The Municipal Services Committee met 08/11/2025. The meeting ran for 90 minutes and almost all of that time was taken up with public feedback and committee discussion about the proposed design for the Oklahoma Street reconstruction project.
As proposed by staff, the design would narrow the street by 6 feet, taking it from 32 feet wide to 26 feed wide, and eliminate parking on one side. Additionally, 41 trees would have to come down—32 due to poor condition, 8 due to their large size and close proximity to the street, and 1 because it is an ash tree. The narrowing of the street would, however, allow the city to save 13 terrace trees.
Representatives of the neighborhood presented a petition signed by approximately 50 Oklahoma Street residents indicating that they preferred to maintain a 32 foot street width and parking on both sides, even knowing that that would mean an additional 13 trees would have to come down.
Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) made a motion to amend the street design to maintain a 32 foot width. This passed by a vote of 3-2 with Alderpersons Meltzer, Adrian Stancil-Martin (District 11), and Alex Schultz (District 9) voting in favor of it, and Alderpersons Brad Firkus (District 3) and Denise Fenton (District 6) voting against it.
However, when it came time to vote on the amended item, Alderperson Schultz voted against recommending it for approval, so the item failed by a vote of 2-3 and will go to the Common Council with a recommendation to deny the project.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
Multiple residents of Oklahoma Street spoke at the committee meeting. Generally speaking, they were concerned about the loss of parking because they felt that they already had a lot of people parking on their street due to its close proximity to West high school and some people that ran businesses or provided services out of their homes. There was frustration as to the lack of enforcement of existing parking restrictions.
There were questions as to whether narrowing the street was the only way to make it safer for pedestrians and bicyclists versus installing things like speed bumps or bump outs.
There was also a lot of sadness over the loss of so many trees because Oklahoma Street has many large and mature trees that provide a very lush canopy. However, there was also an acknowledgement that many of the trees were in poor condition and did need to be removed. There was dissatisfaction that the city had not planned ahead to stagger the removal and replacement of trees over time to lessen the shock of a sudden complete removal of the trees.
One resident did however speak in support of the city’s plans for the street. He had come from Southern California where which is infamous for its broken local, county, and state governments that waste money and do not maintain their roads, infrastructure, or amenities. He appreciated Appleton’s efforts to reconstruct the road and update its design to improve safety and felt that Appleton’s did a standout job in providing services as compared to other area municipalities.
When the committee took the item up, they discussed holding the item at committee and modifying the design. Per Director of Public Works Laura Jungwirth, residents would need to be notified of any proposed design changes, so the soonest the item could come back to the Municipal Service’s committee would be the 09/08/2025 meeting.
Additionally, there were time constraints on finalizing a design because the street design would impact the design of the underground utilities. The underground utility work needed to be completed in 2026, so the overall design of the project needed to be approved in a timely manner in order to allow the utility portion of the project to go forward in 2026. Delaying approval of the street reconstruction design would make things tight for the utility portion of the project. The committee ended up voting down a motion to hold the item.
There was discussion about the concerns regarding narrowing the street and reducing the parking by 50%. City Traffic Engineer Eric Lom told the committee that narrowing the street provided some traffic calming benefits and also reduced the cost of the project. Per the design proposal documentation, it would cost an estimated $1.1 million to reconstruct the street at 32 feet wide versus $941,000 to reconstruct it at 26 feet wide, a difference of $159,000.
He said that city staff had performed 10-15 observations of parking usage on the street at various days and times of day throughout the week. They saw 8-16 cars parks along that stretch of Oklahoma Street out of a total of 122 available spaces which was a total occupancy rate of only 13%. They felt comfortable that one-sided parking would meet the needs of that street.
Alderperson Firkus agreed with that assessment and felt that at 85% occupancy rate was the point at which one would start talking about interventions. He also felt that traffic calming measures such as bump outs were overkill for a residential street like Oklahoma and were more typical for collector and arterial streets.
Alderperson Fenton noted that the existing underground utilities had been installed in the 1920s and 1930s and she was concerned about delaying the project. Not only would delaying the project result in costs going up, but the age of the underground pipes meant that there was an increasing risk that they would fail before they were replaced if the project was delayed.
There was discussion of Elsie Street which is located near Oklahoma. It had been reconstructed at 31 feet with parking on both sides. This design, however, had been approved prior to the implementation of Appleton’s new Complete Streets Design Guide which calls for residential streets to be narrowed to 26 feet and for parking to be eliminated on 1 side in any neighborhood with average to low parking demands.
During the meeting, it was stated that in order to maintain two-sided parking a street needed to be no narrower than 32 feet due to the need for fire trucks to be able to get through. [I didn’t understand how this fit in with the Elsie Street reconstruction which has two-sided parking but is only 31 feet wide.]
Ultimately, the options were, approve the proposal by staff to narrow the street to 26 feet, eliminate parking on one side, and save 13 trees, or change the design so the street was 32 feet wide, which would allow parking to remain on both sides but would result in the loss of 13 additional trees.
Alderperson Melzer made a motion to amend the design to maintain the street width of 32 feet. This motion was approved by a vote of 3-2 with Alderpersons Meltzer, Stancil-Martin, and Schultz voting in favor of it. However, when the committee went on to vote on the amended item, Alderperson Schultz voted against it along with Alderpersons Firkus and Fenton. Alderperson Schultz did not explain why he voted to amend the item but then voted against the item.
The end result was that the committee had amended the item and then didn’t recommend that item for approval, and it didn’t seem like they could go back and make any more changes to the item. So, the item will now go to the Common Council with a recommendation from the committee to deny and not move forward with the project. Council will then have to take it up and either refer it back to committee or do further work at the Council level in order to approve it.
[I can appreciate the fact that reconstructing the street at 26 feet decreases the cost. I think the so-called traffic calming aspect of narrow streets is over-rated. If increased safety is a genuine consideration, it would be nice if city staff could quantify that in the way they quantified the parking considerations. I can say as a bicyclist, I prefer wider residential streets because it provides more space for cars to go around me even if they are driving marginally faster than they would if the street was narrower.
Additionally, even if the parking needs aren’t that big in that area, I could see moving to one-sided parking causing unnecessary rancor between neighbors which is at least as substantial an issue as a desire for vague “traffic calming”. A homeowner may be easily able to live in peace with a somewhat obnoxious neighbor such as someone who talks to himself like a schizophrenic and occasionally urinates off his front porch or the verbally abusive couple that has big blow-up fights twice a year with clothes and luggage being thrown out on their front lawn. But, if that verbally abusive couple or that schizophrenic man are now parking every day in front of your house because the city no longer allows them to park on their side of the street, that can cause problems. Extra space can serve as a pressure release valve, and I don’t see any evidence that the city appreciates that in the way they appreciate “traffic calming” in residential streets that already have minimal car accident issues.
Finally, I didn’t understand why suddenly 32 feet was the minimum width a street needed to be in order to have two-sided parking. Elsie Street was reconstructed at 31 feet and still has two-sided parking. Based on that, it seems like a viable option would be to reconstruct Oklahoma Street at 31 feet, maintain two-sided parking, and still be able to save at least the 10 trees on the north side of the street while also experience some savings by narrowing the street a little.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1328105&GUID=16F8B1CF-B7BF-48AE-B347-F4F0E7F0058F
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