Finance Committee Votes 5-0 Against Resolution That Would Have Ended Alderperson Parking Pass Benefit

The Finance Committee met 12/12/2022 and took up Resolution 12-R-22 which called for the elimination of the Council parking pass benefit, valued at $480 per alderperson per year, and the reallocation of those funds to the city’s concrete budget. The resolution was introduced by Alderpersons Sheri Hartzheim (District 13), Chris Croatt (District 14), and Chad Doran (District 15). The committee spent a little over 20 minutes discussing the item and ended up voting 5-0 to recommend the resolution for denial.

I’ve prepared a complete transcript of the discussion for your downloading pleasure:

There was a brief discussion about whether the resolution was even allowed to be brought forward under Council rules because it was so similar to a budget amendment which had been discussed and voted down in October during Budget Saturday. That amendment, proposed by Alderperson Doran would have reduced the parking pass benefit by 90% and allowed alderpersons to pay out of pocket for parking then seek reimbursement.

Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) told the committee she had corresponded with Attorney Christopher Behrens who told her that there were differences between the proposals (i.e., one reduced the benefit by 90% while the other eliminated it completely) and also that concerns about whether the resolution was allowed to be considered due to its similarity to the previous amendment needed to have been raised at the time the resolution was introduced.

Alderperson Hartzheim, the main sponsor of the resolution, felt that circumstances had changed since Budget Saturday in that she had received a lot more feedback from her constituents about the aldermanic parking pass benefit since the Council discussion in October. That feedback prompted the re-raising of the issue of the parking pass benefit.

She believed that it cost considerably less than $480 per year per person to provide parking for alderpersons. “So, I think it bears some further discussion in that regard. Is this appropriate? Is this what we should be doing as servants to the community?”

Alderperson Croatt through that $40 a month per alderperson was excessive and that if one were to plug the meters for all of the meetings they attended, it would end up being $13 a month. He felt that they could figure out a way to provide some on-street parking with less funds.

Alderperson Doran said he got the sense from previous Council and committee discussions that the general consensus was that the current parking pass benefit, at $480 a year per alderperson, was excessive. The sticking point, however, was how best to deal with the excessiveness of the benefit. He also noted that north of Franklin Street, a mere block and a half from City Center, the meters cost only $0.25 an hour, which would allow an alderperson to park for a month’s worth of meetings for only $2. “I mean, this just does not make sense to charge taxpayers $480 for something that should cost us $2. It’s just wasteful, guys. It’s it’s ridiculously wasteful. And I think it’s just time for us to move on from this. This is this shouldn’t be this controversial. It shouldn’t even take this much discussion. Our job is to be as financially responsible for taxpayers as we can be. And this is just unnecessary.”

Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) mentioned the previous proposal Alderperson Doran had made during the Budget Saturday discussion to replace the parking pass with a reimbursement and reminded the committee that the Finance Department did not have the time and manpower to handle reimbursements.

Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) thought that any discussion about removing the parking passes needed to involve a replacement. “I have a mental concept of the value of the parking passes, and what we gained by keeping them and what we lose by losing them. So what’s the trade off? If we’re getting rid of them, what are we getting of equal value or of comparable negotiable value? I don’t see that in this resolution at all.”

Alderperson Croatt said that his intention with the resolution was to eliminate the parking pass completely, but Alderperson Meltzer pointed out that the resolution called for moving the money to the concrete budget. “If the issue really is that we think that it’s excessive to have this parking pass benefit, then why not just talk about getting rid of it entirely?”

Alderperson Hartzheim responded, “The value that we get from this is that we do not take excess funds from our constituents. It does not cost us $480 a year to park here to do our jobs for what the purpose of this parking pass is. So I don’t see that we have two apples for apples compare what value we’re getting out of this. It is unnecessary for us to penalize the taxpayers of the city for a amount of money that it does not cost us to expend.”

Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) did not like the idea of rehashing an issue that had already been discussed and voted on during Budget Saturday and was concerned that they would set a precedent which would lead to additional things being constantly rehashed. He also felt that the amount of money they were talking about was nominal and wouldn’t result in taxpayer savings. “Now granted, it’s an amount of money. But in regards to the total budget, it doesn’t really amount to a heck of a lot.”

Alderperson Hartzheim, however, believed, “What’s wrong is wrong. Taking too much from our constituents is wrong, whether it’s pennies or not pennies.”

Alderperson Firkus pointed out that this resolution wouldn’t be returning money to taxpayers but instead would just move funds from one budget line item to another. His understanding of the resolution was that the authors were coming from the perspective that the money could be better spent somewhere else.

Alderperson Hartzheim responded, “Yes, that is a fair assessment. However, we have to realize that the reason that we want to do this is because it is–it feels wrong. It feels inappropriate to overcharge our constituents for this.”

Alderperson Firkus raised the point that all city employees, full-time, part-time, and those who worked partly from home, received parking passes. Yes, alderpersons only worked downtown around 6 days out of the month, but the city did not limit the employee parking passes to only those employees who worked a certain number of hours.

Alderperson Hartzheim responded that most of the part time employees worked for the city during the day which was very different than the alderpersons who often came in during the evening outside the parking meter enforcement hours.

Alderperson Fenton felt opposed the resolution, saying, “We have wasted a lot of time on political theater, and virtue signaling.” She felt that through the resolution, “We’re trying to say that only a certain class of people can—are the people that we want to serve as alders. We want people who can afford to work for depending on how much time you put—and I know some of the people who introduced this resolution, devote a lot of time outside of committee meetings—but we’re saying we want people who are willing to work for, you know, $10, $12 an hour, we want people who are willing to pay for their, you know, to pay their own parking. It’s not a huge, huge benefit. But it’s something that indicates that the city is willing to compensate you a little bit for the use of your time, for your—to make it a little more convenient for you to serve your community. And I hope that this ends after next week, because honestly, the reruns have become tiresome.”

Alderperson Doran viewed the resolution differently, saying, “The reason that I’m hopeful we’re having this discussion, again, to change this is because of the most recent meetings where I felt like we came to the realization that we are we are overcharging our budget for this purpose. We can park for $2 for the entire month versus $480 per person. Why wouldn’t we do that? It’s no more, it’s no further to walk than it is from the parking ramp. And if you want something closer, it barely cost more than that. Why do we need to spend $480 per councilmember when we can spend so much less?”

Alderperson Meltzer also opposed the resolution and said, “I think that if we’re looking for the biggest bang for our buck for our constituents, I don’t think parking passes is what we should be looking at. I don’t think that we’re in any way penalizing the taxpayers with an excessive expense.”

Alderperson Meltzer also found great benefit to the parking pass, “Imagine how difficult it would be for the city to do business if some people had iPads and others didn’t. The parking pass enables everybody to be right here to be on time for meetings. Imagine how difficult it would be when our meetings are all supposed to start on the hour if some people had to walk farther than others–there’s not always parking available in the same places. The ramp ensures that if there’s not a closer parking spot, we don’t have to wait for you to find whatever one you can find and eventually get here. It’s about the functionality of us doing business and being able to gather for our meetings. And it’s also saying to the people that have been selected by our community to represent us, ‘You do have space. You do belong here. Don’t let the fear of not having a parking space make you worry that you’re not going to be able to show up on time to make your vote.’”

Alderperson Van Zeeland said that she had been out knocking on doors and when she brought this issue up one of her constituents told her, “I don’t want anything getting in the way of you coming down to City Hall if you need to be working at City Hall for me. I don’t want there to be anything that makes you hesitate about going there four times a week, five times a week. That’s what I want from you.”

Alderperson Firkus said he had spoken with some people who he thought would agree with eliminating the parking pass benefit, “But that would be against what I’ve gotten most of my feedback from. Most people feel that it is worth while to have some level of compensation because we are doing work. We are doing a job. And most other employers, especially ones that offer parking—I know I used to work for an employer that was in a downtown in a city. They paid for your parking as just as well.”

He also said, “I guess I just I don’t see this as actually fixing anything. I don’t see this having even a motivation towards putting this money towards something that’s actually going to make a difference in the lives of our community. $7,000 is a hard amount of money to make a big difference with. And if that’s what it takes to make parking a little bit easier to make accessing this job a little more equitable for the people that want to serve in this community, for the people that choose to use that perk, I think that’s just fine.”

The committee went on to vote 5-0 to recommend the resolution for denial.

[I found this to be a frustrating discussion to watch and I did not come away with the impression that most of the Council members participating in the discussion were serious about using tax dollars in a responsible and non-wasteful manner.

The city is currently only replacing 1/2 of 1% of its roads per year which puts it on a 200-year replacement cycle when even a 100-year replacement cycle is not ideal. The city is also facing some major issues in the way infrastructure projects are funded, having moved from only 14% of road and sidewalk projects being funded through debt in 2005 to 79% of those projects being funded by debt in 2020.

It’s very difficult to see how this is at all sustainable, and yet the Council’s big response to this issue was to pass a resolution asking the state to, pretty please, give the city $35.1 million.

I understand that $7,200 is not a lot of money, but the blatant wastefulness of the way they are using it is frustrating and concerning. The idea that they are spending $40 per month per alderperson to provide parking that an alderperson could get for less than $10 a month if they paid out of their own pocket is problematic. This is such a relatively small and inconsequential thing, but they aren’t willing to even make this small cut. One has to ask: how many other items in the budget is the city blatantly overspending on that the Council is unwilling to cut? How many items in the budget, big and small, are treated the way the alderperson parking pass benefit is treated?

We know for a fact that the library project underwent $12 million in cuts without the scope of the project even being touched. The only reason the city even went to that effort to make cuts was because inflation was so bad the project was going to be massively over-budget, but if inflation hadn’t skyrocketed and the project still looked like it was going to come in around the original budget, the city wouldn’t have made that effort to find areas to cut—even though if they had made those cuts to begin with we could have had started out with a much smaller and more reasonably priced project.

Basic infrastructure is one of the primary services a city government should be handling and Appleton is currently running about 100 years behind where it should in replacing ours, and yet the city’s Finance Committee is unwilling to put even a token $7,200 more toward this very essential item much less the multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars more a year that should be put toward it.]

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1008717&GUID=191CE9D2-108E-489B-9422-847804E1F3FC