The Common Council met 10/18/2023. One of the items they took up was Resolution 10-R-22, the Lawe Street Truck Route resolution. This resolution called for city staff to investigate removing the truck route designation on Lawe Street from College Avenue to Hancock Street.
Even without the resolution being passed, city staff investigated that but ended up issuing a report in which they recommended maintaining the truck route designation. They also recommended approving the resolution and accepting the already provided staff report as having met the requirements of the resolution.
The Municipal Services Committee initially voted to amend the resolution to require staff to investigate several more specific areas related to Lawe Street’s status as a truck route.
City staff then issued an updated report answering some of the questions that had been raised and also noting that were the truck route designation removed from the street the city would be at risk of losing $2.8 million in grant funds currently awarded for the Lawe Street reconstruction project.
The resolution was referred back to the Municipal Services Committee for further discussion. The authors of the resolution asked that it be received and filed, which essentially meant that it would have gone into limbo and forgotten but always with the possibility of being brought back out by the committee. The committee, however, ended up voting 3-1 to recommend the resolution for denial. Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) specifically felt that it would be respectful to Appvion—a local company that had been, perhaps unfairly, singled out as the face of trucks on Lawe Street—to hold a clear up or down vote on the resolution.
When the Council took the item up again, Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2), one of the authors of the resolution, made a motion to return the language of the resolution to the original language that did not require staff to perform any additional study. This motion was approved by a vote of 11-4.
The Council then voted on whether or not to pass the resolution that was now returned to the original language. Because the Municipal Services Committee had sent it to the Council with a recommendation to deny, an “aye” vote at the Council level denied the resolution while a “nay” vote would have approved the resolution.
The Council initially voted 8-6, with Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) abstaining, to uphold the denial, but Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) said that she got confused and accidentally voted the wrong way. She made a motion to reconsider the vote, and the Council voted a second time. This time, the resolution was approved by the Council by a vote of 8-7 with Alderperson Schultz voting in favor of passing the resolution.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download.
Alderperson Israel Del Toro (District 4), one of the resolution’s co-authors, supported passing the resolution and outlined the conclusions he drew from the staff report. “The city recognizes that harm, pollution, and damage that trucks do to our residential roads. We also recognize the environmental impact does not need to be quantified here because undoubtedly the trucks that frequent Lawe Street have purely negative effects on infrastructure, condition, and environment. Three, we’ve heard the voice of our constituents and the overwhelming majority that request the city remove the truck route designation from Lawe Street. Four, the Public Works Department will hold public participation events to incorporate public input into the future design of Lawe Street, and we hope that these public servants can recognize that in the future, trucks belong on commercial streets and not residential ones.”
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) opposed approving the resolution saying, “The authors of the resolution have stated on several occasions now their intent here is to have the truck route removed from Lawe Street. The staff has given us a recommendation that we should not be removing the truck route for a number of reasons. The changing of this resolution back to its original language now leaves open the door for asking staff to do more work, and staff has done hours and hours worth of work on this already and has stated, I think fairly clearly, that there isn’t more information that will come forward that will change that recommendation.”
Alderperson Meltzer disagreed and believed that, regardless of the future intentions any alderpersons had regarding the Lawe Street truck route designation, passing the resolution was a way of showing respect for the time staff had put into studying the issue. “If we approve this resolution today then we are saying we accept the result of the staff study. If we deny this resolution, then I believe we say that we don’t value the work that staff did in the exploratory process.”
Alderperson Fenton did not believe that passing the resolution would result in staff having to perform further investigative work, saying “The authors seem to have made it really clear that they believe that the action asked when the resolution has been completed. So, I honestly have no problem with having the resolution pass as it is amended, not asking staff for further work.”
[I do like to think that our local elected officials are at least slightly less shameless than state and federal elected officials, and that, after this discussion, this resolution being passed will not be used as a way to get staff to do more work on the Lawe Street truck route.
This specific resolution aside, however, it did seem pretty clear that Alderpersons Meltzer and Del Toro would like to see Lawe Street’s truck route designation removed, and I suspect we have not seen the end of their, and possibly other alderpersons’, efforts.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1114841&GUID=F3ED4725-C245-4727-B8AD-CE4601954EAC
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