Municipal Services Committee Approves Changes To Street Terrace Policy Allowing Residents To Plant Gardens And Vegetation Up To 3 Feet High In Terraces

The Municipal Services Committee met 08/22/2022. One of the items they took up was recommendations for modifications to the city’s street terrace policy. The terrace is the typically grassy area in between the sidewalk and the street.

Back in June, Alderperson Israel Del Toro (District 4) introduced Resolution 7-R-22 which called for modifications to the city’s existing rules regarding the maintenance and care of street terraces. If passed as originally written, the resolution would have allowed residents to plant vegetation, including vegetable gardens, up to 4 feet in height (3 feet for corner lots) and lay down mulch in city terraces.

The item was held at the 07/11/2022 Municipal Services Committee to allow staff time to review the resolution for benefits, unintended consequences, and safety concerns before they presented a report with their recommendations to the committee.

City staff ended up recommending a number of changes to the existing terrace policy. Under the recommended rules…

Residents who receive approval, pay an annual $40 fee for a terrace occupancy permit, and have proper insurance could plant/install:

1. Plant in excess of 3 feet in height
2. Hedges or woody plantings
3. Rocks, railroad ties, fencing, etc.
4. Loose stone or sand surfaces
5. Non-native or invasive species of vegetation with the exception of home gardens
6. Private trees
7. Plants within 3 feet of a fire hydrant or other city/private utility surface infrastructure

Residents who do not seek approval, pay an annual fee, or have insurance would be free to install mulch or private plantings in the terrace as long as they stayed fully confined to the terrace area without the aid of structural supports or fencing and were no more than 3 feet high. Additionally, all private plantings would need to be cut down to ground level and removed from the terrace prior to October 5^th to accommodate the City’s fall leaf collection process and the terrace would need to be unobstructed enough to facilitated leaf collection and the placement of refuse/recycling containers.

Staff was recommending that the proposed policy changes be approved.

Alderperson Del Toro was not a member of the committee but, as the author of the resolution, was in attendance. He said that he had met with the Public Works Department and understood the reasons why some of the proposed modifications in his original resolution could not be implemented. At the same time, the changes proposed by staff would allow residents to plan home gardens in those areas which might yield “substantial sources of food”, create a habitat of native pollinators, and increase native biodiversity. He felt that those were core issues that the resolution had intended to promote and that the resulting recommendations were a good compromise. He encouraged the committee to support the resolution.

Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) asked what the $40 fee was for.

Deputy Director of Public Works Ross Buetow responded that if a property owner chose to ask for an exception to some of the rules listed at the top of the policy, then they could pay a $40 fee and petition for that exemption. However, if they followed all of the rules within the policy then they would not need to pay a fee or register their terrace.

Alderperson Del Toro noted that rule 5 specifically exempted home gardens from the policy, so people could plant those without having to pay a fee. [Although, it looks like those plants would still need to be below 3 feet which might rule out things like tomatoes. Gardeners also would not be able to install a fence around their garden unless they paid the fee.]

Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) asked if this policy would allow for rain gardens to be placed in the terrace.

Deputy Director Buetow answered that the policy did not address rain gardens or allow for them. They were not covered under either the resolution or the policy.

Alderperson Siebers asked what would happen with leaves in the falls if they could not be put into the street but the terraces now had flowers on them.

Deputy Director Buetow pointed out that the policy required that any vegetation planted in the terrace be removed by October 5^th. This year would be the first year the city used a vacuum truck to collect leaves so they did not want to have any potential issues trying to remove leaves from terraces that still had vegetation planted. They hoped that October 5^th was a good deadline so that people could still enjoy the life of the plants but then remove them so as not to interfere with the leaf collection process.

Alderperson Del Toro noted that the October 5^th deadline was the change that caused him the greatest hesitation (it had been mentioned earlier that he had asked for an October 15^th deadline). However, he was happy to go with that date for now and possibly change it in the future.

Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) was supportive of the changes but thought they were a bit confusing. She would like to see some education for the public, but she didn’t know how best to do that. She wondered if the Public Works Department had any feedback on that.

Deputy Director Buetow answered that they hadn’t really thought about that. They would obviously update the policy and put it on the city’s website, but they had not discussed proactive education.

Alderperson Van Zeeland was thought it would be confusing to have some situations in which a permit was needed and other times when it was not. She thought it would be good to make it clear when a permit was and was not needed.

Alderperson Siebers said there were some terraces in his district that were very nice but he didn’t think the plants were removed for the winter months. He wondered if they would not have to be removed.

Deputy Director Buetow answered that under the current ordinance they would have to be cleared out. The intent was that there should not be an obstacle for the fall leaf collection.

Someone else chimed in and said that historically that had never been a problem because leaves had always been left in the street so there had not been a conflict with plantings. Now, however, the city was using a vacuum truck to collect leaves from the terraces now which made it necessary for those plants to be removed.

Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) pointed out that the policy didn’t say anything about what would happen if a resident didn’t cut down their plantings by October 5^th. He asked if that was specified someplace else or if it needed to be specified.

Deputy Director Buetow said that the October 5^th deadline provided around a 10-day window before the city started its leaf collection operations. During those 10 days, the street department crews would notice if there were areas that were still planted which would allow the Department of Public Works to reach out to the property owners in some fashion and encourage them to take care of that.

Alderperson Doran noted that the policy barred planting within 3 feet of a fire hydrant or above-ground utility infrastructure. He wondered what would happen if there were underground utilities that people planted on top of. What would happen in terms of remediation if below ground work needed to happen. He assumed the city would not be paying to restore a garden. He wondered if that needed to be clarified.

Someone [possibly Alderperson Del Toro] said that his understanding was that in the past the city restored terraces to a bare minimum by planting grass seed in terraces. He suspected that would continue to be the case moving forward.

Deputy Director Buetow pointed out that item 3 in the lower section of the policy indicated that the city would only restore a terrace to what a typical terrace was, which was usually grass.

Alderperson Firkus said it made sense to remove plants like tomato bushes before the vacuum truck removed leaves from the terrace; however, there were other kinds of plants that he wondered if they needed to be removed. Using his own house as an example, he said the previous owner had planted a perennial around the base of the mailbox. Was that something that would need to be removed or could it be left as long as the leaves weren’t piled up by it?

Deputy Director Buetow said that if the planted area was small and there was adequate room to store leaves in another area on the terrace then the department was not going to be heavy handed in enforcing the rule to cut down plantings. The purpose of the rule was to deal with situations in which a property owner chose to plant something like a garden over the majority of their terrace.

Alderperson Del Toro mentioned Alderperson Van Zeeland’s desire for community education and said it would be good to make sure that people understood they needed to leave a spot on the terrace where the leaves could be collected. He thought that would overcome a majority of potential conflicts and said that he would be happy to work on the information posted to social media and the city website to make sure it was clear.

The committee members had no further questions and they voted 5-0 to approve the changes to the Street Terrace Policy.

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=982993&GUID=0F97248C-E1D7-411F-9D54-FCB23476798B