During the 07/07/2021 Common Council meeting, Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) tried to amend the item regarding the reconstruction of Alvin Street between Wisconsin Avenue and Marquette Street to remove parking from the block of Alvin Street between Wisconsin Avenue and Brewster Street.
This section of street is right next to the Appleton Planned Parenthood clinic, and demonstrators both opposed to and supportive of Planned Parenthood show up, park their vehicles there, and engage in public demonstrations.
***NOTE: A couple of the images in the slide show below may be considered graphic as they show the image of an aborted baby.***
During the public hearing regarding this proposed reconstruction that was held during the 06/07/2021 Municipal Services Committee meeting, one Alvin Street resident expressed concerns about the “circus” and “culture war” on that corner by Planned Parenthood. He didn’t like to see a whole lot of vehicles there throughout the day at all hours of the day and avoided that section of street. He thought construction being added to that was going to create a mess.
During that June 6th meeting, Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) who is the alderperson for that area indicated that he was considering, in the near future, introducing a resolution to implement a trial period of no parking in that area, but given a comment he made during the July 12th meeting it sounds like he may be reconsidering taking that step.
During the 07/07/2021 Common Council meeting, Alderperson Wolff made his motion to amend the item and remove the parking along that block, at which point Alderperson Siebers referred it back to the Municipal Services Committee to be worked on there and to give him time to contact his constituents on that street and get their feedback.
That it where the story now picks up—at the 07/12/2021 Municipal Services Committee meeting.
One member of the public appeared to speak on this item. John was not a resident of Alvin Street and lived over half a mile and multiple blocks away, but he was part of a group of people who got permission from the owner of both the Planned Parenthood building as well as the building on the other side of Alvin Street to plan a butterfly garden in the terrace there. He said he spends a fair amount of time there and interacts with a fair amount of people while he is working. He hass observed the area and thought about what could make it better, and he thought some of the problems could be resolved by eliminating street parking between Wisconsin Avenue and the first residential driveway on the street. He said there was not any reason for the owners of the buildings adjacent to that section of street to desire public parking because they have their own parking, and it would not detract from the people who are residents there.
John also suggested an alternative which would be to wide the street by 4 feet so that it could have a right turn lane, a left turn lane, and a straight lane. That would allow people who want to turn right to not have to wait because he’s noticed that at certain times of the day it can be very difficult for people who want to turn right because of people trying to turn left.
Alderperson Joe Prohaska (District 14) was chairing the meeting since Alderperson Firkus (District 3) was excused. He asked if staff had anything to add, but they did not.
Alderperson Wolff said that he saw this item on the agenda and knew that it had been a largely talked about street for a while, so he thought this was a good opportunity to talk about it at Council since it was there. He thought they should address it and do something different with it to deal with some of the issues that are occurring there. He said his amendment had been to remove the parking from Wisconsin to Brewster, but he was open to other ideas as well.
Alderperson Siebers asked Chairperson Prohaska if he could ask Alderperson Wolff to be more specific regarding what the issues were because not everybody may know what those issues are, and it was possible that he was perceiving the issues as being one thing while Alderperson Wolff was perceiving them to be another.
Alderperson Prohaska asked Alderperson Wolff to do that.
Alderperson Wolff said, “There are a lot of–there are blind spots, when you’re turning left on that specific street. There are also parking issues as well. I think that there’s a lot of cars that are parked there every single day and it may cause an accident or trouble there. I think that it would be a clear, or more clear, for a left turn if we made a more left turn lane, but–or if we moved the parking back, it would be more of a safety thing.”
Director Paula Vandehey said that she wanted to make sure everyone understood that if they tied parking restrictions to this action item those parking restrictions wouldn’t be implemented until after the project was done. It sounded like this was an issue today, so it really should be an item that was separate from the street reconstruction, otherwise the parking changes would not happen for at least two years.
Alderperson Prohaska asked a city engineer if there was any accident data for that street and if the street had problems with accidents.
The engineer said based on what they looked at as part of the design, they didn’t see any significant crash issues at the Alvin/Wisconsin intersection. One thing they always look at in an instance like this where a side street is meeting a major street is whether or not a second approach lane is warranted. He said there’s a lot of balancing that goes on there including financial concerns, space concerns, and operational concerns. He noted that whenever there are two approach lanes to a stop sign, there is the issue of two vehicles pulling up at the same time and each trying to see past the other which, in and of itself, can create problems. He finished by stating, “Here we didn’t have a capacity issue that exceeded more than a few minutes each day; therefore, we did not recommend and would not recommend a second approach lane there based on all the downsides that come along with that very small upside.”
Alderperson Wolff asked if there had been any public input on that street.
Director Vandehey said that all street designs have a public hearing. It appears as an information item with a public hearing first, then it comes before the committee as an action item. This was now the third time the Alvin Street reconstruction had been at committee. She said they did have one person speak at one of the meetings. [Which I have recounted above.]
Alderperson Siebers said he had an opportunity to drop off some letters to constituents along that block. He dropped off a total of 12 letters and was able to speak with 3 constituents. One of those people was for removal of parking, one was against removal of parking, and one really didn’t care. The rest never responded, which he thought potentially meant they didn’t care.
He went on to say, “I do appreciate what Alderperson Wolff stated, but if we’re really honest—if we’re really honest, this is an issue in regards to what’s going on in front of Planned Parenthood. And I’m not taking sides. Alderperson Wolff, you are right in regards to parking in front of Planned Parenthood. That happens. Every day there is a protest, and if Planned Parenthood would not be there—and I’m not suggesting that they need to move or anything, now, please. But if they weren’t there, would there be an issue? And I don’t think there would be. If we moved the parking and you move the protesters away from Planned Parenthood, the problem in regards to parking around Planned Parenthood is not going to go away—I can guarantee you. I know one gentleman—one protester who will find a place to park, and that’s gonna tick somebody off someplace else in my district.”
He thought the parking issue was a separate issue from the design of the street and whether they should make it wider or keep it the same width. He thought, whether unchanged or widened that it should be uniform from Wisconsin Avenue all the way to Marquette as opposed to just the one block from Wisconsin to Brewster.
He didn’t want to get into the issues regarding the protest, but said he was willing to talk to anybody in regards to this. He said that he had had some ideas that he now didn’t think were good ideas. “But this is a design of a street and I look to the professionalism of our staff.”
Alderperson Prohaska said that, to Alderperson Wolff’s question, there were three responses—one for, one again, and one who didn’t care. To which Alderperson Siebers said that the rst who didn’t respond probably also didn’t care.
Alderperson Chard Doran (District 15) said he agreed with Alderperson Siebers that they were talking about two separate things. He thought that regarding the item before them which was the street redesign, he trusted the recommendation of staff–that they had studied it, found no issues, and did not see any concerns with traffic or parking that needed to be addressed in the design of the street reconstruction. In the interest of all of the neighbors that live on that street, he suggested they move forward and approve the item as is.
Alderperson Siebers also wanted to highlight what Director Vandehey said that if they wanted to remove parking through this, that it wouldn’t happen for two years. If there was a problem today he thought they should deal with it now and not wait for two years.
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) wanted to know how many parking spots would be eliminated if they implemented Alderperson Wolff’s suggestion of eliminating parking along Alvin Street between Wisconsin Avenue and Brewster Street.
The engineer did some estimates and said that it would be roughly 18 spaces.
There was no further discussion, and the item was approved unanimously with no changes so that parking would still be included on the street after the reconstruction.
[I thought this was a somewhat interesting item to come up right after the Common Council voted to insert language into lease contracts that would prevent entities who rent city property from displaying political signs on that property. In that case, it was argued, rightfully so I would say, that it was not a First Amendment issue because it is allowable for people or entities to enter into contracts that limit their speech. In this case, were the city to move forward with eliminating parking along this section of Alvin Street would they claim it also was not a First Amendment issue for whatever reason—even though it was clearly only being done to, in some way, hamper demonstrators from gathering there? I suppose it’s a question that every community has to consider…to what degree should residents expect a city to adhere to the spirit of the First Amendment and the ideal of broad freedom of speech even if they technically are able to take measures aimed at hampering free expression?]
View full meeting details here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=859286&GUID=8DA03D7A-E563-45AC-8D66-AB7914870D2E&Options=info|&Search=
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