City council to vote on modified street closure process

ANTIGO — The Antigo City Council’s Finance, Personnel, and Legislative Committee approved an update to the process required for obtaining street closure permits at its meeting Wednesday night.

The update, which still must be approved at a common council meeting July 10 at 6 p.m., would quicken the permit issuance process. Currently, the entire city council’s approval is required to provide final authorization for a street closure permit, whereas with the change, only the approval of the city’s mayor would be required.

Individuals or groups seeking street closure permits still would be required to follow every other step in the previous process, including obtaining insurance, as well as signatures of consent from 75 percent of residents living on a given street.

Parks, Recreation, and Cemeteries Director Sarah Repp, whose department processes street closure requests, requested the change.

“We’re looking for ways to promote the different events in the community,” Repp said. “We’re not looking for ways to say, ‘Well, you didn’t meet our terms and conditions, so we’re going to shut it down.’ So we’re trying to say that we’ve seen these little hiccups and roadblocks, so if we can remove those and still get the notification out to the people that are the most impacted or are going to be impacted, we’re still doing our due diligence. We’re just removing a barrier.”

Repp said the change could prove particularly helpful to groups seeking to plan new events for the first time.

“We’ve had an example recently where new event organizers took over for an annual event and were not aware of all the processes that they had to go through,” she said. “So that’s another example. We’re still, again, notifying the residents that it’s going to impact. They’re getting all the signatures. And the staff that it’s impacting are also notified. So streets is notified, public works, police, and fire, myself, so any city services that needed to be provided [information are], or how it’s going to potentially impact emergency services are made aware.”

Alderman Mark Edwards, whose fifth ward contains much of the downtown, suggested the current slower street closure permit issuance process has encumbered groups wanting to hold events in the past.

“It takes about two months by the time it goes through council,” Edwards said. “Because I know there’s a couple of things that came up last year, but they were right on the cusp of whether they could make it.”

Council members on the committee approved the measure after initial questions they posed were answered.

“As I looked at this motion,” said Seventh Ward Alderman Glenn Bugni, “I just kind of wondered if you need to really have decisions that should be made by a council made by city administrators, but I see that you’re rather unanimous about it and you have good reason.”