Appleton’s Safety and Licensing Committee met 03/24/2021. After denying a request for an alcohol operator’s license and voting to approve a resolution that would ban the sale of cats and dogs by pet stores, they moved on to the “Request from the Appleton Fire Department to update Section 6-56(b) of the city ordinance.”
Essentially, the fire department wants to adopt the 2018 version of the International Fire Code (IFC).
Fire Chief Jeremy Hansen spoke to the committee and told them that there are a couple interesting parts to this change. One of the driving forces to making this change is that they are currently using the 2015 IFC. The Fire Department is classified by and receives their rating from the insurance service office. One of the areas the insurance service office rates is whether the fire codes a department is using is 5 years or older which is why they want to adopt the most current code.
[As a side note, and not as a criticism of the Appleton Fire Department, this situation illustrates how much power can be wielded by non-elected people and organizations whom the public cannot readily hold to account. Essentially, our city’s public policy in this area is being driven by a far distant insurance company and not by the will and desire of our residents. I’m sure we could find hundreds of examples of similar dynamics at play not only locally but at a state and federal level as well.]
Chief Hansen then turned things over to Battalion Chief Derrick Hensen.
Derrick stated that the fire department is in a unique position where they have to stay current in every arena while technology changes at a very rapid pace. Making sure that they have a code that is recent and current is of paramount importance in terms of code enforcement and also ensuring that built environments are safe. Per Derrick, technology has changed dramatically since 2015 regarding things like clean energy and some things that they have known to be issues have been addressed in this updated code such as pallet storage and A-2 occupancy rules. (A-2 buildings are buildings intended for food and/or drink consumption.) The 2018 IFC requires the retroactive installation of a sprinkler system in any A-2 occupancy building with an occupancy limit of over 300.
The 2018 IFC also requires fire breaks around pallets and regulates the height that pallets can be stacked. The pallet storage requirement is limited to several area businesses. Most of them are in industrial areas, but there are a couple businesses that will also be impacted. Derrick stated that, mainly, it was not a burdensome impact and mostly required rearranging their pallets to introduce the fire breaks into their piles.
Alderperson William Seibers (District 1) said that the last sentence of the submitted memo regarding these changes stated that, “This change is expected to impact fewer than 10 businesses, and the Prevention Division will work with those businesses on a mutually agreeable timeline for completion.” Alderperson Siebers said that he asked for a list of those businesses but had not received that as yet.
Per Derrick, the paragraph was written prior to the due diligence that Mayor Woodford requested. They had anticipated fewer than 10 businesses being affected, but when they went through and looked at every A-2 occupancy in the city they found that none of them fell under the provisions of the code. They either didn’t serve alcohol or they had less than a 300 person occupant load so this provision would not impact them. That did not get updated in the memo, and he offered to submit an updated memo.
Alderperson Seibers said he would appreciate that. His concern was that if they were going to ask the city clerk to write a letter to all the pet store owners letting them know they were not allowed to sell dogs or cats, he hoped sincerely that they would write letters to businesses that would be impacted by this because his suspicion was that adding a sprinkler system would result in a large financial impact. He would not support this change until those establishments had been contacted and had an opportunity to speak. But if there were no businesses impacted then there none.
None of the other committee members had any questions or comments and the item was approved 5-0.
View full meeting details here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=819132&GUID=4B05AA6B-37FF-495A-AE2B-FF6C207E956F&Options=info|&Search=
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