The Notes: Week of August 24 - August 28, 2026

Hello, Neighbors!  Welcome to another Committee Meetings Week in City of Appleton government.  These Committee Meetings Weeks are usually quite busy… but this week, you’d think it’s the end of summer or something!  There are a lot of cancellations to report.

None of the following committees will meet this week:

• Municipal Services Committee
• Parks and Recreation Committee
• Utilities Committee
• Community Development Committee

And you would also think that that means a short alderman blog post.  But… not so much!  To follow is a rundown of what will be discussed by the committees which will meet this week.

Monday 08/24/2026

Finance Committee - 5:30pm  This committee will be deciding whether or not to approve a few interesting items including the following:

• A contract with TriCity Glass and Door to replace windows in Fire Station #1… to the tune of $52,640 with a huge contingency amount of $15,000.  According to the memo on this item, this bid is far below the city engineer’s estimates for this work.  But the proposed contractor affirmed that they stand by that low bid.  Also, the higher-than-normal contingency amount has been added due to the potential presence of asbestos-containing materials in the existing window caulking.  
• An under-budget contract for storm sewer lining (~$292k with contingency when the budget is $300k).
• A request to approve the acceptance of $300,000 in tourism grant monies from the Fox Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau and the deposit of those funds into a special Fox Cities Exhibition Center Capital Reserve Fund. 
• A change order request to add funding to an existing contract to allow for the construction of one mini-sewer on Fourth Street.  Earlier this year, the bids the city received for multiple mini-sewer projects all exceeded budget and were rejected.  This change order would allow for one mini-sewer construction to address one of the more pressing mini-sewer needs in the city.
• A contract amendment to allow an engineering contractor to continue work after their original contract for preliminary design on the renovation project for Fire Station #4 was completed.  The additional funds will allow the contractor to move forward with more advanced designs, plan review submittals, and construction administration. 
• A request to allocate $112,000 in salary savings from the Finance Department to “modernize” the department and have a contractor do a compensation plan review for the city.  I’m a bit concerned about this expense as I would much prefer that unused salary dollars go back into the general fund for eventual offsetting of what taxpayers in this city pay to keep the city government running.  However, I spoke at length to the city’s Human Resources Director about my concerns and, while recognizing them, he assured me that this is not just a “made up need” and that the Finance Department is long overdue for an evaluation of how the many duties of the department are divvied up amongst the staff.  Another goal is to help the department better utilize the new Tyler Munis software utilities.  I expect great things from this reallocation of these unused salary dollars and will make that clear should this item be approved.  I expect that this amount of money, if approved, will directly lead to taxpayer savings in the city’s Finance Department activities.  

What are your thoughts on all of these expenses to potentially be approved?  Does any one of these items in particular concern you?  Please send me your feedback.

Tuesday, 08/25/2026

Fox Cities Transit Commission - 2:50pm The first item on this commission’s agenda this week is the recommended rejection of the bids received for Phase 2 of the city’s Whitman Avenue transit facilities.  All of the bids received exceeded the $15M available with the lowest bid ~$5.3M over budget!  As such, commissioners are asked to reject these bids in favor of the architect and staff completing a review of the project to reduce costs and revise the plan.  Also on the agenda are the following recommendations for action:

• Awarding a contract for preparation and concrete work needed for a temporary downtown location for the transit center when the existing one is demolished in anticipation of the new downtown transit center construction (using $25M in federal funding).
• The potential approval of “route modifications.”  This agenda item includes no supporting documentation so there is no way to know what these modifications entail.  We will all learn more on Tuesday, I guess. 
• Approval of the June and July 2026 payments made by Valley Transit. 

Wednesday, 08/26/2026

Safety and Licensing Committee/Board of Health Joint Special Meeting - 7am  The same thing your alderman posted the last time this special joint meeting was scheduled (the week after the Fourth of July holiday) still holds today.  Read it here.  The author of a resolution regarding “Excessive Vehicular Noise Data Collection” to be discussed was unavailable at the previously scheduled date/time.  So this joint meeting had to be rescheduled.  The blog post linked above tells the same story on this item as before and this alderman’s opinion on it remains the same: that I cannot support this resolution.  A follow-up additional document is included in the agenda for this go-‘round.  But this document, a letter from one specialist in occupational and environmental medicine, does not reflect what is called for in the resolution and the doctor’s recommendations are already partially being completed by the city.  The doctor calls for 1) transparent enforcement reporting (which is already being done by the Appleton Police Department), 2) a targeted public awareness campaign clarifying the definition of an “adequate muffler” (which I do not believe is the duty or responsibility of the city government through the use of taxpayer dollars), and 3) policy advocacy (i.e. working with state representatives to “bridge the gap between out local need for a quieter environment and current limitations on enforcing ‘noise only’ violations.”).   While I am not unconcerned about excessive noise, I do not see the need to spend excessive taxpayer dollars in the City of Appleton on this initiative as there are many other more pressing needs in this city.  This is a matter of prioritization and I feel as though there are higher priorities for which taxpayer dollars should be allocated.  What are your thoughts, neighbors?  Is downtown noise a most pressing concern for Appleton?

 

Board of Health (Regular Meeting to follow the Joint Special Meeting) - 7am  After the joint meeting agenda item concludes, board members will continue their meeting and discuss only information items such as recent Health Department newsletters, a new dangerous animal declaration, and the most recent slate of granted noise variances.

City Plan Commission - 3:30pm This commission will review and look to approve the 2027 Operating Plan for the Downtown Appleton Business Improvement District (BID).  You can review that here.  There were no noted significant changes from last year as far as the make up of contributing business members, etc.

Then the commission will entertain approval of the newest resolution submitted by aldermen for the city: a request for an 18-month moratorium on large (exceeding 20,000 square feet) AI data centers in the City of Appleton.  I believe this to be wise as we all know that there are a number of logistical and infrastructure concerns when a large data center is proposed — excess water usage, excess electrical usage, etc. — and there are concerns that there is questionable long-term need for large AI data centers considering technological progress and rapid, rather unpredictable changes coming in that realm.  You can read the substance of this resolution here.  Please take a look and let me know if you agree or have some other thoughts in this regard.    

Safety and Licensing Committee (Regular Meeting) - 5:30pm  This week, there is only one liquor licensed establishment up for a demerit point violation hearing in front of this committee: Durty Leprochaun which was recently convicted of dispensing liquor to a minor.  

In action items, the committee will review and look to approve:

• The denial of a bartender’s license for an applicant with three Operating While Intoxicated (OWI) convictions, one felony conviction for the manufacture or delivering of cocaine, and a conviction for battery (with a modifier of “habitual criminality”). There is no way that this gentleman should be allowed a bartender’s license in the city, in my opinion.  So I would definitely vote to uphold the license denial.
• A table of organization (TO) change for the Appleton Police Department (APD).  This TO change is for some proposed changes regarding which officers report to which higher officer positions and does not impact the overall budget for the APD.
• Several new liquor licenses and temporary liquor licenses for several establishments and organizations throughout the city. 

There are also a few information items for this committees review including the mid-year report for the Appleton Fire Department (AFD), some requested overhires (meaning hiring someone to work simultaneously alongside the current employee in a position in order to assist in knowledge transfer, etc) in APD and AFD, and a director’s report from the AFD Chief regarding their current hiring process to fill some vacant positions.  

Human Resources and Information Technology Committee - 6:30pm  This committee has not had a long agenda like this week’s in quite some time.  They will discuss and vote on the following items:

• A not-longer-than-10-weeks overhire (mentioned above) for the AFD Fire Administrative and Financial Services Manager (formerly known as the Assistant to the Fire Chief).  The current employee in this position has worked for the AFD for the past 34 years and is retiring at the end of this year.  The memo regarding this request does not state how this overhire would be paid for in the AFD budget; so I hope that one of the members of this committee asks about that.
• Another overhire, this one in the APD for another retiring employee in the position of Communications Specialist (a customer-facing front-desk position).  This overhire will cost a projected ~$5k and can be paid for by vacant (unused) salary dollars within the department. 
• Approval of the same requested TO change in the APD as will also be taken up in the Safety and Licensing Committee (see above).
• Yet another overhire, this one in the Department of Public Works (DPW).  The current deputy director of the DPW will be retiring early in 2027 and this position will require a lot of knowledge transfer from him to a new hire in that position.  The projected six-week overlap will cost approximately $18,900 and is proposed to be paid for through other budget dollars and vacant salary dollars in the department.  
• And lastly… one of everyone’s favorite subjects (ha ha) is back on the table for the requisite once-a-year discussion: Aldermen Salaries.  The memo that accompanies this item on the agenda is a generic one where no staff recommendation is made so that all aldermen can weigh in on their thoughts in this regard.  It remains this alderman’s opinion that this position is not one for which a “living wage” is required.  I also do not believe that a higher wage — at added expense to taxpayers — will garner better candidates for these elected positions.  What I do believe will do that is something else entirely — term limits.  But that’s not what is up for discussion this week.  

The current wage for alderman in the City of Appleton is $6,918,75 annually for a very part-time position.  This was increased by a vote in 2025 and takes effect after the 2027 election.  This year’s alderman salary discussion would be for the following election year since no current alderman is legally able to vote for a raise for himself/herself.  The 2027 increase was a 2.5% increase over the previous alderman salary which had been in made effective in 2023.  I do not feel that any subsequent increase is required at this time.  I am interested in hearing your thoughts on this, though.  So please let me know how you feel about this.

And there you have it.  Thanks for hanging in there and reading through this week’s blog post!  Please be sure to send me any feedback on any of the above items that are of concern to you.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Have a wonderful last full week of August.  It’s almost school-starting time once again and summer is quickly winding down (augh!).  Here’s hoping you make the best of it.  And I hope to “see” you here again next week!