Safety And Licensing Committee Discusses New Proposed Special Event Policy, Receives Feedback From Community Event Organizers

The Safety and Licensing Committee met 10/09/2024. They spent 30 minutes discussing the new proposed Special Event Policy.

This new policy would create one application deadline 45 days before an event for all events regardless of size as well as have a uniform $75 event application fee. It would also move the city toward recouping some of the costs they spend in providing services for special events. Currently, the city does not recoup any costs for services rendered, but under the new policy they would seek reimbursement of 25% of their costs which is well below the 100% of the costs that some other communities seek.

For large events such as Octoberfest and Mile of Music, the policy allows the city to negotiate directly with the organizers on services that will be provided and determine a reimbursement rate on a case-by-case basis. This was done so that those event organizers would not see a large jump in charges from the current $1,700 application fee and no reimbursement to having to reimburse the city 25% of $25,000 or $50,000.

The committee ended up voting to hold the item until the 10/23/2024 committee meeting.

I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:

Although the item was held, the committee did discuss it and also receive public feedback on it.

Jennifer Stephany of Appleton Downtown Inc which organizes the Farmers Market and summer concert series, Becky Bartoszek of the Fox Cities Chamber of Commerce which organizes License to Cruise and Octoberfest, and Dave Willems who organizes Mile of Music all spoke on the proposal since their events were the ones likely to be impacted the most by any proposed change.

Ms. Stephany wanted to know what the process for a special event service agreement would be and what the timeline for negotiating such an agreement would be. City Clerk Kami Lynch said that the process was new to the city so they would want negotiations to start sooner rather than later because they knew a lot went into planning those events. She thought that any agreement entered into would end up coming before the Common Council for a vote.

Mayor Woodford expected that the city would start proactively reaching out to the large event organizers after the first of the year to get those conversations started.

Ms. Bartoszek talked about the benefit of Octoberfest and told the committee it brought $43.2 million worth of economic impact to the Fox Valley. She finished up by saying, “I completely understand where you have to look at a policy to adjust. You know, prices are rising everywhere. But please bear in mind that we do sent have some events like this that are a huge give back, and there is zero revenue in it. Specifically for Octoberfest, I will speak on behalf, every dollar of profit, or every dollar that we can squeak out each year goes into a grant program and supports nonprofits in our community, and we have given back over $3 million in to support our nonprofits, including, you know, our police department, a huge investment in Houdini Plaza, just making sure that we’re making our community as strong as possible. So just wanted to share our input, just because we truly, truly want to be able to continue to bring this event forward and have that impact on our community.”

Mr. Willems said that Mile of Music was a for-profit/non-profit joint venture that had never broken even. The organizers have always had to put their own money into it. “It’s a wildly popular event, but not a wildly successful one, and I would just take minimally successful as our goal into the future.”

The question of why the city was only seeking reimbursement for 25% of their costs versus 100% of their costs came up. Per Clerk Lynch, comparable communities all sought reimbursement for 100% of their costs but possibly differentiated between for-profits and non-profits. “We wanted it to be something that was reflective of the resources that the city puts in without being burdensome on the applicants. 25% seem to be to be reasonable in correlation with the event fee structure that we had before, especially when most of our events would come in.”

On that question, Mayor Woodford said, “My suggestion would be also for members of the committee at future discussions if there is some science to the percentage that you believe would be appropriate for us to use, I would welcome that input. We would welcome that input. What we’re again trying to do here is it put forward a recommendation for consideration that provides a reasonable starting point that tries to strike a balance, recognizing that some cost recovery is necessary, and in some cases also having that conversation with event organizers about the nature of their event and the impact that it has on the community, because there are different ways to organize events. Now Mile of Music, Octoberfest, Farmers Markets, those are, those are different but, but there are lots of events that involve elaborate street closures and significant services that this might generate some conversation about how we might accomplish the same goals in different ways and be less impactful.”

The committee voted unanimously to hold the item until the 10/23/2024 committee meeting for further discussion and a vote.

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1217784&GUID=02BF0B19-2CCD-4C3C-BD7D-CB043769AA92