The Appleton Parks and Recreation Committee met 11/08/2021. I already wrote a post about the Reid Golf Course rate changes for 2022. After voting on that, the committee turned to the remaining items on their agenda.
The RISE Sign
The next item they took up was a request from Appleton Downtown Inc (ADI) to install oversized wooden letters spelling “RISE” within Houdini Plaza.
Parks And Recreation Director Dean Gazza told the committee he had nothing to add to the information in the agenda packet other than to mention that last year a similar sign with the word HOPE had been placed there. The letters did not affect any of the Parks and Recreation Department’s operations, and he thought people appreciated the sign.
Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) asked if Appleton Downtown Inc was going to install similar letters every year, and he wondered if the committee needed to approve it every year or if they could just let ADI do it.
Director Gazza was not sure if they would continue doing it every year. He suggested the letters were prompted by Covid and were a way to share with the community that they cared. He assumed that when things started to improve Covid-wise that ADI would move on to other things.
Alderperson Wolff said he thought ADI had their trust and “I don’t feel like they need to get it approved really.”
[Obviously, there would be some issues with the city showing preferential treatment to a specific organization and giving that organization carte blanche to put up signs on city-owned property, particularly property as public as Houdini Plaza.]
Alderperson Martin said he encouraged this to continue being brought forward to the Parks and Recreation Committee so that they could take care of issues if there were any issues.
Director Gazza said that, to be consistent with all other things, it would be best to always bring it forward. If they had submitted a request to do this for a 5-year period, the committee could consider and approve that request as such, but given that the request was only for one year, if they wanted to do another one, they would need to bring it to the committee in order to be consistent with other requests.
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) remarked that she had seen a number of pictures of families and friends and people around the HOPE sign so it seemed to be something that was drawing people to the plaza or at least being taken advantage of by people when they were downtown.
The committee approved the request 4-0.
Lease Extensions For Sculpture Valley Art Pieces
They then moved on to the two requested 1-year lease extensions, one for the Gyan/Gesture of Conscience Sculpture in Jones Park and the other for the To the Moon Alice sculpture in Vulcan Heritage Park.
The requests were made by Sculpture Valley which is the organization that runs Acre of Art and has brought a lot of public art sculptures to Appleton and the surrounding communities. Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) is the Executive Director of Sculpture Valley. He was also a member of the committee. As a point of parliamentary procedure, he excused himself from the committee so that he could stand before them and answer questions in his capacity as the Sculpture Valley Executive Director.
Director Gazza said these two items went to the Public Arts Committee first [which voted to approve the lease extensions] and then came before the Parks and Recreation Committee (because the two works were located in parks. They had been there for two years now with no issue. He thought they added to the parks and his department had no issues with a 2-year extension.
Alderperson Schultz then spoke. As members of the public are supposed to do when they speak before the committee, he introduced himself, “Thank you, Chair, my name is Alex Schultz, I’m the executive Director of Sculpture Valley.” He explained that they had the two sculptures on the agenda installed for a period of two years in accordance with the approval that they received from the arts commission and the Common Council back in 2018. Those leases had expired on November 7, the day before the committee meeting.
He explained that they had some issues regarding artists returning to get their work. Those issues were in part due to the artists’ sensitivity with travelling back to Appleton from areas around the country. More than that, he thought it was probably influenced by the lack of other exhibitions for those artworks to travel to. Typically, if an artist was coming from several states away, they would want to schedule the pickup of their work to align with taking it someplace else for a new exhibition where they could install it and then return home. The number of new exhibition opportunities this year and last year were limited, so there was a reluctance from most artists, particularly those travelling from out of state. [That explanation makes a lot more sense than the “discomfort with travel during the pandemic” that was stated in the memo from Sculpture Valley and touched on in the Public Arts Committee meeting as the reason for the artists not returning to collect their works.]
Of the 22 artworks Sculpture Valley currently had installed, 16 were scheduled to return home this year, but only two artists came back to retrieve their work. He said they had a lot of artists who were essentially asking to keep their work here for another year so that they (a) could have more time to get them into new exhibitions and (b) could hopefully not have to travel until Covid abated.
He finished up by saying they were asking for 1-year extensions for those two works although those pieces may return sooner. He added that the contract Sculpture Valley has with the artists included an automatic 1-year extension, so they were trying to get approval from the Parks and Recreation Department for them to stay in their current locations for that same duration.
None of the committee members had any questions for Alderperson Schultz [or Mr. Schultz as the case may have been at that moment], and Director Gazza did not have anything else to add other than they welcomed art and had no comment or objection on the extension.
Alderperson Van Zeeland said she thought that it seemed reasonable to allow for an extension at this time. She assumed artists were also very hard hit financially during Covid, and she thought it would be a good practice for them to approve this in order to make sure that other artists saw Appleton as a place that supported art.
The committee voted 3-0 with Alderperson Schultz abstaining to extend the lease for the Gyan/Gesture of Conscience sculpture.
They then moved on to the lease extension request for the To the Moon Alice sculpture.
No one had any further information to provide, questions to ask, or comments to make. However, Alderperson Joe Martin (District 4) had a bit of a Judge Schroeder moment when his phone went off. Unlike with Judge Schroeder’s ringtone, I expect that Alderperson Martin’s choice of a train whistle will result in no controversy amongst the residents of Appleton.
He did apologize to the committee.
With that, they voted 3-0 with Alderperson Schultz abstaining, to approve the lease extension for To the Moon Alice.
Reid Golf Course Revenue And Expense Report
Finally, they moved on to the one information item on the agenda, the Revenue and Expense report for Reid Golf Course.
Director Gazza said that their revenue was about $135,000 higher than last year. The revenue report didn’t reflect revenue from some other sources. It sounded to me like he said ponds, antenna leases, and recreational school rentals, but I’m not positive because some of the words were muffled. At any rate, that additional revenue put them over the $1 million mark.
Alderpersons Schultz and Wolff started pounding the palms of their hands on the desk in a celebratory drumroll.
Director Gazza asked Recreational Programmer Jeff Brazzale if he wanted to comment on anything.
Jeff said they saw a big increate in annual pass sales this year. He had been concerned that those sales would hurt their daily revenue, but that didn’t happen. They did a high level of golf this year. The weather was great, they had an early start to the season, and they still had a good week into November although it looked like that was coming to an end pretty quickly.
Alderperson Martin applauded the handling of the course and the excellent quality of the staff, and Alderperson Van Zeeland agreed.
That was the last item on the agenda, and the meeting adjourned.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=890287&GUID=743F6DFB-45EC-456E-AF8A-1C6D8C5A71C1
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