The Finance Committee held a short 5 minute special meeting on 12/15/2021 ahead of the Common Council meeting. These special meetings happen from time to time in order for the Common Council to be able to vote on these items during their meeting instead of having to wait until a future Common Council meeting.
They usually only do this with simple and non-controversial items of business.
During the 12/15/2021 meeting, the committee took up item 21-1688 which was a request to approve the write-off $17,000 worth of accounts receivable invoices and $35,000 worth of personal property tax (outstanding for over one year).
When I posted the agenda for this meeting, a reader had wondered why this was being done and why all that money would just be written off as opposed to the city continuing to try to collect it.
Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) was the Chair of the committee, and he asked Finance Director Tony Saucerman to give a brief explanation about what was happening here.
Director Saucerman explained that the write-off was really just an entry ahead of the audit so that the city didn’t overstate its revenue at the end of the year when the auditors came in. “It does not change our efforts to collect any of these outstanding obligations.”
He said that they had three different outlets to collect outstanding payments: (1) The state’s Tax Refund Intercept Program (TRIP), (2) the state’s debt collection system, and (3) a private debt collection agency.
He said that the city would continue to collect or attempt to collect on these outstanding invoices and taxes, and the action the committee was taking to write those off would not change their ability to do that.
None of the committee members had any questions and the write-off was approved unanimously.
There were three other action items on the agenda, the first to award Unit G-20 Sequoia Drive Sewer, Water, Grade & Gravel to Carl Bowers & Sons Construction Co, the second to approve a $34,000 contract change for a pavement project on Summer Street, and the third to award the City of Appleton’s contract for rental and cleaning of uniforms and related items to Aramark Uniform Services.
All of these items passed unanimously with no questions or discussion.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=910492&GUID=93D473F5-D6D6-4152-84D0-3F83211BB17F
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