The Safety and Licensing Committee met 05/14/2025. Most of the meeting was taken up with discussion on the request to hold the truancy resolution until the fall, but they also approve a number of license applications as well as deny two taxicab license applications to applicants with extensive criminal histories.
The committee voted unanimously to recommend both licenses for denial.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
The discussion on each application was very brief and neither applicant appeared before the committee to plead her case.
The first applicant, Cara Nord, has a conviction history stretching back to 2007 for offenses including theft, forgery, and issuing worthless checks and currently has three open cases against her for forgery and retail theft.
Police Lieutenant Ben Goodin wrote a memo asking the committee to deny her application. State law allows denial of taxi cab licenses if an applicant was convicted of an offense that substantially relates to the licensed activity. Lieutenant Goodin’s position was that Ms. Nord’s convictions did indeed substantially relate to the activity of driving a taxi “because Ms. Nord would be driving a taxi, and that service involves the exchange of money for the service provided. Ms. Nord would be in a position where she would be handling money daily and each of these convictions relate to a lack of trustworthiness with money.”
The second applicant, Sara Johnson, has a conviction history stretching back to 1993 for offenses including burglary, issuing worthless checks, theft, forgery, and possession of methamphetamine. She also has an open case against her for forgery-uttering & misappropriating ID info to obtain money. As with Ms. Nord, Lieutenant Goodin believed Ms. Johnson’s criminal history was substantially related to the licensed activity because she would be handling money daily and each of her convictions “relate to a lack of trustworthiness with money.”
[Not to be too pedantic, but possessing methamphetamine does not necessarily relate to handling money like most of her convictions, but also, I doubt most people want a potential meth user driving them around in her taxi.]
Alderperson Chris Croatt (District 14) asked Assistant City Attorney Zak Buruin if the Attorney’s Office had anything to add to the memo. Attorney Buruin merely confirmed that, while state statute did contain some language regarding nondiscrimination in the approval of license, Lieutenant Goodin’s memo provided sound reasoning why, in these two cases, denial of the license was not a form of discrimination.
The committee voted unanimously to recommend each of these items for denial.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1281685&GUID=BAE7791B-EBEF-4F52-9ABD-18BFF2D5CC74
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