Back on September 15, I posted about the issues and oddities surrounding the rezoning of the Apostolic Truth Church.
On 09/16/2022 Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) sent an email to me responding to that post in which she responded to a number of points in the post. She explained that the note in his constituent update (in which she told her followers, “a local blogger believed that there was some organized plan to abstain and submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for all of our communications for May and most of June that contained a large number of key words, including ‘vote’.”) had been in response to my FOIA request in and of itself and not in response to the question I had sent her a couple week later.
In terms of her concern about housing in the city of Appleton, she said, “I have trouble relating the statistics (we do have a lot of new apartment units available or in development) with the personal stories I hear of working people who can no longer afford to live in Appleton because their rent has increased or because a property owner has decided not to renew leases in order to remodel and rent at much higher rates. Many of our new units are also not suitable for families with children.”
Regarding her vote specifically on the ATC rezoning she said, “My personal feeling is that the community would be better served with more housing than by a large building (church or otherwise) with a giant parking lot, but I know that is not the role of the Plan Commission. I assumed the Plan Commission would vote to recommend the change in spite of my vote and that the Common Council would likewise approve it. After reading the material from the City Attorney’s office I was reminded of our responsibilities and decided a day or so before the Common Council meeting to abstain from the vote.”
I wrote back to her and explained that I had not submitted my FOIA request in order to see if there had been vote coordination and, actually, had been unaware at the time I submitted my records request that such coordination would have been illegal. I had made the request because I was interested in trying to get a better understanding of why the rezoning had been an issue.
I told Alderperson Fenton, “I don’t know that I have a question per se other than, recognizing that Appleton could benefit from some more housing, I still don’t understand why the housing situation was viewed as being so dire that it warranted not supporting a relatively small portion of the city’s vacant residential lots being rezoned to facilitate the long-term owner building a long-planned church on it. It seems like if that kind of opposition to rezonings becomes a regular state of affairs, it could have a potentially negative impact on how people hoping to develop land view purchasing undeveloped lots in Appleton and how owners of undeveloped land view the prospect of their property being annexed into the city. If you have any more thoughts on that, I would appreciate hearing them.”
As I said it my email, I hadn’t really asked a question but more gave an opportunity to provide more thoughts on something that I still don’t fully understand. It has been a week and I have not heard back, so I am posting our exchange such as it is.
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