The Finance Committee met 03/07/2022 and took up Resolution 2-R-22. This resolution was introduced on 01/19/2022 in response to Unlisted, LLC withdrawing from consideration for the city branding contract and as originally written, called for the money currently designated for the city rebranding effort to be reallocated 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
It was held a couple of times in order to give staff more time to figure out funding needs and provide recommendations. Ahead of the 03/07/2022 meeting, city staff provided the committee several recommendations. Mayor Woodford started the discussion out by walking through the recommendations staff had made.
STYLE GUIDE – The resolution did not allocate any funding and staff believed that many of the issues with the use and appearance of the city logo and stamp could be addressed through established replacement cycles and reorders. They did not feel further action from Council was needed. They would bring items forward in the future as needed, but those would be handled on an individual basis.
WEBSITE REDESIGN – They recommended holding the $100,000 the resolution allocated for that pending further scope development for the project and the initiation of the vendor procurement process.
ENHANCED CROSSWALK PROGRAM – The city has a well-established program with projects and funding sources identified through 2025. They are, however, coming up on the end of that program, so the recommendation from staff was to allocate $75,000 in funding (of the $225,000 listed in the resolution) for the purpose of hiring a qualified consultant to provide recommendations regarding the enhanced crosswalk program and city-wide pedestrian safety enhancements moving forward beyond the enhanced crosswalk program that is currently in place.
TECHNOLOGY UPGRADES – Staff recommended allocating $60,000 in funding (of the $150,000 listed in the resolution) for the purpose of contracting for services to provide a comprehensive analysis of the city’s IT systems, then hold the remainder of the $150,000 until recommendations were developed.
Mayor Woodford said that the recommendation to hold the remainder of funds was particularly important because they could be reasonably sure that the IT study would recommend remediation actions they would have to undertake, so it would be prudent to make sure those funds were available. Similarly, they were recommending that the committee hold the remainder of the funds currently recommended for the enhanced crosswalk program until they had a handle on the IT needs. He noted that there had been conversations about the computers and equipment, but the work was about more than equipment.
IT Director Corey Popp gave more details about the information technology needs. He had been in his position for a little over 90 days “and one of the areas of concern that I have is the limited knowledge of the current IT staff as to what is actually taking place on the network.” He had been surprised to find that there was no network monitoring in place, which meant there were no eyes into the circuits, the speed of the circuits, congestion, traffic collisions, etc. That in turn meant that when they ran into issues there was not a lot of trouble-shooting that could take place.
“Another great example of our limited knowledge is I really can’t get anyone to tell me exactly how many computers we have on the network.” When he first arrived, he was told there were 800 computers which didn’t make sense because Appleton only had 640 employees. The number had since gone down to somewhere between 550 and 600 “but the truth is I don’t think anybody really knows just how many computers sit on this network.” Because they didn’t know how many computers there were, it was difficult to protect and secure them.
He described the IT assessment he wanted to have done. The vendor would come in and do a deep dive in the network. They would talk to staff and also place a device on the network to look deep into the network and watch traffic. The city of would be able to keep the device after the assessment was over in order to continue watching what was happening on the network.
Another part of the assessment would be an internal security review that would look internally at weakness in the network of computers and servers on the network and compare those systems as they are currently configured to what best practices are and come up with a plan to remediate any weaknesses on those soft targets.
He opened things up for questions.
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) who was not a committee member but was present, asked for a ballpark figure on what the final price would be.
Director Popp said the assessment would cost about $45,000 and the internal security assessment would be $15,000, which came out to $60,000 total.
Alderperson Hartzheim clarified that she was asking if he had a sense as to what the cost of actual remediation efforts would be once the assessments were completed.
Director Popp said that was an important point—the costs of the actual remediation were not covered by the assessments. He said there were two pieces to a network (1) the physical network of the media that the information runs on and (2) the logical design of the network. He used the analogy of city streets to explain…
The physical computer network was much like the concrete and blacktop of roads. It was the physical medium that carried the traffic and the data.
The logical network was the configuration of those streets–where the lines were drawn, the number of lanes, one way or two-way traffic, the form of intersections be they controlled with stop signs, yield signs, stop lights, or roundabouts.
His concern was more with the logical network than the physical network. He thought the physical network was actually quite good. It had a lot of fiber optics which was good. He thought the city’s network issues could come down to configuration more than a big capital investment. I thought there would be some core equipment that maybe needed to be upgraded or swapped out. That would probably be in the tens of thousands instead of the hundreds of thousands of dollars range.
Reconfiguring the logical network would be something they would be charged an hourly rate for. They would probably be looking at an engineer with a $225 an hour rate. It was hard to say exactly how many hours it might end up being, but he didn’t think it would be something that was going to get away from them. It could take a year or two, or they might end up needing a three -year plan to get everything fixed up and working as efficiently and properly as possible.
Alderperson Hartzheim wondered if it made sense for the committee to entertain defeating the resolution and going back to having the funding request come directly from the mayor for the funds that were still currently allocated for the defunct brand study. “It just feels like the resolution was very helpful in determining where—where some of our vulnerabilities lie and where some of these funds could be purposefully used, but the resolution itself isn’t necessarily carrying the numbers that we’re looking at at this point. So, then there’s a lot of dollars just sitting there in limbo land for a while, and I think it would be better for those things to be in limbo land where the mayor then gives recommendations for what those—for how those things are used.”
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) who serves on the committee and was the main author of the resolution said that she actually wanted to introduce an amendment that would essentially mirror the staff recommendations. “And the reason I think that’s a better way to do this is because we’re actually having these studies done that will tell us things that we need to work on, things that we need to address immediately and having that funding set aside would be helpful.”
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) who did not serve on the committee but was in attendance thought that doing the technology assessment was clearly needed. He was, however, stuck on the funding for the enhanced crosswalk program. Appleton’s current program was going to run for a few more years, but they weren’t at the point where they were even sure if they were going to make changes. He understood the purpose of doing the study was to have a consultant look at what they could be doing differently; however, he had conversed with Traffic Engineer Lom, and during that conversation Traffic Engineer Lom had indicated to Alderperson Doran that he thought staff could internally come to the Municipal Services committee with some recommended changes to the enhanced crosswalk program and wouldn’t necessarily need a consultant to help do that work.
Additionally, Alderperson Doran was worried about the city’s capacity related to doing more enhanced crosswalks in the future. The more enhanced crosswalks they install, the more it costs the city not only to do the projects but to maintain the equipment. The electrical staff has been around 3 people for 20 years and their budget has remained relatively flat, but the amount of work they do has doubled.
He thought that if at some point in the future the city realized they had the capacity, staff, and funding to be able to do more crosswalks then the staff could come back with some recommendations, but he didn’t think a consultant was necessary. “When I look at the two—these two recommendations for consulting, one of them very clearly makes sense because these are things we know that we have to do now—we can’t wait into the future for these things. If the funding goes beyond what we have available, we’re gonna have to find it somewhere to make some of these IT upgrades. The enhanced crosswalk program doesn’t have that same sort of timeline. We’re not in a crunch to get that done. But I think what we need to look at there is: are we going to be able to absorb doing more of these projects and then maintaining them in the future? Because of the costs of the maintenance and upkeep of the equipment and the staff time that it takes. […] I would recommend not allocating funding for that study at this point because I’m not sure that there’s the ability for the city to compete any of that work in the future.”
Mayor Woodford responded that the recommendations put forward in the memo were reviewed by staff directors including Director of Public Works Paula Vandehey. They were the recommendations staff was making so any conversations that were had outside of the development of those recommendations would have to be reviewed by the department. He wanted to be clear that the recommendations in the memo were brought forward with the support of all the directors who review them.
Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) appreciated Director Popp’s analogy of the road and the logical system and thought it was a great way to show the IT study and the pedestrian safety study tied together. “As Director Popp explained to us, we have some safety issues with the logistical part of our network regarding network monitoring and stuff like that. What’s going on with our pedestrians and why there is this outcry and this request from the community to speed up the implementation of these safety measures is because there is a similar safety concern. So, I don’t think that there’s any way to argue how—that we should prioritize one type of safety above another type of safety—the safety of our pedestrians and the safety of our governmental IT. I think that those can’t be ranked one over the other, and with this money available to us it just—it makes sense to be doing both of these things at the same time because they’re both equally valid and pressing needs.”
Alderperson Hartzheim responded, “I would argue with our Alderperson Meltzer about a community outcry. I’ve not heard community outcry in regards to the safety issues for pedestrian safety. Other alderpersons may have heard that, but I have not. And we do have a five-year plan, and there is not in my mind a lot of urgency to get $75,000 spent in order to determine what to do after five years. Whether that was recommended by Director Vandehey or not, I argue that I believe that that just doesn’t—that there isn’t urgency for that particular piece at this point.”
Alderperson Van Zeeland said that when she made her amendment, she specified that the money would be set aside and allocated for “pedestrian safety” not just enhanced crosswalks. “The reason I used that language is because we’re not necessarily certain that the way to make our pedestrians more safe is an enhanced crosswalk.” She understood that staff was concerned that the more enhanced crosswalks that existed the less safe they become, but this study would help them “look more broadly at how we can make sure out pedestrians are safe, especially with, again, the rise in reckless driving. I understand that Alderperson Hartzheim hasn’t heard from her constituents, but that’s because she has an area with a lot of enhanced crosswalks and my district has none. So, I don’t think it’s a great comparison.”
Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) who was a member of the committee was somewhat hesitant about spending $75,000 for the pedestrian safety study because he believed the did have a lot of talent and expertise within staff. “I could understand if this was a situation where staff just doesn’t have the bandwidth to really dig into this, then I would be more supportive of allocating that money right now.” He wondered if they could give staff a little more time on this one and perhaps even engage with the community about it. Ultimately, if there was a way they could put the money toward the projects themselves instead of consulting then he’d be more supportive of that.
Deputy Director Ross Buetow wanted to reiterate what the mayor had said earlier—that this was a staff recommendation. Regarding the enhanced crosswalk program, they had some remaining projects through 2025 and then they would be at the point where they had addressed all the low hanging fruit and weren’t sure how to move forward. “The purpose and the reason that we’re recommending the study is it’s not just to move forward. We’ve implemented some of these now and this is also an opportunity to look back, okay, what’s worked well? What hasn’t worked well? And this is part of the scope that we would ask this consultant to do would be—we’ve got these in place, let’s take a look back and see was this money well spent? Was this money that could have been spent on a different type of remedy? So, it’s not just to look at what can we do next, it’s to say what have we done? Did it make sense? And was it money well spent?”
He said they wouldn’t be making the recommendation if they were entirely comfortable coming up with a list of further projects because there were numerous locations throughout the city that looked and scored similarly in terms of safety. They didn’t just want to pick locations because they hadn’t been in that district for a while or were trying to spread them fairly across the city. They wanted to make sure that they were choosing the right locations.
Alderperson Meltzer said, “As a general rule, I am always in favor of using our in-house resources over consultants. Just as a general rule, I will always be questioning and will scrutinize expenditures on consultants.
“However, given the situation we have with how difficult it is to find employees, the staff turnover with finding a new director for the Public Works Department, no matter how much faith and confidence I have in the ability of our staff to make these decisions, I do not believe we have the capacity. I do not believe they have the time, and I believe these are pressing issues, and I believe this is one of those opportunities where bringing in an extra brain will make this situation so much more effective and efficient for our whole community. It’ll make it easier on staff and it will help the community achieve their goals more quickly.
“I think that for some years now, like leading—what’s precipitated this situation is that we’ve had a very competitive environment for these types of safety improvements where there’s been sort of a bottleneck effect, and it becomes kind of a question of whose district has the newest crosswalk, whose district doesn’t have any, who’s getting left out, who keeps cutting in line. And none of that is getting us anywhere closer to being safer, so I think another thing that this study will do will be to break that bottleneck and just push all of that baggage aside and with a fresh slate say, ‘all right, here we are, here are the safety problems,’ and we don’t need our staff who are spending every paid hour that they have already working on other things—we don’t need to add extra work to them in order to get there.”
Alderperson Hartzheim noted, “$75,000 is someone’s annual salary. I think we can spend it better. I think this city deserves us spending it better.”
Alderperson Doran didn’t want his recounting of his conversation with Traffic Engineer Lom to be misconstrued. “I just wanted to clarify and make clear, I didn’t have the benefit of talking with Director Vandehey because I know she’s not available this week, so I reached out to Engineer Lom, just to have a conversation with him, and I’m not in any way trying to pit staff again each other in any way shape or form in my comments there. I’m just relaying [the] conversation there and sort of his thoughts when we spoke today.
“But I think—you know, I guess I just would say again we have three more years before the end of this first program runs out and doing this study now means its—the results are gonna sit on the shelf for a while at least, maybe three years, maybe not quite that long. But technology as we know changes pretty fast. And even perhaps in this realm of pedestrian safety, new things could come up or technology might change, and I just worry that this money may be not best allocated now but might provide more value for us in the future if at some point we feel we need to go down that road of doing a study at that point.”
Alderperson Matt Reed (District 8 ) also wondered about the timeline and didn’t see a need to rush on a program that had 3 years left on it. He also agreed with Alderperson Doran’s point that technology changes. He also didn’t know how staffing levels might change and noted that the Kernan/Calumet crossing had been hit at least three times and someone had to go out and fix it every time.
He made an amendment to remove the pedestrian safety part from the resolution but leave the other two in place. It failed for lack of a second.
Alderperson Meltzer said, “I do feel that there is a matter of expediency here. Maybe the money’s gonna hang around for three years, but safety only diminishes when safety concerns are not addressed. So, if we wait around three years, we will be less safe at that point and who knows who might have died in the meantime.” [Honestly, that seemed a little over the top to me. I can appreciate the convenience of enhanced crosswalks, but I wasn’t aware that pedestrians were dodging death on a regular basis when they crossed the streets of Appleton.]
Alderperson Firkus said he was willing to support Alderperson Van Zeeland’s amendment in spite of the concerns he expressed before. He thought they could look more closely at it when it came time to contract with a consultant.
The committee then voted 3-2 to approve the amendment with Alderpersons Meltzer, Firkus, and Van Zeeland voting in favor of it and Alderpersons Siebers and Reed voting again.
They then voted 3-2 to approve the item as amended with the vote divided the same way between the same alderpersons.
[I will say, this does seem a vastly more useful purpose for this money than the city brand study. The IT needs in particular appear to be fairly pressing. While spending money on pedestrian safety improvements seems more useful than rebranding the city, the discussion did not convince me that it was the most optimal use for the funds, particularly in light of the fact that inflation is through the roof, gas prices are through the roof, and given some of the things that are happening globally we’re potentially looking at sharply increased costs for everything in the very near future. Maybe it would be better to spend this money on some kind of core established city function instead of to potentially expand a program that’s drawing to an end.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=925220&GUID=4C325E42-A98E-46B2-B8C6-2FC65BD1C8A4
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