The Common Council met 02/07/2024. One of the items they separated out for an individual vote was Resolution 1-R-24 which called to utilize $134,180 in Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant funds for the library project.
The Finance Committee had recommended this resolution for approval by a vote of 3-2. The area of disagreement at the committee level was whether or not to amend the resolution in some way to clarify that the grant funds would not be used to expand the budget or scope of the library project but would instead be used to reduce the taxpayer burden. The committee ended up opting not to amend the resolution, leaving the door open to being able to use these funds to facilitate an increase in project budget or scope.
At the Council level, Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) made a motion to amend the resolution clarifying that the funds would not be used to expand the scope of the library project and that any savings would be applied to another already budgeted city project or projects.
This amendment failed by a vote of 11-2 with Alderpersons Hartzheim and Chad Doran (District 15) casting the 2 votes in favor of the amendment.
The Council then approved the unamended resolution by a vote of 11-2 with Alderpersons Hartzheim and Doran casting the 2 votes against the resolution.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
Discussion on the resolution was limited. Alderperson Hartzheim made a motion to amend saying that she believed the Council should be “promise keepers not promise breakers.” She went on to say, “I would like to see that we do not break our promise to our taxpayers by saying we will not increase the scope of this project.”
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) opposed the amendment, saying that accepting the grant would not increase the budget overall. She said that in the library project’s budget “we have a million dollar contingency. And we have a […] $1.2 million as a placeholder for geothermal. We have a bid for $1.6-something million for geothermal, which right there, we would have to either savings in other areas or pulling from the contingency. But by accepting this grant and applying it to eligible portions of the library project, we would not be reducing the overall budget, the overall cost to the taxpayers, but we would actually be reducing what we would have to go into the contingency for. So, I find this amendment really not necessary.”
The amendment was voted down by a vote of 11-2. And the unamended resolution was approved by a vote of 11-2.
[I guess we’ll see how necessary this amendment would have been if the project doesn’t stay within budget.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1143129&GUID=956D9EB8-0937-4FEB-BBFE-1F267D82ACB9
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