By Steve Erbach on Wednesday, February 25, 2009 4:05 PM

I received a request from Bernie Peterson of the Appleton Post-Crescent to fill out the standard candidate's questionnaire by March 2nd.  Here are my answers to the main questions:

Political Experience: Neenah Common Council Alderman, 2006-2007; Neenah Public Services & Safety Committee, 2006-2007; Neenah Waterworks Commission, 2006-2007; Mayor's Citizen Advisory Board, 2007-present.

Do you have a campaign Web site? (If yes, please include its address): Yes!  www.NeenahPolitics.com

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By Steve Erbach on Monday, February 23, 2009 6:47 PM

Cancellations first: The Feb. 25^th meeting of the Neenah-Menasha Fire Rescue Joint Fire Commission has been cancelled.  Next meeting March 25^th.

Monday, Feb. 23^rd:

The Community Development Authority meets at 4:00pm. They're going to continue to talk about the little wedge of land that the city will acquire from K-C that sits on the shore at the mouth of the Fox River just to the north of the location of the new Plexus headquarters. The diamond-shaped sliver of land to be acquired amounts to 2822 square feet, bringing the total to 41,250 square feet (just under an acre). It has to do with cleanup costs of the groundwater contamination.  Looks like the city will be more responsible for that than originally proposed...but ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Monday, February 23, 2009 9:18 AM

If any of you read the Appleton Post-Crescent you may have seen my regular pieces appearing in the Reader Reaction Forum in the op-ed pages of the paper.  Last Monday the topic was "How has the economic downturn hurt you?"  I submitted the following on Thursday, Feb. 12th for publication Monday, Feb. 16th:

Our oldest son works at a popular restaurant.  He works fewer hours and gets fewer tips. One Sunday three customers left no tips; one had a $70 tab.  My wife actually works more hours than before, so she's doing fine. I don't have "layoff survivor syndrome" yet, mainly because there haven't been any layoffs where I work.  But hourly workers there now work seven hour shifts, not eight.  Gas prices are good, as low as they were four years ago. I really don't think that we're heading into a depression.

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By Steve Erbach on Thursday, February 19, 2009 5:57 PM

Before the Council meeting started last night, I saw Kevin Chaignot in the audience and went over and introduced myself.  I told him that I was going to speak in favor of granting his license and that I had written about it -- some would say, "extensively" -- on NeenahPolitics.com.  He was understandably a bit apprehensive and in a high state of excitement, but he appears to be a fellow that can handle it.

He was the first to speak during the Public Forum segment of the meeting, and he repeated his main point that he didn't knowingly withhold information on his application (full details here).

I spoke my piece next:

I read the Mayor's Council Update of last Friday, including the paragraph in which he expressed a bit of frustration with the Public Services Committee -- and with the ... Read More »

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By Steve Erbach on Wednesday, February 18, 2009 4:22 PM

Today I received an invitation to the League of Women Voters of Neenah-Menasha Voters' Forum on Thursday, March 26th from 6:30-7:15 pm at the Neenah Public Library, 204 E. Wisconsin Ave.  Since the 3rd District is the only Aldermanic district in Neenah with a contested race, the aldermanic section will be pretty small.  There'll be a forum for the Neenah Joint School District School Board candidates immediately following the Aldermanic forum.  That will constitute a somewhat larger group.  But the aldermanic candidates get the first shot.

I'm going to urge you starting now to give up a bit of your Thursday evening five weeks from now to sit in on the voters' forum.  In my experience, the forums are sparsely attended; so I'm asking you as a personal favor to come to the aldermanic portion at least.  It's just 45 minutes in a very nice setting!

The LoWV forum has an interesting format: each candidate ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Monday, February 16, 2009 3:16 PM

Two races appear on the Neenah ballot tomorrow: Winnebago County Executive and Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Here are the candidates and a bio for each one:

Winnebago County Executive

• John Daggett
• Jay Schroeder
• Mark L. Harris (incumbent)

Here are the Appleton Post-Crescent profiles of the three County Executive candidates:

Mark Harris (incumbent)

Address: 2425 Sandstone Court, Oshkosh
Age: 53
Occupation: Winnebago County executive

Political experience: Winnebago County executive, April 2005 to present; member of Winnebago County ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Saturday, February 14, 2009 7:39 PM

I have a three-question [survey for you here].  Would you mind taking the survey?  It deals with the issues raised in my post from yesterday.  Thank you!

By Steve Erbach on Saturday, February 14, 2009 5:19 PM

Some routine items and some not-so-routine items in this week's packet of materials for the Council members delivered yesterday, Feb. 13th.

On Monday, Feb. 16th, the Water Commission meets at its regularly scheduled time of 4:30 at City Hall.  The agenda can be found here at the City's web site.  I was a bit disappointed that the three attachments noted in the agenda weren't in evidence in the packet.  Specifically:

• the status of Fox Valley Energy, which just recently paid up a major portion of its delinquent water bill
• the status of the "Lead Issue". Someone in my part of town had mentioned it when I was out campaigning last weekend and I followed up on it.  The Post-Crescent has a Read More »
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By Steve Erbach on Friday, February 13, 2009 8:15 PM

Last Saturday I wrote about the range of issues that local government deals with in the entry titled "From the tiny to the huge".  This report will concentrate on the "tiny" issues that the City Council deals with and with the interesting pressure that can be brought to bear on its decision-making.  It isn't a story you'll see in the newspaper or hear on radio or watch on TV; but it's the small change of local government that goes on all the time and affects peoples' lives.

A young man, 27 years old, by the name of Kevin Chaignot, applied for a Beverage Operator's License to work at the Eagle's Club in the city of Neenah.  As I detailed in last Saturday's entry, the Public Services & Safety Committee was to vote at its Feb. 10th meeting on whether to recommend that the Council deny his application.  The Neenah pol ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Thursday, February 12, 2009 8:41 AM

Yesterday I put together a more-or-less tongue-in-cheek survey to ask people whether I should make a big deal out of the outrageous sustainability news stories I'd read recently.  I say "tongue-in-cheek" because the choices in the one-question survey were a bit "loaded".

In any event, most people (91%) said I should go ahead and lay it on thick.  I decided not to do that.  Oh, I read a few paragraphs from the article I'd saved from the Times Online; but I think I made the point about being concerned with the group's direction without hammering them over the head with it.

Here's what I said:

I apologize in advance for this being a little bit rambling, but it's a compilation of what I've been thinking about sustainability for the last month, since the previous meeting.

That meeting was startling. The presentation given by the gentleman who has all t ... Read More »

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By Steve Erbach on Wednesday, February 11, 2009 7:03 AM

I'm very interested in what the Sustainable Neenah Committee is going to grow into. I sure as shootin' don't want to see it become anything like Great Britain's Sustainable Development Commission. Nor would I like to see sustainability become the overarching, trumping virtue determining the course of development as it appears is happening in Madison.

Would you please take a one-question survey? What, if anything, should I say to the Sustainable Neenah Committee when I see stories like the two I've linked above? You can find the [survey on this page].

Thank you very much.

By Steve Erbach on Tuesday, February 10, 2009 6:10 PM

It took a while, but the Sustainable Neenah Committee agenda was finally posted on the city web site.  I'll be attending the meeting tomorrow night at City Hall.  If possible, I'll supply them with the unofficial minutes...have to get down to it and put them together!

There was a story last week or so in the London Times Online that I've saved to read to the committee during the Public Forum segment. It's about the British sustainability czar and his sweeping pronouncement about global warming, sustainability, and the birth rate.  I'm reproducing it here in its entirety because the Sustainable Neenah Committee is still feeling out its mission.  This story shows how far the sustainability movement can go if given half a chance:

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By Steve Erbach on Monday, February 09, 2009 9:25 PM

At tonight's Finance and Personnel Committee meeting, the Public Forum segment featured an appeal from Dorothy Gain regarding what she considers to be the sorry state of affairs at the Neenah Animal Shelter, 951 County Road G. According to Ms. Gain, she is probably "the only volunteer left". The bulk of the Board of Directors has quit leaving "two women" in charge. They've hired a fellow for $40,000 a year who, reportedly, sits at the computer all day leaving the care of the animals up in the air. Speaking of the air, the smell of the place is the primary indicator of the decline in animal care. The two girls who are supposed to be cleaning cages and such, "have their little ways" of successfully deferring those duties if they whine enough to the new director, the fellow at the computer.

I checked the web site and saw a statement on the h ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Saturday, February 07, 2009 11:36 AM

In a bit more impersonal detail, herewith the agendae for next week's meetings.

Note: the Board of Public Works meeting scheduled for noon, Monday Feb. 9th, has been cancelled.

Finance and Personnel Committee meets Monday, Feb. 9th at 7:00 pm and its agenda has three items:

1. The Parks and Recreation Commission wants to purchase a $30,000 parcel of land from the Neenah Water Utility. This is a budgeted item.  The parcel is located at the corner of Cedar St. and Belmont Ave.
2. Finance Director, Mike Easker, wants to deposit city funds immediately in money market accounts and CD's in banks and credit unions that are not yet designated as official depositories for those funds. There's a state statute, 34.05, that allows him, as Treasurer of the city, to deposit funds for 90 days, giving the City Cou ... Read More »
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By Steve Erbach on Saturday, February 07, 2009 9:19 AM

The agendae for meetings scheduled at City Hall in the coming week demonstrate the vast array of problems addressed by the committees, the Council, and by the staff of the city government.

First the miniscule: there's a fellow in town who wants to become a bartender.  I won't mention his name, but it's in the material attached to the agenda of the Public Services & Safety Committee meeting of Feb. 10th.  He filled out the city's Application for Beverage Operator's License and submitted it on January 9th.

One of the questions on the application is  [emphasis in orginal]: "Have you been convicted of a misdemeanor or ordinance violation with the past five (5) years (e.g., speeding, OWI, disorderly conduct, driving without a license, etc.)?"  The applicant answered "No".

Each application for Beverage Operator's license is submitted for a backgro ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Friday, February 06, 2009 7:11 PM

NeenahPolitics.com will be, I hope, a place the interested Neenah citizen can turn to for in-depth information and commentary about the political activities in our city. It won't be a place to turn for a list of community events, say; those activities -- like Streetball, Community Fest, the Bergstrom-Mahler Art Fair, etc. -- are covered elsewhere (for example, the "Leisure Connections" brochure, Jan - May 2009 [12 MB PDF], and the "Neenah Notes" newsletter, winter 2009 edition [300 KB PDF]).

The things I will focus on are:

• Meetings of city committees, commissions, boards, and authorities, including agendae and (decidedly) unofficial minutes of those meetings.  I attend a fair number of them, includin ... Read More »
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By Steve Erbach on Thursday, February 05, 2009 1:21 AM

The Neenah Council meeting was preceeded by a showing of the movie, "Edge of Reality", a production of students at Neenah High School.

"Edge of Reality" is a reality show-like chronicle of a teenage drinking party during which one of the boys passes out and falls down the stairs, banging his head hard enough to draw blood.  His tipsy friends decide to take him to the hospital. That's the start of the trouble.

The driver weaves along the road and hits one of two girls who left the party early to walk home.  The car swerves across the road and crashes into a light pole, throwing the girl in the passenger seat through the windshield. The boy who fell down the stairs is injured further and winds up halfway in the front seat.  The driver is relatively unharmed.  God watches over drunks and little children...

The girl he hit dies on the pavement. The girl thrown thr ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Wednesday, February 04, 2009 11:34 PM

As I left the Neenah Council chambers I came upon Alderman Marge Bates, bless her heart, trying to explain to Jake the rooster's owner, Mr. Rocke, her reasoning for voting to take Jake away.  In my commentary on the Public Services & Safety Committee meeting of January 27th, I was pretty hard on Mr. Rocke.  My opinion hasn't changed.

Why? Because Mr. Rocke said to Bates that "You've done nothing about the issue...the local radio stations are coming out this Saturday and they're recording it on CD and they're dubbing it a thousand times and I'll sit on my front lawn and play it all day long."

"Dubbing it a thousand times"... He was referring to Jake the rooster's crowing.  Do you think the local radio stations are coming at Mr. Rocke's request?  Might he be paying for the thous ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Tuesday, February 03, 2009 7:37 PM

I've written a letter to the good people that signed my nomination papers to ask them to help me in my campaign for Neenah 3rd District Alderman.  It's something I didn't do two years ago, and I don't intend to make that mistake this time.

My opponent is formidable and has prominent supporters. That alone makes this campaign more interesting; it gives it an edge that wasn't there when I ran two years ago.

Here's something you can do for me right now: would you please register by clicking on the Register link underneath the search box above?  I don't know how significant this site will become in my campaign, but I've got to believe that the more people that register and read what I've got to say about the goings-on in Neenah, the better they'll be able to judge what I stand for...and the word will spread.

I'm also planning an election night party to thank the people that ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Monday, February 02, 2009 6:11 PM

A revised Common Council agenda for the Feb. 4th meeting was delivered tonight (Monday).  Only one change to the agenda (the other items are [here]). After the closed session to deal with Fox River cleanup / CERCLA issues, the Council will convene in a second closed session:

under Section 19.85(1)(e) of the Wisconsin Statutes concerning negotiation of a potential amendment to the development agreement with Plexus Corp.

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By Steve Erbach on Monday, February 02, 2009 4:40 AM

In my post regarding what's coming up this week, I didn't mention that there's a Community Development Authority meeting this morning, Monday, February 2nd.  There is no agenda for the meeting on-line nor did I receive an agenda in the packet of information given to Council members and candidates for Council on Friday.

I'm not sure what this means.  Most meetings of Neenah committees rarely have members of the public in attendance.  I attended one of its meetings last Monday at 4:00, but the normal meeting date is the first Monday of the month.

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By Steve Erbach on Saturday, January 31, 2009 10:09 AM

The Common Council meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 4th, will be preceded by two events.  First, at 6:00pm, a special performance of "Edge of Reality", a movie produced by the students of Neenah High School. According to the City of Neenah web site, "Edge of Reality" is a "nationally recognized presentation of the impact of drinking and driving,"

The movie is also available on-line at the Appleton Post-Crescent site.

After the movie there will be a quick Finance & Personnel committee meeting to discuss the resolution to change the retirement health savings plan contributions made by the city to retiring union members.

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By Steve Erbach on Friday, January 30, 2009 11:32 PM

Former Appleton alderman, candidate for state assembly, and proprietor of the excellent FoxPolitics.net, Jo Egelhoff, called me Thursday night to ask for some additional details on the Public Services and Safety Committee meeting of Tuesday.  She wrote a commentary on the rooster squabble at her site and, as usual, invited comments.  Here's what I wrote:

Jo, 

The most interesting piece of the transcription was spoken by Mr. R, the owner of Jake, the rooster. It throws more light on this situation than all the rest, I think. It came during Mr. R's first presentation, directly after Mr. C spoke:

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By Steve Erbach on Thursday, January 29, 2009 6:17 AM

I've just recently added the capability for you to subscribe to an RSS feed of the content here at NeenahPolitics.com. This post contains simple instructions on how to subscribe based on the browser you use.

First of all, there's a link to click (isn't there always?). The RSS feed link is represented by one of these two icons:

   

You'll see the small icon in the "Archives" box or the "Blogs" box. You'll see the large icon on the Home page above the top-most entry. So click that first. Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 8:02 PM

The excitement caused by the chicken ordinance way overshadowed the other items on the agenda of both the special Common Council meeting and the Public Services & Safety Committee meeting.

I have to acknowledge a correction to an assumption or two I made.  The special Council meeting dealt, in part, with the revised parking lease with Alta Resources.  It was true, as the City Attorney admitted, that he and his staff had overlooked the clause in the contract that required approval by Alta before any other business was given a shot at renting a block of parking spaces.  But I was mistaken in saying that Alta asked for and received additional concessions.  City Attorney Godlewski very specifically stated that Alta Resources has been a fabulous corporate citizen and very cooperative in the parking lot negotiations with Plexus.  He even pointed out that though Alta has about 700+ employees, they're getting by with only 500 s ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Tuesday, January 27, 2009 11:02 PM

I attended the meeting tonight and recorded the entire proceedings.  The most interesting part -- the part that Duke Behnke of the Appleton Post-Crescent came for -- was the public forum during which anyone can speak relating to topics that come before the committee.

Please note: the transcriptions below contain foul language.  Mrs. Crane claimed that she quoted Mr. Rocke.  You have been warned.

The quiet and dignified Mr. Crane was the first to speak during the public forum section of the meeting:

My name is Bill Crane and I live at 501 E. Wisconsin Avenue. I'd like to make a few comments about the rooster ordinance or chicken ordinance and some of the things that have led up to this.

I'm very sorry that this whole thing has come to this...required this much attention. I think it's rather ridiculous.

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By Steve Erbach on Monday, January 26, 2009 6:22 PM

As a candidate for alderman, I receive all the information that the current Council members receive every Friday.  An officer of the Neenah Police Department comes to my door and hand-delivers the weekly packet.

Today I received two supplementary packets relating to a special Council meeting tomorrow, Tuesday, Jan. 27th, at 6:30pm, just before the regularly scheduled Public Services & Safety Committee meeting.

There are two items on the agenda:

1. Consideration of CDA recommendation regarding amendment to Alta Realty, LLC Parking Lease for the Church Street Parking Ramp

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By Steve Erbach on Saturday, January 24, 2009 6:17 AM

Cancellations first: the Neenah Plan Commission meeting that was to have been held at it's regularly scheduled time on Tuesday, Jan. 27th, has been cancelled.

Also the Finance and Personnel Committee meeting scheduled for Monday, Jan. 26th, has been cancelled.

The Neenah Community Development Authority meets Monday, Jan. 26th, at 4:00 at City Hall.

One item on the agenda re-opens an issue that has rubbed some people the wrong way.  That is: parking.  Specifically, parking in the Church St. parking ramp behind the new Alta Resources building. 

When that ramp was built along with the Alta building, a reserved parking stall rental agreement was reached. In that agreement, Alta pays the city $5 a month for each of 510 parking stalls.  That rate holds good for 20 years.

Now the ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Friday, January 23, 2009 9:04 PM

The Wisconsin Dept. of Transportation (WisDOT) has posted a PDF of the proposed interchange at Breezewood and Hwy 41 in Neenah.  One odd thing about it is that it's formatted for an 8½" x 11" sheet.  If you were to print out the PDF as I did you'd find that the text is too tiny to read.

Fortunately a PDF is a vector drawing; that is, it can be enlarged from within the Adobe Acrobat reader to display the zoomed-in details.  I did that and then took some screen shots and "stitched" them together to form a decent blow-up of the engineering drawings.

I've made a JPEG available <here>.  It's about  1.5 megabytes in size and makes an image that is 1236 x 2350 pixels.

The reason I was curious about it was that I knew that the WisDOT had decided to re ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Thursday, January 22, 2009 6:00 AM

The big attraction was the meeting of the Committee of the Whole from 6:10pm to 7:38pm.  The single agenda item:

Consideration of the Green Bay Road/Winneconne Avenue traffic improvement projects.

The meeting featured soft-spoken Deputy Director of Public Works, Gerry Kaiser at the podium explaining the multiple options the city has with respect to the construction of new intersections in the Shopko Plaza/Fox Point Plaza area.  There are multiple options because the rebuilding of the Breezewood interchange by the state of Wisconsin factors prominently in the city's plans.

Here are the four options as presented by Kaiser:

Option 1: City and WisDOT keep current schedule*
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