What you may not know: Week of June 22

It's a committee week for the Appleton Common Council, and here are some of the items I'll be keeping an eye on:

City Plan Commission, Monday, 4 pm

Two weeks ago I mentioned a pending discussion on the possibility of expanding urban beekeeping in the city by allowing owners of residential property to apply for a permit to keep up to five beehives on their property. The commission was split at that time and held the item for two weeks to gather more information.

Debates like this are challenging sometimes because of the need to deal with a perception of a threat. When done correctly, urban beekeeping poses at best a minimal sting risk. However, I've been told that previous debates on this topic were dominated by constituents fearful of bees, regardless of how small the risk may be.

Getting stuck in the middle of debates like this is one of the more challenging aspects of this job. Unless we receive some evidence that urban beekeeping poses a substantial threat to neighboring properties, the Plan Commission and the council will likely have to choose between:

1. Passing good public policy despite knowing it will upset many of our constituents, or
2. Siding with our concerned constituents and rejecting a policy based on their (at least partially) unsubstantiated fears.

Or we could pursue a third option, I suppose: Continue to delay action. That's the safest course.

Human Resources, Monday, 5 pm

Over a month ago I wrote about a pending action item at the HR Committee calling for council to set the salaries for the mayor and city attorney's offices for their 2016-20 terms. This committee has been considering these items for some time now, but made headlines last week when one member suggested that this could be the time to review Appleton's longstanding policy of having a full-time mayor in place of a city manager.

At this time I don't plan on supporting a change to the current system. I don't see a problem with the way the city operates under the current structure and, as I noted in the post linked above, comparable cities with city managers pay their managers somewhere between $35-50,000 more annually than we're spending on a mayor. If we're going to make a change and spend that much more money, I'd need to see pretty significant proof that there's something to be gained.

With that said, if this is an option my colleagues would like to explore then this is probably as good a time as any to do it.

Finance Committee, Tuesday, 4:30 pm

Several weeks ago one member of the council asked the City Attorney's office to look at possibilities that could allow members to vote on items remotely when they are unable to attend our meetings. This week the Finance Committee will be asked to make a recommendation on one proposed ordinance that would address that concern.

Serving on the Appleton Common Council is a part-time job (in theory, at least), and from time to time we all have things come up, whether it's a personal or family medical issue, work travel, vacations, etc, that prevent us from being able to attend meetings. Our voting structure, however, creates a real issue when members are absent: State statute requires that at least eight of our 15 members vote to approve any action, regardless of how many members are present. This can create and has created situations where an item that would have passed if all 15 members were present has failed at least partially due to members absent.

The ordinance we're being asked to consider would allow members with a reasonable excuse for their absence to participate in meetings via speaker phone. That would go a long way towards solving the issue I mentioned above, but might create some new challenges. There are process issues I'd like to see resolved before I'd be comfortable supporting this.

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.

What you may not know: Week of June 15

Before I get to this week's updates, I wanted to take a moment to send out thoughts to everyone impacted by this week's heavy rainfall and the resulting flooding. I know many residents in the southernmost portion of the 13th district experienced a fair amount of standing water on Monday as the city set a new single-day rainfall record with 2.23 inches. To put that into perspective, the National Severe Storms Laboratory says one inch of rain is (on average) equal to about 13 inches of snow, so this storm is roughly comparable to a blizzard dishing out 29 inches of snow.

Thankfully, the sun is out today and helping our storm sewers catch up. As such, this week's regularly-scheduled council meeting (and a special meeting) will still take place on Wednesday, and most of the attention is likely to be focused on one item:

Library Land Purchase

Before taking up anything else, the council will meet in special session at 6 pm on Wednesday to discuss a possible offer to purchase the Trinity Lutheran Church/Fox Banquets properties as a step towards construction of a new Appleton Public Library. This decision is the culmination of over six years of work to determine a site where the facility can best serve the community in the years to come.

I've written countless times about the reasons why I support moving forward with a new library, and instead of repeating those points again I'll refer you to APL150.org, where many of the reasons for proceeding this way are laid out. I also cannot publicly discuss details of the sale price (to this point they've only been discussed in closed session), but I suspect the number will be acceptable to most of the project's supporters. There's likely no number that would please the people who don't think we should be moving forward with this at all.

Regardless of outcome, this discussion has a possibility to be a milestone moment for the city of Appleton. I hope we'll decide to make an investment in making Appleton a great place to live and learn for generations to come.

Trestle negotiations

In last week's update I mentioned that council would be asked to approve an agreement between the city and Canadian National Railroad calling for the railroad to donate their abandoned trestles over the Fox River. At the time I didn't have any additional details.

It turns out this agreement is similar to what has been proposed in the past: The railroad would like three rail crossings in the city closed in exchange for ownership of the trestles, and the city has already closed two of them in the years past. The agreement on the table now calls for the city to close one more crossing over the next year in exchange for near-immediate ownership of the properties.

There is a financial reason why the timetable is important: The city has received a grant for $100,000 towards the process of including these trestles in our trail system, but that grant will expire if the city hasn't taken ownership by July 5. As such, we're running out of time to reach a deal.

If this deal does pass and is accepted by the railroad, the city will have some work to do to determine which crossing will close. In the past staff has recommended closing the crossing at Locust and Lawrence Streets just south of College Avenue, but council has been unwilling to support that recommendation. Entering into this agreement would force us to take action on that intersection or find another one to close.

Other updates

Here are some quick notes on two items I mentioned last week:

• The City Plan Commission opted to hold the resolution calling for an expansion on the types of properties allowed to keep beehives. The item will appear on their agenda again on Monday.
• Both the Utilities and Finance Committees voted unanimously on a staff recommendation to delay a portion of the West Wisconsin Stormwater project and re-bid next year to allow time to deal with some unexpected soil issues. That item will appear on this week's council agenda.

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.

What you may not know: Week of June 8

It's a full committee week for the Appleton Common Council, and here are some of the items I'll be watching:

City Plan Commission, Monday, 4 pm

Back in 2011 the city took a step towards allowing urban beekeeping within the city limits by allowing areas zoned Public Institution, and in 2013 Urban Farm zoning was also added as an acceptable location for bees. Last week Alderpersons Dalton and Meltzer proposed a resolution calling for beekeeping to also be allowed on residential zoning with the written permission of the Health Department.

There would, of course, be limits to residents' ability to keep bees: Residential properties would be limited to five hives and the city would have some work to do to develop a permitting process to ensure beekeeping is done in a safe and reasonable way. But I'm intrigued by this possibility and will be interested to see the Commission's debate.

Finance Committee, Tuesday, 4:30 pm

For several years now the city has been attempting to work with Canadian National Railroad to repurpose some of the unused railroad trestles over the Fox River to improve our expanding trail system. That process could take a big step forward Tuesday night when the Finance Committee will be asked to recommend approval of an agreement between the city and the railroad.

As of this writing I haven't seen the full text of the agreement, so I don't know what the terms will be for any possible exchange. I know in the past the railroad has asked for closure of railroad crossings at various streets in the city, but I don't believe that's the case this time as the item is not appearing before the Municipal Services committee.

Utilities, Tuesday, 5:30 pm

Immediately after the Finance Committee on Tuesday we'll get an update on one of the city's largest stormwater projects, as the Utilities Committee will be asked to review a proposal to delay the West Wisconsin pond project for a year.

The cause of the delay appears to be some unexpected soil conditions on the site of one of the new ponds. As such, most of the expected borrowing for the project won't happen this year and the effort will be rebudgeted next year.

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.

What you may not know: Week of June 1

My apologies for a delayed and brief update this week, but the most newsworthy items on the agenda at this week's regularly-scheduled common council meeting are all items we discussed in last week's post:

Library

Last week the Finance Committee voted 4-1 to deny a resolution calling for an advisory referendum in spring of 2016 regarding a proposed new Appleton Public Library. Last week I outlined four reasons why I wasn't supportive of the possible referendum, citing a poor proposed question, difficult timing, the unfair nature of forcing the current property owners to wait a year to learn if we're interested in purchasing their spaces and the likely increased costs resulting from the delay.

In addition to those four concerns, two more have since come to the surface:

• Moot point. I can't go into specifics on ongoing property negotiations, but last Tuesday the mayor mentioned that at least one of the two property owners involved is motivated to get a deal done and likely would not wait the full year if we delay the project to hold a referendum. As such, by the time we were able to hold a vote the entire project could be off the table anyway.
• Precedent. The library is not the only large scale project in the city. In the last ten years we've taken on massive stormwater projects, constructed a new police station and various other endeavors and in the next ten we're likely to look at major parking overhauls, renovation or reconstruction of facilities like Erb Pool and more. Opening the door to referendum on this project would make it very difficult for us to draw a line on when we do or don't do so in the future. 

This week the council is expected to go into closed session for an update on property negotiations. I'm hopeful we will continue to move forward on this project, instead of delaying it until next April.

Parking

Last week the Municipal Services Committee made some minor amendments to the proposed changes to downtown parking enforcement. Duke Behnke of the Post Crescent has a story today on the proposal. 

All along the proposal has called for ending parking enforcement at 6 p.m., reducing the cost of meters north of Washington Street and extending the time limit on those meters. The matter was referred back to committee two weeks ago so an exception could be added for the parking lot in front of the library, which is north of Washington Street but will continue to have two-hour meters.

I expect these changes to pass without much controversy, and they should be implemented this summer.

Expo center

Last week both the Appleton Redevelopment Authority and the Community and Economic Development Committee voted unanimously to approve retaining consulting firm Hinshaw and Culbertson for "Phase 3" of the efforts to construct a new exhibition center downtown. The city's financial commitment for this portion of the process is $240,000 to support work to build a coalition of local communities that will need to agree to raise their room taxes, working with an eventual lender on bond negotiations, developing a management agreement between the city and the hotel's new ownership and creating governance policies for the new facility.

I've called previously for this project to be set aside for a variety of reasons, and I'm still not entirely comfortable with it. However, if we're going to proceed (as council has voted to do), I'd be even more uncomfortable going forward without an experienced consultant guiding our efforts.

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.

What you may not know: Week of May 26

It's an abbreviated holiday week for the Appleton Common Council, but we'll still be busy with a partial slate of committees. Here are some of the items we'll be discussing:

Finance, Tuesday, 4:30 p.m.

Our first meeting of the week will likely draw a fair amount of attention, as the Finance Committee is expected to make a recommendation regarding a resolution calling for a referendum on the proposal to build a new Appleton Public Library.

The resolution is identical in language to one the council rejected in November: In fact, a council rule had to be changed to allow this resolution to be submitted again so soon. If it passes, voters would be asked the following question: "Should at least $30 million be spent by the taxpayers of the City of Appleton to construct a new municipal library?"

Council rejected this call for a referendum last fall at least partially because that question, as written, has some issues. The resubmittal of the resolution also creates some new problems:

• Vague answer. If this question appears on the ballot and the voters choose to vote "no," we'll never know why. There are a large number of moving parts in this project, including but not limited to the site, the cost, perceptions related to need for the facility, etc. A simple "no" vote without any further information gathered would make it very difficult for us to move forward in any coherent way. 
• Timing. The resolution calls for a referendum to be placed on the ballot at our next scheduled election in April of 2016. That's nearly a full year the project would have to spend in limbo while we wait to see what the voters think.
• Fairness to involved parties. The city has been involved in discussions to purchase the two properties likely to hold a future library for some time now, and both sides have a strong interest in bringing this matter to a close so they know what their future holds. Adding another wrinkle to this process would leave both of the existing property owners hanging with an uncertain future for another year.
• Expense. In a related note, sending this project to referendum would likely increase its final cost. Ongoing work to keep the project positioned to move forward if approved would have to continue, and rising municipal interest rates would likely increase the cost of the final result. 

For those reasons and others I've previously discussed, I think going to referendum represents a bad decision. 

Municipal Services, Tuesday, 6:30 p.m.

In each of my last two posts I've mentioned several proposed changes to the way the city enforces downtown parking, including ending parking enforcement at 6 p.m., reducing the cost of meters north of Washington Street and extending the time limit on those meters. Approval of those three changes has been delayed briefly and the committee will discuss the matter again this week 

The changes are still likely to pass eventually, but the delay was needed to address some questions about how these changes will impact the parking lot in front of the library. That discussion is expected to happen tonight and the full council should see this item again next week.

Appleton Redevelopment Authority and Community and Economic Development Committee, Wednesday, 4 and 5 p.m.

Finally, this week the efforts to build an exhibition center in downtown Appleton may take another step forward as both the Redevelopment Authority and Community and Economic Development Committees will be asked to recommend approval of a new contract with the consulting firm helping us with the project, Hinshaw and Culbertson.

The new contract calls for $160,000 for our consultants to work on building the coalition of neighboring communities necessary for the room tax to fund the project, working with the eventual lender on the borrowing element, negotiating the management agreement for the facility between the city and the hotel's new owners and creating governance policies for the ARA. In addition, the city could spend another $80,000 on closing costs and bond issuance, although those payments would come from the proceeds from the borrowing.

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.

What you may not know: Week of May 18

My apologies for the late post: I just got back in from four days out of town on Monday night. Nonetheless, the Appleton Common Council will meet for its regularly-scheduled session on Wednesday at 7, and here are some of the agenda items I'll be watching:

Parking changes

Last week the Municipal Services Committee voted 5-0 to recommend approval of parking changes for 2015 calling for Monday-Saturday enforcement to end at 6 p.m. (previously 9 p.m.), meters north of Washington Street to be reduced from $.75 to $.20 per hour and those meters to have their maximum time extended from two to 12 hours.

Last week I mentioned some unanswered questions about unintended consequences of these changes, but those questions have been answered to my satisfaction and I think we're ready to proceed here. I think the only challenge remaining will be finding a way to implement these changes in a timely fashion with minimal confusion.

Highview Park Tennis Courts

An effort to bring tennis courts to Highview Park hit a non-insignificant snag recently when we opened the construction bids for the project. $105,500 remained available out of the $120,000 budgeted for this item, but the city received just one bid for the remaining work and the contractor was asking for $136,390. Once $5000 for contingencies is added, the amount of money that may be required is $141,390, which is 34% over budget.

Unfortunately, receiving a single bid for a summer construction project is not unusual: It's the busy season for many area contractors and that causes many of them to pick and choose projects, especially when dealing with smaller or specialized items. The bigger challenge for me is the large budget overrun. I voted against awarding this contract at the Finance Committee last week and will continue to push for the city to try again at a later date.

Licensing changes

One of the primary tasks facing the city's Safety & Licensing Committee is the evaluation of applicants for operator's (bartender's), taxi, commercial solicitation and street vendor licenses, but that process could see a significant change following Wednesday's council meeting.

The Police Department conducts background checks on all applicants for licenses and, under the current policy, flags some cases where they have concerns for consideration of denial. Anyone with a felony on their record, recent convictions that could be considered related or other concerns may receive that designation and their specific case will be looked over by the committee. Frequently we concur with their recommendation, but the process is important to ensure everyone gets a fair shake and an opportunity to tell their side of the story.

Last Wednesday S&L voted 3-2 to recommend changes to the policy granting the Police Department the authority to deny licenses outright, with applicants that have been flagged for denial only appearing before the committee if they announce their intention to appeal that decision.

I was one of the dissenting votes on that item last week, and remain concerned that this change will lead to the city denying licenses we would have granted in the past. I think the current system works and provides due process to all applicants, not just those who "opt in." I'm hopeful we'll stick with the current procedure.

Elected official salaries

Finally, in last week's post I mentioned that the Human Resources Committee was meeting to discuss the mayoral and city attorney salaries for those positions' 2016-20 terms. Both of those items were held and will be brought back to council at a later 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.

What you may not know: Week of May 10

The Appleton Common Council has a full slate of committee meetings planned this week in our first two-week cycle under our new schedule. Here are some of the agenda items I'll be watching:

Human Resources, Monday, 5 pm

Two of the city's highest-profile elected positions, mayor and city attorney, are up for re-election in April of 2016. One of the things that needs to happen before then will start this week, as the HR committee is expected to make recommendations on both positions' salaries for the next four years.

The starting point for discussion on the mayor will likely be the $94,686 he's receiving in 2015. That figure has gone up between 1 and 3.5 percent in ten of the last eleven years, climbing over $18,000 since 2003.

Appleton's somewhat unique municipal management structure complicates matters here, as many cities of comparable sizes either do not have full-time mayors or have a full-time mayor but also employ a city manager/administrator. Appleton's mayoral salary is significantly lower than what most comparable city managers or administrators are making, as Eau Claire, Fond Du Lac, Janesville, Kenosha and Oshkosh all pay theirs between $132,000 and $147,000 annually.

Mayoral salaries, however, tell a different story. Appleton pays its mayor significantly more than they make in Green Bay ($82,500), La Crosse ($77,200) and Wausau ($74,850). It's hard to compare apples to apples here, though, without knowing exactly how those mayors' job responsibilities compare to our own.

Earlier I mentioned that Appleton's mayoral salary has gone up over $18,000 in the last 12 years, but it's also worth noting that recent changes have been more modest, rising just $3,686 in the last four years. I'm looking forward to the discussion on how we should proceed here.

Meanwhile, our city attorney makes slightly more than $110,000 per year, a figure slightly below the average of 12 somewhat comparable municipalities polled for comparison purposes. Both of these offices will be assigned salaries for their next four-year term, commencing following the April 2016 election and running through April of 2020.

Parks and Recreation, Monday, 6 pm

No official action is likely to be taken, but a major northside park will take another step towards potential improvements on Monday when the Parks and Recreation Committee reviews a proposed updated master plan for Memorial Park.

A fair amount has changed at Memorial Park in recent years, including the construction of the Miracle League field and two stormwater ponds and the decision to return the Gardens of the Fox Cities to city control. More changes are on the horizon for the years to come, so this is a good time for the city to take a step back and look at the entire park at once. I attended an open house to discuss this plan several weeks ago and was impressed by the consideration of several options to better utilize the park's available space and work to improve its functionality going forward. I'm looking forward to seeing the resulting recommendations.

Municipal Services Committee, Tuesday, 6:30 pm

The Municipal Services Committee has 16 action items on their agenda for their now later-than-usual meeting, including approvals of proposed designs for six future street reconstruction projects. The day's big news, however, is likely to be some very significant changes to downtown parking enforcement starting in summer of 2015. These recommendations are some of the first responses to our recent parking study.

On Tuesday the committee will make recommendations regarding requests for the following changes:

• All on-street meter hours of operation will change from 9a-9p Monday-Saturday to 9a-6p, creating 18 new hours of free parking weekly.
• All meters north of Washington Street will change their parking limit from two hours to 12 hours and their rates from $.75/hour to $.20/hour.

I suspect these proposed changes will be popular, but I have some ongoing questions about potential unintended consequences as it relates to parking availability. I'll be curious to see where this debate goes.

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.