The Municipal Services Committee met 10/09/2023. In addition to the Lawe Street Truck Route resolution, the committee took up two other action items. The first was a request for a terrace occupancy permit for a garden in the terrace by the Planned Parenthood building and the second was a request from Appleton Downtown Inc for the city to provide free ramp and meter parking on Small Business Saturday, 11/25/2023. Both items were approved unanimously by the committee.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download.
The request for the terrace occupancy permit for the building on the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and Alvin Street came from Alan, the owner of the building, but the person who attended the meeting regarding the request was John. John was form resident of Appleton but now lived in Mishocot; however, he still owned property in Appleton and came to Appleton every week and was still taking care of the garden. In addition, he was working on finding other people who could also keep an eye on the garden.
The terrace occupancy permit was necessary because while most of the plants were within the 3 foot height limit for terrace gardens that did not require a permit, some of them grew to 4 feet in height. City staff did not have any concerns about vision obstruction and had no reservations about recommending approval for the permit. Additionally, John said that he had polled some of the neighborhood residents and nobody was opposed to the garden’s presence.
The committee voted 4-0 to approve the permit request.
The request for free ramp and meter parking on Small Business Saturday, 11/25/2023 came from Appleton Downtown Inc. Jennifer Stephany ADI’s executive director spoke briefly to the committee. She said that Small Business Saturday brought a huge economic impact to local small shops in the Fox Cities and participation in ADI’s promotion of it continued to grow. Last year over 70 businesses participated. [A] day like Small Business Saturday is an outstanding opportunity for us to really roll out the red carpet to those shoppers, and ask them for their support of locally owned businesses. And we would love the opportunity to also promote free parking on that day. So, we appreciate your consideration.”
The committee did not have any questions or discussion, and proceeded to vote 4-0 to approve the request. [I would have appreciated a brief rundown of how much this would cost the parking utility versus how much economic benefit the city will receive from doing this and to whom that economic benefit will accrue.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1119175&GUID=E7DCBC50-F4CC-41E9-9305-DB8032F34682
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