What you may not know: Week of February 10

We have a relatively quiet committee week ahead of us for the Appleton Common Council, but here are two of the items I'm watching:

Municipal Services, Tuesday, 5:30 pm

On Tuesday it will have been two full months since the Municipal Services committee first heard Alderman Joe Martin's request to install decorative lighting on the Skyline (Oneida Street) bridge during its repairs in 2015. The issue has been held over twice by the committee, but will come forward again this week.

The state Department of Transportation is working with us on the bridge project, but any lighting upgrades would be done at city expense. The estimated cost of installing lights similar to those on the College Avenue bridge and throughout downtown is around $160,000. That's a pretty significant expenditure, so I expect to hear spirited debate on the value of that investment.

Safety and Licensing, Thursday, 5 pm

It passed relatively quietly, but on December 12 of last year Assembly Bill 8 was enacted by the state. It bars local governments from banning bow and crossbow hunting within cities, allowing us only to restrict hunting in the following ways:

• We can prevent hunters from hunting within 100 yards of a home without permission of the homeowner, and
• We can require that arrows only be fired toward the ground (from a tree stand or another elevated structure).

Our current municipal code bans hunting in the city unless the Chief of Police issues a permit, so we'll have to modify our ordinance language to comply with the new state statute. We've received recommended language from the city attorney's office, and it will be reviewed and discussed on Thursday night.

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.