The Finance Committee met 05/12/2025. The meeting was brief lasting only around 8 minutes. They took up three action items all of which they recommended for approval and briefly discussed change orders to the upgrades taking place at the Appleton Wastewater Treatment Plant.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
REQUEST TO APPROVE 2024 BUDGET AMENDMENTS – There were 16 budget amendments needing approval. Finance Director Jeri Ohman told the committee that most of the amendments were recording grants that were received. Some pertained to taxes in which case when the city prepared the budget it was not sure what the revenue would be and the budget amendments were matching expenses with revenue. There were also a couple of wage reserve transfers.
One of the budget amendments was to record $7.9 million donated by the Friends of Appleton Library for the building project. Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) asked where the city was at in receiving the full $12 million in donations that the Friends had raised. Director Ohman said the Friends had paid everything they had been billed in 2024. She was not sure how much they had been billed in 2025, but they had paid everything in that case as well.
Alderperson Hartzheim confirmed that there were no concerns that the Friends might have raised the $12 million but not actually received all the money yet and would not be able to pay the city when they were billed. Director Ohman said that had not happened at this point. Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) said that if there was such an issue with funding, the Friends had a bridge loan that would cover that while they were gathering the funds from the donors.
REQUEST TO AWARD PROJECT CC-25 BRIDGE DECK SEALING TO NORCON CORPORATION IN THE AMOUNT OF $144,482.94 WITH A CONTINGENCY OF $5,157.06 FOR AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $150,000 – This item was unanimously recommended for approval without any discussion.
REQUEST TO APPROVE CHANGE ORDER NO. 3 AS AN AMENDMENT TO CONTRACT 21-24 FOR H-23 LIGHTNING DRIVE EXTENSION IN THE AMOUNT OF $115,622.36 WITH NO CHANGE TO THE CONTINGENCY OF $20,104.82. OVERALL CONTRACT INCREASES FROM $1,695,191.12 TO $1,810,813.48 – Alderperson Hartzheim asked if the delay in completing the Lightning Drive extension had impacted or delayed developers in building housing in the area. Deputy Director of Public Works Pete Neuberger said that there were some developers who would be relying on this extension to access developable land north of the Baldeagle/Lightning intersection. Although the extension had initially been intended to be completed by the end of 2024, the developers plans had not been delayed.
Alderperson Hartzheim commented that the lack of delay in development made sense because some of that land still needed to be annexed into the city, so there were things that needed to happen before construction commenced.
Deputy Director Neuberger also mentioned that the $36,269.15 associated with the delay of bridge construction to 2025 and revision of reinforcing steel for bridge abutments, wing wall and deck was going to be reimbursed to the city because there had been issues with the plans the design consultant had prepared.
INFORMATION ITEMS PERTAINING TO CHANGE ORDERS FOR PHASE 1 AND PHASE 2 OF THE APPLETON WASTE WATER TREATMENT PLAN BELT FILTER PRESS EQUIPMENT UPGRADES PROJECT – There were change orders related to this project that required the city to use $36,938 of contingency for Phase 2 and $29,457 of contingency for Phase 2. Alderperson Hartzheim asked if they were seeing problems with these projects.
Utilities Director Chris Stempa said that they did not foresee problems. The two phases cost around $4.5 million each. Initially they had tried to do them as a single phase, but ended up splitting them up into two phases. The entire de-watering building at the Wastewater Treatment Plant was being remodeled. Because it was a large project with some number of unknowns, they had budgeted enough contingency to cover unexpected things. They did have some other change orders that would be coming forward, but they did not expect to run out of contingency money.
He also noted this was a once in a generation project and they wanted to remedy everything they possibly could with the available dollars that remained in the contingency.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1304177&GUID=DF351027-6689-428C-A730-964D760D654C
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