The Notes: Week of August 31 - September 4, 2026

It's the end of August already, folks.  I just can't believe how quickly this month has flown by us.   

Happy Full Council Meeting Week!  We have one other special meeting this week as well.  So below see your regular rundown of what you can expect this week.

Wednesday, 09/02/2026

Finance Committee - Special Meeting - 5:30pm  It looks as though two last-minute items are up for approval by this committee before the whole council takes them up again later in the evening.  The two action items are 1) a request to approve the Infrastructure Development Agreement between the city and Thrivent for the Wilden Portfolio Park development and 2) a request to approve a Sound Mitigation Project for the Fox Cities Exhibition Center (FCEC). 

The latter agenda item currently contains no additional information online as yet.  So right now there's no telling what this entails.  My guess is that there will be an ask of this committee (and later, the full council) to spend some of the grant money that was just awarded to the city for some echo/sound-deadening items to be installed in FCEC.  The echoing in that building has regularly been an issue as far as folks wanting to rent out the space.  So I'm guessing that the grant money recently received will be put to use to try to mitigate the echoing.  But we will have to wait until more information is provided for this item.  

Information on the former agenda item -- potential approval of the development agreement for the Thrivent property -- can be reviewed here.  While all looks in order with it, this alderman is reticent to vote to approve this as it directly references and relies upon the Tax Increment District/Financing (TID/TIF) that I believe does not conform to appropriate but-for standards.  Take a look at the agreement and let me know if anything else in it concerns you.    

City of Appleton Common Council - 7pm  The council will of course take up all items that came through committee discussions last week (and earlier as noted above).  At this time, the agenda for the evening contains no "mayoral business" items.  So we'll apparently get right to business.  Here are the items that are likely to be separated for further discussion:

• From the Board of Health + the Safety and Licensing Committee:  A resolution calling for Excessive Vehicle Noise Data Collection was unanimously denied by members of both the Board of Health and the Safety and Licensing Committee last week.  As was mentioned here when this resolution was first scheduled for discussion, this alderman cannot support it.  Nothing was made clearer during the discussion at the joint committee meeting and this issue, while obviously a concern for some, will not be solved by the actions called for in this resolution.  I expect that there will be a few concerned citizens speaking to the issue of noise downtown; but I also expect this resolution to be defeated by the majority of the full council. 
  
  
• Also from the Safety and Licensing Committee:  Yet another late special events application is up for approval, this one from Wisconsin Lights of Hope.  As I've noted with previous approvals such as this, I have no real issue with the event itself.  But I do take issue with continued late applications coming in and the city staff looking to approve these events are then forced to set aside their regular daily duties to rush through a special event approval.  My suggestion to the city staff and mayor's office will be that these late applications may still go off with this same special approval process but that the event organizers should be required to pay late fees for this rushed process.  That would not be to punish the events organizers.  Rather it would be to reimburse the city for the additional staff time needed to push the events approvals through within a shortened period of time.  What do you think?  Are there other solutions you can think of to help in these cases?
  
  
• From the Finance Committee:  A request from the Finance Director to contract a consultant for a "modernization" review of her department and the duties required of her staff (to be paid for with vacant salary dollars) is up for final approval.  This was mentioned here.  Your alderman reluctantly voted to recommend approval of this at the committee meeting last week.  My ask, though, is that the Director report back to the council the results of this review and the consultants' recommendations so that we taxpayers get to see the value of this spend.  I have no doubt that the review will be useful; but this is a lot of money to spend for it when the Director herself should be responsible for personally directing her staff, not contracting a consultant to tell her how to do so.  I will likely still vote to approve this in the full council meeting as it does not require more taxpayer dollars... but ideally the vacant salary dollars should have equated to a return of those taxpayer dollars to the general fund.  What do you think? 
  
  
• From the Human Resources and Information Technology Committee:  In last week's committee meeting, discussion on future alderman salaries was held until the committee's next meeting.  So... never fear!  You'll hear more about this in the near future.  However, all of the over hires (mentioned in last week's blog post) were recommended by this committee for approval.  We shall see if any of those over hire items are separated for further discussion by the full council.

As you already know, there are plenty of other action items on this week's agenda.  But the majority of them will pass without fanfare.  If you have any questions or concerns on any other items or anything else city-government-related, please reach out and let me know.

I wish you all a wonderful start to September this week.  We just have to make it through to the coming long holiday weekend coming up!  Until next week... take care and God bless.