The Municipal Services Committee met 07/21/2025. About 45 minutes of the meeting were taken up by the design hearing for the reconstruction of Oklahoma Street between Mason Street and Richmond Street. The proposed design would narrow the street from 32 feet to 26 feet, resulting in the loss of parking on one side of the street. Additionally, 41 tree were marked for removal, 32 because they were in poor condition, 8 due to the negative impact construction was expected to have on them, and 1 because it was an ash tree.
Nine residents of Oklahoma Street spoke at the meeting, and based on comments made it sounded like there were a number of addition neighborhood residents who attended but did not speak. Their main concerns were the loss of trees and also the loss of parking. The loss of parking was particularly problematic in their situation because of their close proximity to West High School, and they were concerned that, during the school year the available on-street parking would be eaten up by students at West, leaving the residents with limited options.
This was a design hearing only, so no action was taken. The proposed street design will come back before the Municipal Services Committee for a vote on 08/11/2025, and then, if the committee votes on it, it will appear before the Common Council for a final vote on 08/20/2025.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
In April of 2024, the city adopted the Complete Streets design guide to govern its design decisions for reconstructing streets. Per the design guide, “Complete streets are multi-faceted and holistic streets that support multimodal transportation, active commerce, and vibrant communities. They meet the needs of a growing and thriving city by improving safety, enhancing access, and leading to even more growth in the community.” The design guide calls for local streets to have a width of 26 to 29 feet curb-to-curb with parking on only one side of the street.
Needless to say, residents were not pleased with the loss of parking on one side of their street. They were particularly concerned because Oklahoma Street is located near West High School and many students park their cars on it. Additionally, Mason Street also lost much of its parking to make room for bicycle lanes, so homeowners on Mason Street were now parking more frequently on Oklahoma Street. A desire was expressed that, if the street had only one-sided parking, a way be found to limit parking to neighborhood residents. One resident, Christine Williams, had only learned about the Complete Streets Policy because of the proposed reconstruction of Oklahoma Street and felt that residents might have to fight that Complete Streets vision, “because if you plan on doing Complete Streets with every single residential neighborhood in the city, what are we going to turn into? We’re not going to have—we’re going to have old neighborhoods without trees and with half the parking.”
Additionally, associated with the reconstruction, were plans to remove 41 trees along the street which was almost have of the 84 trees total along the street. 32 of those trees needed to be taken down due to being in poor condition, 8 because construction was expected to negatively impact them, and 1 because it was an ash tree. It was however noted that narrowing the streets would allow 13 trees to be saved that would otherwise have to be removed.
Residents were upset at the prospect of losing half their trees and multiple speakers stressed how the existing trees enhanced the beauty and character of the neighborhood. One resident pointed out that a lot of residential landscaping would have to be redone because homeowners had planned their landscaping around the shade the terrace trees had provided. That resident also wondered why tree planting and removal had not been staggered over the years so that 32 trees would not have all become sickly and needed to be removed at the same time. A couple residents pointed out that Elsie Street, which is nearby and had been reconstructed a few years before, still had most of its trees and also still had parking on both sides.
The residents voiced frustration with the city’s communication with them. There perspective was that Oklahoma Street had been up for reconstruction for a number of years only to have that reconstruction pushed off until now. During that entire time when it was known that it would be reconstructed, residents were not told that along with the reconstruction they were going to be losing many of their trees or that the street was going to be narrowed. At least one of the residents also expressed dissatisfaction with the loss of the in-person design meetings that the city used to hold for residents prior to Covid and felt that the city should go back to offering those meetings in addition to holding the design hearings. It was also felt that the 2-week notice the residents had received regarding the design hearing was not sufficient and they should have been giving more of a heads up.
Regarding the terminating of the in-person informational meetings that the city used to hold for street reconstruction projects, Project Engineer Jason Brown told the committee that in his experience, 80-90% of the people who attended those meetings had done so because they wanted to talk about special assessments. Once the city eliminated special assessments in favor of the wheel tax, attendance of those meetings declined markedly. It reached a point where they would hold two meetings, one during the day and one at night, at which 2 or 3 staff members would be present, but only 3 or four residents would show up. When Covid happened, those in-person meetings were ended, and when Covid ended city staff decided they wouldn’t go back to holding those meetings.
Regarding the difference between the reconstructed Elsie Street and the proposed design for Oklahoma Street, it was noted that Elsie Street had been reconstructed prior to the passage of the Complete Streets guide. At the time it was reconstructed, it had probably been narrowed by one foot on either side (two feet total) in order to preserve trees, but was kept wide enough to be able to maintain parking on both sides as that had been a priority for the city prior to the adoption of the Complete Streets guide.
[The Complete Streets Policy has been in place for over a year, and we’re now starting to get an idea of how it works in practice. I’m wondering if it should be revisited. Although it wasn’t official policy at the time of the Perkins Street design planning, it had been used as justification for a number of changes to that street that the residents did not want or feel they needed. And, now it is being used as justification for the loss of 50 percent of the parking along Oklahoma Street in contravention of the residents’ desires and, arguably, given their proximity to the high school, their needs.
The two main recurring concerns that residents bring up at design hearings for street reconstruction projects is the loss of parking and the loss of trees. Now that I’m staring to see how the Complete Streets policy works in practice, it seems to me that if it is continued in its present form, it will result in the exacerbation of those two issues. One, the standard smart/complete street width for a resident street is 26 feet, which is only enough width to allow parking on one side. So, it would seem that following the Complete Streets guide long term will result in a 50% reduction in parking in an increasing number of residential neighborhoods the longer the Complete Streets policy is in place.
Additionally, once a street is narrowed to 26 feet, it can’t be narrowed any more. A result of that would seem to be that when all of these 26 foot Complete Streets eventually reach the end of their lives and need to be reconstructed, there won’t be an option to save the mature terrace trees by narrowing the street further, so we’ll end up with the worst of both worlds—trees still needing to be cut down whenever the street is reconstructed and no parking on half the street. On the other hand, if a street is currently 32 feet wide, there is currently the option to narrow it to 30 feet wide to save trees but still maintain parking, then in 50+ years when it needs to be reconstructed again, it might have to be narrowed to 28 feet which would result in the loss of parking on one side of the street but still keep the trees, and then it would only be in another 50+ years after that that the trees would have to be cut down. Basically, there would be a much larger time frame in which street narrowing could be used as a tool to preserve existing trees. That tool, however, is removed whenever a wider residential street is reconstructed under the new Complete Streets guidance.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1327776&GUID=17D8552E-8AA7-437E-87A1-0A151D0BA97D
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