The Municipal Services Committee is meeting 10/09/2023 at 4:30PM.
They will be discussing and voting on for the second time the Lawe Street Truck Route Resolution. This resolution does not itself determine whether or not Lawe Street should maintain its truck route designation, but if passed it would require staff to explore removing the designation. Staff already reviewed that and determined the designation should stay in place. The resolution was then amended at the previous committee meeting to require staff to specifically review additional issues related to Lawe Street’s current function as a truck route.
Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) ended up referring the resolution back to committee for further discussion because he had heard the authors wanted to further amend it at the Common Council meeting, but he preferred to discuss an amendment in the committee.
In light of the first amendment to the resolution, staff issued a follow up memo in which, among other things they indicated that the city would be in danger of losing $2.8 million in grant funding for the Lawe Street reconstruction project if the truck route designation was removed.
The committee will also be taking up two other action items.
The first is a Terrace Occupancy Permit for a garden in the terrace alongside the Planned Parenthood building at the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and Alvin Street. There is currently a native pollinator garden in the Alvin Street terrace. If the plants grew to no more than 36” tall, the owner would not need an occupancy permit, but because some of the plants grow to 48” a permit is required.
The second is a request from Appleton Downtown Inc for free ramp and meter parking on Small Business Saturday on 11/25/2023. As laid out in the memo, ADI’s rational for having the parking utility subsidize the parking costs on 11/25/2023 is that “American Express estimates that for every dollar spent at a small business, $0.68 stays in that business’s local economy. Keeping those dollars local, creates potential to boost revenue for our Downtown businesses.” [The memo does not include any estimates for how much money downtown businesses are expected to bring in on Small Business Saturday, nor how much of that money will end up filtering out to businesses and property owners that are not located in downtown Appleton. It also does not offer a plan for how the parking utility will be able to make up the funds it will lose by offering free parking on Small Business Saturday, or how the parking utility’s budget will be impacted.]
Finally, the committee will be reviewing the standard Inspections Division Permit and Bird E-Scooter monthly reports as well as discussing the 2024 Public Works Department Budget.
View full meeting details here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1119175&GUID=E7DCBC50-F4CC-41E9-9305-DB8032F34682
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