On 08/09/2021 the Municipal Services Committee took up the issue of the proposed Summit Street reconstruction. As I posted about previously, the residents of that street are in a bit of a bind. Their street needs to have sewer and waterwork done because they still have clay pipes from the 1920s and have had multiple water main breaks over the last 10 years. They also have many mature trees that they don’t want to lose. Unfortunately, the only way to save the trees would be to either simply patch the street up after the necessary underground work was completed or narrow the street by 2 feet, but if the street is narrowed by 2 feet then they will lose parking on one side. So, basically no matter what happens the residents will be losing something. Additionally, even if the street was narrowed to save the trees, 5 of the trees were either so old or damaged or unhealthy that they were going to be taken down regardless of what happened to the street.
Again, as mentioned in the previous post about this, I have a personal connection to some of the residents on this street, but given how straightforward the situation is I’m pretty sure that isn’t going to affect this recap substantially other than in my personal opinion I doubt the two trees they’re trying to save are going to make it.
Several residents gave public comment during the previous Municipal Services Committee meeting about this item, but at this meeting only one resident opted to speak.
Lisa said she didn’t have a lot of comments and just had one question regarding the narrowing of the street. Did they look at any other options so that the street didn’t have to be narrowed? She knew there had been concern on the street about losing 5 trees. She wasn’t as concerned about that as she was about getting the street fixed. She completely agreed the street needed to be fixed, but was just curious about widening it instead of narrowing it.
Director Vandehey was glad Lisa had brought up the issue of the 5 trees. Based on feedback from one of the property owners at the previous meeting, the forester went out at rechecked two of those trees that had been slated for removal and said that he would do his best to save those trees. He does have some concerns, but given that the homeowner is wants to try to keep them, he won’t cut them down and is just going to keep an eye on them and do his best to save them. [As I said, I’ll be a little surprised if they make it.]
In answer to the question about the narrowing of the street, she said that narrowing the street by one foot on each side would save 19 terrace trees. If they left the street at the same width or outright widened the street, they would lose all 19 of those trees which is why they were narrowing the road.
She also handed out a document.
One sheet showed the 6 watermain breaks the street had experienced since 2010 which was a pretty high amount for one block of street.
The other sheet had been put together in response to an idea that had been brought up at the previous meeting to replace the underground pipes which were both installed in 1927 but then simply patch the street instead of reconsteuctingbit. The second sheet illustrated in red all the pavement that would be lost through the trenching of the new water main and the new sanitary sewer as well as the laterals. The entire west curbline would be completely gone. That curb and over half the street would be lost through the replacement of the water and sewer mains. Additionally, multiple portions of sidewalk would be removed when the laterals were replaced. Staff felt that after replacing the utilities that they were really going to have to replace the pavement also.
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) asked how many trees would be impacted by this particular project as currently planned.
Director Vandehey answered three trees.
Alderperson Hartzheim clarified that there were also two that they were attempting to save that were questionable.
Director Vandehey said that was correct. They’ll start with the idea of keeping those two and just cut down the three trees in poor condition.
Alderperson Joe Prohaska (District 14), for the sake of the homeowners, asked to confirm that doing the water and sewer mainscwas going to rip up almost the entire road. correct?
Director Vandehey confirmed that was the case.
Alderperson Prohaska then concluded that patching the road was not an option because they would have to patch the entire road.
Director Vandehey said that about 2/3rds of the road would need to be patched.
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) who is the Alderperson for that district thanked staff for looking into it and doing their best to reach out to the city forester about saving those two. He had looked at those trees as well and although they have some history, they seem to be in decent shape at the moment, and at least healthy enough to not warrant immediate removal. He also noticed that the other three trees probably should come down but appreciated the effort of staff to try to save those those trees.
He wished that they could help the entire neighborhood. He mentioned that a vast majority of the residents had been trying to sign onto a petition to try and not repave the street and narrow it; however, given the magnitude of the underground work and the necessity to do so, he could see that patching just was not feasible. It was unfortunate, but as the representative of that community he wanted to make sure he said something. He mentioned again the petition from the residents and how he saw that their wishes were just not possible. He did appreciate the efforts of staff to try to make something happen.
He added that that street does have an Airbnb on it, and he thought that narrowing the street and reducing parking on that side would cause challenges on occassion when there are 5 or 6 vehicles. He lives only a few blocks away and he walks his dogs out that way quite frequently, and he’s aware that on some weekends there are 7 or 8 cars parked specifically for that Airbnb which takes up the northern half of the east side of the street, so losing the other side will cause problems that they will unfortunately have to deal with. [To be fair, the Airbnb is not the only residence on that street that holds gatherings which draw multiple cars.]
He thanked staff for doing their best to accomodate and listen to the constituents.
Alserperson Denise Fenton (District 6) said that the petition from the residents had talked about air spading. She did an internet search about that and wasn’t terribly satisfied that she understood it. She asked if staff could elaborate on that proposal.
Director Vandehey had not seen the petition because it had been sent to the committee members but not to her. She could not talk about air spading even in general terms, and the city forester was not at the committee meeting that day.
Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) who was the committee chair apologized for not realizing she hadn’t been included on the email about the petition. Ultinately, he didnt know that it would make much of a difference. This was an almost a 100 year old sewer and water main that has broken 6 times in the last decade. It was probably not going to break fewer times in the next 10 years than it had in the previous 10. Given how much road would going to need to be ripped up, he didn’t think another process was feasible.
Alderperson Schultz said he thought airspading was just an alternate methodology of working around tree roots that are up against a curb, and that maybe the different methodology would have allowed for less take, so instead of taking 2 feet they would be able to take only 1 foot which would allow the trees to be saved while also giving enough room to keep the street wide enough for parking on both sides. He thought that was what the neighborhood was asking for. He apologized as well for not realizing Director Vandehey had not received the petition. He was curious to know if there was any other kind of methodology that the city could use for excavating near the trees, but he thought right then at the meeting they needed to approve the reconstruction plan and then could maybe look into it further before it came for a final vote.
A woman who I think was Lisa the resident who had spoken earlier disagreed that’s majority of people had signed the petition and thought they were split on that. She herself had not signed it due to the issues staff had brought up. The sewer line needed to be fixed, and the road had been patched multiple times. It was just something they were going to have to sacrifice in order to have good working sewer and water and a nice road to be able to drive on. She also didn’t see a lot of activity at the Airbnb. Alderperson Schultz was correct that there are times it has activity but the majority of the time it didn’t seem to be causing an issue on the street at all.
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) thanked staff for providing the visuals of the work on the street. He found it helpful to be able to visualize the project and the impact. He wondered if those sorts of visuals would be useful to send out to residents in the future.
Alderperson Schultz, responding to Lisa’s statement about the number of petition signers, said it looked like there were 12-13 unique addresses represented on the petition out of 16 addresses on the street. So it seemed like a majority of the residents were signed on to the petition.
Clerk Kami Lynch asked if she could have a copy of the petition to attach to the minutes, [but it seems like they have not been attached.]
Alderperson Firkus said he could do that and then thanked staff for the amount of materials, information, and visuals provided.
The committee then voted to approve the street reconstruction as originally submitted by city staff.
On a related note, my recollection was that the city used to hold open meetings with the public where staff could informally go over the design plans with residents and answer their questions and respond to their concerns. But, I noticed that didn’t happen with this project, and in fact they received their letters about the project just a couple of days before the Municipal Services Committee met and didnt have an opportunity to talk with city staff ahead of time, even though given the issues on this street, they probably would have really benefited from having more time to discuss things with staff prior to the committee meeting. I reached out to Director Vandehey about that and she responded:
Pre-COVID our schedule was as follows:
Mailing (week 1)
Resident Meeting (week 3)
Committee presentation/info item (week 4)
Committee action item (week 6)
Council meeting (week 8)With COVID we eliminated the in-person resident meeting. Now the process is 7 weeks instead of 8 weeks. There is never a rush to approve the design, so the item can be held at committee for as many meetings as necessary. We have noticed that mail has been very slow so we are going to be getting letters out sooner to make sure people have enough time to attend meetings if they choose to.”
[All in all, I think this illustrates city government at its best. Due to the physical realities of the situation, they were not able to do what the residents hoped for, but they did listen to the concerns with consideration, research thing thoroughly, and provide a report back illustrating the different issues and why both the underground work and the street reconstruction had to take place. They did also change plans where they could in regards to saving the two trees that they were originally going to cut down.
The airspading idea brought up by the residents seemed interesting. No doubt there are practical concerns such as the cost of specialized equipment and the feasibility of using it to excavate around the trees of an entire street, but the idea perhaps warrants at least being investigated by city staff. If there was a way to excavate more closely around tree roots without damaging them so that a reconstructed street could keep some of its width, that could potentially benefit a lot of the more narrow streets in Appleton.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=859288&GUID=33364E56-1C21-43B6-AA51-D8BDAAD69CB8&Options=info|&Search=
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