A couple of things happened in the past week that have me wondering just how responsive local government should be to the people it serves, and what power one person should have in determining what happens in our cities.
The first thing to cover is the Appleton Safety and Licensing Committee denying a liquor license for a proposed gaming bar along College Avenue. The same committee approved that license last fall, but the Common Council sent it back to committee for reconsideration. The committee then approved the license again, and sent it back to the Council, who sent it back again. Finally, the third time was not the charm for the owner of the establishment, as now the committee has said “no”, and will send that recommendation on to the Council next week.
The lone obstacle that has derailed the gaming bar proposal was a complaint from one person: the owner of the adjacent business, who, while talking to a contractor on the project, got it on tape that the owner of the new bar was going to put in gambling machines as an important source of revenue. That adjacent business owner was very aggressive in her opposition, attending committee meetings to express fears that gambling-crazed customers would try to rob her shop to cover their losses, sharing the security video with a Green Bay TV station and members of the Common Council, and doing media interviews.
Given that both we and Green Bay media have given this story extensive exposure, you would expect that others would have joined in on the effort to make sure this bar never opens. And yet, there have been no other complaints. Nobody else has come in to tell the Council or any committees that allowing this gaming bar to have up to five gambling machines on site would threaten to turn downtown Appleton into the type of seedy strip seen in places like Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Reno.
Nobody likely joined in the fight, because gaming machines like that are pervasive in many of the existing taverns in the city already. I used to live near a gas station with three Vegas-type machines that had people playing them almost all the time–whether it be 9:00 on a Friday night or 6:30 on a Sunday morning. If people were that concerned about “illegal” gambling in their city, they would be calling police to demand raids on dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of taverns every day.
The ironic part is, that the gaming bar can still open–without a liquor license–and it could still have the gambling machines in it.
This “one person opposition” basically shutting down a proposed business is in direct opposition to approvals of business developments that the same Appleton Common Council and other local government bodies have made in the past. Whenever high-density, multi-family housing is proposed for areas featuring a majority of single-family homes or duplexes, those in the existing neighborhood turn out in good numbers to voice their opposition. They bring up salient points about increased traffic on their streets, additional lights at night, noise, and lowered desirability for resale of their property. But those larger groups of people and their concerns seem to fall on increasingly deaf ears with local leaders. Which makes you wonder, why would one voice resonate more than a dozen or twenty?
Meanwhile, in Oshkosh, some city leaders are concerned that too many people want their neighborhoods to look nice and be safe. This week, Common Council Member Kris Larson asked city staff to look into the use of the See/Click/Fix app. For those not familiar, See/Click/Fix allows Oshkosh residents to report potential building and zoning code violations anonymously. The city’s policy is that all complaints filed through the app will be investigated–no matter how minor they may seem.
Council member Larson relayed stories he had heard of residents being cited for parking trailers in their driveways for months on end, and for unregistered cars sitting on flat tires for months on end in the yard. In one incident, a city inspector was sent out to check on “debris” in the front yard–only to find a baby stroller. And in another situation, an inspector was called in to check on something and instead cited the property owner for a completely different issue after being granted access to the building.
It’s Council member Larson’s contention that the city doesn’t need to be out every day enforcing issues that he believes could be handled if “more neighbors would talk to each other”. In some cases, that could actually work. I had a neighbor with a tree just inside his side of the property line. The tree would fill my roof gutters with junk every spring and fall and deposit approximately five-point-three million small leaves that didn’t rake up very well in the autumn.
Eventually, the branches of the tree grew long enough to contact my roof. That meant on windy nights you could hear the branches scrape across shingles. It also allowed carpenter ants to climb from the branches, onto the roof, into my attic and eventually out of the ceiling light fixtures to access my bedroom. It took just one incident of waking up to find a large, black ant crawling on my face in the middle of the night to get up on the roof with a lopper and start hacking off those branches. Then, after an ice storm caused branches to break off the tree and damage my fence, it was time to work out a deal where I helped cover a portion of the cost to cut down that tree. It was a good example of “neighbors talking” to take care of a problem.
I never had to use See/Click/Fix to report issues with any of the single-family home owners in my neighborhood. Instead, it was the only way to take care of issues caused by the high-density multi-family units located behind my house. They were the kind of apartments that were owned by a company not located in Oshkosh. They had no on-site caretaker. And like most rental complexes, they were filled with the type of transient residents that care nothing about their neighborhood or their community.
For years the ownership company did nothing to contain weed and brush growth on a strip of land directly behind my back fence. Every summer the plants would grow higher than the 6-foot fence, while the brush grew to the size of small trees, with the branches banging against the new fence or growing under it into the yard. One use of See/Click/Fix resulted in a guy coming out with a weed whacker and a brush saw to cut all that down–but then the debris just sat in piles up against the fence. Nothing was ever hauled away. And as it dried, it became a fire hazard. Eventually, all of the grass and brush grew back, and I was forced to use the app again. Each time, I was provided with a follow-up email listing the steps the city had taken to try to rectify the situation.
And it wasn’t just See/Click/Fix that I used to address issues at the apartment complex. The app Oshkosh Police have for non-emergency contacts was used several times as well. Usually it was for vehicles blasting music at deafening levels in the middle of the night. Sometimes it was for one unit where the renters had put their speakers in the windows–facing out toward the neighboring homes–and blasted their music at all times of the day and night. A couple of clicks on the app and some basic location information led to the “disco lights” that the renters probably didn’t want to see, and some peace and quiet for the homeowners. (One side note, after I moved out of that neighborhood, one of those apartment buildings was the site of a sizeable drug bust.)
My counter to those that feel like Council member Larson does would be that if you don’t want so many code enforcement calls and complaints, consider doing away with some of the codes and ordinances. If you think broken down cars sitting in driveways for years enhances the livability of a neighborhood, or having snowmobile trailers parked on the street all winter so the plows have to drive around them and leave big piles of snow in the middle of the road enhances safety, or that head-high weeds in the yard next to yours is “no big deal”, then say so. But these codes and ordinances are on the books for a reason, and to complain that too many of them are being enforced is just foolish.
It hasn’t happened to me yet, but someday I’m sure a “concerned neighbor” will see smoke coming from my backyard while I’m making ribs or pork butt or brisket and call the fire department out of an abundance of caution. When the crews arrive, we’ll all have a good laugh, and I’ll make sure they go home with some good grub. It’s the neighborly thing to do.
