The Municipal Services Committee met 06/06/2022 and took up a request from Appleton Downtown, Inc (ADI) for a waiver to allow dumpsters to be place within city-owned property by Jones Park without the required dumpster enclosure.
Staff members from the Department of Public Works attend Municipal Services Committee meetings as a matter of course, but members of the Parks and Recreation and the Facilities and Construction Management departments do not normally attend. The item had been brought to the Municipal Services Committee rather than the Parks and Recreation Committee because the proposed location of the dumpsters was in the public right-of-way. Ultimately, the committee members had so many questions that would be better answered by Director of Parks, Recreation, and Facilities Dean Gazza or staff members from those two departments that the committee voted to hold the item until the next committee meeting to give time to get answers before deciding on an action.
Jennifer Stephany from ADI told the committee that currently there were no dumpsters in Jones Park. ADI had been talking with the Parks and Recreation Department and the Department of Public Works about putting some in Jones Park. The currently required that dumpsters have enclosures around them, and ADI was interesting in creating a long-term solution, but in the short-term, they wanted to temporarily place dumpsters in the parking lot by Jones Park even though there was not an enclosure.
The main impetus for this was to save money. It costs ADI $500 every week to bring in garbage and recycling containers for their summer concert series. They perform 13 shows which added up to $6,500, which was a lot of money went talking about a free concert for the public.
She said it was also confusing why a dumpster enclosure had not, as a matter of course, been built alongside a million-dollar stage because a stage of that size really needed that infrastructure to support the programming that went on it. She noted that ADI was not the only organization facing this problem and that other organizations put on programming in the park and were also struggling with this additional cost.
ADI ran events through the end of August, so they wanted to be able to place dumpsters in the parking lot through August 31st.
City staff’s position was what had been expressed in the memo to the committee. They believed “it would be very unfair in our professional opinion to waive a requirement that all other businesses are required to do as a part of their project.” Additionally, there was concern that the dumpsters would remain exposed for the summer and would be quite visible at the main entrance of the park. There were reasons that the city had enclosure standards, and that was to protect the dumpsters from animals and also decrease their unsightliness. Staff thought that there was an equitable solution down the road but, given the short notice of the request, and the unfairness to some of the other businesses that have to spend money building these enclosures, staff recommended denial.
Given that I recapped two Board of Zoning Appeals meetings that revolved entirely around a dumpster enclosure, I am clearly not above doing a play by play of a meeting where they are talking about dumpster enclosures. In this case, however, I don’t think that’s necessary and instead will just give some of the main points that were brought up.
- The cost to construct a dumpster enclosure would cost approximately $10,000. The city had proposed that ADI pay for half of that as a long-term solution, but although ADI was open to discussing that they had not yet committed to it. If a waiver wasn’t granted for this year, they were going to spend $4,000 on dumpster costs to get through the remainder of the summer—money that they would not then be able to put toward building a dumpster enclosure.
- Some of the committee members were not keen on the proposed location, and there was some discussion of alternate locations in the park where dumpsters could be placed.
- Although the memo stated the parking lot was asphalt, it was actually concrete so the concerns expressed in the memo regarding damage to the parking lot were no longer relevant.
- Pierce Park, another park with a stage that was intended to host community events, did have a fenced dumpster enclosure installed near the pavilion.
- It was not clear why a dumpster enclosure had not been built at Jones Park, particularly given the amphitheater area had specifically been constructed with the intention of hosting community events that would need dumpsters.
Ultimately, as noted above, the committee members were not able to get their questions answered by the staff members who were at the meeting and decided to hold the item until the next meeting in order to have time to speak with staff and receive answers to their questions.
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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