Hello, Neighbors! First and foremost, I wish you all a safe Memorial Day Weekend of honoring and remembering…
The City of Appleton Parade Committee invites you all to attend the city’s annual Memorial Day Parade on Monday. The parade steps off at 9am. The details on the parade route and the ceremony to follow can be found here.
As Monday is a solemn federal holiday, there are no city meetings scheduled on this Monday of a Committee Meetings Week. That means that the Municipal Services Committee, the Finance Committee, and the Parks and Recreation Committee will not be meeting this week. The balance of the week’s meeting schedule is also pretty light but with a few action items that stand out. Here is what you can expect:
Tuesday, 05/27/2025
Fox Cities Transit Commission – 2:50pm Commissioners will look to approve the April 2025 payments, financials and ridership reports, and a Title VI (Civil Rights Act) program update for Valley Transit. The latter is not really an update but rather a notice to the public (as is required by law) of Valley Transit’s discrimination complaint form, a notice that there have been no discrimination complaints in the last program year, and an outline of Valley Transit’s public participation outreach and language assistance plans. Likely the most interesting of items on the agenda is the request to (finally) execute the Offer to Purchase of the property at 222 N Oneida Street (a small parcel adjacent to the current downtown transit center) for the appraised value of $150,000. This real estate acquisition from the Appleton Redevelopment Authority is an early step in the eventual construction of a larger transit mixed-use center where the current transit center stands. The funding of this land purchase — and eventually the entire mixed-use complex on the combined properties — is largely through federal grant dollars.
Utilities Committee – 4:30pm It will likely be a short meeting for these committee members as there is only one action item on the agenda — a request to approve a contract for the interior and exterior recoating of two water towers in the city. The great news is that there were eight competitive bids submitted for this project and the lowest bid (from a recommended contractor) is well within the budget for the project.
Wednesday, 05/28/2025
City Plan Commission – 3:30pm It what looks to be the longest meeting scheduled for this week, city plan commissioners will hold three public hearings and then take up six action items. The highlights are as follows. If you have any questions or concerns on any of these items, please reach out to me.
- Public hearing and action item on the rezoning of a vacant parcel on Harrison Street from general commercial to central city residential. Both commercial and residential zones surround the property and the change conforms to the city’s current comprehensive plan. I suspect there will be little opposition to this and the rezoning will pass.
- Public hearing and action item on a comprehensive plan/future land use map change request for a parcel on the corner of Goodland Drive and Conkey Street. The requested change is to change the future land use of this property from business/industrial to commercial. The owner of the property would like to use it to build and operate a clinic/surgery/office building. The property is surrounded by industrial and commercial districts in the area of the Encircle campus. This hearing and action item are step one in a two-step process in the rezoning of this property… see the next step below!
- Public hearing and action item on a rezoning of the same property on the corner of Goodland Drive and Conkey Street. Once the future land use map is changed to allow for what the property owner wants to do (see directly above), the commission can take up the rezoning request. Both this item and the above are recommended by staff, so I doubt there will be any issue with approval on this.
- Approving an annexation of some undeveloped business/industrial land currently in the Town of Grand Chute near the intersection of CTH OO (Northland Avenue) and Hwy 441. This annexation is being requested by the owner of this property and is expected to house future businesses in that area.
- Approving the preliminary plat map for the southernmost portion of the Thrivent property. Please note the following direct quote from the staff memo in this regard: “The preliminary plat is not intended to be the final recordable map as changes may be needed based upon staff review comments.” Below are excerpts from the memo regarding this item. You can view the memo in its entirety here. Take a look and let me know if you have any questions or concerns on this initial action to be taken by the city on this property.
- And approving the acquisition of the land mentioned above in the Fox Cities Transit Commission section — 222 N Oneida Street — for the eventual mixed-use development expansion of the downtown transit center. The Plan Commission must approve this item as it is acquisition of land for “public grounds.”
Community Development Committee – 4:30pm This meeting has been cancelled.
Safety and Licensing Committee – 5:30pm In this final meeting of this week, members of this committee start out by hosting a demerit points violation hearing for Mr Frogs (409 W College Avenue). The establishment was recently convicted of being open after hours (for which they received 50 demerit points) and now their accumulated points add up to 130. At the point of 150 demerit points within a 24-month period, an establishment will have a not less than 10 day suspension of their liquor license.
After the “fun” of that demerit violation hearing, the committee will look to approve numerous late liquor license renewal applications and some late cigarette/tobacco license renewals, two “full service retail sales” applications (for beer service during three of the July downtown farmers markets and for beer service at the city’s July 3rd fireworks event), a couple of pets store and salvage dealer license renewals, and the potential denial of a special event application for the Kickin’ for a Cure at USA Sports Complex in mid-June. The latter is up for denial since the city’s new special events application requires a 45-day-before-the-event submittal deadline and the organizers of this event submitted their application with only 39 days before the event was to take place. The staff memo on this suggests that there could be an exception made in this case… and the exception would be up to this committee (and the full council the next week). I’m concerned that exceptions could be easily made to the rules. But in this case, it appears that the event organizers didn’t just spring this on city staff and there has been much communication between them. This is also the first time this event (which has taken place for many years) falls under the city’s new process for special event applications. So perhaps the exception will be granted this one time.
Human Resources and Information Technology Committee – 6:30pm This meeting has been cancelled.
And that wraps up the week! Please let me know if you have any issues with the above items or anything else city-government related. I hope that you have a wonderful last week of May and that your summer plans get off to a great start this weekend! Blessings to you on Memorial Day and always.
