The Municipal Services Committee is meeting 04/10/2023 at 4:30PM.
The item that will probably take up the most meeting time is Resolution 2-R-23, the resolution to eliminate No Mow May.
The resolution, introduced by Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15), calls to eliminate No Mow May on the basis of the fact that the research study that was used to demonstrate the benefit of the program has been retracted due to “several potential inconsistencies in data handling and reporting”. This study was authored by Israel Del Toro, a Lawrence University professor and the current District 4 alderperson (although he was not an alderperson at the time No Mow May was put into city code.)
The issues with the study were raised by Zachary Portman, a bee taxonomist at the University of Minnesota. He first laid them out in a 09/22/2020 Twitter thread and then documented them in more detail in a 10/05/2022 Medium article.
As he explained in his Medium article:
The issues boil down to two main parts:
1. The paper reports multiple bee species that simply do not occur in Wisconsin in May.
2. The paper methods state that the majority of specimens were identified by sight in the field. This is a problem because many of the listed species require a microscope to identify.
In light of these issues, Portman stated in his Twitter thread, “Overall I’m not sure I would trust the bee richness measurements reported in this paper.”
The resolution was initially taken up by the Municipal Services Committee during their 03/20/2023 meeting, but due to time constraints they voted to hold the item until this meeting. At that meeting it was indicated that Alderperson Del Toro had prepared a 20-minute presentation. I would also expect that this item will, again, garner comment by the public as it did at the previous meeting.
The Municipal Services Committee will also be voting on several other items including awarding a Complete Streets/Pedestrian Study contract to ALTA Planning + Design for $75,000. This was already discussed and voted on at an earlier step in the process back in February.
There are also a number of information items on the agenda including Inspections, and Parking Utility reports for March, proposed table of organization changes for the Department of Public Works and the Community and Economic Development Department, and letter from Tree City USA indicating that Appleton was recognized as a 2022 Tree City.
View full meeting details here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1092111&GUID=48048C6D-07BD-4F2D-BEB5-9725AFB386C3
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