Appleton City Council Update: May 3, 2026

City of Appleton Common Council – 7pm The mayor starts the ball rolling with a presentation of a council gavel to the previous council president and with the presentation of Appleton Police Department (APD) Medals of Gallantry to two civilians.

Then we move right into discussion and potential approval of the items that passed through committee meetings last week and the week before.  Here are the items most likely to garner further discussion by the full council:

• From the Municipal Services Committee:  There are a number of street reconstruction projects scheduled for 2028 up for approval by the full council.  Three of them passed through this committee without any objections to the city staff (engineer) plans; but two plans were objected to by neighbors for street narrowing.  One of them was held in committee for further data acquisition and one of them — for Roosevelt Street from Oneida Street to Morrison Street — is up this week for approval by the full council with a change suggested by aldermen in this committee.  The city staff (engineer) plan called for a narrowing of the street from the current 29 feet wide (curb face to curb face) to 26 feet wide.  The aldermen on the committee voted to narrow the street only to 27 feet wide.  I am curious as to what the actual traffic and design engineers that the city has hired to manage these projects think about this suggestion from non-engineers.  Nothing was asked of them about this during the committee meeting.  We do not know what the ramifications or potential downsides are to changing the recommendations by one foot of roadway width.  So I hope and expect that there will be further information presented in this regard at the full council meeting so that all council members can make an informed decision on whether this seemingly arbitrary change made by the committee will be best for the neighborhood and the city overall.
• From the Safety and Licensing Committee:  Committee members voted to approve the late application for a Special Event Permit for the Edison School’s Family Fun Run.  The application was submitted one day past the deadline.  My concerns about the this are
  1) that there are far too many late applications being allowed for this policy’s rules to be relied upon.  If the deadline is regularly defied, why does this particular deadline of 45 days prior to a planned event exist?  And if there is not a reason for this 45-day deadline, why does one at all exist?  It is apparent that this is an issue with this relatively new policy.  So I think it needs revisiting so that it can be fairly implemented for all applicants and so that it makes sense and is not unnecessarily restrictive.
  2) that the committee motion and vote was to approve this application rather than to approve a late exception for this application.  We as council members are not able to properly vet the applications themselves.  So the council’s vote here should be only to allow the acceptance of the late application and not to approve the application itself (as that is what the city staff need to review once the application’s late arrival is deemed acceptable by the council).
• From the Community Development Committee: This committee discussed and approved some revisions to the city’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) allocations last week.  But as mentioned in last week’s blog post, the chairman of this committee has a conflict of interest as she also serves as the executive director of one of the organizations set to receive some CDBG funding from the city.  I am happy to report that the vice chairman of this committee conducted the hearing and presided over the committee proceedings for this funding while the chairman remained silent (did not participate in the debate) and abstained from any vote on this item.  While I am still a bit uncomfortable about the “arms-length” of this transaction, I do believe that this alderman did what is appropriate to ensure that her abstention from this item was clear and defined and that there was no undue influence by her on the committee’s decision.  I expect that she will also abstain from any discussion and from voting on this item when the full council takes it up on Wednesday.
• From “Items Held”:  You may recall a resolution regarding Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) that came to the council a few weeks ago.  That item is still up for final discussion and a vote by the full common council as it was held over due to the resolution’s author’s absence when it originally came up for a full council vote.  (See here and here for more information.)  It was recommended for denial by the Safety and Licensing Committee way back when so it remains up for denial this week for the full council.  I’ve noted in those earlier posts regarding this item that I do not believe that this council can speak for the citizens of Appleton to affirm this resolution which states that “the City of Appleton supports the implementation of ranked choice voting for all municipal elections” and “urges the State of Wisconsin Senate and Assembly to amend state law to authorize municipalities to enact ranked choice voting.”  The resolution also calls for the city clerk to mail the resolution stating this supposed support to the governor, the Wisconsin Towns Association, the Wisconsin League of Municipalities, and “all members of the State Legislature.”

  Not only do I personally not agree with the ideas and implementation of RCV.  But I also firmly disagree that the majority of the residents of District 13 (much less the majority of the entire population of the city) support RCV or urge the state legislature to allow it.  And I certainly doubt that the majority of the citizens of this city want the City Clerk to waste time, energy, ink, paper, and postage to mail every single state legislator this resolution stating that we do.   Do you agree?  Please let me know your thoughts.

• In other council business, there is a request on the table for the council to cancel their meetings scheduled for July 1, 2026 (for Independence Day week) and January 6, 2027 (for the week of New Years Day).  This is a common practice by this council as many city staff and aldermen are traveling/vacationing during those weeks due to those holidays.

There is one more thing that District 13 residents should know, though.  There’s more construction coming up on a portion of one of the main routes in our district: French Road.  From June 15 through August 14, French Road from the Apple Creek Trail crossing south to the roundabout at Evergreen Drive will be closed for complete concrete reconstruction.  I had expected this portion of the roadway to undergo a “mill and fill” just as the portion of the roadway north of the trail had gone through.  But indeed, there will be permanent concrete construction there (including sidewalks on both sides and curb and gutter is my understanding).  I am disappointed that they are waiting until June to start this when they could be working on it right now (as the French Road bridge over Hwy 41 is closed, making that portion of French Road already far less utilized).  But they apparently have a grand scheme to work together with the state Department of Transportation to best serve the area, despite our frustrations with that roadway being closed.  Anyway… I thought you should know so that you can be prepared to change your travel routes even longer into this construction season.

I will wrap up this week with a big thank you to you for reading another alderman blog post installment. As always, I wish you a great week ahead.  I hope we finally see a long-term change in the weather this week so that we can take greater advantage of the outdoors here in our beautiful area of the state.