The Safety and Licensing committee met 02/23/2022. In addition to approving the Auto-Aid Addendum with Neenah/Menasha Fire Rescue and the Urban Search and Rescue contract, the committee also approved a number of licenses. While this isn’t necessarily of huge importance, their conversation does demonstrate the care and consideration that the committee members give to this task and how they do actually read through the application materials and review the information city staff has provided.
Alderperson Michael Smith (District 10) who was chairing the committee meeting that day originally suggested grouping the three liquor and beer license applications together, but Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) had a question about one of them, so they decided to keep them all separate.
Alderperson Hartzheim pointed out that on the Class “B” Beer License application for Taco House LLC the applicant listed a felony on his record. She asked Police Chief Thomas if there were any concerns about that.
Chief Thomas responded that the application had been reviewed and approved by Lieutenant Nagel. He himself had not seen it before and did not have the record in front of him, so he needed to contact the lieutenant to get some more information. He would like to know what the date was and how long ago the felony had taken place but he didn’t have access to that information at the moment.
Alderperson Hartzheim said she was interested in potentially holding the item for the next meeting in order to give time to get more information, but she wanted to get feedback from the other committee members.
They checked with Clerk Kami Lynch who indicated that holding the item would not negatively impact the applicant.
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) said he didn’t have an issue with holding it since doing so would not significantly affect the applicant or his ability to get the business up and running.
Alderperson Smith asked Chief Thomas if he would just be contacting Lieutenant Nagel and verifying why he okayed this application.
Chief Thomas answered that, yes, that’s what he would be doing. This was a self-disclosure of a felony for a drug charge without a date on it, and the applicant had a very common name. He could try to search for this record online right then, but because of the common name and the lack of a date there would probably be hundreds if not thousands of results.
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) asked if it would be possible to approve the license contingent on the approval of Chief Thomas. [My impression was she was trying to find a way to approve the license in a timely manner for the applicant while also providing appropriate oversight.]
The city attorney said it would be okay to either hold it at the committee or approve it and then refer it back to the committee at the Common Council meeting should it turn out there was a problem. I think the cleanest would be–either/or would be okay, to hold or to have it referred back.
Chief Thomas said that if they could hold off on this item until later on in the meeting, he could contact Lieutenant Nagel right then and get more information.
The committee moved on to other action items and eventually had to move into the information items until Chief Thomas was able to connect with Lieutenant Nagel and get more information on the application.
When he got the information, he thanked the committee for being patient then explained that the applicant had been extremely honest on the questionnaire and had actually overstated the charge. He may have been arrested for felony possession with intent to deliver, but he was only convicted of a possession charge. That had been in 2014, and he had no convictions or charges since that date. Their standard practice for that time of violation and that period of time was to recommend approval.
The committee members had no further questions and voted unanimously to approve the application.
There were no concerns or questions about the license applications for Jackson Investment Group or The Breaking Point or for the change of agent applications for the two Aldi locations and those were all approved unanimously.
That left the Cigarette License application for Fox River House.
Alderperson Schultz was curious how many of Appleton’s licensed establishments were still applying for a getting cigarette license. He wondered if there was a number or percentage.
Clerk Lynch did not have that information off the top of her head but she did know it was on the lower end. She said she could provide that information to him in a follow-up email.
There were no more questions and that license was also approved unanimously.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=913979&GUID=1F45D625-A395-4F0C-984D-3C6DF96B819B
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