Parks and Recreation Committee - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. I'd like to call the meeting to order. If you could all rise and join with me for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge my 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. As far as roll call, if I could ask the members to announce their names.

I will begin. My name is Bob Vang.

Jane Lasty. Louis

Fernandez. Kim Riester.

Okay. And Elise is Elise and Laura will not be joining us today. Can I get a motion to approve the minutes from the previous meeting? I'll approve. I second. Okay. And it looks as though we have some public participation today. Would you please announce yourselves?

There you go. Thank you. My name is Alex Schultz. I am the alderperson for District 9. I'm up here representing, I guess, Sculpture Valley.

I'll make my comments based on that association, even though it is tangential to my concerns about the city looking really well when they're redoing the Houdini Tower and putting out a positive image for the city. I refer this back to committee. I had a number of concerns. Just for a little bit of background context, Sculpture Valley was the one that did the first five installations beginning in 2015. Most of those were done with a competition, although a couple of those were just artist selections from local artists.

Every one of those competitions had some rules that went with it and I just passed out basically a clause, copyright clause for all of those competitions, essentially, that was entered into with Creative Downtown, which was Sculpture Valley's partner selecting the imagery. So this is one of the concerns. Like, if we're going to do this and bring back imagery, we need to either have a new agreement between the city and Creative Downtown since they weren't part of this selection process, or come up with another legal agreement that could be shared with the artist, which I think is entirely doable. I understand now we might be going in a different direction and excluding these images, I think would be detrimental given the catalog of images we have to work with. So there's that.

There's the legal question which you guys may decide to go with this new route, or I think it's certainly viable to go a different route, enter into an easy clause with Creative Downtown to extend the usage agreement that was part of those original installations. I don't think there would be any legal ramification for doing so as long as artists were on board and the city and downtown were on board. The second concern I have is the selection of a wide range of media. And I would first say that when I watched the video of the selection process, everyone on this committee asked all the right questions. You guys did an excellent job.

You did the thing you were supposed to do, which was select your two favorites and come up with a collection. I do think there could have been some more defining criteria which would have helped create an installation of 12 images that have some cohesion. One of the questions is asked, is it weird to have artists and photography in the same panel? And I would say there's an option and a way to do that, which is also something this committee could decide to do if you went that route. And that is to have a clause on the tower itself, on one of the panels, that says these images were selected by the Appleton Arts Committee as their favorite from the first so and so seasons.

I think there needs to be something that defines why there's this mishmash of imagery. If you're from Appleton, probably recognize them. But if you're not from Appleton and driving by this tower and you see some artworks, some photography, some professional photography, some amateur stuff, and then a cultural, a couple cultural images, you can have no idea why this is up there or what the context is. So you can do that with some kind of signage either on the tower or next to it. And that's certainly an option if you guys decided, hey, we'll stick with the ones we selected.

But there should be something for the public to understand why they were selected. Alternatively, I would think, what I was thinking to suggest to the committee was to go back and do this twice. Basically parse out all the artwork pieces and parse out all the photography, even though it's amateur and professional photography. Do two rounds of selections, and then you would have yourself two sets where you could put one set up for a year or two, and then go back to the next set and put that up for a year or two. Which is, I think the goal is to repurpose some of this stuff to save the city some money.

It's getting more costly to create these panels. I'm sure it's upwards of 2,500 to 3,000 now, given what it used to cost us to do it. And then lastly, there is another option. And I did talk to the mayor about this, is potentially another route. And that is to put out a call for artists to create a singular installation.

You could have area artists or go a little bit broader if you wanted to, and create 12 works as a singular work, put out a call for entries to create something that's very visually interesting, stimulating, vibrant. I think the challenge sometimes with photography contests is what you end up with is going be a little lackluster. The installation there right now, there's not a lot of vibrancy and brightness to it. It's a lot of sort of medium tone. I mean, they're great photos, but they don't have a lot of punch.

And if you're traveling through the city, most people don't stop to look at the photographs. They're just looking for an impact. What I said the last time the selection process happened is you need to be careful about what you put in there and make sure that it's vibrant, colorful and punchy because that's kind of the function it serves. So those the, I guess, base comments. If you guys have any questions for me, I'll jump back into my chair or I can stay here if you want to ask me some questions. Actually, it's public comment, I'm sorry. I'll go back in the chair and if you want to ask questions of the Aldi person, you can do that. Okay.

That was a lot of information there. Did everyone get a full understanding of that? What I was getting from that are we have about possibly three different routes that we could go into. The first thing being the clause. Now when it comes to this clause, I'm guessing are we addressing the prize money for the Okay, sorry about that.

There was no prize money awarded for any of the artists that participated in our competitions. I don't believe the city had any prize money from what I understand. So was basically the award was to show your artwork on the tower. The installations that were done through Sculpture Valley, agreement was between Appleton Downtown Incorporated and Sculpture Valley. So that agreement is with the artist.

There is a clause, if you read it, that says ADI gives permission to other entities as they see fit to maybe post these again or post them in perpetuity. So it covers it, but there is no it's not quite definitive enough to say that the city of Appleton now, without the involvement of Appleton Downtown, Inc, putting these up again, is covered. So it's really just a matter of creating some legalese that says Appleton Downtown Inc. And Sculpture Valley give permission or extend the rights from the original contest to the city of Appleton to reinstall these photos for another season. Pretty simple.

I think we can run it past legal, and I don't think it would be an issue. Personally, I would like to see that because you have a far greater cache of imagery to put up there, you can create something more dynamic. I think if we go the route we're suggesting to keep it clean and easy, which is to basically restrict it to the ones that were managed by the city in the last three seasons, excluding the ones that are up there now, which I think also if you're going do that should be included in the process. You know, you're limiting yourself to kind of all photography, but some of that is very cultural related and some of them are more natural and, I guess, community related. Guess I'd rather see us tackle the legal challenge, which I think is small, and allow you guys to do another round of selections if you even want to do that, if you want to stay with the originals.

The one other comment I failed to make up there was in the selection process, there are two, I think, that were selected from a singular professional photographer and also two that were selected from one of the singular artists, which is a little skewed when you think about all the artists and people that submitted photography. So you want to be careful. I think if you did it again, I would suggest making sure there's a limit of one of any one individual so that at least you're not doubling up. And again, that question was also asked. You guys asked all the questions.

I just don't think you got to the right answers when you were trying to tease out those questions. So as far as the legal stuff goes, I would suggest you send it back to city's legal and say, come up with a clause that allows us to use what we have. And there I have no qualms with Appleton Downtown or Sculpture Valley giving the city permission to do so.

Okay. You're you're you're mic'd up. Oh, Oh, I'm I'm sorry about that. Where is that?

Agree.

Okay. If the chair is willing, would it be okay if we kind of had Lily give you an overview of the process we went through in terms of working with the city attorney to make the recommendation we did in terms of how to move forward? The other piece I want to remind folks about is at the end of our meeting last time, we did mention we have money in the budget for the 2026 budget for procuring new panels. This interim process of selecting existing panels that we have rights to was really just to give it a refresh temporarily. So my recommendation is to take the information you're getting from Alder Schultz, the information you'll get from staff, but also move forward in a way where we're not spending a lot of your time and energy and staff time and energy on something that's going to be temporary, knowing we've budgeted for new panels for a process in 'twenty six, which is yet to be determined.

So if you're open to that, Lily can kind of review everything staff has gone through.

Okay. I'd certainly be open to that. What do the members view? Absolutely.

You got it. Thank you. Yeah. So once it was received back to us to bring it back to you, Public Arts Committee, I did meet with the attorney's office. And they gave me a statement that any pictures that we did have in our presence that I had documentation for would be the ones and voted on.

I did reach out to ADI for any of their records, and I only received records for 2015. And actually, all those pictures we do not have in our are not even included in the the options that you had. So there is definitely a lack of documentation. And with that, the opinion from the attorney's office was to go move forward with pictures that are within our, like, ability to portray and with our clauses that we did with our past competitions and move forward that. So that's why you see in the picture compilation, there's some that are crossed out.

Those are the ones that we don't have documentation for. The others we do have documentation for. And like Director said, yeah, this is just an interim way to get it to refresh. Another reminder is that facilities and Park and Rec staff, they won't be able to change these out until the weather gets warmer. So it won't happen until spring anyways. And then after that, then we can start a new competition as well. Let's see. Let me get my memo up, see if I'm missing anything. Any questions currently after what I said?

So when we say that they're going to be temporary, they'll probably be up for at least a year, though?

That sounds right.

Chair?

Could I ask a question to

staff? Absolutely.

When you were speaking about documentation, what specifically were you looking for? Because Sculpture Valley wasn't contacted about providing any kind of documentation. I'm sure we have everything you were looking for. What we what were you looking for specifically?

We were looking for, like, the applications of the Yes. The pictures.

We would have all of that. Oh. All of that information's available. I'm not sure why ADA wouldn't have said contact Sculpture Valley. We have all that. Sculpture Valley is the one who essentially collected the imagery, prepped it, and produced it for the installation. So that documentation is certainly available.

Oh, okay.

And I'm 100% with you. Let's not beat this silly because we are going to change it up. On the other hand, we want something that looks decent if it's going to be up there for a year. So it's a little bit of how much time do you wanna spend versus what do we wanna put up there in the public eye that looks decent, doesn't look like, okay, they're just rehashing the last three seasons because they wanna save some money. And that's the that's the appreciation I don't want the public to have.

I want to have an appreciation. We had a lot of great imagery, and now we're doing our favorites. That's kind of what I'm hoping the the committee will do. But I do appreciate that we don't wanna bring you guys in at 08:00 for more meetings. So if we can get to some place, and revisit it and do this again, I'm I I would hope the committee would be comfortable with that. But

So are you saying that all of the images that have the red X, you have the documentation for us? Yes. So they would all be back into the queue.

If that is the path the city would like to We would need go

to review all of that with the city attorney. It I think it would have been helpful to get all of this before today's meeting. This is new to me as well. Again, definitely take horsepower on staff's end. But if it's the will of the committee, we can certainly go down that path.

We've got two paths. One is to take the clean route where we already have a legal opinion, use the photos we have city legal rights to right now today. But if the committee does choose to direct staff to get the documentation from Sculpture Valley, review it with the city attorney, then we're gonna have to come back for another meeting. That's not something we could finish today.

Alderman, when you had implemented that there were some new photos. Photos Are in addition to what we have here?

Oh, I was suggesting that the current installation in the tower was not part of your selection process for picking the best of the series because it's up there currently. But it's certainly if you limited yourself to what the city owns, you might wanna consider pulling that series of 12 photographs into a photography selection of the ones the city owns. I would even though it's repeating it from this last season, it would be in a mix of new or reused photos. And I think that would that would make sense to me because it is a city installation of a photography contest. So if that's the thing you're gonna pull your 12 selections from, you should I personally, I think you would wanna consider the ones that are in there currently.

Okay. I I don't know how the rest of the members feel. I feel as though we've we we've got a lot on our plate here kind of, And we have two paths. We could either move forward in selecting what we have, or we could go back to legal and then open up that whole plethora of visuals that we have.

I'm wondering if we can't just arrange the images in such a way that one panel has your photographs, one panel has art. So then even though it will be a mixture of photographs and art, we could still do it in like a cohesive way. And then that would kind of help us be able to get this done today while still having a good looking plaza while we wait for the next round of art to come through?

Jerry, I don't think that that's possible because we just it was just said by staff that they would have to review the documentation before you could consider the ones that were just being moved. That wouldn't be possible.

Yes, go ahead.

Okay. Yes, so if the committee's will is to move forward today based on the legal opinion we have from the city attorney, we would need to move forward with the photos that the city procured through the photo contest, not the art that was procured through Sculpture Valley and Creative Downtown Inc.

So can you help us understand when you say going back to legal, what kind of timeframe does that mean? Where I'm going with this question is, I would assume and maybe that's a wrong assumption that whether we move forward with legal now, today, or at some point we would do it so that we, in the future, could have this queue of old art. I mean, it should take place no matter whether it takes place today or six months from now. Would that be accurate?

We likely wouldn't go through that process without direction from the committee just due to resource constraints for staff. Okay.

Were most of these photos from 2015, the ones that

are included in our packet? No. They would be from so I think the last competitions were 2022, 2021. I don't think 2020 had one, and then it would be 2015.

I mean, I just feel like the world has changed a lot since then, and new artists would probably really love to have a shot at getting new art, new, the world is different. So open it up. Let the legal weed through the issues that were with the disclaimer, and just hold it

for now and then revisit. Yes. Thank you, chair. Guess that's I option four is to leave it as is, not go through the machinations of trying to create a selection from what's there and and just work to the 2026 call for new artists and do that sooner than later. Again, I'm coming from this from trying to view the tower.

Obviously, I've got the background with it. If I'm a citizen, I'm going to recognize a lot of these and wonder why there's a mishmash of previous images. And I'm gonna come to some conclusion that it was city decided to save some money, and it can't cost that much. So why are they being cheap? That would be my that would be an appreciation someone might have.

If I'm from outside the community and I come in and I see the mishmash, I'm gonna be utterly confused about what it's about. And and maybe that's okay. Maybe then they're gonna ask some questions and and maybe understand that the city is trying to do some things with artwork in their central plaza. But I would I if I were from the outside and looking in, I would I would be confused and just not have any idea why there is this strange mix of photographs and artwork, which is why I would go a different route with that. So those are those are my primary misgivings about moving forward with what we're doing now.

A smaller selection of photographs to work with. Now I think it's probably fine if you wanna take what you've what you've have to work with now. There's a few seasons of photography and and do this, and maybe it just passes and no one pays much attention to it. But I would then just, yeah, maybe concentrate on the next season, getting to it sooner than later, and and, you know, the committee creating a schedule to let's, okay, we've got some funding in this fiscal year. Let's get on it. Let's create the call for artwork and get something new up sooner than later.

What's the timeline if we wanted to kind of leave it as is and say, let's get going sooner than later on the new contest? What does that time frame look like? Are we able to get the images in the tower before the weather gets poor yet this year? Or, I guess, what does that

look like? So for if you were to choose new photos of the inventory today, they would have to wait until, I think, they said March until, like, the frost is gone. And for a new competition, you'd have to run the competition. So I guess it's also in coordination with how long you guys want the period to be open for collecting photos and then the voting process. So it could be two months. It could be, you know, six months. Do you know the lead time to get the photographs? The

I think when we ordered the last set, it was a couple weeks.

Yeah, it's not a super

long was outrageous. And then do you have any idea how long, like, after we advertised for the for it, like how long did we was it three months, two weeks? How long did we give people to submit?

Would do four weeks. A month is pretty common for any call for our, especially if you're asking for people to create something from an like, if you guys went forward with this, I would say you would create a competition that's like, here's the shell of the structure, create an art installation based on these criteria. They have to be 43 by 43 transparent panels are reproduced on vinyl and applied. So relatively easy to create the construct for the contest, but open make it wide open for what goes in there. We want it to be, you know, vibrant, reflective community, all of those sorts of things.

But that's up to the community to decide. But, yeah, I would think if we ran contests, it was usually about a two month process. Put out the call, you wait a month, you bring the things in, you give yourself a month to sit down, make the selections, get the artwork from your selected artist, and then send it off to get reproduced. Two to three months is a pretty typical window. But again, it's this is on staff now, so I'm speaking from if I were doing it, and the staff is an entirely different creature. So I would certainly defer to how much time it would take staff to run it.

Yes. Go ahead.

What I would suggest is if that's the route you'd wanna take, the action today would be to, and Brenda, if I get any of this wrong, maybe withdraw the recommendation to move forward with the refresh of the panels. And then at a future meeting, we set up the parameters for the new contest. And we would be supportive if that's the path you wanted to take.

That? What I'm hearing is if we want to go with that new competition to make a motion to I would need somebody to make a motion to withdraw the term recommendation and to or or an action to withdraw the current recommendation and for the the future meeting for us to set the parameters for that competition. You don't have to make a motion right away if anyone has any questions. If you're unclear about anything, I guess now would be the time.

So I'm leaning towards the idea of just leaving it as is, updating it as soon as possible. I just don't want it to end up being too long of a process. I think it'd be great if we could get it our competition done by spring and then get this updated this summer. Is that what we'd be looking at if we were to go that route?

I don't know if we informed the committee, but Lily will be moving on to a new adventure. So we're in the process of refilling her position. We're conducting interviews next week, but we would need a little bit of time to onboard the new person and get them situated. If we had direction that Dave and I would need to prioritize it, we'd find a way to do it. But I just wanted to put that out there so there's awareness that we'll have a hole in our staffing for at least a month, I'm thinking. Chair?

Yes. Just as a point of reference, usually we would do this April, May and get them installed before Mile Music, which is first weekend in August. So that was our typical timeline. Launch in spring, have a few months in in between. And we usually have them produced by the end of maybe the July, and then they would just be waiting to be installed prior to the Myo Music. And we work with staff on coordinating that scheduling. I'd also suggest if you guys are if there's any assistance, obviously, I've done it. I did it many times. And so I have some experience with running the company. I could share what I what what we put out. So if you wanted some assistance in that regard, I'd certainly willing to sit with staff and help you tease that out.

Maybe maybe just one additional, point to add as it relates to overall timing. I think if we were to release the parameters sometime in, say, spring or so, not to put the cart in front of the horse, right, because this committee will be involved in crafting those parameters. But if it is, photo related, it does allow for images of springtime and into even early summer. Whereas if we were to release the competition now and people are going out and taking images, there's just some limitations in terms of what it looks like. I mean, think of the gloomy weather that we're having this week and not necessarily portraying the community in the best way.

So there may be some value in addition to onboarding new staff over the coming months to releasing them, working on the parameters, releasing them, call for images sometime in, say, spring or early summer, and then trying to target a mid summer fabrication installation?

Looking at the time frame here, it does it does seem doable. Absolutely. I guess it would fall a lot on us as far as setting the parameters, but we have something existing, correct, that we could go off of that.

Correct. Yeah. We could use that as a starting point.

Does anyone have any other recommendations or suggestions, questions, anything you need to you're not clear on?

Well, I did feel like when we were going through the photos, know, looking at them, some of them were kind of dated, like the Houdini Plaza one. I mean I mean, the Trout Museum. You know, that's an old photo with a new building that's right downtown, and that probably shouldn't be emphasized. And then all the ones that were X ed out, you know, then we were really kind of limited on really vibrant choices, you know, because I think I went through it three, four times, like, okay, now what can you pick? And it felt a little, without the exed ones, a little thin.

Oh, I was just

Oh, okay. I you know, to piggyback off of what you said, I did feel like it was maybe just slightly rushed. I don't believe we had the pictures listed by the numbers. It was just when I went back and looked through them, we did have a few that were almost replicas of each other. Mhmm.

So I do feel that there would be a better representation as needed. Yes. Anybody wanna make an action or a motion to move forward with with a new competition. New competition for when? For mid spring.

Right? Yes. The new competition from what I gather would be announced April timeframe as the weather gets better to be completed sometime August before Mile of Music. And then there's also the we have to take into consideration the two week, I guess, manufacturing time for the photos as well as our selection process of the photos. Okay. So we're doing only pictures, art,

right?

Yes. And pictures as well as art.

Entirely up to the community. Yeah, would have to define

the next times. That's a big open ended question that we would have to evaluate the next time.

Chair steps.

What that contest actually

looks like. Would you like a suggestion on how to phrase this?

Yes, I would. If

I were to phrase it, the motion would be to withdraw the current recommendation and then recommend moving forward with a new contest parameters to be determined at a future meeting. We don't need to figure that piece out today.

Yeah. Okay. And that way, we're clarify what it means. Okay. So that was a withdraw of the recommendation. Current Current recommendation. And to move forward with a new contest.

That would be the motion someone needs to make up there.

I motion to withdraw the

contest.

Parameters Okay. To be determined.

Parameters to be determined. Thank you. So I second. Okay.

We would need a second?

There was.

Yes. Oh, was. Yes. I

need a vote. So I need a vote on that.

I need a vote. Yeah. You need to call a vote.

Oh. All in favor. Okay. So let's call a vote. All in favor, aye.

Aye. Aye.

Looks like the ayes have it. All opposed, nay? No nays. Okay. So the ayes have it.

Are

there any more topics or any issues anyone would like to address? Questions?

I don't believe we have any information items.

Okay. Okay. So it looks as though we have determined to withdraw the current recommendation, and we will be moving forward with a new competition with parameters to be determined the next meeting. And that concludes this public arts committee for today. A motion to adjourn. Can I get a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. Adjourn.

I'll second.

Okay. Thank you. Need a vote.

Need to call the

vote. Oh. Motion to adjourn. Yes. All in favor, aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. The ayes have it. Thank you very much.