Happy Labor Day Weekend, Neighbors! Can you believe how quickly the summer season has flown by this year? I am having a hard time believing that the new school year is here and my little girl is now a high school senior. I hope that all of you are having a great long weekend and are ready for the start of our fast-approaching autumn.
This week is a Full Council Meeting Week in City of Appleton government. So there will, of course, be a full council meeting on Wednesday. But before that meeting will be a brief special meeting as well. Here is what you can expect:
Wednesday, 09/04/2024
Utilities Committee – Special Meeting – 6:30pm Last week’s scheduled meeting of this committee did not go off as planned due to a lack of a quorum of members. As such, they will take up their business in this special meeting right before the full council meeting this week. The only thing missing on this special meeting agenda is the “final update” on the polymer incident at the wastewater treatment plant (December, 2022). I hope that this item will reappear on a future agenda for this committee so that we can all hear about how that incident was resolved and how the city is prepared to keep similar incidents from occurring in the future.
City of Appleton Common Council – 7pm The mayor will not be making any proclamations to start off this full council meeting (surprise!). But there will be four public hearings regarding proposed plans that have recently come through the City Plan Commission. Three of these hearings are related to the proposed changes on the Thrivent property on the north side of Appleton and one is for a rezoning of a property on Drew Street. The proposed changes on the Thrivent property were addressed here and the Drew Street rezoning was mentioned here. All of the changes were approved by the City Plan Commission. If you have any questions or concerns on these, please let me know.
Highlights of the remaining items to be approve include:
- From the Municipal Services Committee and the Finance Committee: The approval of a request from city staff to apply for a grant to add a traffic signal to the intersection of Richmond Street and Ridgeview Drive. The grant would cover a large portion of the estimated $640,000 needed for this project. But the amount remaining to be paid out of municipal budgets would be split between the City of Appleton and the Town of Grand Chute (which borders this intersection). Let’s hope the grant application is successful!
- From the Finance Committee: Requests to approve numerous sole sourcing contracts for the city are up for full council review and potential approval. While sole-sourcing is always of concern to me — as sole-sourcing means a lack of competitive bidding from multiple vendors for a project — these particular items all make sense for the city to save some money by reusing vendors who have done similar or related work with the city on the projects up for bid. There is also a budget amendment for $200,000 (moving the funds between projects) which will require a 2/3 council vote for approval. I expect that this 2/3 vote will not be a tough hill to climb but it is important that substantial budget items have a higher threshold of votes to meet for approval.
- From the Human Resources and Information Technology Committee: A significant change to the table of organization and the consolidation of the job titles/salary range for all wastewater and water operators is up for full council approval. This was briefly mentioned here and was approved by the committee last week. The consolidation makes good sense for the good of the city and those vital operations of city staff. I suspect that there will be little or no full council discussion of this item but it is important to mention it as the purpose of the change is to bolster these operator positions in the city’s water and wastewater treatment plants. Without these important operators, the city would be in a tough spot as far as properly serving water and wastewater customers.
What is interestingly absent from the current version of this week’s full council agenda is the potential approval of the resolution presented long ago regarding a requirement of a 2/3 majority for any future changes to the Wheel Tax (mentioned here, here, and here). This resolution could have been voted on the last time the full council met; but there was barely a quorum of council members at the last meeting so the item was held until the next scheduled full council meeting (this week!) so more council members could be present. But as I said… the item is not currently showing on this week’s agenda. I suspect that that is an oversight which will be corrected in a revised agenda which will likely be posted on Monday or Tuesday. An item must be published in an agenda for the council to take it up. So let’s hope that it makes it into a revised agenda soon so that it can be voted upon and resolved this week. If you have any questions or concerns on this resolution, please share them with me. I am prepared to vote to approve this resolution as I believe Wheel Tax votes important enough to receive a higher threshold of votes to be increased or otherwise changed.
And that will wrap up this week of meetings. If you have any questions on any of the above or have other feedback on city government operations, please reach out and share them with me. I hope you’ll also join me back here next week for another alderman blig post. Thanks!
