The video for the Municipal Services Committee meeting on 06/10/2024 was posted Thursday of last week, and I have been able to prepare a transcript of the discussion regarding Resolution 4-R-24, the resolution which would prohibit the use by city staff and contractors of a number of pesticides listed in the resolution.
This resolution was also discussed by the Parks and Recreation Committee which opted to amend the resolution to remove all of the existing action items and replace them with a single directive that staff “gather information regarding the types of turf management chemical pesticides purchased moving forward, how they were used, and report back to committee at the end of the summer.”
The Municipal Services Committee’s action, in some respect, parallels that in that, although they did not amend the resolution, they did vote to hold it for 2 weeks in order to give staff time to report back with a list of pesticides that the city is currently using.
The vote to hold was 4-1 with Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) voting against. He thought that ultimately the committee was going to tell staff either that they could use the chemicals or that they could not and additional information was probably not going to help them make that determination, so there was no need to belabor the discussion or spend more time and money researching it.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
The resolution was written by former Alderperson Israel Del Toro and submitted just prior to his departure from the Common Council. It was co-sponsored by Alderpersons Vered Meltzer (District 2) and Alex Schultz (District 9).
All three sponsors expressed the view that the 125-page staff report on the resolution did not address all of the action points in the resolution. The resolution:
- Included a list of pesticides to be recognized as potentially harmful to human and/or environmental health.
- Called for city staff to no longer purchase or use any of those chemicals.
- Called for city contracts to no longer use any of those chemicals.
- Called for the city to publicly release information regarding the chemical pesticides used on city-owned property
- Set up a process for city staff to request exceptions to the prohibition of those chemicals on a case-by-case basis.
Former Alderperson Del Toro described the memo as a “padded report fails to address the majority of the action items of the resolution and instead fills gaps with old information and tangential information.” He did not think it adequately addressed any of the action points.
Alderperson Meltzer also found the memo lacking and was bothered that city staff did not provide a list of the chemicals that they currently use. [It was mentioned in the Parks and Recreation Committee that the list of chemicals was not based on any discussion with staff about what the city uses but rather came from a 1992 EPA publication.]
Alderperson Meltzer went on to say of the report, “I think that one thing that staff should be able to do that shouldn’t be any sort of burdensome type of research or time taking activity is to say yes or no as to whether or not these chemicals are being used. That was just the first most red flag omission from this report. That that was the most bothersome thing to me. But I also want to say that to take pictures, photocopies that you probably could have fit four to a page and put them on one page. Page 23 to 32 are pictures of the we’d be gone label, including the Spanish translation—one little photocopied piece at a time. Pages 33 through 37 are pictures of the T Zone label. You know, our city parks and grounds operations manual, the turf management plan—all of these things pad this out to make it look like an immense amount of staff time went into it. If I was pulling an all-nighter at Lawrence University like I often did for research papers, I could have put together something better than this.”
Alderperson Schultz expressed the view that the report “didn’t address four of the five directives that were outlined in the actual resolution. And I think, you know, we can do a lot of work at committee, but it doesn’t feel like we have anything we can really work toward, given the response. And there are lots of good—there’s a lot of really good information. I mean, not to disparage the collection of information. There is some rich stuff here, and I took some time to review it, but it’s a lot, and the back half, as was stated by my colleague, alder Meltzer, is—I’m not sure how pertinent it is to answering these questions. So, I would hope that we could get some more work done.”
Initially, Alderperson Meltzer made a motion to refer the resolution back to staff so that they could address the action items that were not addressed in the existing memo, with a particular focus on providing more information on the types of chemicals they were using.
Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 2) thought a refer back was unnecessary and holding it for two weeks would provide adequate time for staff to provide more details.
Alderperson Doran opposed sending it back for more research, saying, “[W]e’ve already been given 125 pages of research and numerous hours spent researching this request. I think that there is probably a wealth of information available on all of these chemicals that the authors are looking for. Some of it might be somewhat difficult to find, but it’s not any easier for staff to find than any of us if this is a concern. But I think a bigger concern in this is we’re either going to tell staff it can’t use chemicals anymore, or we’re not. And I think we all know sort of how we feel about this already, and I just don’t see the point of belaboring this anymore and spending more money and more time researching this, when we kind of have already drawn the lines as to how we feel about this.”
Alderperson Melzer ended up withdrawing the motion to refer back to staff and, instead, made a motion to hold the resolution for two weeks. That motion passed by a vote of 4-1 with Alderperson Doran voting no.
[As I mentioned in my recap of the Parks and Recreation Committee discussion on this, I could easily see this resolution in general and the response to the staff memo in particular being something that prompted staff members to start looking for other jobs. That impression is only strengthened after having listened to the Municipal Services Committee discussion.
I find it more than understandable that, when a resolution is submitted that would ban the use of labor-saving tools [in this case these chemicals] that staff would focus on that aspect of the resolution and not focus so much on the action item calling for information being provided on the website. I also don’t understand what information would even have to be posted on the website if the pesticides ended up being banned.
Additionally, given the way the resolution was written, I don’t think it was clear that the authors wanted staff to put together a list of chemicals they currently use, and it’s a little bizarre to hear that lack of information being presented as some sort of obvious deficiency in the memo. Finally, I don’t understand why a resolution would be needed to prompt staff to provide a list of chemicals that they use in grounds maintenance. It seems like something an alderperson could probably just ask them about informally.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1204510&GUID=F1ACC645-005B-418E-A37A-22C88BE54C67
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