissioners. 
• The proposed adoption of a new Comprehensive Plan for the city.  This would be a repealing and replacing of the current comprehensive plan.  The new plan has been in the works for the last year and there have been several public presentations of it since the initiation of the update process.  If you haven't seen or heard of it yet but are interested, see the city's Plan Appleton website. 
  

A fourth item on this commission's agenda is a request for the approval of the preliminary plat for the Comet Ridge subdivision (also mentioned in the Municipal Services Committee section above). 

Safety and Licensing Committee - 4:30pm  In the final meeting for the week, this committee will be hearing from some local liquor-licensed establishments regarding their recent demerit points assessments, all for serving alcohol to a minor.  The committee is expecting representatives of Eager Beaver, Flanagan's, Jim's Place, MT Pockets, Parker John's, and Urban Modern Kitchen to explain the reasons for their failure to abide by the liquor laws in the city and how they expect to keep this issue from happening again in the future.  

In action items, the committee will be revisiting the license application for amusement devices at Mad Elephant (Taste of Thai owners).  The initial request was denied by this committee but the full council referred it back for more committee discussion on whether the use of the amusement devices planned for this establishment constitutes illegal gambling in Wisconsin. 

Also on the agenda are requests for approval of a number of temporary alcohol licenses for upcoming events and a new beer license for one establishment.  In information items at the bottom of this meeting's agenda, there is a listing of yet more liquor-licensed establishments who have garnered demerit points for dispensing alcohol to a minor -- Badger Mobil, CVS Pharmacy, Festival Foods, Good Company, Hide-A-Way, and Rascals.  Representatives from these establishments will be required to appear before this committee at a future meeting. 

Human Resources and Information Technology Committee - 5:30pm  This meeting has been cancelled. 

In case you were wondering about last week's council actions and haven't yet seen or heard about it on the news, the council did pass a resolution for renewal of a truancy ordinance in the city.  It will be for a shorter trial period (one school year instead of two) and limits some of the dispositions that can be imposed by the courts for truant students.  I hope to see some immediate results from this as the school district expects.  This is not the last that we'll hear about this issue in the city... so stay tuned! 

Also last week at the end of the long council meeting, the already council-approved (with your alderman voting NO) 2.5% alderman salary increase effective April 2027 was up for reconsideration.  Reconsideration is offered to any council member who was unable to vote on an item and wants his/her vote recorded.  But during an approved reconsideration, the entire item is up for discussion just as if it had not been voted upon earlier.  Nate Wolff (District 12's current alderman) took full advantage of this reconsideration period to offer an amendment to level-up and raise the proposed alderman salary increase to over 3%!  His amendment was seconded "for discussion" by Patrick Hayden (District 7's current alderman).  Now, if you recall my last post in this regard, you'll note that these two aldermen were the two who moved to deny the right for this item to be referred back to committee for further discussion and instead forced the vote for the 2.5% increase to occur that night at council.  Apparently, they didn't want further discussion two weeks before... but then did want further discussion last week to attempt to use even more taxpayer dollars for alderman salaries.  Thankfully, the even larger increase was not approved during reconsideration; but the 2.5% increase that had been originally approved was re-approved by the majority of the council with your alderman and Alderman Chris Croatt (District 14) voting NO.  (FYI: Wolff is up for re-election in April 2026 and Hayden is up for re-election in April 2027.)  

To wrap this post up for the week, I'd like to share with you the plans for the review, potential amending, and eventual adoption of the 2026 City Budget.  Council members received our copies of the proposed 2026 budget and service plan from the mayor last week.  In the next few weeks, there will be lots of budget discussion in committee meetings.  You, members of the public, are also invited to view the budget proposed by the mayor and make your voices heard at the following feedback sessions: 

Budget Saturday for the council is scheduled for 11/01/2025.  Between then and now, your alderman will be reviewing the budget and posing questions to the mayor and city staff regarding it.  You can share your budget questions with me any time.  I'm always glad to hear from you! 

I hope that you have a great week this week.  I'll "see" you back here next week for more of what's happening in your local government.