What you may not know: Week of April 6 - Get out and vote!

It's a committee week for the Appleton Common Council, but the week's most important event happens on Tuesday as the city holds its spring elections. On top of the race for State Supreme Court and a referendum seeking to change the way that court's chief justice is selected, there are also contested races for aldermanic seats in the city's 1st, 3rd, 5th, 9th, 11th and 15th districts. Here in the 13th district, I am also up for reelection but running unopposed. Nonetheless, I would still encourage you to get out to the polls on Tuesday and would appreciate your support.

If you aren't sure which district you live in or where to vote, you can find that information by typing in your address on this page and going to the "voting" tab. If you live here in the 13th district you can vote at Faith Lutheran Church, located at 3100 E Evergreen Drive. Polls are open from 7 am until 8 pm on Tuesday.

Beyond that, this week's agendas are largely quiet. One item up for discussion today, however, may draw some interest on the city's north side:

Community and Economic Development Committee, Monday, 5 pm

One of a handful of items on this committee's agenda includes a request to waive the city's repurchase rights for a lot in the Northeast Business Park adjacent to the former Happy Joe's on Evergreen Drive. Here's a quick primer on what's happening here:

• When the city sells lots in the industrial park, we retain the right to repurchase those lots from their buyer if they wait too long to develop them. We also hold the right of first refusal to repurchase the property if a developer tries to resell them.
• The lot in question here and the adjacent Happy Joe's property were purchased from the city in 2006 and Happy Joe's was built in 2009, but the other lot has remained vacant all this time and was re-sold in late 2014 for roughly $66,500 per acre, over $30,000 below the assessed value. The city was not offered the opportunity to repurchase despite the requirement that it happen.
• As such, tonight the committee is being asked to retroactively waive our repurchase rights to allow that sale to remain.

Procedure aside, the note that many people may find interesting is in the third paragraph of the memo attached to this page: The purchasing company, S & J Enterprises Fox Cities, LLC, has told staff they're interested in building an aquatics center on this site. There are no details or renderings to share at this time, but I suspected the possibility of a new aquatic facility near the sports park might be something many of you would be interested in hearing about.

You can see agendas for all of this week's meetings and the full schedule at the city's Legistar page.

Keeping you informed on issues that may impact you around the city is one of my primary goals as an alderman. 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.