Neenah uses metrics to rank sidewalk projects, but political decisions can override them

Duke Behnke, Appleton Post-Crescent
Employees of concrete contractor Jim Fischer Inc. of Appleton install sidewalks along Baldwin Street in Neenah.
Employees of concrete contractor Jim Fischer Inc. of Appleton install sidewalks along Baldwin Street in Neenah.

Reader question: Why doesn't Neenah have a sidewalk on Gillingham Road between Byrd Avenue and Breezewood Lane? With the amount of truck traffic, is that not a greater safety concern than putting sidewalks on both sides of Baldwin Street?

Answer: Neenah's five-year capital improvement plan calls for the construction of 2,600 feet of sidewalk on the west side of Gillingham Road in 2028. The project is estimated to cost $104,000.

The city budgeted $170,000 this year to install 4,300 feet of sidewalk on both sides of Baldwin Street between Winneconne Avenue and Cecil Street. That work is happening now.

The reason Baldwin is getting sidewalks four years ahead of Gillingham has to do with metrics.

Neenah engineers evaluate the need for sidewalks on collector streets and subcollector streets to come up with a composite score for each one.

Baldwin ranked high with a score of 468 points, compared with 322 points for Gillingham, according to a spreadsheet provided by Public Works Director Gerry Kaiser.

"The streets are assigned points based on proximity to schools, parks, employment centers, school bus stops, disabled or elderly care facilities, shopping/restaurants, and transit routes," Kaiser told me. "In addition, points were assigned for density of the adjacent development, pedestrian volumes, crash history, police ticketing, vehicle speeds, documented close calls, sidewalk connectivity, and spacing from parallel streets with sidewalk."

Pedestrians and vehicles mix on a stretch of Neenah's Gillingham Road that doesn't have sidewalks.
Pedestrians and vehicles mix on a stretch of Neenah's Gillingham Road that doesn't have sidewalks.

The pending closure of Hoover Elementary School will lower Baldwin's score to 442, but that's still considerably higher than Gillingham's 322.

Department directors, the mayor and the Common Council use the scores to prioritize which sidewalk projects rise to the top in the annual city budget. Political decisions, though, can override the scores and have done so in the past. That's one of the reasons gaps exist in Neenah's sidewalk network.

Watchdog Q&A: Duke Behnke answers your local government questions

Only three Neenah streets had higher scores than Baldwin.

  • South Park Avenue between Peckham and Cecil streets, which scored 545 points. The project hasn't yet been added to the capital improvement plan.

  • South Plummer Court between Green Bay Road and Adams Street, which scored 503 points. Sidewalks will be installed later this year.

  • Whittier Drive between Hawthorne and Kraft streets, which scored 495 points. The project was recommended in the 2020 Neenah budget but was removed by the council.

Kaiser said the scores will be recalculated this summer to account for school boundary changes and the closure of Hoover school, which were approved in February by the Neenah school board, and for the 2023 closure of Shattuck Middle School.

The metrics pertain only to developed areas with gaps in the sidewalk network. New developments are handled differently.

"As new subdivisions come forward, we are identifying the sidewalk locations in the platting process and arranging for developer funding for sidewalk installation in the early stages of buildout," Kaiser said.

Post-Crescent reporter Duke Behnke answers your questions about local government. Send questions to dbehnke@gannett.com or call him at 920-993-7176.

This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Why does Neenah put sidewalks on one street and not another? We explain

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