Please accept my apologies for a Monday post instead of a Sunday post as I attended a family function this weekend and didn’t get a chance to sit down with my laptop to update you on what to expect this week in City of Appleton government. Your wait is now over, though! See below for what we’ll be talking about this Full Council Meeting Week:
Tuesday, 03/18/2025
Library Board – 5pm (Location: Appleton Public Library Cornerstone Conference Room): This group will start out being introduced to a new board member and a new building supervisor. No other information (names, etc) for these folks is provided in the agenda for this meeting so I’m sorry that I can’t tell you who those folks are. The board will then move on to approval of the February bill registry, a budget amendment including distribution of a Friends grant to some budget sub-accounts, approval of the allocations of the 2025 materials budget for the library, an employee fringe benefits policy update, and an update to the space use/rental fee policy for the library’s “public use” conference rooms. The latter is not, unfortunately, a fee reduction proposal but rather an proposal to include some verbiage changes such as “bookings must be in hour increments” and a cancellation/refund policy: “A 20% cancellation fee applies to reservations cancelled more than 7 days before the booking date. No refunds are given for cancellations made within 7 days of the booking.” Boy, this new public space sure has a lot of expensive rules.
Wednesday, 03/19/2025
City of Appleton Common Council – 7pm: Interestingly, this city council meeting will start off with a presentation from the Appleton Area School District regarding truancy and attendance issues. Here’s a snapshot of what will be the focus of this presentation:
The reason for this presentation is apparently to ask city government to re-introduce, support, and pass a new truancy ordinance in the city to help combat this issue. A truancy ordinance had been in place in Appleton for quite some time prior to its removal by the council in 2019. There is no formal proposal in place for this potential ordinance yet… but, after viewing the presentation, what are your early thoughts on a truancy ordinance returning to the city? What penalties could be written into an ordinance to get student attendance back on track? Would this work? What pitfalls could we fall into in enacting a new truancy ordinance? What should be avoided to keep the city from falling into some of the negative issues experienced before the last truancy ordinance was revoked? Please share your thoughts and opinions and ideas with me.
Following that presentation and a couple of mayoral reappointment requests, there will be two public hearings — one for the sanitary and storm laterals and storm main for several streets being reconstructed (outside of District 13) and one for the concrete pavement/curb/gutter/sidewalk construction for many District 13 streets:
This public hearing is a first step to the council adopting a formal resolution to proceed with the final street construction work. After the hearing and a confirmation of the final resolution, property owners along these streets can expect final notices of their special assessments for this work. If you are a property owner expecting a special assessment and want a specific estimate of the assessment for your property, you are asked to contact the city’s Department of Public Works directly (as noted in the Public Hearing Notice you no doubt already received). Please contact me should you have any questions in this regard.
The council will then move on to the remainder of the items in need of approval after last week’s committee meetings. Here are the items of greatest interest which might spark additional discussion/debate:
- From the City Plan Commission/Parks and Recreation Committee: The proposed placement of an Appleton Downtown Inc (ADI) “sculpture” in Houdini Plaza. This item was mentioned here and (briefly) here. Many folks are not impressed with the design of this “sculpture,” but the council is not being asked to approve of what constitutes beauty. Rather, we are being asked to approve of the placement of a piece of “public art” so that it is not costing taxpayers additional money or causing a public safety issue (and matters of that ilk). I approve of the placement of this “sculpture” even though I find it unappealing. It’s placement in Houdini Plaza is not something that will cost the city more in maintenance (which ADI will take care of) and — hopefully — not more police presence in the plaza. The city will enter into a Memorandum of Understanding with ADI to make sure that ADI will take care of this “sculpture” and keep it tidy. The MOU will also likely include terms on which the “sculpture” would need to be removed should it be causing public harm or excess police presence for vandalism or other shenanigans (a great word to use on this March day!).
- From the Board of Health: Since the municipal code language regarding noise has recently been updated, a next step to curtailing disruptive noise in the city is the proposed noise variance fee schedule approved by this board last week. I don’t find any issue with this though the imposition of more fees in the city often does concern me. What are your thoughts on the proposed fee schedule?
- From the Parks and Recreation Committee: As was mentioned here, there is a resolution on the table for full council approval regarding a firm/strict reduction in the city’s carbon emissions. (This resolution applies only to emissions from city government activities, not from private citizenry in the city.) During last week’s committee meeting on this item (in which the committee approved the resolution), there was no mention of how, exactly, the city will reach these goals and what additional costs the city will need to incur to reach the newly proposed goals (“shifting from the goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner to a new objective of reducing net emissions by 50%—from 27,198 metric tons CO2e to approximately 13,600 metric tons CO2e—by 2034.”). As I mentioned in last week’s blog post, I believe that it is right and good for the city to keep striving towards better energy efficiency. But I believe this resolution to be unnecessary but for the “feel good factor” that many will get from an approval of it. I do not plan to vote to approve this as it may become to costly to the taxpayers for the city to achieve and those costs are completely unknown at this point.
Of course there are a few other items on the agenda for potential approval. But none are bound to spark much controversy this week. What items above might be of concern to you? What other city-government-related issues would you like to share with me? Please reach out and let me know!
Until next week (back to Sundays next week!), here’s an Irish blessing for you:
““May misfortune follow you all the days of your life. And never catch up!”
