Community Development Committee - Regular Meeting

All right. Welcome to the City of Appleton Community Development Committee for Wednesday, 01/14/2026 at 04:30 p. M. Let's go ahead and call this meeting to order. Next we'll do the Pledge of Allegiance.

Let's go ahead and get our roll call of membership beginning to my left.

Patty Effernan, District 8.

Denise Fenton, District 6. Thaya Jones, District 10.

Josh Lambrecht, District 1.

Vered Meltzer, District 2. We will go on to item number 260,015, CDC minutes from elevennineteen twenty five. Move to approve. Second. Alright. And we have our first and our second. Is there any questions, concerns, or changes that need to be made to those? Wonderful. Let's go ahead and vote. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? Abstentions? That passes five-zero. We do not have any public hearings or appearances, so we'll move on to our action items.

Number 260,016, request to approve amending the offer to purchase from Consolidated Construction Company Incorporated, its successors or assigns to extend the closing date to 01/31/2026 for Lot 41 in South Point Commerce Park Platte Number Four, the address of 4041 East Endeavor Drive, tax ID number 31958004. Do I have a motion? Move to approve. Second. First and a second. And who will be taking this? That will be Director Hulme. Thank you.

So this is a very basic amendment that we are requesting approval for. The only term that is changing is the closing date. The initial offer to purchase had a closing date of January 15. The amendment is requesting closing by January 31 of this month. There was an appraisal that didn't come in in time to close on the fifteenth. We currently have closing tentatively scheduled for January 30 already. So happy to answer any other questions, but all other terms stay exactly the same.

By extending this out, is the city of Appleton losing out on any financial resources or anything? Is there any negative by doing this? Any other questions from the committee? Wonderful. All right. Let's go ahead and vote. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any abstentions? Any oppositions? Five, zero. Those are the hardest words in my vocabulary, I tell you. We will move on to number 260,024. We do not need to go into closed session because we did complete that. Do I need to do anything with that?

No. Thank you, Attorney Darren Glad. We will move on to number 260,055, request to approve amending the cost reimbursement agreement with Thrivent Financial for Lutherans to include an additional deposit of $135,168.75 for a total of escrow deposit fee ceiling of $235,168.75 Do I have a motion? Move to approve.

Second.

All right. Who is taking this? All right. Director Ohlman.

All right. So what you have before you is a request from staff to authorize us to amend the cost reimbursement agreement with Thrivan. We have been working collaboratively with them since we initially established this escrow account. As of right before Christmas time, we had nearly exhausted the $100,000 that were there primarily through engineering consulting and, to a lesser extent, consulting that had had been rendered by Ellers Associates, our financial and consultant. As we move into the deep dive engineering review, in particular for the final plan, it became abundantly clear that additional money was needed.

So we have estimated and Thrivan is agreeable to depositing an additional $135,168.75 If common counsel if committee recommends approval and council authorizes us to amend it, we would do that, and then we'd carry forward a budget amendment so that we can deposit the check when they cut it to us.

So a reminder, again, this is not money being spent by the city. This is money from Thrivent being put up for consultants. Correct.

I'm gonna rephrase that. We're not spending city money. Thrivent is giving us money, then then we pay our contractors with that money.

So there's no cost to the city of that? Correct. Thank you. Any other questions? Wonderful. Let's go ahead and take a vote. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? That passes five-zero. All right. We are going to head on to information items 02/60017, annual updates, the housing affordability report, and the housing fee report. And that is going to be by principal planner Kafka. Okay. Number three.

Thank you. So this information item, a little background on this. Every year, city staff update this annual report, or two annual reports, I should say, one being the housing affordability, analysis report and the housing fee report. This stems from a state statute that came about in 2018 that required municipalities above 10,000 people to put together both of these reports. The basis of these reports is primarily to just reflect data collection.

There isn't necessarily a huge deep dive into housing affordability necessarily, and there's not a bunch of recommendations. Rather, it's more of a data analysis or a data collection and some general analysis that's put together. So an excerpt from both of these reports can be seen in this table reflecting sort of on a yearly basis what what those changes have been when it comes to Platts and CSMs approved, residential building permits issued, dwelling units approved, and so on and so forth. An interesting kind of caveat with each of these reports is that we're always looking a year back and not even from this year, 2026, but actually a year back from 2025 into 2024 because that's our most readily available data to us by the time we need to update this report at the start of each calendar year. So you're kind of looking a little bit more in the past.

I'm happy to answer any other questions you may have on this one. But, the reports, again, just cover some of the basic data that we have available on file and information on some trends with, housing here in the city of Appleton.

Just out of curiosity, when would that 2025 data become available to you?

It kind of rolls in. It depends on what the data specifically is. But usually, it comes probably more '25 or sorry, of of twenty six. Right? So by the time we get around September, October is when we'll have a more complete picture

Okay.

Of twenty five. And then that's when we start putting this plan together sorry, I should say the studies or reports together and then bring it to this group to just report out.

Great. Any questions, concerns? Wonderful. Thank you very much.

Oh. Actually, would just were there any trends or observations? I mean, in looking at this, it looks like there was a significant number of new dwellings which were approved or that were in 2024 more so than any in the prior five years. But were there any other key findings or observations that would be helpful for us to be aware of?

I think that's probably the main one. And some of that is based off the fact of it takes a while sometimes to put together a plat for a subdivision that might have 100 residential parcels. And so maybe that plat was approved towards the '23, but the homes, the permits weren't actually pulled until 2024. So you'll kind of notice a jump. We've had some multifamily developments as well, or I should say back in '24.

And next year when we're back here again, we'll probably see a lot more as well. So there's been a lot of new housing units put online, whether that's single family residences or multifamily. And then I guess one other thing that, again, is just kind of interesting, don't want to get too off subject, is the the vacant parcels analysis. You'll see that the number does dip a little bit. Over the years, depending on how we've evaluated the report, sometimes really tiny parcels that are unbuildable have been included. So this year, we took it upon upon ourselves to subtract some of those really small parcels. So that's why you'll see a difference there.

And then with the do you mind if I with the continued things like the Thrivan project, some of the annexation that has occurred, would that affect the number of parcels next year as we look at things like potential new subdivisions and things of that nature?

Yes. We stay on top of this. So say a subdivision gets approved and you go from one gigantic lot, and now you've got 100, but only permits are pulled for a couple dozen those numbers of vacant lots will be reflected. So it's not just necessarily vacant lots maybe in the urban core, but it might be on the periphery as well. Great. Thank you.

Any other questions? Wonderful. We can move on to 20, Inspection Division Permit Summary Reports ending eleventhirtytwenty five and twelvethirty onetwenty five. Who's taking this? Right. Doctor. Holman. So we

included November and December because we had meeting cancellations from the holidays. So I'm primarily just looking at the December 1 right now. Just summarizing the whole year, would say it ended quite well. I know when you compare '24 to '25, it does look like '25 in terms of number of permits as well as estimated is, four. And then the next

is,

terms of revenue and permits, things ramped up and then really stabilized. Receipt amounts in terms of permit revenue came in just a bit above what we had budgeted. So really happy with the activity we saw.

Do you find I'm sure, you know, you have your crystal ball back in your office. But 2026, is that gonna be more similar to 2025 than the 2024?

In terms of single family construction, depending how quickly Platts can come online, it could be busier. Okay.

Wonder.

And maybe even multifamily. It's really once that infrastructure we've been working through on the planning process for Platts, Thrivan, etcetera, if and when they come through, there's a high likelihood we will get very busy, which is a good problem to have. Not against that.

And just to remind

Yes. Alder Lamprecht. Go ahead.

So right now and it kind of goes into both of these more informational items. I know that I had heard somewhere around 300 or so units is kind of what we're aiming for annually for.

I recall with the comprehensive plan update, the estimate is now three forty. Thank you. Yeah. Three forty. So it's actually more now with some of them being single family and some being multifamily. So it wasn't until 2024 that we actually came close to that in recent years.

Yeah. And that's what I noticed on the prior report is we were right in that 300 or so.

Any other questions? All right. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Next we have eight. Do I have a motion? Move to adjourn. Second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? We are adjourned. Thank you.