The Finance Committee met 02/07/2022. There were six action items on the agenda. The committee spent the first five or so minutes approving five of those items, but the bulk of the meeting was taken up with discussion of Resolution 2-R-22 which would take the money currently allocated for the city’s brand study and reallocate it as follows:
- $100,000 for an Appleton.org website re-design
- $225,000 for the city’s enhanced crosswalk program
- $150,000 for technology upgrades
The resolution had been held at the 01/24/2022 Finance Committee in order to give staff an opportunity to provide feedback. Per the memo provided to the Finance Committee for this meeting, staff was recommending holding the item until June at which point, they would have a better idea of funding needs.
Alderperson Matt Reed (District 8) started things off by making a motion to deny the resolution. He was seconded by Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) who is the chairman of the committee.
Mayor Woodford said that the feedback and recommendations from staff on the resolution were included in the memo that had been provided to the Finance Committee and Common Council. He went on to say, “As I noted in the memo, each of the recommendations is important, but in terms of time sensitivity—we can talk about the timing of the various recommendations—but none are necessarily urgent or emergent at the moment given staff’s analysis.” He was happy to have a conversation and address questions, but he didn’t have much to add beyond what was stated in the memo.
Alderperson Siebers asked if any of the resolution authors had questions or comments.
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5), who serves on the Finance Committee and is the main author of the resolution made a statement in which you could definitely hear passion and some frustration. “I’m not gonna make the mistake of arguing about the minutia of the steps that I took while putting this resolution together because I think that will detract from two really important concerns that we have to discuss and that is gatekeeping and double standards.
“Not allowing this resolution to move forward to the committee for discussion is a way of gatekeeping what issues are allowed to be discussed in a public forum. It means that [if] an alder doesn’t get satisfaction for their constituents with the administration they have no other recourse—nothing else that you can do—and that flies directly in the face of our constituents who vote for us and do not vote for staff.
“There’s also a clear double standard in how items that come from the mayor such as allocating funding are to be handled, and how those items are handled when we make those requests. The message we’re getting is if the mayor wants funding for something, we allocate that funding and deal with the issues—like we did with the transportation utility—during the committee process, but if alders have constituents who have been patiently waiting for the opportunity to fund needs or we have money that we can deal with known budgetary issues right now well, then we have to go through a vetting process and have staff approval and go through committee. We need to make the mayor aware of resolutions we are going to propose—something I did with this one by the way over a week before I submitted it—but the mayor can write a memo like he did here without reaching out to a single author by phone or by email.
“We cannot serve our constituents in this kind of an environment. All this resolution does is allow us to have a discussion without worrying about how we would fund a possible outcome. It does not approve any programs or any purchases and all voting against this does is tie our hands in the future.”
Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) who is a member of the committee and a coauthor on the resolution said that he did not support a denial because the brand study was no longer on the table. If they denied this resolution then they would still be sitting on $475,000 that they needed to determine how to use. Holding the resolution to give staff some more time to review stuff was one thing, but denying it straight out would result in them having no plan on how to use the money which he didn’t think was the right course forward.
He thought it was better to either approve the resolution or hold it for some amount of time, but he felt that the recommended June date was far off and he wanted some justification for why staff was recommending a date so far away.
He also noted that they had had conversations about all of the items in the resolution.
Technology upgrades had been discussed.
The “phase 1” of the crosswalk enhancement program was referenced which suggested a phase 2. He pointed out that the Municipal Services Committee earlier that day had discussed enhanced crosswalks and the resources available for them. In that meeting it had been pointed out that there was a range of enhanced crosswalks that did not only include expensive flashing lights.
In regards to the website redesign, that had been an item that had initially created support for the branding study.
Alderperson Siebers asked Mayor Woodford if he wanted to address the recommended hold date of June.
Before addressing that Mayor Woodford spoke to some earlier comments.
First, he wanted to make sure that it was clear that the memo provided staff’s feedback based on the recommendations made in the resolution and staff’s understanding of the spirit of the resolution. In regards to the enhanced crosswalk program, the feedback was simply to say that there was an existing program in place with defined criteria. That was not to say that that program wouldn’t be revised or that other interventions for pedestrian safety wouldn’t happen moving forward, but projects under the program currently in place were scheduled through 2025 and already had funding. That did not mean that Council couldn’t direct other action on the crosswalk program, but the program as it currently existed was already planned out and was being seen through.
Regarding redesigning the website, he said it would take time to go through that process and would likely involve putting out a request for proposals and looking for a vendor to work with. That did not mean it was not important and not a worthy pursuit. He reiterated what was noted in the memo that performing underlying architectural work on the website could be done regardless of the status of the brand study.
He said he “wanted to clarify that the memo’s not saying yes or no to the recommendations that are brought forward in the resolution. [It’s] simply giving feedback based on what we have in front of us today. It’s up to the finance committee, as it always is, and the Council as to how you allocate funds and you set policy. That’s not the role of the executive branch. So, the feedback in the memo is just based on a conversation with staff and giving the committee a read about this. Ultimately, it’s not the responsibility of my office to gatekeep in terms of what comes forward, what doesn’t. That’s the purview of the Council and no attempt’s been made to stymie that process.”
He then went on to address the questions about the June timeframe. The purpose for recommending giving time was because each of the items in the resolution would need further work, evaluation, and committee conversation in order to be worked through. The committee and the Council could go ahead and set the allocations as laid out in the resolution, and staff would then start the work of implementing it; however, whether it was held or approved now, staff would have questions in terms of where the needs would be and how to prioritize those needs.
He used technology upgrades as an example. In the mayor’s conversations with IT Director Corey Popp, who is still relatively new in his role, Director Popp had indicated that he was in the early stages of evaluation. While $150,000 may be sufficient to address the issues that he is undoubtably going to find, it may turn out that $150,000 is too much or is insufficient.
He said that June was a time when the city would be in the early stages of the budget process for the coming year. Teams across the City of Appleton organization would have had their budget instructions for about a month at that point and would be starting to map out their project work for the coming year. He noted that a lot of the work for the resolution would have to be feathered in to future work plans.
He said he had intended to convey in the memo that “Adding more money doesn’t necessarily accelerate a piece of work, unless we add lots and lots more money and more people. So, we’re gonna run up still against the limitations of the human capacity of the organization.”
June fit nicely with their planning window, but it could be sooner or later. It was up to the committee to decide what timeline they wanted to set.
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) is not a member of the committee but was present at the meeting. In terms of gatekeeping and double standards, she thought the committee itself had performed gatekeeping during its last meeting when it had killed the branding study. “I think it’s foolhardy to believe…you can have it happen in one instance and not happen in the next. That branding study should have come back to full Council because it was approved in full Council.”
She thought that passing this resolution as it stood that day felt like it would be exactly that: gatekeeping and the performance of a double standard. She encouraged the committee to deny the resolution, and finished up by stating, “Allocation of funding came from the mayor when he asked us to use 2021 funds to fund the branding study, and that came through full Council, and I think that should be how things should go.”
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) is not a committee member but was present for the meeting. She said she was one of the people who supported allocating funding for the branding study because she understood that it would be used for a much-needed redesign of the city’s website.
She said that she had gone back through the timelines and the proposed allocation of the funds for the branding study came to “us” on July 12, 2021. [The allocation of the excess general fund balance was approved by the Finance Committee on 07/12/2021 and then approved by the full Council on 08/04/2021.] After that, it did not come back for any discussion for over 6 months, although she understood staff had been working on the Request For Proposal. Bottom line, the allocation was made and then 6 months later they went back to discuss it again. The committee then decided to kill that brand study, which, in her mind, meant that the funds that were allocated to that were now available.
She went on to say, “I do take issue with the idea that this resolution was cooked up in the couple of hours between finding out when the brand—that the bidder had withdrawn from consideration. Because I was contacted about it before I knew that the bidder had withdrawn, and there was discussion about whether I would be interested in allocating this, if this brand study didn’t go on.”
She thought it was hasty to kill this resolution because it came from the Council and the committee instead of from staff. She had heard the talk that it was the job of council members to reach out to staff and get advice from staff when they are considering submitting a resolution. She said they had been referred back to the manual for alderpersons, but elsewhere that same manual reminds them that the Common Council is the policy makers and the staff is the administrator of the policy. She thought that if they were not supposed to act upon anything that originated from an alderperson to a committee and if they were not supposed to introduce resolutions in that way and are, instead, merely supposed to act upon those things that originate from someplace else then their jobs as policy makers don’t really exist.
She urged the committee members to vote against the denial. She was interested in hearing a discussion about the timing of a hold, but she reminded the committee members that the Council had been fully comfortable allocating funds and then 6 months later actually discussing the mechanics of using those funds.
[To me there does seem to be a difference between allocating money for a rebranding and then spending 5 months going through the process of finding a company to conduct a brand study vs allocating money for enhanced crosswalks when that program is already winding down and a phase 2 does not exist at this point and may not exist.]
Alderperson Siebers said, “Just a clarification. First of all, we didn’t kill the brand project. We tabled it. Okay? At any given time, any member of this committee can request that it be taken from the table and it gets a second vote on it. So, it’s not dead. It’s there someplace.”
He went on to say, “The other thing is that this alderperson [referring to himself] who seconded the denial did not second it because the resolution or the suggestion came from an alderperson or alderpersons vs the staff. That’s the furthest from the truth in terms of my second to the denial. I like the table aspect because I like items to have a lot of thought before we vote on it and so in regards to what’s being suggested here—I made the comment rather than the federal government throwing money at stuff let’s see what we need and how much we need before we start allocating. So, I just want you to be aware that my denial or my second is not because it came from you or any other alderperson who authored it. If you want to respond to that you may.”
Alderperson Fenton responded, “Thank you, Chair, and I do—it was not my intent at all to personally attribute your second of that motion. It was a general statement in terms of some comments that have been made about what alderpersons should do generally meaning not introduce anything that hasn’t been vetted with staff, not from the chair, not in particular, just some general comments in other testimony.”
Alderperson Siebers said, “I made the comment that from my experience when I’ve had an idea in regards to a resolution that I have gone to staff and a lot of times they’ve either convinced me not to submit it for whatever reason or, number two, they made me look awfully smart when they improved my resolution. I wasn’t saying that unless staff okays it, it shouldn’t be submitted.”
Alderperson Reed thought there was a big different between allocating funding in a general sense and then coming back later to specifically delineate how those funds were spent vs taking funding from something else and reallocating it to something you see as a need when that hadn’t necessarily been run past staff. He pointed out that staff live these things day to day, and they are the experts in their fields.
He said the enhanced crosswalk allocation was a good example of that. The city has a program in place which is fully funded, fully scheduled out, and going according to schedule. This allocation wouldn’t change any of that or accelerate that. “And to propose moving a quarter of a million dollars to a fund just in case something might change down the road is not in my view a good way to manage the funds.”
He said the allocation for the enhanced crosswalk program and the website redesign was a good chunk of money. That didn’t mean he wasn’t open to funding the website redesign. As the new IT Director got a better feel for the department and their specific needs, Alderperson Reed would welcome him coming to the Council and explaining what his department’s needs were and what the estimated costs were. But they were not at that stage yet.
He said the money wasn’t going anywhere, so why not keep the money set aside and then down the road they could get more specific information about how they could use it in a wiser way.
Alderperson Van Zeeland said that she kept hearing about the plan that they had in place for the crosswalks, but 11 of the alderpersons were not on the Council at the time the plan was created. She thought they had the ability to have a discussion that included all of their needs with the people who were representing those districts.
Alderperson Siebers mentioned that during the Municipal Services Committee meeting earlier that day he had asked when they could start discussing the criteria of the program because, right now, the area Alderperson Van Zeeland wants an enhanced crosswalk does not meet the currently laid out criteria in the program.
Alderperson Hartzheim thanked him for mentioning the Municipal Services meeting. She herself had not been on the Council when the enhanced crosswalk plan had been put in place, but she was satisfied with it because it had been thought out, had a timeline, and had a very detailed flowchart specifying how to determine which areas needed enhancements. There was a specific way in which these enhancements were being chosen, and she did not think that, as alderpersons, they necessarily got to choose where an enhanced crosswalk was going to be installed.
[Honestly, I’d actually appreciate a discussion of the specific area in District 5 that Alderperson Van Zeeland would like to see an enhanced crosswalk installed. I would really hate to see all this energy go into extending and expanding the enhanced crosswalk program only for the specific area that’s behind her push for this still not end up with a crosswalk.]
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) was not a committee member but did attend the meeting. He said that, in regards to the point about talking to staff before introducing a resolution, the reason to do that was so that staff could give advice about the feasibility of a resolution or the practicality of accomplishing a resolution. As the mayor had explained, the staff didn’t currently have a plan to address the items in this particular resolution. They didn’t have the time or perhaps the manpower to accomplish the things in the resolution. If the resolution had been discussed ahead of time, perhaps staff’s feedback could have been a factor into whether or not it was introduced.
He thought it was always a good practice to talk to staff. The alderpersons were the policy makers, and they could produce resolutions that went against staff recommendations, but he thought it was important to have that discussion first so that they were as informed as they could be.
He cautioned the committee to “be very careful about deviating from the past practice with how excess fund balance funds are allocated. The mayor sort of talked about this in the memo about how this resolution is trying to allocate differently than past practice has been with excess fund balance funds, and as the committee that holds the purse strings for the city I think, you know, following past practice is really important so that we don’t end up having these circular discussions like we’re having about this resolution now.”
He thought the resolution should be denied at this point because there were so many different components to it that involved different departments. He wanted to give staff the time to assess the programs and bring forward recommendations at the time they were ready to accomplish things. At that point the committee and the Council could discuss each item individually, and if a resolution needed to be brought forward at that time it could. He thought having all three things together just made it more confusing and difficult to manage.
Alderperson Siebers asked him if the committee killed the resolution what message would that give to staff regarding the items that were in the resolution. Would it suggest that staff did not need to look at the items?
Alderperson Doran didn’t think so. He thought the message it would send was that they had heard from staff that they are already working on these items and that the resolution was unnecessary at this time.
Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) said, “We’ve been talking a lot about staff concerns. From the memo and the mayor’s comments, staff is concerned that none of these have been weighed against other city priorities. I feel that this resolution is proposing to set these as priorities as part of the work that this resolution is doing. They may be different than the staff or the mayor’s priorities but the intent of this resolution is to elevate them. I think that it’s certainly prudent to establish what our needs are. I’m okay with taking time to do some analysis…. An argument against the resolution is that doing these things together is more confusing and difficult and we’d rather do them separately. Well, we’re not here to grade each other’s resolutions like high school essays. The fact is, if we have something that’s more difficult, we can still work with that and I don’t think that that’s a reason to table something or to ask our colleagues to go back and do—basically try to find a different way to bring something forward that they have already brought forward now.”
Alderperson Meltzer did however think that Alderperson Doran’s concern that staff did not have the time or manpower to accomplish what was in the resolution was valid but preferred holding the item rather than denying it and, like Alderperson Firkus, felt the June date was farther out than was possibly necessary.
Alderperson Siebers asked what a shorter period of time would be, but Alderperson Meltzer deferred to the resolution’s authors.
Alderperson Van Zeeland said she hadn’t considered what a good date would be but pointed out that they would have a new Council in April and suggested that they start working on this at least in March because that would give them a month to work on it before the incoming Council.
Alderperson Siebers removed his second from the motion and Alderperson Reed, chuckling, said he could see where this was going and withdrew his motion to deny.
Alderperson Meltzer made a motion to hold the resolution until the first Finance Committee meeting in March. This was seconded by Alderperson Van Zeeland.
Alderperson Hartzheim said she was interested in hearing from the mayor as to whether he thought that would be a successful timeframe.
Mayor Woodford said he the IT Director was in the early stages of determining their IT needs and he didn’t know how far along they would be in March. “I’ll put it this way, Chair. We will report back to the committee with everything that we have at the time that this item is taken back up, but…I think it’s unlikely that we will be at a place where we have a bow on every one of these items by the first meeting in March. But we will certainly bring back what we have.”
Alderperson Van Zeeland said that would offer them an opportunity to look at possibly splitting this resolution in to separate resolution.
Alderperson Hartzheim said that she wanted to everyone to think about the fact that while they were talking about this with the current Council, “what’s most important about this resolution or any resolution that we bring forward is how it best serves the city. So, to me it’s not as important who’s sitting in these seats when this thing gets heard. It’s what will we be doing to best serve the city and the citizens.”
Alderperson Siebers appreciated that comment.
Alderperson Firkus said that parts of the conversation made it sound like people had the expectation that this resolution was going to accomplish all of these things immediately, but he didn’t believe the intent of anyone who cosigned or wrote the resolution was that all the money would be spent in 2022. Rather, it was about putting money aside in general.
He had been interested in holding this item at the last meeting in order to try to get more feedback and information on what other priorities alderpersons or members of the community felt they should be considering with these funds. He thought in the resolution they were trying to communicate to staff things they were hearing from the community and things they have talked about in committees during budget season.
He thought they could work through the details of what was and wasn’t feasible, but even if they had to hold it for some time due to staff issues, they would be communicating what they were interested in, and with that foundation they could come up with a plan.
He felt like the feedback they had received from staff on the resolution was more in the line of critiquing, which was fair, but he was really hoping that they were going to hear more suggestions of how the work might be done.
He acknowledged the resolution was a little out of order from what they normally do but he thought there was a way to make it worked based under the circumstances of the situation.
Alderperson Hartzheim appreciated that the items in the resolution were long-term goals that did not have to be done right away, but she pointed out that was contradicted by having it come back so quickly in March. She didn’t oppose holding it but she thought bringing it back in March was too soon and would result in a similar discussion as that which they were currently having.
Alderperson Doran appreciated that they could have a discussion about other priorities they could use the money on. He was interested in debt reduction and would be interested in discussing using the funds for that purpose.
He did want to stress one more time how this process differed from past practice. He thought it was important that the committee take that under advisement. He read the relevant paragraph from the mayor’s memo because he thought it was very important. “During the January 24th finance committee discussion, it was argued that the funding allocation process initiated by the new Resolution (2-R-22) was equivalent to past allocation processes of excess fund balances. However, what is being proposed, while technically feasible and technically an available action for the Council to take, does deviate from past excess fund balance allocation practices. The most important difference being the funds currently under discussion were prioritized, a recommendation was made and approved, and work was initiated to execute the specified project. Resolution 2-R-22 seeks to override that previous process and randomly reallocate those funds to other purposes.”
Alderperson Doran advised the committee to take that under consideration when they looked at holding the item for future discussion because to him it was a clear signal that this resolution should be recommended for denial and a new process could be initiated in the very same manner with the very same items in this resolution under the process that’s normally followed for excess fund balance allocation.
Alderperson Van Zeeland responded, “All of these issues are a moot point if these separate resolutions are introduced to council at a later date.”
Alderperson Firkus said that if they came back in March and it truly wasn’t enough time for all of these things to be deal with then, if nothing else, it would give them the chance to receive a status report, get a better glimpse of it, and have it out in the open to the public vs discussing it via email and behind the scenes discourse.
There was no further discussion and the committee voted 5-0 to hold the item until the first Finance Committee meeting in March.
[All in all, an interesting discussion. I wasn’t sad to see the branding study held indefinitely, but I’m not sure these reallocations are the best repurposing of those funds. Meeting the city’s IT needs and updating the website seem reasonable, but it seems unwise to allocate money to an undefined phase 2 of a program that it’s not clear to me (based on this discussion or the Municipal Services Committee discussion) was originally intended to have a phase 2. I’d rather have a program clearly defined and costs discussed in front of the public and only once it was approved then funds could be allocated to it.
Also, as I mentioned above, I’d appreciate a discussion specifically about the area in District 5 where Alderperson Van Zeeland would like an enhanced crosswalk to be installed. Perhaps there’s a way to get a crosswalk placed there without having to create an entire phase 2 of the enhanced crosswalk program.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=925218&GUID=9165D88C-C340-47D5-BF98-45D0B9219541
Be the first to reply