What you may not know: Week of March 25

It's a relatively light week in terms of meeting volume for the Appleton Common Council, but a pair of committees have packed agendas. Here are some of the highlights:

Finance Committee, Monday, 5:30 pm

Excessive Assessment Claim

Monday's Finance agenda will be one of the busier I've seen in quite some time. First, the committee will be asked to make a recommendation on a Claim for Excessive Assessment from Wal Mart in regards to their property taxes for 2018. The City assessed the property on E. Calumet St. at $10.8 million, while Wal Mart is requesting a 12% reduction to $9.5 million and a refund of over $31,000 in taxes on the difference. Wal Mart's assessed value was already lowered from $11.9 million in 2017.

I don't know if it's a factor in this specific case, but in situations like this the oft-discussed "Dark Store loophole" has been an issue. The loophole stems from an issue with state statute that allows big box retailers to compare their properties to vacant stores for the purpose of assessment. Those stores, some of which have been on the market for a long time, typically have an assessed value much lower than their active counterparts. Appleton is among several municipalities that have asked the state to step in and end that process, but it has yet to come to fruition.

In the meantime, our inability to assess these properties at their full value has a very real impact on the city's remaining taxpayers. These reductions in tax collections are spread out over the rest of the tax levy and cause everyone else's property taxes to increase to make up the difference. Closing the Dark Store loophole and solving this issue would allow us to return to a fairer balance of tax contributions across the city.

"Carryover" budgets

Next, it's time for the committee's annual consideration of "carryover" dollars from the previous year's budget. Per longstanding city policy, unspent dollars from the previous year's budget that aren't currently under contract for an active project are subject to the carryover appropriation process. 75% of those unspent funds are automatically applied to debt service (part of the reason we're routinely able to pay off debt early), and the other 25% is available for projects that we may not have been able to fund in previous budgets or urgent needs that have come up since the budget was discussed in November.

This year the general fund's portion of that remaining 25% is just under $175,000. Most of that money is requested for a special salt purchase to cover the gap while the city waits for its final shipment from our vendor, which was delayed due to icing on the Great Lakes.

Special Event Policy

Tonight the committee is also expected to have their first opportunity to discuss a resolution submitted by three alderpersons at last Wednesday's meeting related to the city's Special Event Policy.

Large special events throughout the year in the city attract visitors and improve quality of life, but there's always been a challenging balance between the city working to help promote these events and ensuring our departments are able to recoup their expenses for the extra hours worked during these events to keep the costs from falling on the taxpayers. Council most recently updated the policy in early 2017 to increase the cost for Special Event licenses to cover more of the city's associated costs.

Alderpersons Kathleen Plank, Patti Coenen and Chris Croatt's resolution calls for that process to be reopened to consider including a portion of the Department of Public Works' cost for cleanup following events. I'll be interested to see how this debate unfolds, given previous discussions about the importance of preserving this balance.

Safety & Licensing Committee, Wednesday, 5:30 pm

A discussion that has been rippling through the community for several months now will appear on an Appleton committee agenda once again this week.

Concerns regarding truancy court and the Appleton Area School District have been well-documented in recent months, with the Eighth Judicial District recently announcing that their judges will no longer participate in the program. Before the process was discontinued representatives from the City Attorney's office had participated in the hearings, at least partially because the city has an anti-truancy ordinance that parallels state statute on the matter.

Last week Alderman William Siebers presented a resolution calling for the city to repeal that ordinance, effectively removing itself from the truancy enforcement process. That resolution will be heard for the first time on Wednesday.

As part of that meeting I'm anticipating an active discussion on Appleton's role in the efforts to prevent truancy. I'm not sure if any official action will be taken at this meeting or if the discussion will be extended to a later date.

You can see all of this week's meeting agendas 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. Good governance happens in the open, and I remain committed to raising awareness on the issues coming before us.

What you may not know: Week of March 18

The Appleton Common Council will hold our regularly-scheduled meeting on Wednesday at 7 pm to take up items including the following:

Rezoning along Glenhurst Lane

Several weeks ago the City Plan Commission heard and discussed a proposal from a developer to rezone two large parcels near the corner of Glenhurst and Lightning Drive from CO (Commercial) to R3 (Multi-family). This proposal has drawn a fair amount of concern from neighboring property owners, many of whom built new houses in the area within the last few years under the assumption that the property was to remain commercial.

One of the challenges of this discussion has been the relatively wide array of property types allowed under R3 zoning. Just within a few hundred yards of this parcel, R3 zoning is being used for:

• Townhomes (to the south)
• A pair of senior living facilities (to the west)
• Apartment complexes (to the north)

While townhomes or senior living facilities might be an appropriate use of these properties and could create a low-impact, positive impact on this neighborhood, the neighbors are concerned about the possibility of apartments. Under the current zoning laws as many as 180 units of apartments could be built on these properties if rezoned. This could have a significant impact on the property value of the surrounding homes, none of whom had any reason to expect this when they built in the neighborhood.

I and several other alderpersons have heard from the developer proposing this rezoning and have been told that max occupancy and/or low quality isn't their plan, but as part of the rezoning process we have to consider all possibilities and cannot obligate the developer to follow their current plan once the property is rezoned.

At the Plan Commission a few weeks ago the vote was split on this issue, with the commission voting 3-2 to recommend approval of the change. I was one of the dissenting votes then, and I'm planning on voting against the proposal again on Wednesday night.

Vaping and e-cigarettes

For the past few months the Board of Health has been discussing relatively new developments in the tobacco industry and how they may or should impact the city's ordinances on smoking. 

As vaping increases in popularity we're seeing it more often in public spaces. At the same time we're also learning more about the chemical composition of what's breathed back into the air by someone using an e-cigarette. Secondhand material from an e-cigarette may lack some of the smell and chemical content of a traditional cigarette but, as we've come to learn, it still contains chemicals like dicetyl, linked to lung disease, benzene, and multiple heavy metals.

Last week the Board of Health voted to recommend the city expand our current smoking ordinances to include e-cigarettes, and ban them in all of the same locations where smoking a regular cigarette is currently banned. We've received some negative feedback on this, but I'd hope most people will understand and/or appreciate our efforts to protect them from unwanted secondhand materials indoors and in their places of business and other public spaces.

You can see all of this week's meeting agendas 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. Good governance happens in the open, and I remain committed to raising awareness on the issues coming before us.

Clarifications on Valley Transit Bus Purchases

The Appleton Common Council is back on its regular schedule this week following a couple of light weeks and weather delays. The agenda for our full council meeting on Wednesday is relatively light on items of interest, and should wrap up without much controversy or debate.

In the meantime, I wanted to take this opportunity to share some information and insight into another recent decision that has generated some discussion: New bus purchases for Valley Transit. As I noted in my last update, Valley Transit has recently made progress on a longstanding concern regarding its aging fleet by submitting an order for five new clean diesel buses. Issues regarding the age of VT's fleet have been difficult to solve for a pair of reasons:

• First, nearly all of VT's active fleet was purchased around the same point in time, meaning those buses also reached the end of their depreciation cycle and useful life around the same time.
• Second, Valley Transit's capital expenditures are paid for by an 80/20 federal/local match program. As such, capital expenditures can only occur when federal funds are available to cover their share of the projects. These funds have been difficult to come by in recent years.

With that said, I'm happy to report that we're well on our way to solving some of these issues and Valley Transit has a plan to replace buses over the span of the next several years to avoid the aforementioned fleet aging issue occurring again. Our expenditures, however, brought up another question: At what point does it make sense for Appleton to consider making the jump from clean diesel to electric or other renewable fuels?

My colleagues and I have been getting a fair amount of feedback on this topic since a Post Crescent article discussed the matter back in December. I've been happy for the opportunity to discuss our decision with a few interested folks individually, but wanted to share my thoughts here in case anyone else might be curious.

The decision to acquire clean diesel vs electric buses was driven by a couple of factors. The first, as you might imagine, was cost. Until recently Valley Transit's entire fleet was purchased in or before 2005 and nearly every bus had more than a million miles in service. As mentioned above, our need for new buses had stacked up for a long time and left us in a position where we had an enormous number of buses due for replacement at the same time. As such, we needed to stretch available replacement dollars as far as possible to replace our aging fleet. In the last year we've gone as far as accepting buses phased out of service by Go Transit in Oshkosh because they were still newer and in better condition than some of our fleet.

As an organization with big needs, we need to maximize the return on our investment. As part of a recent grant distributed by the state in the VW settlement, the city of Racine received around $6 million for bus replacement and, to my understanding, used it to purchase six electric buses. Valley Transit recently placed an order for seven diesel buses at a cost of $3.5 million. By that math, the cost difference between electric/diesel is about $500,000 per bus. We'd have to save a lot of fuel to make up that cost, and recent history shows that other Wisconsin bus companies that have purchased electric buses are still burning some fossil fuels to heat them.

The other issue is long-term reliability. As I mentioned above, Valley Transit buses are operated near constantly and may put on 1,000,000 miles over more than a decade before being replaced. We have track records to show that a clean diesel bus can manage that workload, but don't have the same data to prove that an electric bus will hold up that long without needing extensive repair, frequent battery replacement, etc. Within the last decade Valley Transit took a step in this direction by buying small hybrid buses to operate downtown. The hybrid element of those engines did not operate reliably and ended up being removed. As an organization with limited resources, it's difficult for us to take risks on early-generation technology.

With all of this said, I'm glad that cities like Racine and Madison are taking the plunge and trying out electric buses. I hope those experiments serve them well, as increased proof of performance for electric buses would make it much easier for an organization like Valley Transit to consider them in the future. In the end, however, the combination of our large need, limited resources and reliability concerns made clean diesel buses the right decision for us at this time.

You can see all of this week's meeting agendas 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. Good governance happens in the open, and I remain committed to raising awareness on the issues coming before us.

What you may not know: Week of January 7

The Appleton Common Council is back from our holiday break and we have a full slate of committee meetings this week. Here are some of the highlights from our agendas:

Municipal Services Committee, Monday, 4:30 pm

The first step in a long overdue process to improve safety along the French Road corridor will likely take place today as the Municipal Services committee will be asked to make a recommendation on a intermunicipal agreement calling for a study of the corridor from State Highway 96 (Wisconsin Avenue) to County Highway JJ (Edgewood Drive). The portion of the road being studied passes through Appleton, Little Chute and Grand Chute, and the three municipalities along with the county are expected to participate in the study.

The primary focus of the study is the intersection of French Road and County Highway OO (Northland Avenue), which has been experiencing traffic delays and safety issues for some time now. The issue is complicated by the close proximity of State Highway 441, which limits the options for this intersection somewhat.

The county and the three municipalities are expected to contribute a combined $40,000 to this study, with Appleton's share valued at $6,666.66. I expect this item to pass committee without issue today and applaud all that's being done to improve the viability and safety of an intersection so many drivers use daily.

Finance Committee, Monday, 5:30 pm
Fox Cities Transit Commission, Tuesday, 2 pm

This week the Finance Committee and Transit Commission will both be asked to make a recommendation on another long-overdue project: Replacing seven buses on Valley Transit's operating fleet.

Valley Transit has long struggled with the challenges related to an aging fleet: The Federal Transit Administration considers a bus to be eligible for replacement when it has been operated for a minimum of 12 years or 500,000 miles. Until recently, every bus in Valley Transit's fleet exceeded that threshold and many were over 1 million miles.

The process of purchasing new buses is complicated by Valley Transit's funding structure: Capital purchases for Valley Transit are funded via an 80/20 match, where 80% of the funds come directly from the Federal Transit Administration and 20% are paid locally. VT has had money in its depreciation account for a long time to pay the local share but the federal portion of the funds have not always been available when needed, hence the aforementioned backlog in buses due for replacement.

The funds available at this time will allow Valley Transit to purchase seven new 35-foot New Flyer buses using just $700,000 in local funds, which will be paid entirely out of Valley Transit's depreciation fund. As such, there will be no local tax impact from this transaction.

Utilities Committee, Tuesday, 5 pm

Finally, we're back to the topic of French Road. Increase of development along that corridor north of County Highway JJ has sparked a conversation about the need to modernize that portion of the road. This week the Utilities Committee will be asked to make a recommendation on a proposed stormwater analysis for that area in anticipation of further upcoming work.

In this case the project will be completed by raSmith, an organization with extensive expertise in the area. They previously consulted on other stormwater ponds and projects within the local area, including the existing Emerald Valley Pond.

As is the case with the other French Road item mentioned above, this is just an early step in the process to modernize, urbanize and improve French Road to make it safer and more usable for residents in this area. Both, however, are important steps in that effort.

You can see all of this week's meeting agendas 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. Good governance happens in the open, and I remain committed to raising awareness on the issues coming before us.

What you may not know: Week of November 26

The Appleton Common Council returns from our Thanksgiving holiday break this week with a full slate of committee meetings. Here are some of the items on our agendas:

Municipal Services Committee, Monday, 4:30 pm

Earlier this year the Department of Public Works initiated a six-month trial of new parking restrictions along Lutz Drive near the Appleton Yacht Club in an effort to resolve a safety issue on the adjacent multi-use trail. The common practice of Yacht Club users loading/unloading their vehicles on the south side of the street created an increased risk of pedestrians/cyclists on the trail getting hit with car doors on their way through.

The six-month trial in this area called for the creation of some "no parking" area along the south side of Lutz Drive adjacent to the trail to eliminate this unsafe interaction between trail users and vehicles. The Yacht Club continues to operate a small parking lot at their facility and users would continue to have access to parking on the north side of the street, along with access on the south side a little further down the street. Yacht Club users have expressed concerns with this arrangement.

The Municipal Services Committee initially recommended permanently enacting the changes made during the six-month trial, but the item was later referred back to committee for further discussion. The committee will be asked once again to make a recommendation on Monday and the item is expected back at council on December 5.

Utilities Committee, Tuesday, 5 pm

Preparations continue for Outagamie County to open a new landfill cell at their facility between Holland Road and French Road and south of Highway 41 in future years. The new cell will be at the northwest corner of the facility, near the French Road overpass over I-41. This week the Utilities Committee will be asked to make a recommendation on two staff requests regarding leachate, the associated water that has percolated through the landfill materials and leached out some of the chemicals within.

The city had previously agreed to accept leachate from the new landfill cell at the Wastewater Treatment Plant, which has the capacity necessary to accept this material for treatment. Outagamie County has since asked the city to also consider accepting leachate from the east and northeast cells at the facility, however, and doing so would cause the plant to exceed its design capacity for loading of ammonia.

The staff recommendation on this matter calls for the city to accept leachate from the landfill's northwest site but reject the requests regarding the east and northeast sites.

Community and Economic Development, Wednesday, 4:30 pm

On Wednesday the Community and Economic Development Committee will be asked to review allocation recommendations for the city's expected Community Development Block Grant funds for the 2019-20 program year. CDBG is a US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program providing funds intended to provide assistance and improve quality of life for low and moderate-income households in the community.

For the 2019-20 program year the city projects to receive around $560,000 in funding. A six-member panel with representatives from the Mayor's office, Common Council, Appleton Redevelopment Authority and City Plan Commission recently met to review requests for grants and arrived at the following recommendation:

• City programs including the Homeowner Rehabilitation Loan Program, Neighborhood Services Program, Fair Housing Services, Appleton Housing Authority, Police Department and administrative costs will receive a combined $290,018.48.
• Requests designated as "Public Service" are subject to a 15% cap per HUD regulations, so a request from Harbor House for $30,000 towards counselling/advocacy staff is slated to receive $10,000, a $20,000 request from LEAVEN for rental assistance is recommended to receive just under $10,000 and a request from Pillars, Inc. for support staffing was not funded.
• Three projects designated as "Non-Public Service" were fully funded. Pillars, Inc is expected to receive $100,000 towards an affordable housing project, Rebuilding Together Fox Valley has $50,000 towards a home repair project for low-income homeowners and Iris Place Respite Center is expected to receive just under $50,000 towards a project to replace a boiler system.
• A request from Habitat for Humanity for $88,500 to acquire three properties to rehabilitate and resell to low-to-moderate income homebuyers was not funded.

At the committee meeting this week I expect we'll learn more about why the Habitat request was not granted and the city's options for the nearly $50,000 in funds left unallocated as part of this recommendation.

You can see all of this week's meeting agendas 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. Good governance happens in the open, and I remain committed to raising awareness on the issues coming before us.

Notes on Appleton's 2019 Budget

The Appleton Common Council will meet in special session on Wednesday night to make final amendments and adopt the city's 2019 budget.

This was a very difficult budget year: The state's limits on our revenue meant we had around $600,000 in new revenue available to put into the budget, and wage increases for our contracted employees (The Police and Fire Departments, Valley Transit) and our increased health insurance costs alone rose by about $670,000. So there simply isn't money available this year for new programs or any notable expansions to current programs funded from our operating budget. We're also having to borrow a bit more money to pay for road projects that would previously have been paid for in cash.

Here are quick notes and explanations on a few of the discussions I've been involved in during the budget process:

Police Equipment/Personnel

The lack of extra available funds exacerbated an already difficult situation with the Police Department, where a collection of necessary personal protective equipment had already fallen behind its replacement schedule. The ramifications of this issue became very apparent recently when our SWAT team was unable to use their gas masks during an incident.

On Budget Saturday I worked with Alderperson Kathleen Plank to partially address this issue by removing part of the PD's scheduled contribution to our Central Equipment Agency to help fund the purchase of new gas masks. There are still equipment needs at the department, however, and I anticipate multiple amendments this week in an effort to get that problem addressed.

Additionally, it's my understanding that Alderperson Patti Coenen has made an effort to cut from several budgets in an effort to fund a new police officer starting in March. This amendment came about relatively late in the process and I'll be curious to learn more about it during debate.

Wheel Tax

As I noted above, the city is borrowing significantly more money than usual this year to stay on top of our street reconstruction projects. On Budget Saturday I raised the possibility of increasing the Wheel Tax by $5 to help reduce that borrowing.

I know the Wheel Tax isn't universally popular, but in this case raising it would actually save taxpayers money in the long run: Generating about $340,000 in new revenue would allow us to pay cash for some of our smaller street projects instead of borrowing. Vehicle owners would have to pay an extra $5 in the short term but would avoid having to pay that money back with interest as part of their property taxes over the next decade. To compare this to one's personal finances: Paying cash is almost always cheaper in the long run than putting a purchase on your credit card.

At any rate, the proposal was not well received at committee and failed on a 3-1 vote. I don't intend to bring it up for debate again on Wednesday night.

Polygraph Testing

On Budget Saturday I asked the Finance Committee to consider an amendment that would remove $2500 in funding used for polygraph testing as part of the police hiring process.

Polygraph, or "lie detector" testing, has largely fallen out of favor due to questions about its accuracy. It's been illegal for private companies to use it in their hiring processes for around 30 years now. A recent Wired Magazine article, however, notes that it's still pretty common practice for public safety employees. Popular Science also wrote about this in September.

In a year where we have a litany of unmet budget needs, cutting off our reliance on pseudoscience seems like a good opportunity to find some fiscal flexibility. My amendment failed 2-2 at committee but I intend to ask the full council to overturn their recommendation.

You can see all of this week's meeting agendas 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. Good governance happens in the open, and I remain committed to raising awareness on the issues coming before us.

What you may not know: Week of August 6

The Appleton Common Council is back to work on a normal committee week this week, although most of the notable meetings will take place on Monday.

Before I get started, please note that all of these committee meeting times are subject to change if the preceding meeting goes long. Meetings will not start before the listed time, but may be pushed back if the previous meeting continues for over an hour. Given the topics at hand, it's a strong possibility that staying on schedule will be a challenge this week.

Municipal Services Committee, Monday, 4:30 pm

In last week's update I mentioned a resolution introduced by Alderman Bill Siebers calling for the city to change the fine for parking in the street during times where parking is banned due to a snow emergency. That item was on our council agenda last week but was referred back to the Municipal Services Committee and appears on their agenda once again.

This committee has previously opted to recommend addressing this issue by raising the fine from $25 to $100 per offense. As I noted last week, that increase would establish our fine for this offense as the highest among comparable municipalities.

The more I've thought about this issue the more I've come to see it as an enforcement issue, not a punishment issue. I have yet to see any compelling evidence that raising the fine will improve compliance, and would support efforts to try to find another way to solve this issue.

Finance Committee, Monday, 5:30 pm

This week the Finance Committee will be asked to make another recommendation on a step forward in efforts to build a new Appleton Public Library as part of a mixed use development on the site of the Soldiers Square parking ramp downtown.

In April of this year the city council and library board voted to support the city's efforts to include the library's needs as identified in a mixed use development with Commercial Horizons. The 2018 city budget allocated $500,000 in funding for the library project, and this week the Finance Committee will be asked to recommend awarding $347,000 of that allocation to Commercial Horizons for the following project elements:

• Site development and building coordination for the new library.
• Programming and public outreach for the new library.
• Library schematic design.
• Site development for a temporary parking solution following the demolition of the Soldiers Square ramp.
• Topographic and schematic parking lot layouts for temporary parking.

Some of this is a continuation of work already taking place. There is an Open House with the OPN Architects scheduled for Tuesday, August 14 from 6-7:30 pm for interested parties to drop by and share their opinion. Anyone interested in being part of a focus group with the architects can also sign up at apl.org/focusgroups. 

In the meantime, continuing the process with Commercial Horizons will hopefully give us more information to consider in our 2019 budget discussions.

Committee of the Whole, Monday, 6:30 pm

Again, in last week's update I noted that our August 1 council meeting included an agenda item calling for us to act on a proposed amendment to the U.S. Venture Development Agreement. Last week council met for about an hour and a half in closed session to discuss negotiations related to the amendment, then later opted to refer the item back to its committees of jurisdiction for further discussion. The amendment had been sent directly to council previously, so this will be the first committee meeting to discuss this action item. Because the item is technically within the jurisdiction of the Finance, Municipal Services and Community and Economic Development committees, council will come together as a Committee of the Whole to take it up.

Our previous conversations on this topic have been in closed session, so I'm reluctant to discuss any of the finer points of the negotiation at this juncture. Suffice it to say that I expect a spirited discussion on the proposed amendment on Monday night. I'll also note once again that while this project does require a significant investment, it has been and continues to be the city's priority to keep the expenses contained within the appropriate Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district to prevent the taxpayers from bearing any of the burden. The costs are being borrowed by the TIF district and are expected to be repaid by increased revenue due to the related increase in property values.

You can see all of this week's meeting agendas 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. Good governance happens in the open, and I remain committed to raising awareness on the issues coming before us.