The Notes: Week of May 25 - May 29, 2026

Happy Memorial Day to you all, Neighbors.  It's a wonderful day to honor and remember those who have fought for our freedoms.  

This week in City of Appleton government is a Committee Meetings Week.  Due to many meetings regularly scheduled on Mondays, there are a number of meetings cancellations for this week.  The following committees will not be meeting: the Municipal Services Committee, the Finance Committee, the Parks and Recreation Committee, and the Utilities Committee.  To follow is your regular run-down of what to expect for those committees scheduled to meet:

Tuesday, 05/26/2026

Fox Cities Transit Commission - 2:50pm  Since this commission has not met in quite a while, they are scheduled this week to go through their regular housekeeping items of electing a chairman and vice chairman of the committee, etc.  They will then look to approve the Valley Transit payments from March and April 2026.  The only other major action item for this commission is to review and potentially approve an advertising service for the bus fleet.  The work of selling ads to be placed on Valley Transit busses has, to this point, always been a function of the current Valley Transit staff.  This measure would contract that work out.  Here is the proposed fee schedule: "The guaranteed minimum annual revenue for Valley Transit will be $49,992 in 2027, $49,992 in 2028, $60,000 in 2029, and $60,000 in 2030. If sales are higher than the minimum annual amounts above in 2027-2029, (the vendor) Houck will provide Valley Transit 57% (2027), 55% (2028), 52% (2029) and 52% (2030) of gross sales.  Since nothing in the memo regarding this recommendation states what the current ad revenue for bus ad sales, there is no good way for one to judge whether this is a good idea for Valley Transit.  So... I hope that commissioners ask some tough questions on this before moving ahead to outsource this service.  

Wednesday, 05/27/2026

City Plan Commission - 3:30pm  The only item up for review and potential approval by this commission this week is a proposal for new verbiage in the municipal code to clearly delineate the building codes required for solar energy systems in homes built in the City of Appleton.  You can view the proposed language here.  Please let me know if you see anything questionable in this text as I don't know enough about solar systems to know if this verbiage meets requirements for the city.

Community Development Committee - 4:30pm  This committee meeting will begin with a public hearing and end with a discussion of the 2025 Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report (CAPER) for the city's Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program.  You can review the draft CAPER here.  The only other thing this committee will discuss (again) is the recent resolution calling for an increase in the fees the city can assess for non-compliance of homeowners for tall grass/weed cutting and snow removal.  This was mentioned here and here.  I will be looking to further discuss the calculations required for the proposed fees and will suggest adding some verbiage regarding an annual review of the pricing to verify that fines do not exceed the actual costs of the city staff/contractors performing the work.  

Safety and Licensing Committee - 5:30pm  There are three liquor licensed establishments in the city being called forward to respond to recent demerit point violations on their licenses:  1) MT Pockets (open after hours), 2) Cinders on Kensington Drive (dispensing alcohol to a minor), and 3) Holidays Pub and Grill (dispensing alcohol to a minor).  To follow will be a reconsideration of the bartender license denial of an applicant who had a 4th-degree sexual assault record (from 1998) which the applicant says was expunged from the court record.  Due to the expungement, the city's legal department staff wrote an updated memo regarding this application and is now recommending approval of the license.   

There are two other bartender license applications also up for denial by this committee.  Both applicants have battery charges on their records (which is an "automatic denial" for bartender's license applications.  There is also a commercial solicitation license up for denial as the applicant has a felony conviction for burglary and a misdemeanor theft conviction on her record.  Then there are a number of changes of premises and changes of agent applications and a couple of requests to for the Appleton Fire Department (AFD) to apply for some grants all up for approval by this committee. 

Lastly, the committee will take up further discussions regarding the soon-to-sunset truancy ordinance in the city.  According to this memo from the city attorney's office, there are four choices available to the committee and council at this time:  1) take no action and allow the ordinance to sunset, 2) repeal the current effective dates on the ordinance (which would allow the ordinance to remain in place with no further sunset provisions), 3) amend the current effective dates on the ordinance (essentially to allow for a continued/longer trial period, and 4) otherwise amend the ordinance (to do whatever the council would like to do for future use of this ordinance).  There are two very interesting documents regarding this issue included in the agenda for this meeting: here and here.  Have a look at them and please let me know your thoughts as far as the future of a truancy ordinance in the City of Appleton. 

Human Resources and Information Technology Committee - 6:30pm  In the last meeting of the week, these committee members will look to approve one internal policy update (mostly verbiage updating on a salary administration policy).  This meeting should wrap up fairly quickly as that's the only thing besides the regular recruitment status report on this committee's agenda. 

That about does it for this week.  I hope that your Memorial Day was a rewarding one and that you were able to enjoy some nice weather (which we all know is a rarity for this unofficial first weekend of the summer!).  I'm grateful for all of the feedback I regularly receive from readers of these alderman blog posts.  I'll keep writing... So join me back here again next week!