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.