The Municipal Services Committee met 06/06/2022 and discussed next steps regarding the creation of a Transportation Utility. This was a follow-up discussion to the Transportation Utility presentation they had received during the 05/23/2022 committee meeting. That meeting had gone long so they ran out of time to properly discuss next steps. (https://allthingsappleton.com/2022/05/27/municipal-services-committee-receives-presentation-on-transportation-utility-funding-study-hears-attorneys-legal-concerns-puts-item-on-agenda-of-next-meeting-to-discuss/)
The committee ultimately decided to hold off on moving forward with a Transportation Utility at this time due to ongoing legal cases related to transportation utilities within Wisconsin and instead bring the item forward periodically for updates.
The discussion started out with the news that the lawsuit brought by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) against the Town of Buchanan over Buchanan’s transportation utility had been decided earlier that day in WILL’s favor.
City Attorney Christopher Behrens told the committee that at the time the decision was rendered, he had a conflicting meeting, but Assistant Attorney Darrin Glad had been able to listen to the ruling. Attorney Behrens’ understanding was that the decision was not favorable for the Town of Buchanan. In general, the court had found the town’s transportation utility to be a tax on property without the specific authority to do so and that it violated the state’s levy limits. The judge had also noted he was expecting the parties to appeal the decision. Attorney Behrens didn’t want to go into any more specific detail because he had not yet had the opportunity to read the decision.
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) noted that the presentation they had received during the previous meeting had noted that Buchanan’s transportation utility was different from what Appleton was contemplating, but the Village of Pewaukee’s transportation was similar to what Appleton had been thinking about and it was also facing a lawsuit. She wondered if anything had happened in the Pewaukee lawsuit since the last committee meeting.
Attorney Behrens said that given the timing that case had almost certainly not progressed since then.
Alderperson Van Zeeland commented that it was hard to make a decision as to where Appleton should go without knowing where things were progressing with the Pewaukee lawsuit.
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15), who was one of the main sponsors of the resolution that had resulted in the funding of a transportation utility study, said that it seemed like, having given their presentation two weeks prior, the transportation utility consultant was sort of at a standstill awaiting a recommendation from the Common Council.
A staff member said that they had put this discussion on the meeting’s agenda for that very reason. The consultant had done their initial work and presented the core structure of what they would propose. This was the point at which they would move into Phase 2, but it was possible the Council wasn’t comfortable sending them down that road at this point.
An additional thing for the committee to keep in mind was the fact that, if they wanted to have a transportation utility in place for 2024, they would have to make some decisions about moving forward within the next month or so.
Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3), who had been the other alderperson to sponsor the resolution that resulted in the funding of the transportation utility study, thought it would be useful to know how narrow or wide the ruling regarding the Buchanan transportation utility was. Was the ruling narrow in that it said Buchanan’s transportation utility was not legal or was it wide in that it said that all transportation utilities were not legal. Knowing that would help the committee gauge how risky it would be to move ahead on their own transportation utility.
Alderperson Joss Thyssen (District 8) thought they shouldn’t move forward until they knew the outcome of those lawsuits.
Attorney Behrens suggested that, procedurally, the committee might bring the item back as an action item so that they could give a little bit more director to staff through a formal action even if that action was just to hold the item for a period of time. While it was okay to have it just sit there without a formal vote, it was a little clearer if they voted on it. He offered the possibility of holding it for a period of 2 or 3 months and then asking for an update.
Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) who was the chairperson of the committee decided to move forward with that and told Deputy Director Ross Buetow to put it on as an action item for the next meeting. He also asked him to provide the committee with information on what the timeframe was in terms of when a transportation utility could be started based on when the committee voted to move forward.
Alderperson Van Zeeland asked if there were any systems or things that the city would need to update in-house for a transportation utility to go into effect.
A staffer answered that, currently, the plan was to tie a transportation utility into the city’s current utility billing system. Doing so would require some programming. It would probably take between 6 and 9 months to program the billing system, load the data from raSmith into the billing system, and make sure that everything was correct. That work would be done in house.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=981272&GUID=8E2B3F9D-8683-4332-A1C0-0F1BC257A7C6
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