Appleton City Council Update: April 26, 2026

Finance Committee – 5:30pm As is always the case with a new council year, committee meetings will begin with the “housekeeping” agenda items such as electing a vice chairman and affirming the meeting date/time for the new council year.  Then this committee will continue with discussion and potential approval of the following:

• Acceptance of a grant for the Appleton Police Department (APD) for some new police radios.  The grant amount to be accepted is $39,518 but it will require a local budget match of $9,879.  In a second (related) item, the committee will be asked to approve a resolution for acceptance of this grant and the commitment to spend the matching funds required.
• Acceptance of a grant application to be made by the city’s Department of Public Works (DPW) for over $1M for traffic signal improvements at the Badger and Richmond Street intersection and the Badger and Memorial Drive intersection.  If awarded, this grant will require a local budget match of $115,700.
• A change order (in the amount of $25,000) to add the replacement of sidewalks in City Park to a citywide “miscellaneous sidewalk replacement/repair” contract.
• Another contract change order (in the amount of $20,721) to add 200′ of storm sewer and lateral to an existing project to alleviate a drainage issue on Eighth Street.

Utilities Committee – 4:30pm Just to shake things up, this committee will be taking up their new council year “housekeeping” items after their first and only other action item.  That action item is a request to award a contract for $352,500 for sanitary and storm sewer cleaning and televising throughout the city.  They will also review the February and March 2026 water main breakage reports which show losses of $180,511 of water in February but only $45,361 in March.

Board of Review – 9am  No agenda is yet published for this board which meets annually to review the city’s assessment roll and hear/adjudicate any formal objections to assessments by property owners.  Property owners have until 48 hours before the scheduled meeting to make any formal appeals.  So I’m sure that the non-posting of the agenda as yet is due to the clerk’s office awaiting that deadline before agenda release.     

Community Development Committee – 4:30pm  A public hearing regarding to take comments on the 2026 Annual Action Plan for the city’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program starts this committee’s meeting.  After that public hearing is closed, the committee will review and look to approve the revised 2026-27 program year allocations for CDBG.  This action is needed due to the city receiving approximately $20,000 more in federal CDBG funding than had been originally anticipated.  Here is a chart of the staff-recommended revisions:

It’s important to note that the city’s Community Development Department will be accepting public comment regarding this committee’s chairman, District 10’s Alderman Vaya Jones, who is also the current executive director of a potential CDBG award recipient, Rebuilding Together Fox Valley.  Jones was appointed to that organization’s executive director position after the organization applied for the CDBG grant funding and has abstained from discussions and voting regarding the CDBG allocations.  But still, a conflict of interest waiver is required and public comment in this regard is welcome (by May 1, 2026).  Please see here for more information on this.

Other items on this committee’s agenda this week include 1) a request for an extension on a development agreement between the city and a TIF-recipient, 2) a request to approve a grass moving contract to one contractor for mowing on city industrial park sites, detention ponds, and other miscellaneous city-owned sites for ~$34,000, and 3) the annual “housekeeping” items for this committee.

Safety and Licensing Committee – 5:30pm There are five liquor license demerit point violations hearings to be conducted before this committee gets to any action items.  The following license holders have violations for which demerit points were earned: Aldi #86, Dong Po Restaurant, The 10th Frame, Sangria’s Mexican Grill, and Appleton Motomart.  No information was included on the agenda for these hearings so we don’t know as yet for what violations these license holders earned demerit points.  I suspect that they all dispensed alcohol to a minor (as that is what we’ve been seeing lately).  But we shall see if this agenda gets updated before the meeting date/time so that more information is disclosed before these hearings.

Then this committee will look to allow an exception for a one-day-late special events application for the Edison Elementary School’s annual fun run.  I suppose for one day, an exception could be made.  But it is becoming disconcerting how many of these exceptions are requested for special events applications now!  A deadline should be a deadline… otherwise, it becomes meaningless.  What do you think?

Other items on this committee’s agenda include approval of a number of 2026-27 renewals for liquor licenses, another request to accept the grant funds for APD (mentioned above in the Finance Committee section), approval of a number of 2026-27 cigarette/tobacco/vaping device license renewals, and a couple of requests for premises amendments for current liquor license holders.

Human Resources and Information Technology Committee – 6:30pm In the final scheduled committee meeting of this supposed-to-be-Fifth-Week week, this committee will complete their annual “housekeeping” tasks and then look to approve the following:

• A request to update the city’s general safety policy and subsequently eliminate the city’s aerial bucket and forklift policies.  The elimination doesn’t mean that the city won’t use aerial bucket trucks or forklifts anymore.  It just means that those separate policies have now been added to the general safety policy and are no longer needed as separate policies.
• A request for the city to move away from Cellcom, their current cellular service provider, and move to Verizon.  Verizon has a State of Wisconsin wireless contract that will allow for a line-of-credit discount that can be used by the city if this provider switch is approved.  The overall annual cost for services with Verizon will be $24,900; but the credit offered by Verizon (of $128,000) can be used to offset that increase until the amount of the credit is exhausted.  And the bottom line is that the city’s experience with Cellcom has not been positive with many “performance and reception issues,” which is especially concerning with cellular data/voice use by members of the Appleton Police Department (APD).  I am inclined to agree that this is the best move for the city at this time (when the city’s Cellcom contract expires in August 2026).

I hope this last week of April 2026 treats you well and that we finally see some consistent spring/summer weather come our way this week into next month.  ‘See you back here again next week!