The Parks and Recreation Committee met 04/25/2022. Most of the meeting was taken up with discussion about the Green Tier Legacy Communities 2021 Annual Report.
Director of Parks, Recreation, and Facilities told the committee that in 2010 the Wisconsin DNR created this program for communities and organizations that wanted to start advancing sustainability initiatives and engage in environmental stewardship. The City of Appleton was one of the first five signatory communities. Tim Hanna, the mayor at the time, really liked that the program didn’t make sustainability any one person’s job but made it everyone’s jobs. The report reflects that with its different categories of Transportation, Land Use, Energy Conservation, etc.
The number of communities participating had grown to almost 40. They meet quarterly, and then have a larger annual meeting. Director Gazza is the liaison between the City of Appleton and the Wisconsin DNR, but other people attend meetings when needed such as if a specific top comes up.
The report summarized the city’s accomplishments. They were looking at new ways of improving the reporting and in the future were going to measure carbon emissions and start calculating the true effect of what they were doing. For example, when they say the added 1.25 miles of sidewalk, they would try to show what that meant.
He asked all the departments to present any achievements whether large or small, such as installing a boiler or a solar project. One year the HR Department moved to taking only online applications, thus saving paper.
TRANSPORTATION – Accomplishments included the sidewalk poetry program and the installation of additional bike lanes. That was a little repetitive because they do those on an annual basis. Another item that he drew attention to was that all the Valley Transit buses had been replaced. They now had 23 Clean Diesel buses which were 90% more efficient than the old buses. He commented on how much soot had gotten everywhere when the old buses were in use. He finished up by highlighting the bike Fix-It stations and a couple of new trails.
LAND USE – This section included community development areas. It also included some things that he thought people weren’t aware of, and he drew attention to the fact that the city uses horticultural vinegar for weed control when they can, although there were some areas that needed something more to keep the weeds down.
ENERGY – The American Engineering Council had awarded Appleton the Best of State Engineering Excellence Award for the wastewater treatment plant’s biogas system which saves around $200,000 annually. Director Chris Shaw also had installed at the wastewater treatment plan a high frequency turbine that reduced annual kilowatt hours by over 1.5 million.
Beyond that, each year they were always upgrading to LED lights. Director Gazza said people asked why they didn’t just go out and upgrade them all at once. They didn’t because of money reasons. The waste water treatment plant consisted of 13 main buildings with tunnels and there were lights everywhere. They target the areas that are in greatest need of replacement.
WATER – Although it didn’t make it into the report, Director Gazza noted that they also reduced the amount of concrete and hard surfaces which improved how stormwater was handled. They were up to 56 wet ponds and 12 dry ponds. Director Gazza said that some other communities were amaze at how advanced Appleton’s storm water management was compared to some other municipalities.
Over 3 miles of old, leaking undersized water mains were replaced. The Council also allocated $1 million for the Lead Service Line Replacement program.
WASTE – The city continues to provide nearly 100,000 cubic yards of leaves, brush, and digested biosolids to residents as compost.
COMMUNITY PLANNING – Director Gazza thought it was important to note that the climate action plan proposal had been completed. That would now go to the next level, and the mayor was working on naming members to a climate commission and setting the framework for the commission and identifying its responsibilities.
He pointed out some the library activities including a nature walk they had held in 2021.
He said that all of the directors and staff are thinking about sustainability all the time, and sustainability is discussed at various meetings. It wasn’t just one person’s job. It was everyone’s job.
He noted the increase in Steve Schrage’s responsibilities. [This had been discussed at the Human Resources committee meeting on 03/09/2022.]
Director Gazza finished up his report by saying there was also a private/corporate side to the Green Tier Legacy Communities. A number of companies were involved, but the public entities and the private entities didn’t interact as much as they should. He understood they had different roles, but they did have a lot to share with each other and, in many cases, the private businesses were quite advanced. He then opened things up for questions.
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) asked if, in addition to all of the great things being a Green Tier Legacy Community did for the community, did it also help Appleton be at the top of the list for grants or was that separate from being Green Tier Legacy?
Director Gazza answered that it didn’t help Appleton get extra points on their grant applications, but the city was considered a leader in sustainability and environmental stewardship so it had given them favorability for grants. Additionally, during projects, the DNR might normally be expected to visit the site quite often, but since Appleton has become a Green Tier Legacy Community, the DNR hasn’t visited a site once because they understand that Appleton is committed to doing things the right way so there is an increased level of trust. Knowing that the DNR is trusting the city that much also means that Appleton can’t have anything go wrong and so the city has to make sure that everything is set and in place.
Alderperson Israel Del Toro (District 4) asked what as coming down the pipeline in terms of projects for the next couple years.
Director Gazza answered that the report from the Taskforce on Resiliency, Climate Mitigation, and Adaptation included different areas of focus and symbols to represent those areas. Mayor Woodford wanted to incorporate those symbols into the budget so that when someone looked at the budget, they could see which projects were tied to which sustainability goal.
He said there were a lot of lighting and HVAC improvements planned. They were also looking at doing solar and geothermal at the library. There was also a Valley Transit Project that they were looking at costs for now, but he didn’t know when it would come forward.
Alderperson Del Toro wanted to clarify if they were using the Resiliency, Climate Mitigation, and Adaptation report as a guiding document for future projects.
Director Gazza responded that they were not directly doing that at this time. They did read the report. When the new Climate Change Commission was established, they wanted to sit down and prioritize things moving forward.
The report did set priorities but included no way to measure what should be done first, so they needed to develop a framework for prioritizing projects. Additionally, some of the recommendations in the report were either completely done or further along than the task force was aware. He said that it would have been beneficial if the task force could have sat down with every single director and talked to them about different projects and recommendations because the task force hadn’t had a total understanding of what was going on. One example was the recommendation to replace all of the city street lights with LED lighting. That was already 100% completed in terms of what the city had control over. WE Energies had not converted all of the lights they controlled, and Appleton had no way to push them to do anything within the city.
Although he didn’t go into great detail, he noted that there were other goals in there that had some ramifications, and mentioned that the goal about waste removal and composting might have some issues regarding rodent control.
Essentially, once the commission was formed, they wanted to bring things to departments and talk about problems with the goal, available resources, possible grants, etc. Ideally, they would take the task force report and the goals and initiatives already set by city staff and roll them into one document.
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) thought that everything the city had done since the start of the program was pretty impressive. He thought they needed to figure out a way to let the community know all the things the city was doing because he didn’t think the community grasped what they were doing and what they had done.
Director Gazza said that Communications Specialist Sheng Riechers had put out some great communications regarding solar projects and the biogas boiler so there were a lot more communications going out. There was some background noise on the audio, but it sounded like they wanted to highlight some of the efficiencies brought about the Steve Schrage.
Alderperson Schultz thought it might be nice to do a weekly post and show the community what the city has been doing.
Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) agreed with that idea. He wanted to get the accomplishments of all of the different departments out to the community, ideally in a fun way. He thought maybe the alderpersons could help out with that as well.
[Frankly, the only thing I want to see highlighted is how the city has stopped borrowing so much and has focused our tax dollars on the basic municipal needs of infrastructure, police, and fire.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=955035&GUID=7F34C4E6-C42E-413E-8492-F67367559F0F
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