Council recap for the week of 12/20/21

Merry Christmas neighbors! I wish you and your families and friends a blessed Christmas and Happy and prosperous New Year! 

With the Christmas/New Year holidays upon us, all city committee meetings are cancelled this week. In fact, given the the holiday schedule, we won't have a committee meeting again until January 10th. Our next Common Council meeting won't be until January 17th. 

With that, I'll share a brief recap of what actions the council took last week and share a few other important notes.

Council Recap

The main topic of discussion Wednesday was the item related to food trucks. Up for approval was a recommendation from the Municipal Services Committee to expand the number of available licenses for food trucks downtown from four to eight and to remove a requirement that prevented food trucks from parking within 50 feet of a business offering similar food. 

The item was recommended for approval 4-1 at the municipal services committee. I supported the increase in licenses and removing the parking restriction, both times this came before the committee. However, last week after further conversations with several people impacted by those rules, I learned that the concerns are mostly related to food trucks competing with a small number of downtown restaurants for late-night downtown visitors. Given that we did not hear any complaints about the 50-foot rule from the food trucks and few issues with it in place so far, I was comfortable supporting keeping the 50-foot rule in place for another year as we see what impact having additional food trucks downtown will have.

We also approved the ordinance changes required to the solid waste, recycling, brush and leaf collection starting next year. These were a package of changes we approved earlier this year to bring some services in house that were previously contracted out and to meet ever increasingly stringent DNR water quality requirements. I'll recap those changes again in a future post.

Redistricting Reminder

Following approval of the new district maps, changes will take effect January 1st. For our district, there are only minor changes, with a small section of District 5 coming into District 15. This will be the look of District 15 for the next 10 years. 

Garbage/Recycling Reminder

With Christmas next week, note the following changes to the garbage and recycling schedule from the Public Works Department. 

Property Tax Bills 

Property tax bills should have arrived last week. There are a number of options for making a payment. You can find all the details on this page on the city website. 

Winter Information Page

We've already had our first sizeable snowfall and will surely have more to come in the winter months ahead. The city has a helpful page on its website with information about how it conducts snowplowing operations, reminders about sidewalk shoveling and other helpful winter reminders. It's good to check it out for a refresher at the start of the winter. 

Open Positions

This is a good opportunity to remind people that the city is always looking to fill various openings. Right now there are a number in the Department of Public Works, including the search for a new department director, to fill the retirement of long-time department director Paula Vandehey in June. In addition to several DPW vacancies, we are also searching for two other department heads - a Finance Director and Health Department Director. Our Finance Director Tony Saucerman retires this spring and our Health Department Director position has been vacant since this past June when former Director Kurt Eggebrecht retired. 

Check out all the open positions and apply on the city's job board.

Get In Touch

I am always available to answer questions at district15@appleton.org or (920) 419-1360. As always, agendas can be found on the agenda and meetings page of the city website. Meetings can be viewed live on the website or watched at a later date. Meetings are also open for anyone to attend in person and all meetings take place in the Common Council chambers on the 6th floor of City Hall, unless otherwise noted.