Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Menasha Common Council met on Monday, September 21, 2026, at 6:00 PM in the First Floor Conference Rooms at 100 Main Street, Menasha, Wisconsin. Mayor Hammond presided with 7 of 8 alderpersons present (Alds. Rand, Eisenach, Hale, Lewis, Marshall, Grade, and School; Ald. Perkins absent). The meeting included three public hearings on proposed zoning overlay districts, routine consent agenda approvals, and several significant resolutions including a $5,000,000 tornado recovery borrowing authorization, adjustment of the 2027 budget timeline, and the establishment of two new zoning overlay districts. The meeting adjourned at 7:26 PM.
Good evening. I'd like to call the City of Manasha common council meeting to order. If you would please rise and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. Clerk Janet, if we could have the roll call, please. Alderman Grotty. Alderman School. Alderman Rand. Alderman Eisnack. Alderman Hale. Alderman Perkins is absent. Alderman Lewis. Alderman Marshall. Seven are present. Thank you, Clerk Janet. Next we'll move to D on the agenda, which is public hearing, and there are three public hearings this evening. So you have as long as you wish to speak before the common council staff and myself. And if you have questions, would encourage you to say I'm wondering this or I'm wondering that, and then we can incorporate the answer to that question later when we get to the actual ordinance to take action on uh this isn't a QA. Uh but with that, Director Dane, could you please give us just a real quick high level of what these th three items are? These uh three items um sort of trace back to some uh uh meetings and public hearings we had earlier this year uh when we came forward with some housing related uh proposed changes to the to the zoning code at that time. Um I believe there was a proposal to remove the minimum roof pitch requirement in the city, the gr the two-car garage requirement, and reduce the minimum lot size for single family lots. Um of those three proposals passed um during that discussion here at the council. Uh one of the alders, uh Alder Rand had uh shared some uh insight or commentary regarding the need or desire to uh take a more fine uh uh fine grain approach to sort of calibrating or modifying um some of those types of uh requirements. Uh and he felt that um rather than a broad broadly applying those changes to the whole community would make more sense to go a different path and uh try to create some tools that would allow us to sort of calibrate those types of changes around specific neighborhoods so we could get more um more specific uh to reflect the sort of character of individual neighborhoods in the city. So uh Mr. Rand and I uh primarily um uh Alder Rand uh took the lead on putting uh several of these proposals, uh amendments together and we worked back and forth on that. Um so the overall sort of goal of this was to sort of create some tools that would allow us to um, you know, preserve or enhance neighborhood character throughout the differ throughout uh different neighborhoods in the city, but also to provide another tool that would allow us to uh kind of make uh encourage uh investment into some of the uh corridors like Appleton Road corridor and other areas in the city uh that were seen as underperforming. All right. Thanks, Director Dane. Uh so we have three ordinances this evening, and each one gets their own public hearing. Uh again, if you wish to speak before the common council, would just ask that you please step up to the podium, state your first and last name address. You have as much time as you wish to address the common council, and again, uh, this is the public hearing portion of the agenda, so it's specific to each of these three individual ordinances. So I'm gonna begin with item D1. This is the first of the three. This is O1526. So I am now gonna open the public hearing for O1526 proposed amendment tonight, Title 13, zoning code chapter 1, article C sections 13 1-20 apparent A, apparent A, 18, and enacting 13-1-41 of the code of ordinances effectively establishing a new overlay district, neighborhood conservation overlay district. This public hearing is now open. Talking to my forehead. And so I personally find zoning a difficult thing to understand. Uh, when Shoreline zoning came to the county board, I had to go back five meetings and start watching from there. So I had to watch like 11 hours of meetings in order to understand what was going on. Your September 1st meeting is not on video. Um I did go back and read the minutes. The minutes are unhelpful and not I mean the minutes are minutes, right? How detailed are minutes? They're not, and this is addressed to all three items. So minutes are just are just not that detailed.