Hello neighbors,
I’ll try to keep this week’s note on the short side. First, a quick recap from last week. The public hearing on the city’s 2023 budget was held last Wednesday night. While there were a couple of speakers with more general comments on the budget and taxes, we mostly heard from people interested in showing support for the library project. We also had a Common Council meeting on Wednesday where we received a brief update on said library project from Director Gazza. The project team continues to work on making the design more amenable to attracting lower bids when it goes back out for bids this winter. They are examining everything from layout to door hinges. The team continues to work very hard on making sure we can make the necessary improvements to the library while staying within budget.
We also took up two items for discussion that had been attracting a great deal of attention. First, was the updated terrace policy. This items passed, which means mulch that doesn’t need a barrier and vegetable plants under 3 feet can be grown on terraces. Flowers had been permitted prior to this resolution passing. There are still rules that predate this policy around how close plantings can be to fire hydrants and the curb such as parking designations on the adjacent road can affect the location and height of terrace plantings that are permissible. Those were discussed and the language laying out those rules were slightly modified for clarity only.
The second item was for alder pay. Coming out of committee, the recommendation was for no raise in 2024. This was referred back to committee, but not before a proposal was made to convert the council’s parking passes into salary. This change would not have any significant budgetary ramifications since it moves it from one part of the Common Council’s budget to another. I don’t have a strong feeling either way about this, but I think the flexibility that comes from converting the parking passes into pay is good. Driving and parking a car downtown is not the only way members of the council get to meetings and this could in it own very minimal way support alders in considering other methods of transportation.
This week has a few small committee meetings on Monday and Wednesday. There are no committee meetings on Tuesday due to the election. The big Common Council activity of the week will be the budget adoption meeting on Wednesday night at 6:00pm. This meeting will finalize the 2023 budget of the city. As of me writing this, only three amendments have been offered to the budget so far:
- Take $6,480 from the Common Council’s parking permit budget and add it to Public Work’s concrete reconstruction budget (proposed by Alder Doran)
- Take $1,400 from the Common Council’s Training budget and add it to Public Work’s concrete reconstruction budget (proposed by Alder Doran)
- Reduce the General Administration Tax Levy by $188,726 and add $5,000 to the wage reserve by reducing the merit-based pay increases for non-represented employees from 5% to 4% ($193, 726 difference between the two levels of pay increases) (proposed by Alder Hartzheim)
More amendments may be offered by alders anytime between now and the approval of the budget. As of right now, I don’t see a compelling case for approving any of these suggestions, but the alders proposing them will get their chance to state their cases for these amendments on Wednesday night.
Beyond Tuesday’s election and Wednesday’s budget adoption meeting, we also have Veterans Day on Friday. There will be a flag raising ceremony at 8:30am at Veterans Park to commemorate the day and honor those who have served our country. Please feel free to join if you are available Friday morning.
As always, please reach out with any comments, questions, or ideas. Hopefully after this week I will be able to respond a little quicker than I have been in recent weeks.
AppletonDistrict3 