The Municipal Services Committee met 08/07/2023. One of the items they took up was a terrace occupancy permit from Colleen, the owner of a home on West Commercial Street, who was seeking to be able to maintain an existing 4’ foot fence, lilacs, landscaping stone and pavers in the terrace. The owner had not installed those items herself but had purchased the property with them already existing. She ran a licensed daycare facility in her home and needed the fence to meet the certification requirements associated with the daycare.
The committee ended up voting 4-0 to approve the permit, in recognition of the fact that these features had existed when she purchased the home and since the issue was brought to her attention, she had taken steps to reduce some of the visibility issues. However, Alderperson Van Zeeland (District 5), the committee chair, and Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) who was not on the committee, both expressed the hope that the homeowner would take further steps to bring the property more into compliance with city code in the future.
I’ve prepared a complete transcript of the discussion for download.
Colleen started out by explaining she received a letter instructing her to remove the four-foot fence and some trees on the street terrace. Those were both already there when she purchased the house in 2007. She ran a licensed daycare out of her house, and the 4-foot fence was necessary to maintain her license. It was mentioned later on that whoever originally installed the fence had not taken out a permit.
Director of Public Works Danielle Block provided further background. Last fall they had received a customer service request regarding a vision obstruction at the intersection near the corner of Colleen’s house. The issue centered on a street terrace with lilac bushes, a planting bed, and a private fence, some of which encroach onto the public right of way. Those items all fell outside of the uses that do not require a permit under the Street Terrace Policy updates made last year.
The new updates to the Street Terrace Policy included some specific guidelines regarding vision triangles on corners. Colleen had moved part of the fence on the corner and also cut down one of the lilac bushes so the line of sight was opened up more, but some of the fence still remained in the terrace and it wasn’t clear to me if the changes that had been made meant that the things in the terrace now met all the vision corner requirements or if the permit was going to allow there to be things in the vision corner that were over 3 feet high and still caused line of sight problems.
Whatever vision issues there were seemed to be minimal. The city’s crash history for that intersection recorded only two collisions, and the fence and overgrowth on the corner was not listed as causes of those crashes. Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) noted that he had driven passed the area to see what it looked like in person, and it did not seem like there was much of a vision obstruction.
Alderperson Vaya Jones (District 10), whose district covered the property in question, spoke in favor of issuing the permit explaining that Colleen had started working with the city as soon as the issue had been brought to her attention, the street did not have a high traffic volume, and the two crashes had not been caused by this. “My concern is that she has not advocated enough for herself. She runs a daycare in her home, so a three-foot fence is not in compliance with her accreditation or certification to continue this. This is her livelihood. So that for me is very important for us to consider this.”
Alderperson Van Zeeland felt that Colleen had been very responsive and also appreciated that a fence was necessary to maintain daycare certification.
Alderperson Hartzheim recognized and appreciated the issues at play and the effort Colleen had taken to mitigate them. She viewed the issuing of a terrace occupancy permit as a stop gap measure to allow the daycare to continue operating, but she hoped there would be further actions taken to deal with the underlying problems even after the permit was granted. Alderperson Van Zeeland also hoped that, with Colleen having already been so responsive, that she could continue working with the Department of Public Works on these issues.
The committee voted 4-0 to approve the terrace occupancy permit.
One other question was raised during the discussion, not specific to the issues with this property. Alderperson Doran said that his understanding when the Street Terrace Policy had been updated had been that its purpose had been to provide people the opportunity to plant on terraces. He didn’t recall anything like that coming forward to the Municipal Services Committee and wondered if anyone had applied for that purpose yet.
Director Block said that a permit wasn’t needed to plant in the terrace so people wouldn’t be coming before the Municipal Services Committee for that.
[Yes, plantings and gardens under 3 feet heigh do not need a permit, but things over three feet high do require a permit as well as fencing and pavers among other things (regardless of their height). At the time the updates to the policy were being discussed, I took those provisions to be providing a way for gardeners to fence in their terrace gardens or lay down some kind of decorative features within their gardens. The terrace permits that have come before the committee thus far, have not involved gardens in any way, and have solely been used as a means to maintain run of the mill fences that have encroached into the public right of way on properties that don’t have sidewalks running in front of them.
Also, unrelated to the terrace occupancy permit, nothing was really said about the fact that the fence in question is 4 feet tall when city code only allows 3-foot-tall fences along the front yard. I’m not sure if the Municipal Services Committee is able to approve a terrace occupancy permit to allow a 4-foot-tall fence in the terrace when the municipal code only allows a 3-foot heigh fence. I’m not sure how the Street Terrace Policy and the municipal code interact.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1115707&GUID=0ECB7747-201B-4768-9FB6-E58412B60D53
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