Monday, August 24, 2015

What you may not know: Week of August 24

With my apologies, this is going to be a short update. It's a committee week for the Appleton Common Council, but most of the items worth discussing have been discussed in this space before. As such, here are some updates on items I've written about recently:

Human Resources, Monday, 5 pm

Back in March the Human Resources committee was asked to recommend a salary structure for the mayor for the office's next term, from April of 2016 through April of 2020. That item was held in March and again in May, June and July while council debated, voted down, reconsidered and again voted down consideration of possible changes to the city's governmental structure.

With that debate behind us, on Monday the HR committee will again be asked to make a recommendation. Back in May I outlined the challenges inherent in doing so, noting that differences in mayoral duties across municipalities make it hard to compare apples to apples when setting a salary. I'll be interested to see how the committee opts to proceed here.

Finance, Tuesday, 4:30 pm

The city continues to wade through some challenges with a relatively new ordinance dealing with licenses issued (or not issued) to properties where a landlord has fallen behind on his or her property taxes. Last week a resolution calling for the city to create provisional licenses to deal with these cases was referred back to the Finance Committee, where it again appears on the agenda this week.

The issues we've experienced with this ordinance, however, will likely lead to a broader review than what's called for here. As one of the three co-sponsors of the resolution, I'm interested in withdrawing it to make way for that larger conversation.

Additionally, at Finance this week the committee will also be asked to again review an ordinance we've been discussing since June that would open the door for members of the council to participate remotely when they're unable to attend a meeting. I remain in favor of the spirit of what we're trying to do here, but voted against the final product at committee two weeks ago because I remain concerned about the details of the procedure used to determine who can participate and our ability to successfully allow it with our existing setup.

Finally, these items remain in process but will not be voted on this week:

  • The Appleton Police Department and Parks & Recreation Department are continuing to work on language for a change to the park ordinances regarding alcohol. Council will likely take action on a proposal to limit alcohol to those with a permit sometime in September.
  • A resolution calling for the city to expand the urban beekeeping permit process is also on hold, having been referred back to the Board of Health. That board's next scheduled meeting is September 9 at 7 am.
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.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

What you may not know: Week of August 17

The Appleton Common Council will meet in its regularly-scheduled session on Wednesday, August 19, but before we get started we'll have a special meeting to discuss one of our longstanding items:

Expo center update

The Common Council will meet at 6 pm on Wednesday and is expected to go into closed session to discuss the latest developments in the effort to build an expo center in downtown Appleton. I don't know the specifics of what will be discussed on Wednesday, but I can tell you that two major hurdles remain if the city is going to purchase the prospective site yet this year.

The exhibition center likely cannot happen without agreement from many of our neighboring municipalities to raise their room taxes to help pay for it, so an intergovernmental agreement will be needed before anything can move forward. It's my understanding that work on this side of the project is ongoing.

Meanwhile, another critical piece of the puzzle is the proposed management agreement between the city and the new owners of the Radisson Paper Valley. I've seen public statements saying both sides expect this to be done soon.

Both of those agreements will need to come before the common council for approval, and I look forward to the opportunity to review them. It's my understanding that council will take no official action on the expo center at this meeting.

Once we've wrapped up that discussion in closed session, council will reconvene in open session to take up our other scheduled items. Here are the updates on items I discussed last week:

Alcohol in parks

Last Monday the Safety & Licensing and Parks & Recreation committees held a joint meeting to discuss proposed changes to our park ordinances regarding alcohol. After a fair amount of discussion there seems to be a feeling that something needs to be done but some of us appear to remain concerned about how the issues we're experiencing can be addressed without impacting others whose ability to have alcohol in parks is not causing a problem. In the end a resolution requiring a permit to bring alcohol into the parks was referred to staff for further development. No action will be taken on this item on Wednesday.

Licensing and landlords

Last week the Finance Committee voted 4-0 to recommend approval of a resolution calling for the city to create a new, provisional license to allow some temporary flexibility to business tenants caught in the middle of disputes between the city and their landlords over unpaid property taxes.

This issue is somewhat complicated and may lead to a review of the entirety of the ordinance, but I'm glad to see the committee understood the need to do something to help business owners who have done nothing wrong. I'm hopeful council will do the same this week.

Urban beekeeping

Finally, last week the Board of Health voted 3-1 to approve a resolution calling for the city to expand the urban beekeeping permit process to residential property. We've been discussing bees for some time now, and I wrote this piece on the existing regulations for beekeeping on public institutional and urban farm properties back in June.  If this item passes council on Wednesday night, the next step would likely be for staff to prepare a proposed ordinance for council to review on a future date.

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.

Monday, August 10, 2015

What you may not know: Week of August 9

After a couple of quiet weeks (an off week to end July and a very light council agenda to open August), the Appleton Common Council has a very busy committee week starting today. Here are some of the highlights:

Parks & Recreation/Safety & Licensing joint meeting, Monday, 6 pm

The issue of alcohol in parks has been making significant headlines in recent weeks, and we'll likely take a step towards addressing the issue when the Parks & Recreation and Safety & Licensing committees come together for a special joint meeting Monday night.

The discussion will center around a resolution that would eliminate drinking in the parks without a permit, which would be very similar to the ordinances in place in most communities around the Fox Valley. The hope is that eliminating permit-free alcohol in the parks will help the police keep disorderly, frequently homeless drinkers out of downtown parks.

I sympathize with the police department's desire to do more about this issue, but I worry that we're addressing a symptom of a larger problem here. Our recent annual count showed that homelessness in the city is on the rise, and that's likely a contributing factor to the issues we've been experiencing in the parks. We're certainly capable of chasing these individuals out of the downtown parks, but unless we take steps to address the underlying issues we're just going to find them drinking somewhere else.

Finance, Tuesday, 4:30 pm

On Tuesday we'll discuss another resolution, this one an effort to try to mitigate some unintended consequences to a change to the city's licensing ordinances.

As you likely know, the city licenses all kinds of businesses: restaurants, bars, tattoo parlors, etc. Recently we changed city policy to make issuance and renewal of those licenses contingent on property taxes being up to date, giving us some leverage over property owners that may otherwise have allowed their debts to the city to continue to lapse.

This creates an issue, however, when the property owner and the business operator aren't the same person. We've had at least one instance this summer where a business owner was leasing from a landlord who failed to pay their taxes, causing us to shut down a business that got stuck in the middle of the dispute.

Last week Alderpersons Plank, Martin and I co-submitted a resolution calling for the city to develop a provisional, short-term license to issue in these cases. The provisional license would give tenants an opportunity to continue to operate for up to three months while the tax issue was being resolved, or in the worst case it would allow them to continue to operate temporarily while looking for options to relocate. These tenants have committed no crime, and I hope we'll find a way to help them make the best of a bad situation.

Board of Health, Wednesday, 7 am

Finally, a longstanding debate will reopen on Wednesday morning when the Board of Health will be asked to make a recommendation regarding Alderpersons Dalton and Meltzer's resolution calling for an expansion of urban beekeeping in the city. I've written a fair amount about this issue in the past, and remain convinced that the permitting process we've been using for hives on public institutional and urban farm properties can be tweaked to allow safe, successful, low-impact beekeeping on residential zoning.

Any action these committees or boards take on any of these action items will go as recommendations before the full council at our next scheduled meeting on Wednesday, August 19.

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.