Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, good afternoon. I'd like to call to order this meeting of the Finance Committee for Monday, July 20, 2026 at 5.30 p.m. 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, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Roll call of membership. Let the record show that all members are present except for Alder Hartzheim, who is excused. Our first item is 26-0956, approval of the minutes from our previous meeting.

Move to approve. Second.

All right. I've got a motion and a second. Are there any updates or corrections to the last meeting minutes? Hearing none, let's go ahead and vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. That passes 4-0. We have no public hearings or appearances, so we will move directly into our action items, the first of which is 26-0988, request to accept SISP grant award and approve state municipal finance agreement, SMFA, for Badger Avenue signal rehab retrofits. Can I get a motion?

Move to approve. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second.

Who is going to talk to us about this one? Deputy Director Neuberger is on. District 1. All right, thank you. Deputy Director Neuberger.

Thank you, Chair. This item was also at Municipal Services Committee, and our DPW traffic section applied for state funding for Badger Avenue on the basis of the intersections at College Avenue, which is State Highway 125, and Rich Memorial, State Highway 47. The information on the grant award is following the memo. Basically, it's a 90-10 state-local split, a little over a million dollars in state funding, and about 115,700 would be the local cost share here, too. So what had been in our CIP assumed that we were not gonna get a grant, so this is just money that we're gonna be able to get from the state, and it'll free up city dollars for other spending priorities.

Okay, great news. Any questions, comments from up here? seeing none let's go ahead and vote all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye that passes 4-0 next item 26-0989 request to approve use of 590 thousand eight dollars in 2026 bridge cip funds as contract contingency for old oneida street bridge over south mill race reconstruction project Move to approve. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Is it you again, Deputy Director Newberger?

Yes, it is, Chair.

Okay.

Okay, so the committee members may remember a little bit of the history on this one. So shortly, right around the time this project was awarded, the The city was able to obtain some additional state funding on this project, which was good news for us because we had been dealing with two years of increasing cost estimates from the state. For a while there, we were capped. The ratios between the state and local funding weren't looking pretty, weren't looking great. But with the additional state funding, we came out doing okay on that. That meant that we had money in our CIP that was over and above what our local cost share was going to be. That was the good news. The not so good news was with the additional money available from the state, there was no There is there was and is no additional money available from the state to help deal with any change orders that come up on the project projects like this are very complicated you are dealing with site conditions that are hard to predict beforehand so it's it's pretty pretty much guaranteed that some change orders are are likely to come up so the intent here is to identify that additional those additional unencumbered budget funds, identify them now as project contingency so that when DOT, who is administering this project, the contract with the contractor, it's their contract with the contractor, they make the field decisions, and then we get billed by the state for our share of those costs. So the intent here is to be able to keep the contractor moving, not shut the contractor down waiting for city change order dollars to be approved so that when the state, having done their due diligence in managing potential change orders with the contractor, can come back later with confidence knowing that we have contingency dollars available to keep the contractor moving.

All right. I think I know the answer to this question, but do we have any idea of the magnitude of the change orders that we're expecting, or we just allocated everything just to be ready?

It's the latter part. We just wanted to have, as long as the budget dollars were available there, again, it's not a blank check. This is something that The state is very, very good at this. They know how to manage these types of contracts, frankly, better than we would just because they're the experts on this sort of thing. So it's very, very hard to predict right now what kind of dollar amounts we might be looking at. We did already get a heads up from the state that a $16,000 change order has kind of been in the works, and that's probably going to be heading our way here pretty soon.

Thank you. Anything from up here? All right, seeing none, let's go ahead and vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

That passes 4-0. Next item, 26-0998, request to approve the 2026 purchasing policy. And I think that Director Messerschmidt is probably, is that, are you on four? Three, okay. Director Messerschmidt.

All right, so first I have to apologize. For some reason, the memo did not make it out to you guys. I did send it out before the meeting and brought a hard copy as well. It's a really good summary. This is very minimal changes to the current policy that we have. I'll just give you the quick overview of what we're looking for. This will come back. And we'll have to decide as a committee how we want to tackle it, because we have a lot of changes that we need to make to it. So this is one that we need to have done to match what the state of Wisconsin has changed public contract construction projects limits too. So we're just kind of following suit with that. Instead of just bringing just that one item, we thought we might as well just bring all of the thresholds to finance committee to have that reviewed and approved. So if you go to page five is where the changes do start. And this just talks about the different levels and the requirements at each dollar level. So at level one, currently it's at $2,000. I'm asking to have that up to $10,000, which is more practical in today's price environment. And then same thing with level two, that was $2,000 to 7,500, basically taking that from 10,000 to 24,999. And then purchases of the 25,000 require a minimum of three written solicitations, whereas the 10,000 to 24,999 requires two. And then the anticipated cost not to exceed 50,000, or more would need the Committee of Jurisdiction and then also Finance Committee's approval. And then item four, that talks about, these are where the states made their changes from the 25 to 50,000, and then just some language change in their estimated cost not to exceed 25,000. So that's a majority of the changes. There's some language change on page six under sole source, which just is more reflective to what we do in current day practice. And then also, again, updating those thresholds for the sole source procurements. Same as what we just talked about on page five. And then... Page 8, under our procurement cards, I have had a lot of users request that we have those limits update up. I didn't want to go too radical on that, so I only bumped it up 1,000. And then authorization for anything greater than 10,000 would need... higher approvals. So just makes things a lot easier for processing and more efficient on our end. But also keeping risk in mind as well. eCards is one place where we can tend to have some fraud. So we try to keep that buckled down a little bit. So more than the others, not that we're saying it doesn't happen in the other categories, but that's one that we see it most. Change order approvals, again, made those thresholds to mirror the threshold part at the beginning. On page 10, that would be item 2A, changing it from 15,000 to 25,000. And then, let's see here. Page 13 was just a couple changes on page 13 for disposals of items, to bring items with a value of $2,000 or more, using methods other than one through five would have to come through committee. So just upping that, because I don't think you guys want us bringing every little thing through committee. And then, let's see, direct sale of anything over $5,000. would have to have a higher approval as well. And we had that at 2,500, so I didn't up these, I didn't go crazy. And then language change, estimated values of less than 2,000, that's at discretion. And then for estimated values over 2,000, departments should contact our purchasing department for assistance. And then all proceeds should be ran through the finance department. The accounting manager really doesn't handle the cash receipt stuff anymore, so I just wanted to make it so it's just finance department, so it's coming through the right chain that clearly reflects what we're doing. And then, Just some language change on page 17, item AA. Again, just more so following current process with retaining electronic copies of items right in our financial system versus having all the paper.

And that's it for changes. Okay, thank you. Are there any questions? Alder Crowe.

Yeah, thank you, Chair. A comment and a couple questions, I guess. I think I heard you say at least one part of this is statute-driven, changes to statute. Correct. I think that was in the... Public bidding. Yep. There are, I mean, these are some pretty substantial increases, but I think is part of it because of the fact that this hasn't been updated in 11 years?

Correct. 2015 was the last time that this policy was updated.

Yeah. I was very surprised to see that. I would have thought a policy like this might have got to look more often every couple of years. Should. Okay. Well, thank you for looking at it.

So that's why I say these are going to be coming back. You're going to start to see a lot more policies coming through in the next year.

Yeah, yeah, thank you for looking at it, because obviously in 11 years, costs have gone way up on things, and these types of limits need to be looked at. They just seem to be substantial. I mean, you're going from $2,000 to $10,000, $7,500 to $25,000, some pretty substantial increases.

And part of that too, just so you know, for federal grant monies, they have, their limits are at 10,000 for micro purchases, and then it goes up from there. So we're kind of following those federal thresholds.

Okay, you're kind of getting to my other question. Sorry. Well, no, that's good. And I apologize, I didn't get your memo before the meeting. I'm sorry. That's okay. Mike, my other question was, how does the new Appleton proposed policy align with, say, industry standard, but governmental standard for municipalities of our size? Is it in alignment?

It's very much in alignment. Some just use a $5,000, $10,000 threshold in moving those increments, but we always want to make sure that we're staying within the uniform guidelines of the federal grant policy because that just opens up a bigger ball of wax for us and more audit procedures are required. So trying to keep that on a lockdown.

Yeah. And does that include sole source? Cause that's an area that myself and Alder Hartzheimer are always concerned about sole source contracts. Okay.

Yep.

All right. Nothing further.

Alder Van Seelen. Thank you, Chair. Could you just talk about the ones that are not policy driven and just explain how we happened upon these numbers? I guess I'm curious how I can explain these numbers Huge changes and also setting a precedent for reviewing going forward. Sure.

So typically what I've looked at is a couple other purchasing policies within that are similar to our cities of our size and looking what they had. And this is kind of. because everybody's had to change their purchasing policy because of the state statute. So it's been on a lot of agendas. So I just looked at that and then also looked at GFOA's best practices, and they kind of give us those guidelines as well. You know, just make sure that you're within these parameters. And more so than anything, it's because of cost of stuff has just gone crazy. compared to what we had back in 2015. So it's very comparable to what we have on surrounding communities. Can I follow up, Chair?

When I look at this, I kind of say, well, I don't mind it coming in front of me because I'm not really... You know, it's not like we're trying to prevent these things from happening. It's just another piece of information for oversight. So what are the other administrative things that happen if we would keep these lower? Like how has this helped staff to move these higher?

So a lot of it becomes pinch points. So they're waiting to get approvals or they, and it's something that they need to buy. And so then there's the question of, is it an emergency purchase? Is it not an emergency purchase? So then we're trying to look at the policy and trying to frame it where it fits to see if we can make the purchase or not. So that's really the biggest complaint that I've heard from Leadership is that it's just it just really ties our hands is so it's an efficiency which I appreciate is there also Just the waiting ever Mean that we end up paying more or something good or we don't have we don't get the best price Absolutely, okay. Thank you. Yeah And sometimes some like Chris and I had a conversation about some of the specialized stuff that they have to purchase for their area. And it's like those pieces of equipment aren't $2,000 anymore. They're $10,000. So it's like, okay, where do I fit into that in those different buckets? So just making things a little bit more efficient for the folks out in the field.

Okay. Thank you.

All right, I'm just gonna say, just to let you follow up, Director Messerschmidt, even with these limits, can you just briefly talk about some of the controls that are still in place?

So, yeah, so part of with our financial software, we do have workflows or workflow rules set up. So as stuff goes through the system, and that's why some of the language in here is talking about attaching electronic documents because we forget to do that. So now it's like I have something to point to that enforces that rule, but that will just help going forward. and also creates the transparency. So it's like not just one person is seeing this. So if anybody could pull it up from that perspective, and then it goes to the workflow. So then whoever's on those workflow approvals, depending on how it fits the purchasing policy, then that's who will have to approve those items.

And I'm just assuming that the software enforces a three-way match between the...

We're working on that piece of it because that hasn't been put into play yet. Like I said, there's a lot of things that I want to do that need to be updated just to fit with more efficient practices today and hopefully eliminate all this paper. As much as I love the paper mill folks, I come from a family of paper mill workers, so... I just don't like cutting the trees down. So I'm trying to save on paper. And when we have access to the resources, anybody that has user access to Munis can clearly see any of the attachments that are there. So it makes us in finance a lot more efficient because I'm not having to track someone down to find a document. If I'm working on something at seven o'clock at night, I don't have to wait till the next day. It's right there. I can grab it and I can keep going. Mm-hmm.

All right, thank you. You're welcome. Anyone else?

Can I just? Go ahead, please, please. Just wanted to preference that. This will be formatted, so it's not all different colors by any means, and it's horrible formatting. I just needed to get it to you guys. And I guess I would like to kind of know from the committee, how would you like to tackle these policies? Since this is such a big policy, there's a lot of, meet to it. Do you want to take it, I guess, in sections and then approve a section and then bring another section forward? Or do you want to just bring the whole thing? I guess I'm just looking for some direction from you. All right. I'm going to open this up. I saw all the bins.

Actually, I see all the probes.

I had my head turned. Okay.

I don't know if I'm going to say the same thing.

Thank you, Chair. I don't know if we're on the same page here or not, but I read this as we were taking it up tonight in its entirety.

Yeah, this is tonight, but this is going to be coming back.

Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, I think this format is good. Break it into sections or pieces and bring it forward like this.

Because they'll be adding some language. For example, I'll be bringing the debt policy forward. We don't have a fixed assets policy, which is kind of part of a procurement policy. So there'll be just different pieces that I'm trying to hone everything in so that when someone, like when I first started, I'm like, what's our threshold for capital assets? And One place it's 10,000, one place it's 15,000, another place is 25,000. So it's all over the board. So just again, make that unified among all of our policies so that they match each other.

I think this is good, the way it brought forward tonight. I think it is. Easier to review a smaller thing than a huge 100-page.

And having worked on some of these conversions in my past life, I suspect that the new ERP system is bringing to light some of the gaps that we've had in processes previously. I see Dr. Youngworth nodding her head as well.

Yes, we definitely have lots of room for improvement.

Okay. So, yeah, I agree with my colleagues. I think that piece I wouldn't want us to have to go through that whole policy look at you know look at things over 85 different pages during one committee yeah so I think in sections is good you also bringing these forward so they start to see more policy stuff coming and it would be the kind of the same format any changes that I make will be in red so that it's transparent and I will have a summarized memo okay Anything else? All right, are we ready to vote on this?

Oh, Attorney Glatz.

What did we do wrong?

No motion.

I am so sorry.

I'll move to approve. I'll second.

Okay. Thank you so much for keeping us in line as usual. So we have a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. That passes 4-0. All right. Moving to 26-0958, request to award Appleton Wastewater Treatment Plant MK Tunnel Bridge Improvements Project Contract, to Staub Construction Corporation in the amount of $119,000 with a contingency of 10% for a total project cost not to exceed $130,900. Move to approve. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Director Flick, you're on. Director Flick. Are you not?

Oh, sorry.

Alder Furcus is helping me out here with having number troubles.

Thank you, Chair. Before you tonight is a continuation of tunnel bridge improvements at the wastewater plant. This is well within budget. Of course, we would like to see more bidders on this project, but we feel we have a very reputable company to do the work. I'll answer any questions as needed. Okay. Questions?

All right, seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. That passes for zero. Next item, our final action item is 26-0990, request to award Appleton Department of Utilities Network Improvement's project-based bid and allowance to Van Ert Electric in the amount of $649,489 with a 7.5% contingency of $48,712 for a project total not to exceed $698,201. Move to approve. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Who's going to talk to us about this? Director Stimpa. What mic are you on? One. Director Stimpa.

So if I can address any questions or concerns regarding the memo. There's a lot of acronyms in here. They're a little above my head and outside of my expertise per se. So it's on the finance side. This project has two parts, really, as far as I'm concerned. There's the business network side or the enterprise resource planning part. the business network, and then our SCADA system. So it's our computer system that we navigate and operate our plant with. The brunt of the project, you're really focused on the network side, but we're operating in parallel to maximize some infrastructure improvements on the SCADA side. So that's on both sides of the utility. So both sides of the utility have these needs with antiquated and outdated devices for the business network, including and maybe primarily our phone system. which has had issues. We are transitioning entirely over to wireless iPhones as a primary means of mobile communication. But even that, we're lacking effective AP points to get connectivity throughout these facilities. So this project's really to address that. And again, position us in a place on the wastewater plant primarily for the SCADA system upgrades that will take place in a couple years. So we need that infrastructure highway to do the next steps as part of that SCADA upgrade project, which will have a fairly significant price tag to it. And I won't go into details of that, so I'll just confuse the matter, but I can address any questions you may have.

Okay. Questions from up here? All right, seeing none, let's go ahead and vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. That passes 4-0.

We have Alder Van Ziema. Oh, no, go ahead. I was going to just ask a question on the next item.

OK. In our information items, the legal and administrative services move to your budget. Alder Van Ziema.

Thank you, Chair. What accounts for the difference in licensing fees? I thought that all of our alcohol licensing and everything is processed by June, but there's quite a bit of difference.

All right, Attorney Glass.

So you're looking at the summary licensing? Yes. Well, I'm happy to pinch hit for Attorney Behrens. I think if you have specific questions like that, if you could just direct them to him.

Okay. Anyone else? Any other questions? Okay. That brings us to item eight.

Move to adjourn. Second. All in favor?

Aye. We are adjourned. Thank you all.