The Parks and Recreation Committee met 01/08/2024. They took up two items, a request to adopt revised rental and fee schedule policies for Houdini Plaza and Jones Park. The Houdini Plaza rental policy and fee schedule included an increase of $25 for the fees charged to rent the plaza by various types of organizations.
The Jones Park policy changes did not impact fees and were intended to clean up language and allow propane gas cooking equipment to be used within the new outdoor food preparation area at the park.
These two items had been approved without discussion or question at the previous Parks and Recreation Committee meeting, but, at the Common Council meeting, Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) requested they be referred back for further discussion, saying he wanted some input into the changes and stating, “That meeting lasted two minutes, and I think anytime we’re reviewing fee increases, some significant fee increases, it’s worth a conversation at committee.”
The Parks and Recreation Committee ended up voting to hold the items until their next meeting to provide city staff enough time to research how many events that are held at Houdini Plaza and Jones Park are put on by Local Non-Profits, vs Nation Non-Profits, vs For-Profit Organizations, vs being private events.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
Alderperson Schultz started out the discussion by saying he thought a conversation concerning the fee increases was worth having, and he expressed the possibility of revising the fee schedule depending on whether the renting organization was a local non-profit, regional non-profit, or for-profit entity. He wanted to have more information on about the number of rentals from each type of organization.
City staff was working on getting that information and expected to have it by the end of the week, but since they had to pull it manually by going through each event rental and manually totally what they were, they did not have the information available in time for the meeting.
Alderperson Schultz made a motion to hold both of the items until the next meeting, saying “I think local nonprofits are sort of a class by themselves and they could use a little bit of a leg up when it comes to park rental fees. It’s not a lot of money, I get that. But a little bit goes a long way for these nonprofits that are doing things for us.”
Alderpersons Kristin Alfheim (District 11) and Patrick Hayden (District 7) expressed hesitancy regarding not increasing fees for local non-profits. Per Director of Parks, Recreation, and Facilities Dean Gazza, the city was already subsidizing the events at these locations through the extra work of staff putting out picnic tables, picking up garbage, mowing the grass ahead of an event, and doing extra bathroom clean-up. “The fee that we’re charging is minimal.” Both Alderpersons Alfheim and Hayden were concerned that reducing the fee for local non-profits and trying to make up for them by increasing the other fees would result in a decrease in other types of organizations hosting events at those locations.
This was particularly of concern given that, Director Gazza suspected that a majority of the rentals came from local non-profits, particularly Appleton Downtown Inc which would probably be impacted the most by a change to the rental fees.
In the end, the committee members did not see any harm in waiting to get more detailed information about historical rentals of Houdini Plaza and Jones Park, and it did not seem that waiting a couple weeks to make a decision on the matter would impact any immediate rentals. In fact, Director Gazza mentioned that the larger events had already been rented a year in advance. As a result, the committee voted unanimously to hold the items until the next committee meeting in order to give staff more time to gather information on historical rental information.
[I really don’t understand what the concern is here. If you look at the Houdini Plaza Fee schedule, the rental of the space by local non-profits is already highly subsidized. The current rental fee for a local non-profit is literally only $25 as compared to $300 for a for-profit organization to rent it or $500 for an organization to hold a private event. Bumping those fees up by $25 across the board seems very unproblematic, which is probably why the committee did not discuss it last time.
It’s hard for me to understand how increasing the rental fee from $25 to $50 would cause any kind of legitimate hardship for a local non-profit. I mean, there’s being a non-profit and then there’s being insolvent, and if an organization can’t afford $50 to rent Houdini Plaza then clearly it is not a competently run organization.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1161861&GUID=6A82D473-AF2B-4E6F-BC52-50DB6248A75D
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