The Municipal Services Committee is meeting 06/07/2021 at 4:30 PM.
There will be some public hearings regarding proposed street pavement projects, and the committee will be voting on some miscellaneous projects and changes including parking and traffic changes and the installation of a stop sign.
The most interesting item is probably the information item about the Department Of Public Works proposed operational changes.
They want to change their leaf collection and street sweeping processes. Their current leaf collection procedures are not supported by the DNR. Instead of having residents put their leaves and brush in the street, they want to move to a system where they put their leaves on the terrace and then the city collects them via vacuum equipment. [Thank you, DPW. I’m going to have this song stuck in my head for the next week.] The drawback is that the city won’t be able to collect branches and heavier brush so they are proposing doing a second yard waste collection twice in April and then once per month May-November.
[I’m not sure why this is an information item and not something that the committee and Common Council should vote on. Appleton prides itself on being a leader and innovator, and offering free bulky overflow is certainly a unique and progressive service. While there are obviously benefits to changing our garbage pickup practices (not offering bulky overflow during the winter months, particularly, makes sense) it seems like the Council should actually discuss and vote on that instead of just changing how we do things because other municipalities do it differently. I would also be interested in knowing if the residents of Appleton will receive any sort of tax break due to the savings the city would experience due to this change.]
Per the memo, Appleton is “the only community offering a regular, free bulky item collection. Therefore, we looked at finding a way to align our service level with other municipalities freeing up resources to perform brush collection and winter snow removal.” They want to move to a system where they offer free bulky item collection to offering a $10 per item paid service April-November.
They will also be moving their side-walk snow removal services from a contractor to in-house after their contractor gave notice that they do not want to continue providing services. This change should result in an annual savings of $38,000.
They’ll also be reviewing the BIRD e-scooter pilot program. Over the month of May they received a total of 36 complaints over half of which were for scooters on the sidewalk of College Avenue. On a positive note, there were no reported accidents in May.
View full meeting details here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=859285&GUID=57A997D2-2AA7-41F8-9E2C-1C9783E47EC4&Options=info|&Search=
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