The Common Council met 06/19/2024. One of the items they separated out for individual discussion and a vote was the resolution regarding pesticide use by city staff and contractors. In its original form, this resolution prohibited the use of chemical pesticides by city staff and contractors.
City staff responded with a memo in which multiple department heads and the mayor recommended denial of the resolution.
The authors of the resolution then argued at both the Municipal Services Committee and the Parks and Recreation Committee meetings, that the main purpose of the resolution was not to prohibit pesticide use by city staff and contractors, but rather to provide transparency to the public as to what chemicals were used on city property and when those chemicals were used. They argued that the memo from city staff did not adequately address those transparency concerns and did not provide a list of chemicals that staff currently used.
The resolution was amended by the Parks and Recreation Committee to remove all of the existing action items and replace them with language stating the “Parks & Recreation Department will 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.”
At the Common Council meeting, Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) made a motion to replace the version that had come from the Parks and Recreation Committee with a new version that stated, “The record keeping of pesticides will be built into the Turf Management Policy so that when a pesticide is applied, a record is kept of what type of pesticide is applied and where the pesticide was applied.”
This amended version was approved by a vote of 15-0 by the Common Council.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
The resolution was authored by the now former alderperson for District 4, Israel Del Toro, as well as Alderpersons Vered Meltzer (District 2) and Alex Schultz (District 9).
Professor Del Toro and his colleague Professor Relena Ribbons at Lawrence with whom he has authored several studies spoke to the Council in favor of passing the resolution. Professor Del Toro reiterated his dissatisfaction with the staff memo and then asked that the resolution be amended to state that “the city will publicly release information regarding the chemical pesticides used by the city using the new and updated city website by the end of 2024.”
Professor Ribbons asked for the city to keep the city’s pesticide treatment records in a database and make that information available to the public so they could look that information up and know when it was safe to go to public parks and spaces.
Alderperson Meltzer made a motion to amend the resolution as Professor Del Toro requested to include a clause stating, “Let it be further resolved that the city will publicly release information regarding chemical pesticides using the new and updated website by the end of 2024.”
This proposed amendment was then further amended to remove deadline of “the end of 2024” because it was not certain if the city’s new website would be up and running by that deadline.
Alderperson Schultz supported the amendment, saying, “I think I would hope we’re all comfortable with that goal being an increase in transparency, publishing somewhere for, or at least making it available to the public, in some way, as was requested by one of our constituents, information about what the city’s using, where it’s using, how much it’s using it, on what days.”
Alderperson Van Zeeland felt, “[W]e’re asking Parks and Rec to prove that something that doesn’t exist doesn’t exist. If they could just expand on that. It’s my understanding, we just aren’t using a lot of these chemicals. Can we talk a little bit about that?”
Director of Parks and Recreation Dean Gazza, said that they had been naturally cutting back on the use of chemicals over the years, but he did not have a list of how much they had cut back on, and “We only use it when it’s absolutely necessary.”
He went on to say, “There’s just certain things that in order to meet the community’s expectations for, whether it be maintaining the parks, whether it be the ball diamonds, or the golf course, there are things that are absolutely necessary to do that. One could say, Yeah, you could substitute that with doing it by hand or doing it in another means, but in many cases, we’ve looked at those and they’re just either not feasible, or we don’t have the financial resources to do that.”
They put out postings every time they apply chemicals that require postings, but they do not post anything on the internet informing people where and when they sprayed. He said that many times they applied chemicals when people were not present.
They used vinegar in the playgrounds.
“We do broadleaf control in the fall. We do the north parks one fall, south parks the next fall; it’s only one time a year. We do use glyphosate to knock down weeds in cracks of sidewalks in difficult areas that are difficult to trim and to help with that, but again, we do that only when necessary and to meet the needs of the community and what their expectations are for what the park should look like and the public spaces.”
He finished up by saying, “I have not in 18 years gotten one call for anybody to ask me about a chemical, what we’ve been using, how we’ve been using, and frequency. So, for me, it has not been an issue that has driven me to on my own think about this is something of an issue that I need to start publishing and start notifying. It just hasn’t been an issue because we’ve been following the law and we’ve been doing it with trained professionals.”
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) opposed the amendment because the information was available for anyone who submitted an open records request, but he did not see the need to create more regulations and procedures for city staff.
Alderperson Meltzer disagreed, saying, “I think that our city, especially being one of the charter, members of Green Tier and things like that, we have a long history of doing the right things, doing them well, and being a role model. Right now, we have a problem in our community of people not knowing that, of people being afraid of chemicals, and I don’t know if it’s a problem with our current website, or if it’s just kind of the siloing of departments, but constituents do try to find this information, and Dean Gazza is not the one getting their calls.”
Alderperson Schultz’s understanding was that there were records but they were not kept on every single use or application of pesticides and if people wanted to know what was sprayed in a specific place it wasn’t clear where they would go for that information.
The amendment proposed by Alderperson Meltzer ended up being voted down by a vote of 6 in favor to 9 opposed.
Alderperson Van Zeeland then made a motion to amend the resolution by substitution, removing the language that came from the Parks and Recreation Committee with language that read “The record keeping of pesticides will be built into the Turf Management Policy so that when a pesticide is applied, a record is kept of what type of pesticide is applied and where the pesticide was applied.”
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) supported the resolution, however, “I think we’re missing the step of making it easily available to the public. […] I would like to see us get to a point that we can get some of this information as easily as we can get, say, ‘what date is my recycling get picked up on?’ from without figuring out who you need to call in the city.”
Mayor Woodford said, “[T]here’s no opposition from my administration when it comes to being transparent about the use of these chemicals, none whatsoever. So, the means of delivery, if that’s the website, a point was made earlier that that is where most people access information. I agree with that point. There’s no opposition from us with respect to making that information publicly available.”
Alderperson Schultz supported the amendment, saying, “I think it gets us closer to where we want to be. I would remind Council that we have a Bee City certification (that’s a partnership between the city and civic organization), and one of their goals is to see a reduction and disuse of chemicals like glyphosate and 2 4 D and others. And so, there’s a shared commitment and goal there. And I think we’re trying to chase it. We’re doing our best.”
The amendment was approved by a vote of 15-0, and then the Council went on to approve the amended resolution by a vote of 15-0.
After the resolution was approved Mayor Woodford spoke:
Now that that’s resolved, I just would like to speak on this item on the record just to clarify some things. This process didn’t initiate as a conversation. It initiated as a resolution that was submitted and read into the record, and my administration responded to the resolution that was submitted and read into the record. Subsequent discussions went down a path of talking about records keeping and public information, and I’m afraid that it’s been framed as though there’s opposition or unwillingness on the part of my administration, the Parks and Rec Department, our Department of Public Works, Utilities to share information publicly about the chemicals we use, the processes we use to serve the community. And that that’s an unfortunate thing, and it’s not accurate. And so, I just want to make that clear, that that we’re happy to share this information.
And as these conversations evolve and emerge and the desires of the community change, we want to be responsive to those things, but quite frankly, I’m troubled by the assertion that that we’re trying to be anything other than open and communicative with the Council or the community. And I would ask that […] when you’re contemplating a resolution, that you please talk with us, because we’re happy to talk through it and try to get to a place where ideally, we don’t need a resolution. We can just work through this.
I think it’s great that the Council you work through a legislative process, which I completely respect, and that is your prerogative as a body, but the action that you took tonight did not require legislative process from my perspective. And so again, it’s your prerogative as a body to do that. We respect that, and we will we will run that process however you like. But I just would like to like to make that point on the record.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1195550&GUID=AEC1BE7F-94E5-447D-B49F-6CDED9394186
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