The Common Council met 04/02/2025. The one item separated out for an individual vote was the request to spend $200,000 to hire Walker Consultants to conduct a Parking Utility Strategic Planning and Marketing Study. The Council discussed the cost and value of the proposal, and there was specific discussion about the portion of the proposal that called for Walker to provide recommendations on public electric vehicle charging stations.
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) made a motion to amend it to remove some of the items that were to be covered by the study, but that motion was voted down. The item ended up being approved as originally written by a vote on 10-4 with Alderpersons Patrick Hayden (District 7), Sheri Hartzheim (District 13), Chris Croatt (District 14), and Doran voting against it.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
This item was associated with a 2024-2025 budget carryover request that included $100,000 that had originally been designated in 2024 for a Wayfinding Signs with Marketing Campaign. That project had not been done and staff now wanted to combine that marketing and wayfinding project with this study for a single study contract that cost $200,000.
The Municipal Services Committee recommended approval of the item by a vote of 3-1. During that meeting there had been discussion about a downtown parking study that had been conducted by Walker Consultants in 2015, and concerns were raised that the recommendations from that study had, by and large, not been implemented.
During the Common Council meeting, Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) said that while she had not been on the Council when that previous study had been conducted, she had had an opportunity to review it, and it appeared that a number of a recommendations had been or were in the process of being implemented. It was specifically noted that access and control of the parking ramps was scheduled to be updated this year and Lawrence University had expanded the chapel parking lot. She mentioned that one item that had not been implemented was a neighborhood parking plan that would have imposed two-hour parking limits in certain zones; that had not been implemented because the neighborhood residents had opposed it. Additionally a recommendation for smart parking meters had not been pursued because cellphone technology and mobile apps had made the recommended meters obsolete.
During the Municipal Services committee meeting, Alderperson Hartzheim had expressed concern that the parking utility was subsidized by taxpayers. During the Council meeting, Alderperson Fenton took issue with that and said that the parking utility was funded by user fees outside of two transfers of American Recovery Plan Act funds to the parking utility, one for $500,000 and one for $244,000. She and Finance Director Jeri Ohman had not been able to find any history of transfers from the general fund to the parking utility.
Overall, she believed a new study was warranted because since the 2015 study had been conducted there had been a 10% increase in parking needs downtown along with an expansion of residential units in that area. Additionally, US Ventures moving in to the 222 building would result in about 650 more people parking in the downtown area on a daily basis.
Alderperson Hartzheim opposed approving the contract due to its cost. She noted that in the Municipal Services Committee meeting it had been indicated that the study would cover parking concerns outside of downtown, but she didn’t see that mentioned anywhere in the documentation about the contract. She also specifically took issue with the fact that one of the items the study would provide was “Evaluation of and recommendations for public EV charging stations based on current and 20-year projection of public parking user needs, with budget-level cost estimates.” She did not think it was the place of the city to be installing or operating electric vehicle charging stations.
Alderperson Kristin Alfheim (District 11) didn’t think the study would address parking needs elsewhere in the city and did not think it was meant to address those needs. She also thought that looking into EV charging stations was important because if people parked their car to charge it in a location that was near a restaurant, store, or bar they would be more likely to go spend money while the vehicle was charging which would benefit the economy.
She agreed that things had changed since the 2015 study which was a reason to conduct a new study. She also thought that the new study would not solve all of Appleton’s parking issues and they would keep having to have conversations for years.
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) thought that electric vehicle charging stations should be included in the study because it would align the city with the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program.
Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) thought the study was long overdue and that it would help the city take steps to improve in a more efficient and less piecemeal way. The $200,000 did not seem exorbitant; neither did it seem too little.
Alderperson Hayden thought that the study should be more comprehensive and cover outlying areas of the city as well as downtown. Additionally, he thought that the $200,000 for the study could be better invested elsewhere such as rectifying some of the limitations of the parking ramps. He thought it would be money well spent if they could invest the money into updating the parking ramp gates to something that would facilitate having people park for free on Small Business Saturdays (an issue that is brought before the Council ever year and regularly results in a lot of discussion about logistical problems.)
Late on in the meeting, it was confirmed that Walker could look into flexible entry and exit options for the parking ramps that would facilitate allowing free parking on Small Business Saturdays. They could also look into ways to improve efficiencies for parking validation for large events.
Alderperson Doran made a motion to amend the item and remove a few line items from the proposal. Those were:
- Analysis of existing downtown parking supply and conditions – he thought this was unnecessary because Walker Consultants had conducted the 2015 study and was already familiar with the city’s parking conditions.
- Evaluation of and recommendations for DPW marketing strategies and a wayfinding plan, based on current and 20-year projection of public parking user needs, with budget-level cost estimates – he thought this was unnecessary because drivers, even visitors from out of town, had mobile phones with map apps on them that could easily direct them to local parking ramps.
- Evaluation of and recommendations for public EV charging stations based on current and 20-year projection of public parking user needs, with budget-level cost estimates – he did not think it was the city’s place to be planning for where public EV charging stations owned by private businesses should be installed. If a private company wanted to install charging stations they could bring a proposal forward and have it be evaluated at that time.
- The Strategic Planning and Marketing portion of the proposal that was budgeted at $95,143.
Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) disagreed that all people had access to mobile phones that could direct them to the parking ramps. He said he had recently travelled outside the country and could not access the internet on his phone to help navigate the city he was in. He thought foreign students at Lawrence might experience the same problem. He was also in favor of the study and suggested the possibility that it might find that bilingual wayfinding signs were warranted given the city’s Hmong population.
The amendment ended up being voted down by a vote of 12-2 and then the entire, unamended item ended up being approved by a vote of 10-4 with alderpersons Hayden, Hartzheim, Croatt, and Doran voting against it.
[I think that this entire item and discussion is but one small example of American’s overall societal decay. We as people have become so unfocused, incurious, and sluggish that we are rapidly losing our ability or will to carry out even basic responsibilities. In this case the city has just decided to hire a consultant to tell city staff how to organize the parking in our downtown—a thing that falls well within the core responsibilities of a city government to manage and organize its streets and infrastructure and should be able to be done by city staff. It just gives the impression that nobody knows how to do anything anymore and we’re all just waiting for some big, smart, mysterious expert to come fix everything for us.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1281668&GUID=60DA71BA-3FFE-48E2-9610-F8796BAC7FE4
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