Municipal Services Committee Votes To Deny Resolution That Would Have Closed Whitman Yard Waste Site

The Municipal Services Committee met 02/12/2024. One of the items they took up was Resolution 12-R-23 which called for the closure of the Whitman Yard Waste Site.

This item was held for a month at the 01/08/2024 Municipal Services Committee meeting in order to provide staff time to research the potential cost savings of closing the site as well as the repercussions to Appleton’s agreement with Grand Chute to provide Grand Chute residents access to our yard waste sites. City staff has now determined that closing the Whitman Site would prompt Grand Chute to reevaluate their agreement with Appleton and likely reduce the amount they pay to Appleton for access to our sites. As a result, staff recommended against approving the resolution.

The committee voted 4-0 to deny the resolution.

I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:

The committee did not spend a lot of time discussing the item at this meeting.

The Town of Grand Chute is currently paying Appleton around $63,000 for its residents to utilize Appleton’s yard waste sites. Director of Public Works Danielle Block told the committee that she had organized a meeting between Appleton and Grand Chute’s Public Works Director and Town Administrator. Those two people had confirmed that were the Whitman Yard Waste Site to be closed, they would want to renegotiate the agreement they had with Appleton. They did not have a specific dollar amount that they would want to decrease their payments by but they would want to look at things like increased travel time and decreased acreage as a way of judging the decrease in service.

There was some effort to determine how much of the site’s costs were covered by Grant Chute’s payment. Public Works Deputy Director Nathan Loper estimated that the amount of money Grand Chute paid Appleton covered 20% of the operating costs for both the Whitman and Glendale yard waste sites. Additionally, much of the cost of running the sites was the result of chipping the yard waste and hauling all of the debris that was brought in, and the amount of yard waste they would have to process would not necessarily decrease even if the Whitman Avenue site was closed. The main savings that would be found in closing the Whitman site would be that Appleton would no longer need to have an employee staffing the site.

Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) said that District 2 residents had expressed the opinion that Appleton was too large to have only one site and they preferred having two. They would rather have more yard waste site hours rather than fewer, and a lot of people just wanted to keep things as they were.

Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) thought that denying the resolution at this time was an appropriate thing to do; however she thought they should look further into whether Grand Chute was paying an amount commiserate with its use of the sites.

The committee voted 4-0 to deny the resolution.

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1169993&GUID=A3B3FA20-B22D-464E-A457-50A10D4ECF0C