The Notes: Week of March 23 - March 27, 2026

Hello, Neighbors!  Thank you for the grace granted me for a late alderman blog post this week!  

We are in Committee Meetings Week and it's looking like it will be a fairly busy one.  See below for your regular rundown of what to expect:

Monday, 03/23/2026

Municipal Services Committee - 4:30pm  The first item on this committee's agenda is a request to approve a contract for bridge inspections throughout the city.  Interestingly, there was only one qualified proposal received by the city for this work.  This is a bit concerning; however, city staff notes that the city has contracted this one contractor before and they have a good track record of this sort of work.  The only other item on the agenda is a request to approve a sole source contract with raSmith for construction inspections work throughout the city.  This is apparently needed due to several vacancies in city staffing and will require a carry over of 2025 unspent budget dollars... which will be taken up by the Finance Committee in the next meeting.

Finance Committee - 5:30pm  There are a few contracts up for approval by this committee before they reach the 2025 budget carryover requests mentioned above.  The "special consideration" carryovers from 2025 amount to ~$57.8M and the "not under contract" carryovers total ~$7.75M.  A large $3.85M is earmarked for carryover for the start of some Northland-Bellaire flood mitigation (as was approved by the council earlier this year).  A fairly large total amount of the carryover dollars are to be attributed to projects on the fast-growing north side of the city (involving the Thrivent property as it moves forward with development and some new District 13 developments and the related infrastructure improvements/additions).  And while these carryover dollar totals are large, much of this is for existing and in-process projects throughout the city, not new initiatives not yet discussed by the council.  See this and this for more information on the carryover requests.  If you have any questions on anything found here, please let me know.  

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

Tuesday, 03/24/2026

Fox Cities Transit Commission - 2:50pm  The only action item for these commissioners is the potential approval of the February 2026 payments made by Valley Transit.  But in information items, they will discuss recent ridership reports, financial reports, and the latest Valley Transit "Transit Development Plan" (TDP).

Utilities Committee - 4:30pm  This committee, too, has only one action item.  They will discuss and potentially approve a sole-sourcing contract for Brown and Caldwell (the contractor that has been working on citywide flood mitigation issues for the last year or so) to prepare the preliminary engineering design for the recently approved initial improvements for Northland/Bellaire flood mitigation.  As a reminder, this includes 1) expansion of the Memorial Park Pond South, 2) storm sewer improvements and inlet capacity enhancements on Northland Avenue east of Meade Street, and 3) local sewer improvements and inlet capacity enhancements east of Meade Street and south of Northland Avenue.  It should also be noted that the memo in this regard includes verbiage regarding an upcoming 2026 stormwater utility rate study.  So... you must know that stormwater rate increases are likely in our future.  

Wednesday, 03/25/2026

City Plan Commission - 3:30pm  These commissioners also have only one action item on their agenda this week.  (I am sensing a trend here.)  They will be asked to approve the preliminary plat for a proposed Town of Grand Chute development.  The city is surrounded by what's called an "extraterritorial plat approval district."  Any development within this district requires review and approval by the city... so that's the situation here.

Community Development Committee - 4:30pm  One small agenda item comes before this committee as well: the potential approval of a renewed lease between the city and a local farmer which allows him to farm city-owned undeveloped land on West Edgewood Drive (approximately 21.14 acres).  Since this is a renewal of a lease, I suspect that there have been no issues with this in the recent past and that farming on this land will continue until the city has some firm development plans for this property.  

Safety and Licensing Committee - 5:30pm  This week's slate of meetings will conclude with what I expect will be the longest meeting of the week for this committee.  The meeting begins with three hearings for recent demerit point violations which occurred at three liquor licensed establishments:

• Fratellos Waterfront Restaurant: 80 demerit points for dispending alcohol to a minor
• Appleton Yacht Club: 80 demerit points for dispending alcohol to a minor
• Tipsy Turtle: 80 demerit points for dispending alcohol to a minor

Next will be an appeal to this committee to add a particular towing company back to the city's approved list of towing companies.  Bob's Towing (aka Mac's Towing) was apparently removed from this list due to a large number of towing requests being denied by Bob's drivers and one particular incident during which a driver for Bob's acted unprofessionally in communications with an Outagamie County dispatcher.  And the owners of this company want back on the list.  Not much more detail is provided in the agenda materials.  But I suspect we will hear from representatives of the Appleton Police Department (APD) about this and why APD feels so strongly that this towing company be removed from the approved list.  

Then there are a few other license and premises amendments up for approval before the extensive list of information items will be explored.

First on that list is an update from the Appleton Area School District (AASD) regarding the city's recently added truancy ordinance and its application with the school district.  You can view the report to be presented here.  And please, if you are interested, tune in for the meeting online (links to "In Process" meetings can be found here) or attend the meeting in person that evening.  You can also ask me any questions that you might have and I will either do my best to answer them or refer you to those who can answer them.

Next, the committee will review the Appleton Fire Department (AFD) 2025 Annual Report and the Appleton Police Department (APD) 2025 Annual Report.  And after a couple more notices on recent alcohol license violations and upcoming special events, the meeting will conclude with a review of the most recent APD traffic report focused on excess speed and loud vehicles, particularly in the downtown corridor. 

Human Resources and Information Technology Committee - 6:30pm  This meeting has been cancelled. 

What, of the above items, do you have questions regarding?  What other city-government-related item is of concern to you?  Please let me know!  I am always happy to hear from you and answer any questions. 

Again, I thank you for waiting patiently (if you've at all been waiting) for this week's alderman blog post.  I hope you have a great rest of this week and I hope to see you back here for another post next week!