This was the meeting gauntlet I traversed in a single day today, Wednesday, January 21st:
- 7:00am - Business Improvement District (BID) Board
- 4:00pm - Community Development Authority (CDA)
- 5:45pm - Finance & Personnel Committee
- 6:00pm - Committee of the Whole (Neenah City Council members)
- 6:50pm - Board of Public Works
- 7:00pm - Neenah Common Council
I feared that the total meeting time would approach 6 hours, but, mercifully, it was closer to 3 hours and 45 minutes.
This report will focus on the first three meetings; tomorrow I'll report on the final three.
The BID Board is an outfit I became interested in because of my ill-fated attempt to derail the new Newspaper Vending Machine ordinance (Details 1. here, 2. here, 3. here, 4. here, 5. here, 6. here, 7. here, and finally 8. here. I wouldn't want you to miss a single, thrilling detail!) At two of the meetings I attended during that time, members of the BID Board spoke in support of the ordinance, directly as a result of my raising a stink about it. Matter of fact, on the day I learned about the proposed ordinance, I met one of the principal members of the Board, Grant Birtch, on Wisconsin Avenue just as I was about to scope out the vending machine situation for myself. So I started attending its regularly scheduled meetings.
The Business Improvement District Board met at its usual time of 7:00am on the third Wednesday; this time, of course, on January 21st. The BID Board generally acts on the recommendations of its committees, as all groups of its kind do. The BID Board's committees include:
- Executive Committee
- Recruitment and Retention Committee
- Public Relations and Marketing Committee
- Maintenance Task Force
The only item discussed relating to the Executive Committee was the scheduling of the annual meeting. Tentatively, the meeting has been scheduled for 7:30am, Wednesday, February 18th (the usual meeting date for the Board but a half-hour later start), at the Holiday Inn, 123 E. Wisconsin Ave., Neenah.
The R&R Committee hadn't met since the last report, so the Board continued on to PR&M. There's to be another sale of BID gift certificates: a $40 certificate gets you $50 in merchandise at downtown Neenah businesses. The sale will take place this year on September 16th.
There was some discussion (as in a couple past years) of selling plastic gift cards like the ones you can buy at Walmart or Barnes & Noble. That is, cards that "remember" the balance after purchases have been made that are less than the value of the card. There is, of course, a cost to provide this sort of card over and above the cards with the magnetic stripes themselves. Their cost is the main disadvantage while the main advantage is that the shopper has to use up the entire value of the card in downtown Neenah businesses. Currently, when a purchase is made that is less than the value of the card, cash is returned to the buyer. Thus the amount of merchandise purchased in the downtown is less than it could be with a magnetic stripe gift card.
They also talked about the annual Future Neenah "Ultimate Ladies' Day" in March. Sara Hanneman of Future Neenah expressed some concern that the usual activity line-up was a little thin so far this year.
On to the Maintenance Task Force report. There had been no meeting, but chairman Steve Griese began a discussion about snow removal with Bob Buckingham, the Community Development Director. Apparently snow is incompletely removed in the parking slots downtown. That is, there's a buildup of snow at the curb that people parking their cars have to trudge through. Buckingham promised to bring the situation to the attention of the city crews responsible for clearing snow from the sidewalks and streets downtown.
Finally Buckingham gave a summary of recent developments downtown as the Future Neenah update.