Municipal Services Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay. It is 05:30. Let's call to order this meeting of the Safety and Licensing Committee for Wednesday, 04/29/2026. Please join me in 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.

Okay. Thank you. Moving on to the roll call of membership. All members are present tonight. It's a five member committee. We do have a few new members, so welcome to Alders Hayden, Lambrecht, and Jones. We just went through a cycle of getting new appointments to committees. So Alder Fenton is returning to the Safety and Licensing Committee. I'm Chris Croat, the representative from District 14. And to my left is Alder Fenton. Go ahead.

Denise Fenton, District 6.

Aye Jones, District 10.

Josh Landberg, District 1. Patrick Hayden, District 7.

Great. Thank you. Next on the agenda is an approval of the minutes from the previous meeting. There are two sets of minutes listed. Is there a motion to approve the minutes?

Move to approve. Second.

Motion is second to approve the minutes. Any corrections or changes? And yes, you can vote on the minutes if you weren't, on the committee as long as you reviewed them. Okay. All those in favor of approving the minutes signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? Minutes are approved, five-zero. Okay. We'll go in the order that's listed on the agenda tonight, starting with the appearances. We have five appearances on our agenda tonight. We'll take them in order. I think maybe everybody's here for these, so thank you for coming. We'll start with 26Dash0506.

It's a demerit point violation appearance for ALDI number 86. Before and representatives from ALDI, please use the podium here. I'll turn on the microphone. If you could give your name and address for the record. Before you get started, the intent of having these establishments come before the Safety and Licensing Committee is to explain the nature of the violation, what happened, and what you're doing to correct it from happening into the future.

I hope you had you did receive a memo from the clerk's office which explains the demerit point violation program, the demerit points, how many you accumulate, And then also a note at the bottom about free training from the Appleton Police Department if you should want to take advantage of that. So go ahead with your name and address. This is Aldi, Store number 86.

Hello. Chris Suber. It's 2702

North Richmond Street, Appleton, Wisconsin.

And I'm Bob Best. I'm the district manager.

Okay. Thank you. Hi. So what the situation was that we had an employee that did sell to a minor. The situation was that he was looking at the expiration date, and then he put it in there wrong.

So what we have done since that situation is anyone that has the long ID, the underage ID that is still 21 over, we take their ID. Even if it's on our self checkout, we take them up to the register and we physically type their birth date into the register. Also, we've been pretty much on top of talking about it since each and every week and making it a key focus within our store. But the main point was that we bring our anyone that has the longer ID to our register, physically type the register in or I'm sorry, their birth date in and making sure that it is 100100% legit going forward. We also do talk about anybody else with the ID to making sure always checking them, doing all the right steps and all the right things, but that was the main focus since the issue was regarding around the 21 and under ID and looking at the wrong date on the ID.

Okay. Thank you. Is there anything you want to add?

Yeah. We do obviously take it pretty seriously. It is our policy as a division to terminate an employee if they sell to a minor. So we also focus on training as well. New hires go through training with with it as well. But I think it's a refocus on just the the proper way to look at the the driver's license and making sure that they know kinda where to look at and what to look at. If they at the register, if they if they punch in the the date, it's a kind of a it'll let them know if it's the wrong date. Think the situation is so that's why he was talking about doing it at the register versus self checkout.

Okay. Good. Thanks. So this is an 80 violation. You have 80 points total. So the first violation, you understand the program and the Okay. What we often hear are these opportunities to do some additional training or a refresher, a reminder type thing. So thank you for coming. Are there any other questions from committee members? No? Okay. Thanks. Appreciate it. Thank you, guys. Yep. All right, moving on. 2007, demerit point violation appearance, Dongpo Restaurant. Same situation, dispensing to a minor, 80 violation, 80 points total for the establishment. Welcome. Name and address for the record, please.

Hi, everyone. Jim Chen. 719 West College Avenue. What happens when the care check the survey checked his ID, but did a rough math about the age. What would be after? And we paid a temporary and scheduled the Upton Police Department for free training for who will serve the alcohol. And also have the signs put up by the bar area. Also the chapel with the date to 21 years old as well to prevent the round mess things happen again. I'll show you the picture like this.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Thanks for the explanation. Any questions from committee members? No? Thank you for explaining what measures you've taken. Okay. 2009, demerit point violation appearance, the tenth frame, same situation, dispensing to a minor, 80 violation, 80 points total.

Welcome. Good evening. This is our first time in twenty two years

Name and address for the record.

618 West Wisconsin Avenue. This was our first time getting one in twenty two years. My bartender just didn't do the math in her head. This is her first time back after she had surgery, and that's not an excuse. I normally fire people right away, but she's worked for me for fifteen years. She just had an off day. We take it very seriously. We, like I said, have been in the business twenty four years, and this is our first time ever getting anything. I did call the Olympus department, gave you a call back. It's been two weeks to have them come and maybe educate some people. But to be honest, the new IDs are

a little hard to read.

But it was busy, and she messed up. And we, like I said, take it very seriously, and it won't happen again.

Okay. Thank you. Do you have an ID scanner? Have you ever considered getting one? We did look into that.

I was just at the last Tavern League and the two people that I did meet said they weren't very they weren't good. Okay. So I'm waiting for some more technology maybe.

Okay.

But like I said, my bartenders are very good.

Yeah.

And in twenty two years, they only have one. It's not too bad.

Okay. Did you say that you called APD and you haven't gotten a callback?

Correct.

Okay.

It's been two weeks.

Chief Olson, can you follow-up with Lieutenant Gooden on that? Okay. Thank you. You bet. All right. Next on the agenda is 20 six-five eleven, demerit point violation appearance for Sangria's Mexican Grill. Same situation, dispensing to a minor, 80 violation, 80 points total. Welcome.

Hi. My name is Sarah Gregory and the address is 215 South Memorial Drive Appleton. Same situation where it was we haven't had an issue in a very, very long time, but we were very very strict about carding, and anytime that we'll have a minor that even works at the other restaurant because I also own Tipsy Taco, then we'll send them over just to try and test the staff. We're constantly going through sections asking, Did you card this person? Did you card this person?

We have a strict rule if they're 40, or I tell people if they look younger than me, you gotta card them. And we started something new where as people are handing you their ID, we ask what year they were born because a lot of times you can catch if they're nervous or or whatever. I mean in this last week we've caught close to fifteen sixteen fake IDs, I mean we're constantly catching them. In this particular instance, the server read a four and it was a seven, and he asked a bunch of questions about it, but he read it wrong and unfortunately that happens. We had Lieutenant Gooden in a couple weeks after and he met with the staff at both places.

We did talk about the ID scanners because I did look into them as well. He said that with the rate at which the fakes are kind of developing as well, they're just honestly not really worth it in his opinion either. So we do have UV lights and things like that, we have a book that you can see licenses from every other state as well, and then we do have an alcohol training as part of the original onboarding. Now a lot of our staff has been there for a very long time, so I told them that we're gonna start just revisiting it annually and making sure that they're still up to date and and pass that every year.

Okay. Good. Thank you. Any questions from committee members? No. Thank you very much. For those of you that have already appeared, you're free to leave. You don't have to stay. We do thank you for coming. Appreciate you coming and explaining your situation. We have one more left, 20 six-five thirteen, demerit point violation appearance for Appleton Motomart. It's the same situation, dispensing to a minor. 80 violation, 80 points total for the establishment.

Hi. Thank you. At 3400 East Calumet Street, it was a situation where the employee claims that she just had other things on her mind and it just didn't occur to her in that moment, which obviously does not adhere to our company policies, values, or training. We do regular training, but we have amped up things even further. We do have the scanners at the stores so all employees are instructed to scan for every single alcohol purchase going forward, as well as also physically checking the ID for fakes because the scanners can fail.

We do now weekly have every employee read through our policies and sign off every single week. I personally have spoken to every single employee and will continue to do so for every new employee at this location. We also are enrolled in the BARS program, which is an independent third party that comes and checks us regularly. We also will be reaching out to APD to help us with additional training and just, you know, doing everything that we possibly can to prevent this from happening in the future. That employee was also terminated if I didn't mention that as well. I just want to thank you guys for listening to all that.

Yep. No, thank you presenting that. And it's clear that you understand the magnitude of how this could, multiple violations could accumulate and impact the business. So any questions from committee members? No? Okay. Thanks.

Thank you.

Yep. Thanks for coming. Appreciate it. All right. That takes care of our appearances tonight. We'll jump into our action items. The first one is to elect a vice chair, 20 six-five 28. I'll open the floor for nominations. Is there a nomination?

I would like to nominate Alder Fenton.

Okay. Are there any other nominations? Not hearing any nominations. All right. Nominations will be closed. Alder Fenton, do you accept?

I accept.

Okay. We will vote on do we need we need to vote on that, right? Okay. The paper's right here. Okay. All those in favor of Alder Fenton being vice chair, signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? All right. Congratulations. You are vice chair. Experience on this committee will come in handy when I'm not here. All right. Moving on to set meeting date and time. If there's no objection, I'd like to keep this meeting at this date and time or day and time Second. Just from a consistency standpoint for those that come and for us that have been on the committee. Any objections to keeping it on Wednesday at 05:30? Not seeing any. Okay.

We'll keep that. Designate a contact person. I believe Clerk Molitor, are you the contact person? Okay. Would you like to continue to be the Okay. All right.

Move to have her be the designated person. Don't think to move that.

To formally do that? No. We can just just appoint her? Okay. Thank you. All right. So, yeah, if you're gonna miss a meeting, make sure clerk Mollinder knows. Please copy me and Alder Fenton and just so we don't run into an issue of quorum because we do usually do have people coming to this committee meeting, and we wanna make sure that we can have the meeting. So next on the agenda, action item is 26 dash zero five three three. It's the Edison Family Fun Run special event application.

Move to approve the application. Okay.

Is there a second? Okay. Motion and a second to approve the application. Clerk Malitor, it's on our agenda. Could you please explain? Director One, go ahead.

Let me put District One.

Oh, I'm sorry. You're right. I did. Go ahead.

So for those of you who are new to the safety and licensing committee, our special event policy requires that people apply for their special events at least forty five days out from the event. If they apply within that forty five day window, it is an automatic denial. The reason that this is part of the policy, this is intended to ensure that our approving departments have enough time to make a recommendation about the event without sort of undue pressure on them. And if we speak to this specific situation, we already have approvals from every approving department except for Valley Transit who doesn't have a particular thing to approve in this situation. I imagine it just hasn't come around in their day to day tasks yet to approve it.

So I would say, like, in a situation like this, we clearly did have enough time without that undue pressure in order to make that recommendation. It's in situations of bigger events when that forty five days or more is really required that the policy really comes into play.

And did I see that this was sorry, Chair,

do you No, go ahead. I was just going to explain that it was forty four days,

right? Yes, it was forty four days.

So we're very, very close. Very close. But some of us were trying to send a pretty firm message last year that we're going to start adhering to the 45. We've made a couple exceptions since. Most recently, the most recent event, we made the exception for. And I'm assuming we're going make the exception here again. But at some point, I think we need to start saying, you need to get it in by the deadline or it may not be approved. Go ahead, Alder Lambert. No, don't have that. Question Alder Fenton, go ahead.

You, Chair. Maderick to Clerk Malitor.

You may.

And I honestly can't recall, Clerk Malitor, has this event been held under the existing policy before or? It was held last year. Okay.

And in fact, this is an ongoing event that I want to say has been happening since probably 2014, which is again why the recommendations were able to be made in such a timely fashion because when it's a long standing event, we already have plans in place for things like that.

And then I understand some of these volunteer run events, the committees may change from year to year, and it may be a little bit more difficult to but just curious because per the chair's comments, I mean, we want to get the word out that you do need to get them in on time. But I don't want to be a meanie about one day.

Yeah, right. This one is as close as it can get, right? Will we be getting the approve I know you said Valley Transit doesn't really have anything with this, but it is the one thing that is listed as still being needed. Will we get that by the time this gets to counsel?

We can reach back out to Valley Transit and request that they make an approval by

next year. I think that would be good if we could do that, even though it might not have an impact on things. Alder Hayden, go ahead. Thank you, chair.

Yeah, forty four days is pretty close to forty five. But it is something that we probably need to look at, whether it's changing it to forty days since it seems like anything that comes in within forty days seems pretty easy for staff to handle, or a number of other things to look at to kind of actually add some weight to the rules that we put out there.

Yeah. And I think to that point, there's some events that may actually need more than forty five days in advance. So I think there's going to be some maybe adjusting to the policy at some point.

And that would be communicated, obviously, when an appeal is made if we're unable to make recommendations in that time.

Okay.

We do have a motion and a second to approve the application. Is there any other comment or question? All right. All those in favor of approving the application signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? Alright. Five zero. That will go to council as a recommendation to approve. Next on the agenda is twenty six dash zero five four five is the twenty six twenty seven alcohol license renewal applications contingent upon approval from all departments by 12PM on 06/30/2026.

Move to approve. Second.

We have a motion and a second to approve. Anything on this clerk monitor? No? Okay. Any questions from committee members? Not seeing any? Okay. All those in favor of approving the renewal applications signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed? All right. Five zero. Any abstentions? None? Okay. Five zero. Okay. The next item on the agenda is listed as an action item, but attorney Berwind tells me it's it's to be an information item because it was at finance and voted on. So it's a request to accept grant funding. This is for APD for radios. Correct? Anything you want to share, chief Olson? Which one do you District 2? Alright. It should be on.

If you recall last year during the budget process, the Common Council approved, I think, well over $500,000 for radio replacement that was long overdue. And this grant is basically a joint grant that we applied for with the Outagamie County Sheriff's Department, to which we have to pay a small percentage towards the awarded grant for, I believe I don't have in front of me, but I think it's like $9,000 And so this is really just taking this through the official steps that are needed in order to get that acceptance approved.

Okay. Thank you. Any questions? No? Go ahead.

Chief, just to clarify. So the match requirement is the portion of the budget, that we've already allocated. Is this gonna reduce some of the budgeted dollars that we would then have put towards the radios at this point? Or is this effectively budget neutral?

It's effectively budget neutral. So this was taken into account through all of the different accounting processes that transpired. The paperwork is just getting caught up.

Thank you,

chief. Okay. Any other comments or questions? Not seeing any. We don't need to vote on that, Attorney Berwyn. Right? Okay. All right. Now we're at a point in our agenda. And maybe I'll ask Alder Fenton to take the microphone here. We usually get to a point on our agenda where we have a number of applications, whether whether it's class b beer, class b liquor, cigarette, secondhand dealer, take those all up as a group. And sometimes a committee member will make a motion to approve the balance of the agenda. So that just saves some time, but we can still separate them out if we need to. So Alder Fenton?

Thank you, chair. And with that, I'd like to move to approve the balance of the agenda.

I'll second that. Okay. Motion and a second. And I will list them just for the record. 26Dash0469, 26 Dash 0470260488260535260475 will all be taken together under the motion to approve. Are there any of those that someone would like separated out? Not seeing any. Okay. Any discussion or comments on any of those? No? Anything from staff? No? Okay. We can take a vote on those. All those in favor of approving the balance of the action items signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? Five zero. Okay.

We took care of all of our action items just like that. Alright. Information items. We have a number of, new alcohol license violation convictions. One is open after hours, Pizzeria Pub and Bar on Sharon Street, and then we have a couple more dispensing alcohol to minor, Katsuya, Tipsy Taco, and Valley Mobile.

So those will be asked to come and appear before the committee at a future meeting and do what we did tonight. Next on the agenda is a list of special events that may have already no, these are all coming up. Some of them are sometimes listed already happened. So that's that listing. And now we're on to director's report, twenty six-five twenty five.

City clerk doesn't have anything listed, so nothing to comment on. Fire chief doesn't have anything listed, so Chief Hanson doesn't have anything to say. Police chief, he's got it easy tonight. Police chief Olson, you have an attachment on the agenda, the combined focus, which is the traffic warnings and tickets for the month of March. Is that correct?

That's correct. And for the new members on the committee, this is a report that gets generated on the fifteenth of the month. And I have been attaching it to the agenda for the second meeting of the month for safety and licensing. It's not all of the citations that are written in the city. Just to be clear, we write way more than what's listed here.

These are specific to those that contribute to noise in the city. And if you go on the far right hand side, you can see there's a checkbox for the downtown corridor. So if that box is checked, then that citation and or warning was written in that specified area, which is generally the downtown corridor of College Avenue and in some of the side streets near College Avenue.

Okay. Thank you. And thanks for continually bringing this forward as an information item. So those that represent areas downtown and around downtown that are getting inquiries from their constituents about noise can understand what APD has been up to as far as enforcement. Alder Jones, did you have a question?

I do. Okay. Go ahead.

So College Avenue is in my district, but not exactly downtown. So what are the parameters of counting the downtown corridor of College Ave?

It's my understanding that we would probably stop counting it at around Richmond.

Okay.

So Richmond to the East, as we approach, probably captures some of College Avenue Bridge and some of those stops because, generally, they might originate on the East Side, but then they tend to get stopped more on the West Side. But it's not an exact science, unfortunately. It's the best we have, though.

That's great. Thank you.

Alder Fenton, go ahead.

Thank you, Chair. May I address the chief?

Yes, you may.

Chief Olson, you know, I see that they're separated between warnings and citations, and obviously there's judgment call. Could you just tell us a little bit what goes into an officer deciding to warn a person with a I'm particularly talking about the noise things, the defective muffler, etcetera like to issue a warning as opposed to a citation.

Sure. So sometimes it comes down to whether or not the person's already been warned. And so that might play a factor or role into whether or not they get a citation, especially if they've been given opportunity to correct whatever you know, the defect and or illegal muffler previously. There's sometimes a lot of other factors. If there's other driving behaviors or other things that the officer might be addressing at the time, they may choose to write a citation for, say, a red light violation or speeding.

And then therefore, some of the noise related defective things might get issued a warning because we don't necessarily try to make it a practice of writing the same individual a multitude of citations and a stop. And sometimes it could be simply that they're written a warning just because they are given an opportunity to remedy the situation before write them a citation for the equipment.

All

right. Thank you, chief. That helps.

Yep. Okay. Other questions, comments on the report? Not seeing any. Okay. Thank you very much. Mhmm. Alright. That takes care of the the agenda for tonight. We're at number eight.

Move to adjourn.

Second. Motion is second to adjourn. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed? Five zero. We are adjourned.