Human Rights Commission - Regular Meeting

It doesn't have a date on there. So when was the last meeting? Alright. Approval of the March minutes. Now accepting a motion. Second. You wanna make the motion?

I'll make a motion here for the minutes.

Alright. Motion made by commissioner Beganowski. Second. Second by commissioner Stanton. All in favor? Aye. Awesome. Alright. Now we move to the election of officers. I will now open, for nominations for chair.

Any nominations? Do I I was gonna say, do I yourself nominate? No. You can nominate me. Yes. Alright. Nomination for mayor Shandel to serve as chair. Any other nominations? Any other nominations? Alright. Seeing none, all in

favor? Aye.

Now we'll vote for vice chair. Any nominations? Yes. Come come council member Goggins.

I'm gonna take the odd deal and nominate myself, Aaron Goggin, for vice chair.

Alright. Nomination for vice chair has been made. Any other nominations? Any other nominations? Any other nominations? That's just a formal thing they make me do. All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Alright. Vice chair has been named Aaron Goggins. Council member, Aaron Goggins. Alright. Moving to our agenda items starting with agenda item one twenty five zero six three six, information of Green Homeowners United Home Energy Audit.

Yeah. So it looks like we have, Sanja, who is from Green Homeowners United, to speak briefly about this topic.

All right.

Hi. I think my my I think my colleague and the chief economist from Green Homeowners United just joined. His name is Kevin Kane, and he's in by phone.

Okay. Can we have you both just say your name for the record and county or city you live in municipality. Excuse me.

Yes. I am Sonia Hoinotsky. I am an employee of Green Homeowners United, and I live in Milwaukee County.

Hi. This is Kevin Kane at Green Homeowners United. I'm sorry. I can't get the Zoom link to load. It keeps giving me an error. And I live in West Dallas, Milwaukee County.

Well, thank you. The floor is yours.

Okay. Great. Well, hi, everyone. I'm sorry that I couldn't be by video. Not sure. I know I'm doing wrong. But my name is Kevin Kane. I'm the chief economist at Green Homeowners United. We're proud to be an organization that's working closely with the city of La Crosse planning department to help people utilize these new federal funds from this inflation reduction act. Despite all that's happening in congress up to and including yesterday, the funds, the $149,000,000 and possibly more that Wisconsin has designated for residential upgrades to homes is still in play.

It's still possible to use. And after a lot of work that we have done in the Milwaukee area, we were asked to help La Crosse residents utilize it too by utilizing a state grant that the Wisconsin Public Service Commission had put forward to allow us to help approximately 300 area residents in utilizing these federal funds to perform energy assessments of these properties. And while we are while we are in these homes and using these devices to to track how drafty a house is, how leaky the the ductwork from a furnace is that makes it not work as well, to also do some immediate improvements to folks' homes, to seal air leaks, to to seal with mastic ductwork so that we're not just saying here's how you can use these future funds, but let's do some good from day one. And so we have been thankful because we've already been able to, with our local union workers, do quite dozens of homes already in throughout the city of La Crosse. This current program is solely for City Of La Crosse residents who live in one to four unit homes at this time who have furnaces.

It is designed originally to work with low income residents. That being said, though, they may be expanding it to middle income residents too in the near future. But what we're doing is helping people find out that they qualify, take advantage of of these federal funds, do some immediate good in the home, and we've often been leading with the the some of the biggest things that can be done in these homes that these homes can unlock, tens of thousands, in some case, dollars for things like air source heat pumps that both cool and heat the home, adding insulation to places like attics and basements or or even above ground walls, or in general, just guiding people through that insulation, heating, electrical, whatever these funds can can unlock. These every house is different, but the main goal for us is to, as is required by Wisconsin's focus on energy program, identify how that home can save at least 20% on their overall household energy use. So this project will make La Crosse one of the most successful in enrolling people through this program.

We've Green Homeowners United is excited because in the Milwaukee area, we've enrolled more people than almost anyone in the country because Wisconsin was the first. Well, this has really challenged us to supercharge that and bring possibly even more than that to the Lacrosse area and really help local residents utilize these millions of dollars available to them. The area that we could really use Folks' help with is that we have tried many different approaches to reaching out to area residents, whether it was online, mailers, talking to neighborhoods, commute speaking to different community organizations, knocking on doors, various advertising methods. It has gotten a lot of people from outside the city limits, to contact us, which unfortunately is not helpful for this program. We can eventually help them, but we wanted to prioritize the city of La Crosse through this grant.

And so we would welcome the opportunity to meet with local neighborhood associations or to interested neighbors and parties, organizations that you might recommend that are connected to local homeowners, especially lower or middle income homeowners so that we can connect them to this. There is no cost to them to do this program, the energy assessment, as well as immediate sealing of air leaks and the like. And oftentimes, there is generally no cost to upgrading things in their home, although every house is a little bit different. And so what we'll do is we'll guide them through no obligation and help them identify what improvements make sense, what funds they can further unlock, and whether we can help them through our workers or whether they can work with other local contractors that are well established in La Crosse, such as Schneider Heating or Paul's Heating or Olson Solar Olson Electric. We'll connect them to local contractors or ourselves, but we would welcome the opportunity and and would love to hear from all of you whether it's now or at a later point, how you might recommend that we best get this information to residents of La Crosse.

We have probably 200 something, slots that we can fill, and the state would like us to do so this year if we can. So we would, welcome the opportunity to get that information out. Again, we have worked with mailers. We have worked with digital. We've worked with door knocking, community groups. And, I wouldn't say we've yet quite found the magic bullet, but we are working pretty much every day in these homes already and would love to figure out how to work with the Neighbor Commission to work on the homes in your respective parts of town.

Mobile homes are included. I just wanna make sure that that's included. Mobile homes, single family, up to four plexus. And then, also, we just received new, income qualifying guidelines. So if you are a single person in the home, the qualifying guideline is $60,150 or less that you made last year.

Thank you. Is there anything else?

No. Thank you. No. Thank you.

Okay. We're gonna open it up to questions and comments from the commissioners. Are there any questions or comments from commissioners? Commissioner Cratt.

Yeah. I'm just interested. Are there any barriers or hurdles for the, tenant landlord situation? And how do you navigate that to encourage this happening in those areas?

At this time, tenants are able to take advantage of this too whether or not the landlord lives there, such as a owner occupied duplex. The we can help tenants identify if they are income qualified without necessarily having to have the landlord involved. But if any work is done to the home, it would have to be done with the landlord support. There is a form that Wisconsin's focus on energy program would have them sign if they were to do any major projects funded by the inflation reduction act. But they would have to sign a kind of a community benefit agreement to let them know that, hey, if you accept these funds, which are more for low income residents, that you have to not, you know, jack up the rent or or evict your tenant for a higher paying thing just because your your your building is is has more work put into it.

And so we have had some success in working with landlords in in doing so. As of right now, Wisconsin is very slow to get funds for the actual larger improvements for multifamily. And so right now, most of the landlord tenant relationships have been for single family homes occupied by a tenant, and we have had success with that as well. It's easiest when the funds cover the whole project, and then neither the tenant nor the landlord has to pay.

Yeah. Any other questions? I have a couple. Starting, so when you all are hosting meetings here in La Crosse, is it you all coming out to La Crosse to meet with these organizations, or do you have a representative in the city that meets with these organizations?

We have two staff based in La Crosse currently. I'm obviously not myself. And we haven't worked with other local organizations like Habitat for Humanity and others to try to let other folks know. I have come to town. I've I've and I will do so again. No question. But we do have local staff that are helping work with residents to sign the forms of their home as well as do the work directly.

Can you share the names of those local staff members?

Sure. One's name is Andrew Lee, and the other one is Kevin Cardemas.

Okay. And then earlier, you mentioned thank you for that. Earlier, you mentioned that you all would be considering possibly doing middle income. What would that look like? Can you break down those numbers for us?

Sure. So for a the the income limit depends on how many people are in the actual family household, and so the income numbers will kinda change depending on household size. But for context, a family or just the one individual is approximately I'm blowing up memory because they just changed the numbers yesterday. Approximately 58,000 for an individual, and I'm going to work on bringing those numbers up shortly. Lower income individuals can have projects a 100% covered in some cases if if there's an opportunity to do so within a certain dollar amount that the state offers.

For example, a low income household that achieves a 20% reduction of energy use can get 5,000 off insulation work or 8,000 off this heat pump or 4,000 off this electrical service panel, depending on what it is they have and what they need. A middle income individual can learn, in some cases, over 100,000 a year and still qualify under Wisconsin's focus on energy rebate program that is unlocked by this energy assessment as well. Originally, when we first applied together with the city of La Crosse, no one was receiving no cost energy assessments. And as this grant took a long time for the state to approve, Wisconsin's focus on energy program also started to provide low income residents a no cost energy assessment too. So in theory, there's actually two sources of ways to pay for low income energy assessments, but there isn't for middle.

And so this is why we think that it's a approach that the state will be open to to say, hey. The spirit of this is to figure out how to get as many people in a municipality to benefit. There is now a way to help low income people, but the middle income people still have to pay out a fair amount of money for a private energy assessment to even find out what they get what they're qualifying for. So we're we're trying to see if the state will adjust that definition to allow this grant to also help middle income people so that they don't have to pay money to find out even if they get anything. And then that way, we can help middle and low income people both.

And if that goes through, I guess, do you have, like, a timeline of when you might hear back from the state? And then if you do, would that be a part of the 200 applicants that are left, or is that something that'll start over next year, or what does that look like?

So, yes, it we could make them part of the middle or the the 200 something that are available. But because the state of Wisconsin is offering to cover the cost for low income residents, period, regardless of city of La Crosse or not. This sort of continuing to do energy assessments for low income, this will continue. We will be able to do it even beyond the lifespan of this grant and continue to offer at least for the low income, which is why we think this grant, if we broaden it to other income groups, will allow us to help even more people with limited grant funds since there is now this other funding source that will continue beyond this year and to help with those

benefit too.

I appreciate that. One of my concerns, right, as mayor of the city is sometimes there's a kinda like this forgotten middle. Right? You make too much money to qualify for services, but you don't make enough to actually sustain or be able to afford certain things. So I think that's something that's extremely important to look into. So thank you for doing that.

Absolutely. And our goal here is to have a continuous ongoing process where we have local union workers constantly helping local residents, even beyond the life of this crime.

Yes. Sonya, it looked like you were about to say something.

Yeah. I wanted to say that also when we do speak to people who are over the threshold and in the middle income, we do send them to a third party who is able to service them and provide energy assessments with them and other other funding. And Kevin can speak more to that, but we don't want them to slip through the cracks either. And we are also keeping note of those people so that when those funds are unlocked, that we're able to go back to

them. Okay.

I considered it after, but the income limit for an individual at the middle income designation that the state has is a 103,000 for La Crosse County. So it's it's a good number of people who could benefit who might be in that kind of lost middle as you alluded to there.

So that's for a one person household is 103,000. What was the rest of that?

103,350 or 147,000 for a family of four. That would be the higher middle income limit. Currently, the low income limit for a family of four in La Crosse, as it just changed yesterday, is 85,900 for a family of four or 60,150 for an individual. So it's a good number of people, but if you're just over that threshold, we don't wanna make it feel like there's nothing for you.

Gotcha. And what's the third party? Do you prefer people to go through this particular initiative to get to the third party, or can you share who the third party entity entity is? Sure.

There's a local established energy assessor based in La Crosse named Cliff Niesel who has long been performing energy assessments to focus on energy and elsewhere. And we wanna make sure that if someone can't quite fit for this grant, that they are connected to someone local and established who knows the market, knows the housing stock, knows the local contractors. He doesn't himself do the work, but then can guide people through local trusted contractors if they're higher income or just outside the city limits. And that way, no one's just kinda burned by we applied. We couldn't get into this grant. Well, I don't wanna do this at all. No. We wanna let people know that there's a pathway for it. Thank

you. Any other questions or comments from commissioners? All right. Seeing none, thank you very much. We'll move on to the next agenda item, 20 seven-two 72, discussion on outdoor lighting regulations. Will this be you, Jenna?

Yep.

All right.

So I know it's been a while since our last meeting, but at our last meeting, this was something that was brought up for discussion and commissioners seemed interested in taking up. With the zoning code, we haven't had a ton of time to look into much more with the outdoor lighting regulation, but I did attach one new document that went through some of the municipalities, and I'm hoping to build on this, that went through some of their outdoor lighting regulation ordinances of Middleton, Fitchburg, New Glarus, and Lake Geneva. And I just started to compile some of similarities, some of the differences, so we can kind of have a place to start when we're looking at what an ordinance here might look like. Something of note was that Fitchburg, New Glarus, and Lake Geneva all don't have required public street lighting regulations, so anything in the public right of way is not regulated. I know that's something that got brought up last time about making Recording stopped.

Oops, sorry.

Recording in progress.

Of making any of our public right of way lighting non compliant then or have to grandfather that in. So I don't know if anyone has any questions based on just looking through this document. I know that there's some nitty gritty stuff like lumens and temperature that we will need to kind of explore more as we continue to look at this. But I'm open to any questions.

Any questions or comments from commissioners? Yes. Commissioner Begnaski.

I think you did a good job putting the chart together. And is the planning department now gonna kinda synthesize this and say, okay, this looks like it, and then also share what the dark sky standards or regulations are?

Yeah. I think that's definitely the next steps based on direction of the commission as well. But that would definitely be the next steps. Probably look into some more municipalities than just these four and see what other municipalities have in place or don't have in place, and then see what might be appropriate in our community.

From my point of view, I think we need a consistent

Can Well,

you put your mic on?

Across the mic. I think we need a consistent lighting policy across the state doesn't seem to say it is. I think we need a consistent policy across the city. And, when I read the articles that you supplied us with, like the dark sky type thing, I think those regulations are well based.

Any other questions or comments from commissioners? Commissioner Stan.

So were were the other municipalities that you looked into, were they, like, using dark skies as a guideline or a starting point? Or Do you know?

From my recollection, I think that some of them were looking to dark skies. I don't know if any of them are truly dark skies communities, but they might have been looking for some guidance from the Dark Skies Initiative. And then a lot of I had noticed that some of them were looking at each other's ordinances while they were drafting their own as well. So I'd say that, yeah, it might be a starting point, but I don't know for sure if they are officially dark skies recognized communities.

I will say it was interesting seeing this on the agenda because I recently talked to a constituent who was like, hey. Have you talked about light pollution yet? And they gave me an article, and I read it. And I was like, you know, it makes sense. Like, I get it.

My question for you, and you kinda mentioned this earlier, and I just wanna make sure I heard you correctly. So for there's kinda two parts to this. One, the current lights that are already placed in public right away, what will we do with those in order to, I guess, be up to code, assuming we kinda vote on a code and it passes, what do we do with the current existing lights?

So I guess it depends what the ordinance ends up being and whether they're compliant with them or not. I would say, as it stands, a lot of and what I was seeing from other communities is any existing lighting was grandfathered in. And then it came to a lot of it came to design review when there's new lighting or especially new developments that this ordinance then applies. And like some of these communities, didn't even include anything that was in the public right away, and that wasn't part of their outdoor lighting regulation or ordinance. So it kinda depends what it looks like.

I would say that if it does include it and we have new standards, that it would probably be moving forward, and then anything else would be grandfathered in.

That would be interesting knowing that, like what is is it 7th Street with the super bright lights across, like, several blocks and then Caledonia and all that too? So then the other question I have, and I don't know if this is this body or if it's city council, but knowing that we're kinda going through this process of exploring this option, are we putting a pause to any new lights that are currently, like, in the process of being, like, petitioned to be in built in certain city cities, neighborhoods is what I'm gonna say.

Not that I'm aware of just cause right now we're doing, like, the policy research through this commission. That would probably have to be an action through the council to put a pause on any new lighting. But as of right now, new lighting can happen while we continue this research.

But can that be a recommendation from this body if we so see it that to pause the implementation of new lights until we figure out, you know, what this policy will look like or ordinance will look like? Like?

I don't see why not, but it might depend on what like, if there's a new development going in, I would assume they need to have lights in certain spots and stuff, and that would be required as part of the design review process. So that could be tricky to be able to do that.

Understandable. Any other questions or thoughts around this? Yes. Commissioner McDonald.

Yeah. Just a comment. And, a month ago, I was happened to be listening to the Larry Mueller show on Wisconsin Public Radio, and I he was talking to an author of a book about, dark skies. And, he's from, like, Galesville or Trump somewhere pretty nearby. And it was, you know, of course, my ears kinda perked up because a month ago, we were gonna have this meeting, and and it was canceled.

And I was like, wow. That's kinda weird to have this subject come up. But it it he probably talked for a half hour about how important light pollution, can harm a a community. So it was you know, this is definitely a a subject we should at

S.

And and Lake The Geneva, there's nothing going on in, let's say, Eau Claire or Green Bay? Or

Yeah. I mean, I did do this research probably two, maybe more months ago, so I can look into some of those communities as well. I definitely focus on these just because this is what I found for lighting regulation. A lot of these other communities don't necessarily have a lighting outdoor lighting regulation, or ordinance. And so this is this is what I found at the time. But I like I said, I wanna continue to do some research on some other communities, see if I can broaden that as well. Yep. Thank you.

Do you oh, sorry. Commissioner Stan, go ahead.

Thank you. I was just do you know what the rationale for not including public right of ways in the ordinance? Did they did they state the reason why they would exclude that?

I didn't see anything for why they would exclude that. I'm guessing that they wanted to be able to make their own rules in a lot of those communities. And maybe some of these I I like, I don't even know. I we're gonna have to do more research on what kinda Lumens make sense and, like, what what these other communities did, but maybe it doesn't make sense in a public right away. But that does that's not to say that if we have something for a public right away, it it could be its own thing. It could be different, I'm assuming. So just could be more, like, directing light down and and figuring out how to make it more dark skies friendly even if it's not perfect.

Yeah. I just I was just wondering if it was, like, you know, it's extraordinarily difficult to for some reason. But

Commissioner. Correct.

Some of it may come into play because, on state highways, US highways, they have to follow standards, you know, for traffic safety,

that could be part of it.

Commissioner Gary.

Thank you, mister chair. Do the regulations change when you get out of a residential neighborhood if you get into an industrial park or commercial or

There were in some of these ordinances, there were specific, places that there are exceptions. I'm just looking at like, this one, Lake Geneva has different lighting for for FAA, and communication towers that they they're not required to follow this ordinance. Security lighting, not required to follow the ordinance. I know that there was some, like, I think gas stations. They they were able to call some places out that didn't necessarily need to follow the ordinance or places that it made sense that there was more lighting. So that that seems like it can be a possibility.

In doing this, so the goal of pointing the light the light downward, in your research, have you seen issues or anybody talk about concerns of having light going to the ground? I mean, I know we we know the research about it going up. Is there research about it going down?

I haven't seen anything. Okay. But I'll make sure to make a note of that and see if there's anything out there about possible worries with the the lighting different direction of lighting.

Yeah. I'm just curious because, I mean, you know, research change every so often, and then we find out we just put this ordinance into downward light, and then we find there's a whole another issue that comes about. So Councilmember Goggins.

I'd like to go back to something the mayor brought up about, lighting projects that may be in the public budget. I appreciate the idea of maybe putting that lighting on pause if we're gonna change things because I, you know, am concerned that we're gonna spend money that we either have to, change or, I can't think of the word I wanna use right now, alter after it's done where we could have maybe saved ourselves time and a lot of money. And so I think I just want to and again, I understand the developments, private developments, that's different. Any public money that might be right now in a budget for lighting, we should put on pause until we decide what we're going to do? Because, again, I'm sitting in a lot of meetings hearing that we don't have a nickel extra.

So if we can find ways to save a nickel, let's try to do that.

Commissioner Bagneski. Well, I think it would take years to get this in place, but I think if we don't start going down that road, we'll never have consistency as far as lighting and light pollution and whether it's shining on your neighbor's lawn or is it not. I mean, these things all can be regulated by looking at some of the dark sky codes. You don't have to follow them for a to the t, but I think they've done a lot of work for us. So we just read through those and figure out what other cities what the dark sky code says, and, I think it's gonna save us money in the long run. But, again, you can't save money if you don't even spend any money, so I understand what Aaron is saying. So but I think it's worth starting down that road.

Commissioner Stanton.

Thank you. Going back to the the issue of the right of ways, it was just kind of occurred to me. I know, you know, some of the roads that go through our community are like state highways, and we don't always have final say on the design and, you know, what happens to those roads. But on the as far as the lighting of those roads, is that usually, like I'm thinking of, like, Jackson or something like, does this does the state do the lighting, or do we do the lighting? I because it's, like, not on the road. It's kinda up on the curb. So just whose responsibility is the lighting for that currently?

I don't know exactly. I know that so the DOT is currently doing corridor study through 35, 53, and 16. I think that they are required to do, like, a bare minimum of lighting. We can request that and do a cost share for more pedestrian scale lighting and and such. From my understanding, I think that it at the end of the day, it's us that maintains it, but they probably have the final say.

Any other comments? What's our timeline to be able to, I guess, kinda hammer down what we want this to be and what we're gonna recommend to go forward to the council.

I would say you guys can direct the timeline here. We're definitely going to try to hammer hammer some of this down and and get some more research done so we can provide you with the information that's necessary to keep moving forward. But, yeah, it's definitely up to you guys on what that timeline looks like.

Do we know maybe you know this or if there is a professor at any of the universities that can come and kinda talk to Lumens and and kinda do some sort of presentation around light pollution to help us and or inform us in our decision making?

That's a great idea. I don't know for sure, but I can definitely look into that.

I'm sure there's somebody. There's gotta be.

Yes.

Commissioner McDonald.

Well, that's ironic because the person I was mentioning that was on the public radio is somewhat local. But, unfortunately, I don't remember what his name was. So I tried to look him up on my little computer in my on my phone, and I couldn't find anything about an author about dark skies from Trempelo or Galesville. So, I mean, it probably somebody could maybe I could look into it a little bit more. But that guy was pretty sharp, and he lives less than a half hour away.

You could probably document the show.

Yeah. So it it might be through it might be easiest to look through the Larry Mueller show. And, now granted, he has lots of guests. But and I do have one more comment.

Yes. Go ahead.

More to to Aaron's point about not wasting money. For the people that have paid attention to my neighborhood, Wash Burn neighborhood, for the meetings for the last five or six years that I've been going to them. I've been asking for lighting in our neighborhood for several years, and it looks like it's possibly gonna happen. It would be a shame to have it be postponed, but I do understand. You know?

I mean, I'd be more like, oh, darn. But I do understand that we we should save the money if we have to.

In some of these other so to that point, thank you for mentioning that because I think that's something to keep in consideration too. When it comes to this particular light regulation, will it also control how many lights are, like, on a street. So for example, 7th Street is always gonna be my example right now. Like, I feel like there's I don't know. It seems like a gazillion.

Right? But there's quite a few lights that are spaced out across that whole block similar to what was just done on the North Side. What street is it? Is it Rose? Is is that it? The going over the viaduct from Copeland Saint Andrew. Saint Andrew? I think so. I yeah. I don't remember.

But there's a new street. They just did a bunch of construction. I should know this because it's around the corner from my house, but whatever. And they just put the lights, and it seems like there's just so many of them, like, you know, next to each other. And then I wonder, like, is there a way to space that out? Or, like, when we talk about dark matter, does that play a role in it too? Like, how many lights we have on a block? So

Yeah. It'll be I can definitely research more on some other communities that maybe did include public right of way lights in their ordinance. Like I said, three out of the four didn't, but I definitely think that the number of lights matters. And if that's something that the commission wants to move forward with and the council wants to move forward with, I think that that's a possibility.

Copeland To Rose. That street. That's the street. Any other conversation? Oh, yep. Commission council member Goggins.

I'll just make one more comment. I what I hear on the north side is that Onalaska Avenue, which is very well lit, and George Street, again, which is very well lit, they're just thinking that when people discuss it, there's just too many lamp posts giving off too much light. They appreciate the light, and they do want it facing down. Because, again, you're walking on the sidewalk, and that's where you need to be seen, and that's where you want to feel safe. But again, if this pool of light is overarching onto that pool, we're just wasting.

We're wasting. So we just need to figure out kind of a, you know, how many how many feet do they need to be apart. So thank you. I appreciate that.

And that actually the rest of my point that I didn't make was that we have so many light poles in certain neighborhoods and none in others, and they're wanting light. And so I'm I think that has to be a part of the regulation too. So I don't know if that's, like, talking to streets or whoever to figure out what's the justification of that and how we change that so that we can ensure other neighborhoods are just as lit, right, as some of the ones that have an abundance of light. Yes. Commissioner Stanton.

I just have a comment. So I there was, back when the neighborhood associations were getting their community

Now it's the community arrangement grants?

Something The else capital improvement funds that they could allocate. I remember we had someone come and talk to our neighborhood association, so that's the Holy Trinity Longfellow, who was from because they were going through the process of doing the downtown and like around Cass And King. And they had done a lot of this research already. And so they were kind of informing us because I think we we had talked about it a little bit on some our streets, and we didn't end up using it for that. And I think that's how 7th Street got their runway lights.

And so I think I can try to figure out who it was that came and talked to our neighborhood association because they were very knowledgeable and they had asked a lot of these same questions. And, you know, specifically on the issue of because we also had this issue of like, why is there so many? And it's like this kind of like so each lamp creates this pool of light, and you just don't you want the pools to kind of, like, touch each other so that you're not going light, dark, light, dark, light, dark, because it's, like, kinda hard on your eyes, and especially, like, for for drivers and stuff to be going through, like, you know, a really light area and then going into darkness, then going back into light, and your eyes have to adjust to that. So that was, like, a kind of, like, a constraint of you want each cone of light to touch the next one. Fascinating.

I can find out who it was that came and talked to our group because I know they had gone through, like, a lot of this if if we can't find the other, expert who is probably also has this knowledge.

Commissioner McDonald.

I don't know if there's any irony here, but I I feel that, with the downtown, neighborhood association, I think, council member Kahlo and some of her

She was involved in that.

Definitely involved in the lighting for Cass Street and probably King Street. And they spent many hours trying to figure the lighting lighting out. And I live on Cameron Avenue, and it is extremely dark. So that's why I keep bringing this up. Now councilmember Kahlo brought up at the our last meeting that evidently we're up for getting our lighting possibly.

And that's why I mentioned, you know, if we have to postpone it, well, so be it. But there are parts of town that are extremely dark. And I used to go to work at three in the morning every day. I don't. I'm retired now. But, it was a little bit scary 03:00 in the morning. It was very, very dark in our neighborhood.

Thank you. Commissioner Begnarski.

And what I would say is we need a consistent plan across the city to say and it doesn't all have to be the same. Some neighborhoods, maybe this and then downtown or college area could have different lighting regulations, but depending upon the sector of town, lighting can can change. But at least somebody then has an idea as far as why are the lights here and not over here. Well, it's because and we need that kind of definition, which when I talk to people, nobody seems to really have a big handle on overall the city lighting schedule.

Any other comments or questions? Alright. Sienna. This is just a item for information so we don't have to do a vote or anything. Okay. But in regards to the recommendation for council in terms of sorry. I just blanked real bad. The recommendation for council to possibly look at holding off on other light projects, Is that something we should take up now, or should we wait on the next agenda for our next meeting?

I think that I will bring that up with our engineering department, and then we can bring that back at the next meeting.

Okay. Thank you. Alright. Seeing no other conversation or discussion, we'll move to agenda item number three, discussion on the purpose of commission and goals for the community.

Okay. I can give a little background here. I'm just gonna pull up the ordinance for the creation of the NRC. And with Mayor Shandell and Councilmember Goggin kind of beginning to help lead this commission, we just thought it was a good time to evaluate where we want to move with this commission. And I'm going to try to give a very brief background for those of you that aren't aware.

So this commission was formed between 2010 and 2012. It was when neighborhood associations started to get created, and a lot of them were having the same issues. This seemed like a place that made sense for the neighborhood associations to come together discuss some of those issues and figure out solutions to those issues. So that is when the Neighborhood Revitalization Commission was founded. And at the same time, neighborhood associations were increasing.

And they started to do some projects that specifically related to revitalizing neighborhoods. So some of those included love your neighborhood events, residential parking in neighborhoods, there was a mayor's conference on neighborhoods. They did neighborhood walk throughs with each of the neighborhood associations just to walk the neighborhood, get to know your neighborhoods, stuff like that. The paint and fix up program, which we actually have an active paint and fix up program grant right now for the downtown neighborhood. So And they worked on some of these projects to revitalize neighborhoods in the city.

Since then, the Neighborhood Revitalization Commission has kind of ebbed and flowed with different goals, with different practices, and we're kind of looking to bring it back to you guys and get some advice on where we want to move forward with this. Let me just pull up the purpose so we can look at this too. Act as an advisory body to the Common Council in implementing the comprehensive plan, primarily the neighborhoods and housing element, and any neighborhood association plans. Its purpose is to support and provide education to, as well as advise on policy for the city's neighborhoods. Then some of the powers and duties: Provide direction in neighborhood residents on how to advocate for neighborhood development, planning, and improvement projects, advise the Common Council, make recommendations to the city with regard to capital and operating budget, advise the council on methods to utilize available resources.

Sorry, this is kind of lagging here, so

it's hard to

read. Explore and advise projects and policy affecting neighborhoods, specifically housing, rehabilitation, preservation, economic development, and so on. And then recommend strategies neighborhoods and provide staff with input on a variety of community projects and programs. We sat down with Mayor Chandel and Councilmember Goggin, and I don't know if they want to kind of touch on a little bit about where they saw the direction of the Commission going and their thoughts, I feel like they had really good thoughts about where we go with the Commission and how we work to revitalize neighborhoods. So I don't know if you guys want to give a little spiel as well.

When we spoke, and since I've become a council member, I've been coming to the NRC meetings. And my thought sometimes has been, what are we doing to actually revitalize neighborhoods? And not always like the I mean, there are big important things like housing and all those things. But neighborhoods are just that. What are we doing to strengthen the bonds of neighborhoods and create communities within neighborhoods?

So I would like to see the NRC become maybe not 100%, maybe not even 50%, but a certain percentage of our time, we try to figure out ways to reach out into these our city's neighborhoods and see what we can do to enhance them and revitalize parts of them.

I'll just ditto that. I think in our conversation, we've also talked to kinda you know, at one point, we knew our neighbors. Right? And and we were kinda losing that. And so thinking about how do we truly look at and I'm probably used the word revitalization a couple times, not because of the name, but look at revitalizing some of that. Right? Like, the neighbor interactions. And don't get me wrong. I know some of that might happen with neighborhood associations. But to be also honest, a lot of neighborhood associations, depending on what neighborhood you're in, they've lost so many members that it's just the same group of people that, show up all the time.

And so the question is how are we revitalizing our neighborhood committees or associations? And then how we are we also kinda making sure that we're building bonds across neighborhoods, whether it's renters or homeowners? Right? And I think sometimes it's very easy to get into the battle of, like, well, they're renters, so they don't care. But I don't always think that to be true.

I think if you haven't taken the time to actually go and invite and, you know, build that relationship, then it's easy to stick with the with their renters, they don't care. But, also, the reality too is they might have jobs, and they might be busy just like some homeowners might be busy, and they don't all wanna go to a meeting. So what can we be doing to reach out to our community to revive our neighborhoods and and this community as a whole? So there's kind of that piece for me and thinking about there's yeah. And there's the improvements and projects, etcetera, but there's also the people. And how do we put the people back in the center of the revitalization pieces beyond some of the improvement projects?

So I'm open for you guys to have a discussion here, but we also I also have index cards if everyone kinda wanna wants to write down, like, one or two goals or how we could accomplish some of those things. Let's start with that maybe, and open to you guys having a discussion as well. But then maybe next meeting, we can finish the activity, come back, compile all of those thoughts, and then have everyone re rank what those top priorities might be for this commission.

And as as we do that, can you remind us what neighborhoods are not present right now?

Alright. Let's see. Downtown Neighborhood Association is not here. Palpogue, Hamilton, Weigand Hogan, Gina,

and

Lower North Side. K. And Hinchin. Thank you. Springbrook Clean has not met since I have been here.

I'm not a representative, but I live in the Lower North Side, so you got me.

Alright. So I'll come around, pass out some index cards, some pens, and people can come up one, two, three ideas maybe for for some actions, some goals for this committee, and then we can maybe wrap this up next meeting and and compile those and then come up with more rankings.

Commissioner?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to eliminate one thing before we start this. The city, for most of the neighborhood groups, maybe seven, eight years ago, would give you a couple thousand dollars. You'd mail out a they'd mail out a postcard or a card to everybody in your neighborhood to come to the meeting.

Well, we send out 1,200 cards, and maybe we get five people curiosity seekers, and you're lucky if one or two sustain themselves. You know? We'll send them a postcard and hope they come. But to me, we've tried that twice, and and every day we go we've probably spent 10,000 or $20,000, and it's very ineffective. So let's think outside the box and try to find a more effective way to, you know, get them to the meeting versus, you know, the the postcard maneuver.

Yeah. I hear that. And the nonprofit sector, when we started our organization, one of the things we did is we actually walked the neighborhoods and we talked to the community and that's kinda how we got our name out there. That's how folks need to utilize us as a resource. And maybe that's something we start doing with neighborhoods. It's like, maybe it's a day that the neighborhood association goes out and say like, hey. We're gonna knock on every door in our neighborhood and invite them and let them know why it's important for them to be a part of a neighborhood association. Council member Goggins. I wanna just throw it all together.

I want to if you'll just give me indulge me just for a little anecdotal thing about neighborhoods. In March, we had a shooting on Logan Street, which is my neighborhood. And as awful as that was, the thing that still just hits me and continues on today is that the neighbors all came out. You know, like, what's going on? Oh, and I don't know you.

Who are you? Who are you? And that has been like a rolling thing where now I didn't know people that lived eight, nine houses away from me, but I know who they are now. And the people across the alley, I didn't know that the new lady or the older people had moved out and the new lady moved in, but I do now. And so we have found that and, again, I don't wanna suggest that happen again, but but some sort of event, you know, and I don't and, again, we don't have any money, but some you know, if we can figure something out.

To bring people just outside of their houses. And, you know, if you know, to figure out who lives over there and who's new, you know, type of thing. Because, again, it is our neighborhood's gonna have a block party, and I'm amazed. And I'm like, this is sweet. So just thank you for indulging me.

Commissioner McDonald.

Yeah. To to piggyback on Aaron there is that the national night out is August 5, and our neighborhood's been very lucky. We've had a 100 to 200 people come to these for the last three or four years, and we're planning on a 100 to a 150 again. Hope it happens, but she's right. And you're right.

When we get people together, we don't necessarily know each other, but now you might know another three or four. And it it there's a ripple effect, and it it's very important. So I hopefully maybe the idea of revitalizing our neighborhoods has to be done, you know, in our own neighborhoods and then that as a community.

Yeah.

Commissioner McNasky?

Yeah. And I would agree. National Night Out is fantastic. I'm I'm the Bluffside Neighborhood Association, and we get 200 plus people. And you meet people that you live down the street, or you live over there and so on, so you really get to know people that way, neighbors and so on.

And then I think it's an avenue for people to let you know where they stand, whether it's something like sidewalks or the Grand Ed Bluff Trail or whether it's the house on Farnam Street. I mean, I can't believe there must have been a 150 people at those meetings venting, and they had some word event then. So I think it's a connection to city hall and hearing what's going on in the city in general. I've always thought that strong cities are only strong because of strong neighborhoods, and so I kinda live by that little motto. What are we supposed to put on this card?

Any ideas you have about how to revitalize the globe. Okay. Okay. Suggest you maybe we should try something.

Go ahead, commissioner Saleh.

Thanks. So one idea that I was kinda thinking of because our neighborhood just doesn't really participate in the neighborhood night out, and I just like, our we have a hard enough time just even having regular meetings. And, you know, people do show up if there's, like, something happening. You know, I've seen the meetings get quite large when there was, like, you know, something that so people are getting the message. It's not that people don't know that the meetings are happening. It's just hard to get enough interest. And so

and

we also just we don't really have any kind of budget for, you know, putting on any kind of party or so I don't know, like, if we if if we tried to do something like an event, I think it would be pretty lame because it would only be, like, three of us planning it without any kind of budget. So I think if there was, like, something like, some things that the city could provide and not necessarily money, but just, like, you know, bring a fire truck and and park it and, you know, maybe bring, like, some of the police dogs so that people could meet, you know, some of the you know, just some of the city services that people might be might be interested in kinda coming out to to, you know, bring their kids and make it kind of a fun sort of thing. So there might be things that the that the city could kind of do to help draw people to an event without, you there'd be the staff hours, I guess, for the firefighters and the police officers. But it might it might, you know, attract some kids, you know, and families would wanna come and do that sort of thing.

And and then the I know a lot of the food trucks around town, you know, all you really have to do is just invite them, and they're more than happy to come and show up and provide food that people can purchase. So yeah. Ideas.

Councilmember Goggins.

Just to address that, the police department pretty much runs this, and they'll provide you hot dogs, chips, cookies. And last year, we had the and we're doing it this year too. Have National Night Out at Harry Jailson, and they brought so when any fired people do come, they bring a truck because, god forbid, they get called, but they have to go. But we had police officers show up from NROs to detectives. We had different just people drop by, drop in, and they were going around to the different neighborhood meetings or the different national night out.

So it was in you know? And what what worked for us kinda is they people could smell the hot dogs being grilled. And they were like, what's going and we had and we also we provide Harry Jaelson provided, hot fudge sundaes. So, again, it was new for us last year, but it was we're looking forward to doing it again. But you there is help out there to get the, you know, the supplies, if you will. And I I believe it's officer Jovanna Nedland.

Yeah. Okay. Mhmm.

Yeah.

Okay. So we would just contact the police department to do it? Jovana Nedland. Yeah. At LaProsse. Okay. Yep. But I I'm I mean, I'm wondering, like, because if because if they're kind of going around to the different, like, all in one night, but if it was maybe sort of, like, you know, this month is this neighborhood, and then it might be a lot too much for them to have it to do it on different so that it could be kind of, like, a more concentrated concentrated thing. Thing.

I think that would work, though, because you have the neighborhood resource officers. So those folks in that particular neighborhood would probably be willing to do some stuff, and then you have the fire department show up. And as long as we know when an emergency happens, they're leaving us. And the fire department used to do these fire demonstrations too that kids really love, and actually grown ups should probably watch and learn from too. You wanna talk about what's on the cards?

It's up to you. We can we can discuss that now. We can collect it and compile it and bring it back later. Whatever works.

What do you all think? You wanted to talk about what's in your cards now, compile it later? Let's just do it now. Let's just go down the road. We'll start with commissioner McDonald and just take it on out.

Okay. So, basically, I I just wrote, tried to get more people involved in neighborhood associations, which has been pretty much a ongoing problem for a lot of the neighborhood associations. Washburn, from what I understand, I've been with them for about eight years, has been around for about twenty some years, so they were very early in the neighborhood association process. We've all of a sudden been gaining some new people. Now whether they stick, we'll have to see.

But I like the idea of maybe well, I'm not sure if I like the idea of knocking on everybody's door, but but still maybe make it more if you run into somebody, bring it up because we do need to get more people involved. And then the idea of having more events, I brought up national night out. And at our national night out, the police were there. The fire department was there. The only thing we paid for, I believe, is we have music usually, and I think Jim does at Bluffside as well.

And that was, like, a $100 or something. I mean, it it's it's pretty reasonable because, otherwise, everything else is just labor. You know? And we have a pretty strong core of volunteers, but maybe not every neighborhood is that lucky. But, anyway, that's that's my spiel.

Commissioner Stead.

I I kind of already shared my it's just the how to how to do a block party that isn't lame.

Gotcha. Right. Commissioner Cratt.

So I just wrote it sounds like I'm very aligned with what commissioner Gagan and or council member Gagan and mayor Sean Bell were saying. Seems like we're looking for more organic ways, you know, because you can't really force it. You gotta make people wanna be there. For staff, I know NACCO had some really great resources. I think as a kid growing up on the South Side Of Lacrosse, we played football on the street.

You know, as crazy as that's as crazy as sounds today. And it it was a bus ride. It was Westin Street. But so there's some really good ideas there on, you know, just asking the street department to put up the barricades for a block and letting the kids play. And then maybe it'd be worth studying the concept of third place and work to make sure as many residents in our city have access to a third place within walking distance

Thank you. So I'm just gonna throw out a couple. One was to work to develop innovative ways to build community relationships. And then the other one, something that I've seen before and, actually, I had a meeting with the the unsheltered group today, and something I brought up was some sort of, like, neighborhood campaign. Sometimes those go really well.

I noticed that they kinda ebb and flow. But if there was, like, a neighborhood campaign that we could create that talks about, like, compassion and care for neighbors or, you know, something even more creative than that. But just thinking of that, like, a campaign that we can push across the city that talked about, you know, really being there supporting and caring for neighbors. Then I put block parties, of course, and then I threw in neighborhood competitions. So I really think that sometimes we thrive off of competition.

So if we even said from each neighborhood, you're gonna do, like, a shoe drive or a food drive, whatever that looks like, and just kinda have the neighborhoods compete in a friendly manner, I think that would be cool. Commissioner Begnaski?

Well, one of the things I think I was trying to come up with something like more neighborhood meetings out. And, like, for instance, instance, there's a world music day. It's across the world, and we usually try to find a musician then to come on that day, and they play songs for quite some time, and people just come off and listen to it. But then you turn to your neighbor or whoever shows up. Another thing that seems to draw, and this isn't for adults necessarily, but we have movie nights.

And if we could have more of those movie nights, I think kids come out of the house and maybe too many people talk about getting them off their little machines or whatever and listen to music or watch the movie or whatever. We've had as many as 75 students come out at night, kids. So I think if we could have more of those, but that's about it.

When you all do your movie night, do you, like, use a screen when you get it from somewhere else? Or

Right. Right.

Right. So

screen up. They set it up within a couple of minutes. I couldn't believe I would just blow the thing up and then usually somebody contributes some treats of some sort or another. And you advertise it a week or so in advance so people get it on their calendar and so on. And again, it depends upon, I know we've had two years ago, it was rained out. Can't help those type of things. But, again, it gets the kids together, and then the parents start talking also. Awesome. I like them.

Commissioner Geary.

Thank you, mister mayor. I just thought of something kinda crazy, but, you know, when you get all these gatherings, people don't go around and talk to each other. The two or three people at your neighbor, that your friends you know what I mean? It's like you have 30 different little sections where you're talking to the people you know, but you're really not getting to know everybody in the other 19 sections. How about this where I'm crazy? You get together. You have some kind of potluck. You get a lot of people there. But once you get there, you do something like speed dating. You've got all these different tables or chairs, and you, for four or five minutes, you sit there one on one with somebody you don't know, the horn goes off, you move to the next table.

You actually it kinda forces you to do it, but after you do it a while, I think things would really loosen up or something because the big gatherings it it and I've been to and we've all been to a million. Usually, there's a bunch of individual groups in the gatherings. It isn't like milling around. You know what I mean? Might be a crazy idea, but it wouldn't cost anything to try it. Right? Right.

Councilmember Goggins.

Okay. So mine has engaged the neighbors in the neighborhoods to, like, do do something, and I capitalized the word do. And perhaps, like and I let and I wrote a competition of some sort. And beautiful yard before and after competitions, like, where someone takes a picture of their yard before, it might be just something not. And then it then they just clean it up, and it's you're not telling them they have to spend any money, but it's just doing some make what did it look like before and what did it look like after?

And then or even if you're challenging your neighbors to go out and pick up their block, you know, when the when the they see plastic bottles or paper or wrappers or whatever. And then you you, you know, you got every all of us have cell phones at the end of our hands. You post a pic, and you get you get points for every every pic that your neighborhood has posted, and it's it's a competition. And it's but we gotta make it fun, and we've gotta make it somebody's gotta somebody's gotta be the kind of the ringleader of the circus. And so that, you know, vibrant leaders make vibrant neighborhoods make safer cities.

And we always have the neighbors app. Go ahead, commissioner McDonough.

Okay. Once again, piggybacking on here. I I yeah. So for the people that probably know this, I I pick up garbage five or six days a week in my neighborhood for the last five or six years, and I'm up to about six cases of bags that I've used. So that's about 180 bags of garbage.

So it can be done. For me, it's a way to revitalize my injured knee, so that's why I do it, but other being addicted to picking up garbage. But we, I I think that there are people in each neighborhood that are the doers, and I know who they are in our neighborhood. And, I mean, I we came up with a a competition. So I won the first year because I do it, you know, every day.

And a young gal, probably 20 early twenties, won it this year. And we took a picture of the garbage she picked up and, that went on our neighborhood website. And then she won a gift certificate to yes, a quick trip. And, you know, I was super happy, and I think she's gonna be one of these people that comes to the meetings now. Won something, so there is something to be said about competition.

Gina, where would you like us to go after this?

So I've been taking notes as you guys have been speaking. I think what we can do is I can send out this document, and people can come prepared to the next meeting with some of their highest ranked priorities. And then we can kind of go through and rank and and kinda set an action plan for the this commission then.

Awesome. Thank you. Anything else on agenda item three? Seeing nothing, we will move to agenda item four, five zero one four three, update on the zoning and subdivision code project.

Yeah. So as you guys can see, we use the same agenda item as we did for the city plan commission. So there's a lot of attachments, for this project, but I just kinda wanted to give a brief update on this project as you guys have been kind of involved from the start. Tim and I had attended all the Neighborhood Association meetings. As we talked about a couple months ago, we ended up combining some of the Neighborhood Association meetings.

So we did a Northside Neighborhood Association meeting. We did a downtown Washburn and Palpogue, Holy Trinity, Wygant, and Hinchin, and then Gina and Bluffside. So we just wrapped those up. I I think last week or maybe two weeks ago, we finished up with Bluffside and Gina. Those have all went really well.

I'd say there was maybe between twenty and thirty attendees at at all of those. So I felt like it was really good to kinda combine some of those neighborhood associations for better attendance. And that was just kind of a zoning code one zero one. So that was just kind of a a briefing on on what we're looking at, what the zoning code means, and where we're moving from here. So we anticipate coming back to the neighborhood associations at least at least once, maybe twice, as we continue to work through this process.

Our survey just closed on Tuesday. We received over 800 responses responses on our survey, which, I thought was pretty good for a zoning code survey because it's not maybe the most exciting title or something that people even realize, how important that is. And so that was our first survey round. And what we're looking at is really kind of continuing to do our analysis and come up with some recommendations within the next couple months. We'll probably go maybe a little bit more quiet here as we as we try to take some of the feedback we received from the survey, from the neighborhood meetings.

We're going to be working with some stakeholders such as architects, construction companies, people like that, and sit down and and kinda get in the nitty gritty of the code. So that's gonna be coming up this month, and then and then we're gonna be, starting to kinda draft some language, look at what things could look like, might look like, and then we're gonna come back to the public with with some of the options and and, specifically, the options of what we've heard throughout this process and what we heard throughout the comprehensive plan. So does anyone have questions on any of that? I know that's a lot.

Any questions? Alright. Well, when you all kinda get your findings and stuff together, is this one of the first committees you go to, or do you go to all the other ones first? Or who

how does that work?

So our city plan commission is, our our steering committee for this project. So they'll definitely be they kinda have those updates regularly, every month. But we can certainly bring that to this committee as well and kind of if we want to do the same presentation as we do at CPC, we're happy to do that and and can bring that back here as well.

Okay. Alright. Seeing no other questions or comments, we'll move on. But before I adjourn the meeting, and I don't let me know if I can do this or not. I don't know. I'm just doing stuff. But what I would like to implement on the agenda is something around neighborhood concerns and celebrations. If you all are okay with that, I think you get a lot of information from your neighborhood. To share. Yeah. And I think it would be nice to hear some of those from you all. Do I need, like, approval for that, or can I just use my mayoral power to be like, hey? Yes. Yes. Go ahead.

So and I think it's a fantastic idea. But can you give me an example of, like, what you'd be looking for?

Yeah. Like, for example, during a flood, I got an email that a council member in their neighborhood went out and actually helped neighbors get water out of their basements and things like that to concerns of our street keeps flooding, and we need y'all to do something about it. Right? Or this morning or afternoon, I actually went to the Washburn neighborhood, and we had conversations about some of the unhoused, unsheltered situations happening at Burns Park and things like that. So all the way to if there was just a nice neighbor that you know that did something great to acknowledge that, and then I think, we can kinda figure out what's the next step after we hear concerns and celebrations that's happening in neighborhoods.

Maybe some of those celebrations get mentioned in that segment of, the council meeting or or something like that. No. Alright. Meeting adjourned. Thanks, people.