The Community and Economic Development Committee met 09/13/2023. The one item on their agenda was Resolution 6-R-23, the Bird Safe Glass Resolution. This resolution was based on an ordinance from Madison that is currently the subject of legal challenges. Arguments on the legality of the ordinance were heard by the Court of Appeals back in April but a decision has not yet been released.
Much of the committee meeting was spent workshopping an extensive amendment to the resolution that ended up removing the main action point of the resolution which had been to create a city ordinance regarding bird safe glass requirements. It also removed all reference to the City of Madison ordinance that had been offered as a template for the potential Appleton ordinance.
The amendment kept but slightly reworded the language calling for the city to post educational information regarding bird-strike risk criteria. It also kept the requirement that the city identify all public buildings with existing glass panes that posed a danger to birds and then retrofit them with bird-strike abatement measures; however, it added that such actions should be taken “as soon as practical and within budget and staffing constraints.”
The amended version of the resolution was passed unanimously by the committee by a vote of 4-0.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download.
This item initially appeared before the committee on 08/09/2023 at which time the committee voted to hold it until the first committee meeting in September. At the time, it was indicated that the authors wanted to have some more time to discussion potential amendments to the resolution. However, when the item came up again at the 09/13/2023 meeting, Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2), one of the co-authors of the resolution, requested that it be held until the November meeting in the hope that the court ruling on the Madison ordinance would be released at that point.
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) was amendable to that request, but noted the resolution had already been held at the previous meeting as a courtesy. She had reached out to the authors and had also talked to Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) and city staff and had hoped “that we could produce an amended version of this resolution that would focus on immediate measures, would get us away from the city facing litigation.”
She went on to point out that a large main areas of focus for the Community and Economic Development Department and the committee was housing in the City of Appleton. She was concerned with creating “really stringent new building requirements” that could possibly raise the cost of construction and make developers more reluctant to build projects in Appleton, particularly affordable housing projects. She noted that affordable housing projects tended to be apartment buildings which would be more likely to fall under the restrictions in the resolution.
She stated, “I really hoped that we could reach a compromise before we got to this point, and I’m disappoint—and I’m disappointed that I didn’t hear from two of the authors before today. And so, I’m okay with holding it. But I will be very honest that if this—if we come back in November with the same language here, I won’t be able to support it.”
She also noted that they had missed the window of opportunity to pass a compromise resolution before the migratory bird period which happened in September.
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9), the main author of the resolution, was not a member of the committee but he was willing to suggest an amendment that the committee could use. The committee then spent around 20 minutes refining his suggestion until they arrived at the final version of the amendment which stripped the resolution of the request to create a bird safe glass ordinance, still required the city to retrofit glass panes on existing city-owned buildings that met bird-strike risk criteria, but gave the city more leeway to do that as staff, time, and budget permitted, and altered the clause regarding the posting of educational language to clearly refer only something the city would do on its website and not something that it would ask or compel non-public entities to also do.
It was noted during the meeting that there were only four city-owned buildings that would fall under guidelines laid out by the University of Wisconsin regarding buildings that needed to install anti bird-strike abatement measures to their windows. Those were:
- The Library
- City Hall
- The Water Treatment Plan on Manitowoc Road
- The Yellow Parking Ramp in downtown
The Library design already included some bird-strike abatement measures, so might not need anything additional. Alderperson Van Zeeland had communicated with a Bird City USA representative and learned that the City of Appleton as a Bird City USA affiliate was eligible to purchase discounted anti-bird strike stickers/decals, so that looked like a potentially low cost option to retrofit the remaining three buildings.
Additionally, during the meeting Alderperson Schultz recounted a personal anecdote illustrating the danger large, reflective windows posed to birds. “I can give you an example. Back two windows in the back of Acoca, very urban, right next to the PAC, not much vegetation, but there’s a couple of small white pine there, and I was out there doing some work. And in the period of 15 minutes two pine warblers smashed into that glass. One of them survived, and one of them didn’t. And this was just me anecdotally being there for a period of 15 minutes one morning. So, it can happen anywhere. And it’s just it’s glass of a size that’s reflective enough where it deceives the birds in believing that they’re flying into open airspace.”
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1111431&GUID=91CB51C6-3737-4B14-A7DC-84E3ECAF1A14
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