Hello neighbors!
Getting right into the week ahead, the item that will draw the most attention will likely be the presentation at the Municipal Services Committee discussing the creation of a transportation utility.
Municipal Services Committee
Monday 4:30 p.m. - The consulting firm of Ehlers/raSmith will present it's findings to the committee after being hired by the city to create a plan for a transportation utility. This comes after a resolution by Alderman Brad Firkus last year. I signed on to the resolution to bring this issue forward because it is time the city makes a decision about properly funding our infrastructure work. In my mind the options are doing away with the wheel tax and replacing it with this transportation utility fee, doing nothing at all and continuing to worsen our infrastructure issues, or reducing services in other areas and putting more general fund dollars back into roads. At this point, I'm leaning toward the last option, but we will see what the consultants present us.
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| Road showing concrete cracks |
As I've written about many times now, the city continues to borrow more for annual road projects and is doing fewer of them, resulting in more long-term debt and deteriorating infrastructure.
The wheel tax added in 2014 was meant to help address this issue. The idea being that the money would be set aside to fund road reconstruction projects which consist of new underground water, sewer and stormwater and a new road surface. However, since to $20 tax was added it has not been raised and has not kept up with the rising cost of road reconstruction. The wheel tax also replaced the special assessment that used to help pay for road projects by assessing property owners when their street was redone. So the wheel tax never generated additional revenue, while general fund dollars kept being diverted from road projects to other areas of the budget.
That trend has continued since then and gotten us to where we are today. The presentation by the consultant will likely lay out our options for proceeding to create the transportation utility and associated transportation utility fee. If the council would move forward with this plan, which is not a guarantee by any means, the transportation utility fee will replace the wheel tax, but work in a similar way, in that it will be dedicated to road reconstruction and transportation projects in the city.
This discussion is just informational, so no votes will be taken at this time. We will want to spend significant time studying the options and to get feedback from residents once we know what it could look like. So watch for more details on this in the weeks ahead.
Also at Municipal Services Monday, we will have yet another discussion about Soldiers Square. This committee previously voted to deny a resolution that basically asks the city to put a Soldiers Square project into the five-year capital improvement plan, but it does not have a plan or mention of how to fund the plan attached to it. That is one of the reasons the committee recommended the council deny the resolution. However, one of the authors, Alderman Alex Schultz, referred it back to committee at council last week. We will see what if anything changed with it since last Wednesday, but if not, I would expect it to be recommended for denial once again.
Finance Committee
Monday 5:30 p.m. - On the Finance Committee agenda is a request to approve changes to the city's special assessment policy. This is the portion of the policy relating to new subdivision construction that is still assessed vs. falling under the wheel tax.
Also on the agenda is a contract for constructing a second raw water line from Lake Winnebago to the water treatment plant. This project has been in the works for several years and will provide a backup should anything happen to the main line and provide redundancy as well as maintenance flexibility. The 2022 Capital Improvement Plan had $9.8 million budgeted for the project, but of the four companies that bid on the project, the low bid being recommended by staff, came in at $4.875 million.
Transit Commission
Tuesday 3 p.m. - The Transit Commission will take up a request to recommend approval of a contract for consulting services on a master plan for the transit center.
Community & Economic Development Committee
Wednesday 4:30 p.m. - The CEDC has just one item to take up, which is a request to alter the Community Development Block Grant awards. Federal funding for the program came in at less than expected and the staff made a recommendation to reduce planned grant funding to the Appleton Housing Authority by roughly $34,000 to cover the gap.
Safety & Licensing Committee
Wednesday 5:30 p.m. - The Safety & Licensing Committee has a light agenda with a handful of of alcohol license renewal requests and a few other license requests to take up.
HR/IT Committee
Infrastructure Resolution
The last item I wanted to touch on for this week is a heads up for next week. The infrastructure resolution I proposed (read about it here) a few weeks ago is finally going to be taken up. Prior to the June 1st council meeting, a joint meeting of the Finance Committee and Utilities Committee will be held to discuss my resolution to address some of our infrastructure needs using ARPA funds.
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| My resolution addressing our infrastructure needs using ARPA dollars |
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.
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