The Parks and Recreation Committee met 02/10/2025. One of the information items they received was the Grounds 2024 Annual Report.
This ended up resulting in a discussion about some of the issues the Grounds Division and the Parks and Recreation Department more broadly was experiencing with homeless individuals.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
The Grounds Division’s interactions with homeless individuals was not the focus of the report, but Grounds Manager Greg Hoekstra did mention that homelessness continued to be an issue, not only the messiness caused when such individuals claimed a pavilion for their own, but also the discomfort younger, often teenaged, seasonal staff experienced when they came upon them asleep in park bathrooms or pavilions. Mr. Hoekstra stated, “The younger seasonals and staff, they’re scared to interact with them. So, I would say that’s one of our challenges to deal with in the summer, but otherwise we’ve had 2024 was good year for the grounds department.”
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) asked if there was anything the city could be doing better or staff could be doing better to manage situations with homeless individuals.
Mr. Hoekstra responded, “I think we’re kind of stuck working in the confines we’re in.” When city staff finds tents, they can’t just dispose of them but, instead, have to post a notice telling the owner they have 24 hours to vacate which essentially was telling the individual that they had 24 more hours to stay in the park. “So, it would be nice to be able to, when you came across an encampment, to just dispose of it right away, rather than having to wait. Other than that, I really don’t know what else, what else to do.”
Director of Parks and Recreation Dean Gazza also told the committee that sometime people will drop off bags of clothes and sometimes even food in the parks. [I took this to be people who were trying to provide help to homeless individuals.] He said that the food is perishable and the animals get into it and homeless individuals typically are not interested in the clothes. “They won’t go through the bags and look for clothes. It’s strange. They’re pretty picky. They like the clothes they got.” The result is that city staff has to clean the food and clothes up.
Director Gazza said that they had been meeting with the Police Department, Fire Department, and the Community Development Department and discussing what the community on a broader scale could do to help homeless individuals and what resources there were. Additionally, they were working on a policy that would be similar to one Valley Transit has that would allow them to remove an individual from a park for 24 hours versus banning them for 3 months or 6 months.
Additionally, Recreation Manager Niki Wendt said that she and her marketing communications coordinator had met with the Health Department and the Police Department and talked about what the Parks and Recreation staff could do. “And part of that is just educating some of these individuals of the resources in the community. So, we’re working on, you know, how do we hang flyers, whether it’s on the backs of the bathroom stalls, or they were giving us magnets that people—we can give out to people our business cards. So, we’re, we’re starting to try to, you know, just at least educate the community of some of the great resources that we have.”
Director Gazza also noted that the Police Department will reach out to city staff and ask them to do things like trimming trees so that police officers can more easily see underneath them to check in people are hiding there.
Alderperson Martyn Smith (District 4) mentioned that he had received a couple calls from people who had concerns about what they called an “encampment” in City Park. “To me, it’s really important that we keep these parks as neighborhood parks, so treating people with dignity who need a, you know, who don’t have a home and who need a place, but I would be, you know, really in favor of making sure that these are we keep these as city parks. And do you feel like that’s—I just wanted to get some response on that, as how does homelessness, in your view, kind of impact the use of these parks?”
Mr. Hoekstra responded, “Yeah, I guess the problem I have is getting the work done. Coming in the city—City Park started out in 2024 not with a real big issue, but it steadily as the summer progressed, it steadily got worse. And then that was one of the parks where, a Saturday morning, at 6:30 in the morning, I get a call from one of our colleges seasonals ‘Hey, there’s three guys sleeping on the floor in the bathroom here. What am I supposed to do?’”
Director Gazza said, “it’s a grounds issue for him, in the aspect he’s out there trying to, you know, maintain a property. But in most parks, that’s a, you know, a policing issue where, if the police people are there and they’re not committing a particular crime or violating a park ordinance, they’re allowed to be there. And so, what it becomes for a lot of people is a perception that people are there and they feel uncomfortable, and that’s the hardest thing to break is they’re allowed to be there by law and by ordinance. They can sit there all day in the pavilion as a group, talk. As long as they’re not drinking alcohol, smoking illegal or illicit, you know, materials, they’re allowed to be there. And so, yeah, how do you, how do you break that perception? You know? So, I don’t really have an answer, but it’s more of a police issue. So, what we do is they—if they see anything illegal, they are calling the front desk at the police department to report it as fast as they can. And then also, we always, when people are asking us, ‘Why ain’t you doing more?’ you know, we go say that, well, please report stuff, you know. But, yeah, that perception is hard.”
Alderperson Smith then clarified with Director Gazza that tents were against city code and would need to come down if found and parks also closed at 11PM so people, theoretically, were not allowed to remain there after 11PM.
Issues around homeless individuals in the parks were not the only issues discussed during the report. Mr. Hoekstra noted that they had been testing out Low Mow techniques this last year and were looking to incorporate that into areas around the city. He mentioned the islands on OO as a possibility.
Parks and Recreation Deputy Director Tom Flick added that they were also looking for areas on which they could do habitat restoration or plant pollenabler habitats. They had received a couple grants to do such a project in Ellen Kort Peace Park and planned to turn a ¾ acre into a No Mow area. They had also identified an area of Lundgaard Park as a candidate for such a project as well and were looking for grants to finance that. He said they could save a lot of time and money by reducing the amount of mowing.
They also cut back a lot of weeds and cleared a lot of fences. Mr. Hoekstra mentioned that the Wastewater Treatment Plant had had an intruder in 2024, and as a response staff did a lot of clearing and repairing of their perimeter fencing.
There were also several incidents in which park property was damaged by vehicles in 2024. At Memorial Park, someone drove a car through the outfield of the number 2 baseball field and lodged it in the backstop. In Jones Park a card drove up the walking ramp and damaged the rail. Another car at a different time also tried to drive up the ramp but did not cause any damage. Mr. Hoekstra said that the city put up some no vehicle signs.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1274520&GUID=4F30AB54-6FA3-4004-B89C-7D8624CF4E55
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