What You May Not Know: Week Of March 18

The full Common Council will meet on Wednesday, March 20 at 7 pm for the final time before the April 2 election. Here are some of the topics on their agenda:

Human Resources:

The Human Resources committee met for over two hours on Monday, March 11 to discuss proposals for the city's non-union compensation plan and eventually approved the following resolution:

Be it resolved that a new appeals board be appointed by the Mayor to hear and decide appeals to the most recently adopted compensation plan. The appeals process shall allow for the appealing employee and the compensation consultant to present their rationale for an appeal and allow for the appeals board to make a final determination for each appeal.

That resolution was approved 4-0, and will appear in front of the council this week. All other previous proposals were recommended to be denied.

Municipal Services:

As I mentioned last week, the Municipal Services committee met on Tuesday and one of their action items was approval of the installation of bike lanes on Mason Street this summer. The meeting was reportedly quite heated with both proponents and opponents of the bike lanes on hand, but the committee did eventually vote 4-1 to recommend approval of the installation.

Appointment of a new IT Director:

Two weeks ago the Council was asked to approve the appointment of Interim IT Director Dean Fox, along with a plan that paid him $25,000 to move from Greenville to Appleton and gave him 24 months to do so. Both the expense and the timing were not well received, so this week the Mayor will again present Interim Director Fox, but with a modified proposal.

Instead of receiving $25,000 in cash, Director Fox would now receive compensation directly tied to his full moving expenses, including the realtor fees on the sale of his home. His time to move has also been changed from 24 months to 12 months. This is, of course, pending council approval.

Keeping you informed on issues that may impact you around the city is one of my primary goals as a candidate for and a potential member of Appleton's City Council. Making the council's activity as accessible as possible to as many people as are interested is part of my goal to make it easier for more people to get involved with issues that matter to them.