The Municipal Services Committee met 06/20/2022. One of the items they took up was the creation of a Transportation Utility.
This had been an item for discussion during the 06/06/2022 committee meeting during which the committee members had generally expressed a desire to hold off on moving forward with creating a transportation utility in Appleton until the ongoing legal questions raised in lawsuits against the Town of Buchanan’s and the Village of Pewaukee’s transportation utilities were settled. They put the item on this agenda as an action item to formally vote on what if any next steps they intended to take and had indicated they would probably simply hold the item until later this year when the legal issues became more clear.
The committee did indeed end up voting to hold the item until the first scheduled Municipal Services Committee meeting in January of 2023. Before doing that, however, they engaged in brief discussion.
City Attorney Christopher Behrens told the committee that he had been able to communicate via email with the attorney representing the Village of Pewaukee. That attorney indicated that they were currently litigating several different items and the briefing schedules were likely going to extend into October of this year. The Pewaukee attorney thought it would be advisable for the Municipal Services Committee to hold the item instead of moving forward with it at this time.
Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) asked at what point they would need to approve the creation of a transportation utility in order to implement it for 2024 and was told that a decision would need to be made by the end of February of 2023 at the latest.
Attorney Behrens noted that if they went past that deadline, they would simply be pushing the implementation timeline out another year but would not be prevented completely from creating a transportation utility.
Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) was inclined to hold the item but, just thinking out loud, he mused that there were options that Appleton could implement if they wanted to. Theoretically they could hold a referendum to raise the levy limit which might allow them to implement a transportation utility even with the current legal uncertainties. [That’s a major paraphrase, and I hope that I correctly understood what he was saying.] He noted that Grand Chute was planning to hold a referendum this fall that, if passed, would help fund road reconstruction and some public safety expenditures.
Attorney Behrens seemed to agree that was an option but said that it might need a more in-depth conversation with the Finance Director.
Alderperson Firkus agreed with that and said he felt that the city could at least consider some other ideas in case the courts ruled against transportation utilities. One of the things the transportation utility study had illustrated was that residents were paying a very large portion of the city’s road budget through their general fund taxes and the wheel tax, but they weren’t using the roads as much as some other types of properties.
Alderperson Siebers asked when a referendum would have to be submitted to be on the November ballot.
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) thought it would have to happen in August, and Attorney Behrens was not certain of the exact timing.
Alderperson Firkus said he was not trying to rush anything and was not proposing that the city go to referendum at any point, he was just raising it as a potential option. Given the legal situation with transportation utilities, he thought the city might want to consider some other options and approaches. He was throwing an idea out himself and hoped that doing so might spark some ideas in other people.
He went on to make a motion to hold the creation of a transportation utility until the first scheduled committee meeting in January so that they would have some time before the February deadline to make a decision.
Alderperson Van Zeeland seconded that motion. She thought it made sense to hold it, particularly given that the attorney in Pewaukee thought they should wait on it. She didn’t think it was a dead issue, but, at this point, after having invested in the study they needed to see where things fell in the litigation.
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) asked if holding off on creating a transportation utility would also put on hold the work of the consultants and no more money would be spent on the consultants until the city decided to move forward.
Attorney Behrens confirmed that was correct. The consultants had indicated that at this point they needed to receive further guidance from the city before doing anything further.
Alderperson Van Zeeland asked if there was a time frame in the contract the city signed with the consultants that put a limitation on how long they could hold off on moving forward into the next phase.
None of the staff members knew the answer to that question, and someone said they would review the contract and follow up with Alderperson Van Zeeland about that.
The committee members had no further comments or questions and voted 5-0 to hold the item until the first scheduled meeting of January 2023.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=982990&GUID=61FEF012-A518-471D-A30D-194267107A69
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