Community Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay. All right. Good afternoon. I'd like to call to order this meeting of the Community Development Committee for Wednesday, January 2026. Chair Jones is excused today, so I'm Denise Fenton, the Vice Chair, and I'll be running the meeting for her.

Please rise and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Roll call of membership as noted. Chair Jones is excused and also Alder Heffernan is excused. We have people here, so introductions from my left. Vered Meltzer, District 2.

Josh Lambert, District 1.

All right. Thank you. Our first item of business is the approval of minutes from our previous meeting, 20 six-two zero seven, the CDC minutes from 01/14/2026. Can I get a motion

So To approve? Second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. Are there any updates or corrections to the minutes? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye. That passes three-zero. We do have a public hearing for scheduled for today, twenty six-two zero eight. The Community Development Block Grant, CDBG, Notice of Funding Available and Community Needs for the 2026 program year, which runs from 04/01/2026 through 03/31/2027, and that's associated with our action item 20 six-two zero nine. Before we open the public hearing, do we need to hear anything from staff on this? Okay. Okay. Community Development Specialist, Galeanne, what mic do you have?

Okay. All right.

So I'll just give a brief summary here before we jump into everything for the actual item. But for the public hearing, it's just open for anyone to give us their opinions on those items that the CDBG Advisory Board gave preliminary CDBG recommendations for, and then also just to talk about if there are any activities that we should be especially mindful for the investment of CDPG funds for 2026. We have gone through the initial preliminary allocation process, both with allocating our core city programs, which are regular repeating projects often, our city department application period. And those were also preliminarily approved. And so today's meeting is bringing forth the external applications that we received for preliminary approval with the advisory board's recommendations.

So just seeking any public comments on those or any additional CDBG priorities that we might want to be aware of going forward as well.

Okay, thank you. All right. This is a public hearing. Is there anyone who wishes to speak? And I'm legally required to say this three times. This is a public hearing. Is there anyone who wishes to speak? And this is a public hearing. Is there anyone who wishes to speak? All right.

Seeing none, I declare that public hearing closed. And we will move to our action items. First is 26Six-two09, which is the request to approve the preliminary twenty twenty six-twenty twenty seven program year Community Development Block Grant Community Partner Allocations specified in the attached documents. And Community Development Specialist Galion again?

Yep, so just kind of a brief overview of the CDBG process. So we began in July 2025 during the budgeting period to kind of determine what we thought our CDBG allocation for 2026 would be. And we based our estimated allocation amount of 576,096 on our prior year's allocation amounts. We usually do about a five year average, also recognizing that last year we had a little bit lower than what we were expecting, so try to keep it to a more consistent estimation with that in mind as well. And so from there, we start with our initial core program allocations.

These are things such as our housing rehab loan program, our neighborhood program, Appleton Housing Authority, or administration of CDBG dollars, just to name a few. These are typically repeating projects that are allocated funding each year and are kind of core to our CDBG operations. And then after that, we moved into our city department application process. So there's about six weeks available for city departments to apply. And during that period, we received two applications, one from the Parks and Rec department, and then one from Inspections Division within Community Development Department.

And then following that, those two core programs and then the city programs are brought together in front of CDC for preliminary approval of those amounts. And while all of that was happening, we had an initial training period for any interested external organizations. And then following the training completion of the training, I think there are about 12 organizations that completed the training and received CDBG applications for 2026. And then from that, we received six total applications for funds. And at the time when the applications were released, we had allocated funds for those core and city projects with a total amount of $480,717 preliminarily allocated, which left us with about $95,379 for these external projects.

And so we received those original six applications. One of them was for a public service project, which we had already we have a cap on the amount of funds that can go to public services projects on a yearly basis. And we had already met that cap with our community resource navigator position, which is under our core city projects. So we didn't have public services projects available. So that one was taken out of consideration when sent to the advisory board.

And then from there, so all of the other applications that were received were checked and confirmed CDBG eligible and all of those things and sent over to our advisory board for review. During that process, we did come to find that the First Five Fox Valley project, they had already begun the work on their project application was for asbestos remediation. But in order to begin other construction on their project at the Family Resource Center space, they had to do the asbestos work ahead of time with the CDBG regulations. That meant that we wouldn't be able to award that project. So it was taken out of consideration at the point of the advisory board meeting.

So our advisory board members each received the applications, individually reviewed and scored them, and then came together in a meeting to talk about where their applications were coming in at and kind of their recommendations. So that's how we get to, on the second page here, the recommendations for each applicant. And again, these are preliminary award recommendations depending on the actual amount that we receive from HUD for the 2026 program year. And one note on that is the advisory board said they were comfortable with the approach that we could adjust the allocations on a equal percentage basis for them or proportional basis. But we wanted to keep the pillars funding at 35,000 if possible, ensure that habitats funding does not go below 10,000 because that is our minimum amount that we will give to an external project for city projects, or to any project, really, city projects.

And then so it would be the COTS and Rebuilding Together funding that are then toggled either up or down or stay even depending on where our award comes in to that estimate amount that we had of $576,096 So that's kind of the approach that we'll take for toggling those once we get the actual HUD award this year.

So am I understanding correctly, if we get wonderful good news and we get more than expected, we would just proportionately allocate all of the awarded grants upward. But if we get bad news, we would proportionally allocate downward with the stipulations that you talked about.

Yes. Okay.

Alright. Anything I'm sorry. W. Doctor. Krust, what mic are you on? All right.

Thank you, chair. So so, yes, with a caveat being pillars is already recommended for the full amount. Right? So in the event that we do receive an actual award that's greater than what we have been projecting, pillars would remain as is, and then it would be a proportional increase to the other three applications.

Let me turn you back on. There you go.

One other note there as well. Typically, to keep that public service cap at 15%, we would toggle that one up or down as well. So that one may the community resource navigator position, which has already been preliminarily approved, would also either be toggled up or down depending on the award amount prior to any changes being made to either of applicants because we just want to keep that one consistent as well.

Okay. Thank you.

And if I may, Chair, one other thing to, I guess, just remind ourselves of is that once that final number is known, we do bring it back to CommDev Committee and counsel for final action on the final award amounts. Really, what we've attempted to do with the advisory board is to limit the need for them to regroup unless something substantially different were to occur. But the final award amounts would come back through CommDev Committee and counsel for final action.

Okay. Thank you. Anything from committee? Alder Lambert?

Yeah. So I have the honor of serving on the committee, the advisory committee. And I just want to highlight that one of the goals that came out of the conversation was wanting to fully fund one of the projects, which is why if you look at the allocation pillars was the one that was identified as the fully funded and then doing the maximum amount of funding that we could based upon what was remaining and differentiating or differentiating it out that way.

All right. Anything else? All right. If there's nothing else from committee or staff, we'll go ahead and vote.

We need a motion.

Oh, am so sorry. I'm in plain submission mode.

I'll second it.

Okay. Now we have a motion and a second. All in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. That passes three-zero.

I always get a little confused after plan commission. All right, moving to our next item, 20 six-two 56, request to approve proposed text amendments to the Municipal Code Chapter four Buildings, Section four-two 78, Water Supply Systems and Water Service, as identified in the attached documents. I promised that I would rest Inspector Cranon's voice if I could. So if you have anything to say, what, Mike? Okay.

So this is an ordinance change that would impact duplexes. It would require two water laterals into a duplex for various reasons, one being if water is shut off on one, it wouldn't impact someone who doesn't need their water shut off. So it's just sort of common sense. We've been doing this in practice for years and this just codifies it.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Any questions, comments from up here? All right. Let's get a motion on

this. Move to approve.

Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. That passes three-zero. We have one information item, which I believe we will see in another committee already seen this in finance? Okay. Anything on that, Deputy Director Krauss?

Sure. I can just give a little overview here. So for some background, a little reminder, there was an offer to purchase that was approved back in September for the PAC to potentially acquire a city owned lot located immediately north of the PAC facility. At that time, council also approved a resolution that gave staff the authorization to pursue outside grant funding and sign any related agreement that would potentially come from secured outside grant funding. Good news today is that we have essentially two different funding sources that we're able to tap into.

So really a staff status update on those outside funding. Calumet County has allocated funding from their EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, grant to help with initial site investigation. The city also did independently pursue Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation funding, and we were recently notified that we will receiving a grant amount of $150,000 through the WEDC site assessment grant fund. Through that funding source, we do need to make a budget amendment to basically recognize that there'd be the $150,000 in revenue coming in and then an anticipated $150,000 in expenses in corresponding way. As alluded to, this did also go to finance committee earlier this week as an action item that was recommended for approval.

So really purpose of having it on the CommDev Committee agenda today is just for informational purposes to give you all an update on where we're at.

All right. Anything comments from up here?

Thanks for your work on it.

Yes. Thanks for that. That's good news. I mean, I know we understood that the city would not be liable for any remediation on this site, but it's really good that we got the grants and we can do that cleanly. And then any comments on the Inspection Division Permit Summary?

You know, it's just the first month of the year. I can pull it up on the screen here for reference purposes, so bear with me for a moment. So we're all looking at the same thing here. You know, kind of January 25 comparison to January 26 comparison, number of permits slightly down, but estimated construction cost actually up quite a bit. One comparing the two Januaries. And then the receipt revenue amount for the building permit activities is very similar to last year at this time. So feel good about where we're at. Nothing earth shattering to note at this point, but just common practice for us to bring these monthly reports to the Comm Dev Committee.

Exactly. It's January.

It's January. Yep. And as Kurt can attest to, probably one of the slower months for the building inspections division, right? There's not as much exterior work occurring, more interior remodeling and the like.

All right. If there's nothing else, we can go to item eight.

Move to adjourn.

Second. All right. All in favor? Aye. We are adjourned. Thank you all.