Katie Van Zeeland has offices in two halls: City Hall and Lawrence’s Briggs Hall. At Lawrence, Van Zeeland serves as the Administrative Assistant for the Education Department, does federal reporting for the department and helps student teachers obtain licenses. At City Hall, she serves as Council President and alderperson from District 5, where she works to establish and maintain a good relationship between the council and Mayor Jake Woodford.
As someone who often works with students, Van Zeeland is passionate about students getting involved. She pointed out that an individual can make a much bigger difference by volunteering in a local election than in a statewide or federal election. Van Zeeland stated that one of the biggest ways students can make a difference is by finding candidates we agree with and knocking on doors for them. She added that there are organizations that can pay for armies of canvassers and lots of literature to defeat incumbents who work hard for their constituents but lack those resources, and that community involvement can make a huge difference in these elections. She fears that we may start losing our rights in relatively liberal areas if we don’t take action.
“I don’t fault anyone who doesn’t care […] but what’s happened [elsewhere] is going to happen here if people don’t get involved,” Van Zeeland predicted.
Van Zeeland added that everything done in municipal politics has a big effect on peoples’ everyday lives, referencing issues such as garbage pickup and being able to cross the street safely. She stated that by getting involved, you can help choose the people who make those decisions. She feels this process of people getting involved has already begun to happen and is reflected by the fact that the council has begun to transform and elect new people from a variety of backgrounds.
The issues Van Zeeland is passionate about — including sustainability, pedestrian safety and equality for all– are inspired by her becoming the parent of a child on the autism spectrum. Because she cannot always be there for him, she wants to start working on creating a better world for him now.
One of the ways in which she hopes to create that better world for her son is by making the city more walkable and accessible, and thus more friendly for pedestrians, bicyclists and public transit. She mentioned times in which she and her son couldn’t go to Lions Park because crossing Calumet Avenue was too dangerous. She said that pedestrian safety is a problem everywhere and that in the last legislative year she was able to devote money towards a pedestrian safety study. She added that reckless driving got worse during the pandemic and that it’s even worse in big cities.
“We didn’t build an infrastructure that’s conducive to being a safe bicyclist or pedestrian,” Van Zeeland said. “I don’t want that to become the norm here, that we’re just okay with kids getting hit by cars.”
She added that alderperson Denise Fenton sometimes calls her the “crosswalk queen.”
Van Zeeland discussed climate change and sustainability, mentioning quiet yet important efforts to combat climate change at the local level. She referenced the fact that the Parks Department is no longer spraying pesticides at the public parks and that the city’s Task Force on Resiliency, Climate Mitigation and Adaptation has put out recommendations that are already starting to go into effect. She said that people can be initially resistant to sustainability efforts, but when they see that putting solar panels on the Municipal Services Building saves thousands of dollars, peoples’ minds start to open and those barriers start to get broken down.
Van Zeeland is also concerned about equality for and treatment of queer and neurodiverse people. Although she cares about the dignity of all people, she is particularly passionate about disability rights. In her first year in office, Van Zeeland sponsored legislation to ban conversion therapy, a cruel form of “counseling” that promotes the false idea that queer youth can be converted to heterosexuality, in the city of Appleton, characterizing conversion therapy as child abuse. She wants people to get involved and stand up for the rights of everyone, even in relatively liberal places like Appleton.
Van Zeeland feels that all of these issues tie together, especially when she thinks about her son, and the future she wants to create for younger generations. “A sense of community is a goal of mine, and in that goal, everyone is accepted,” she stated.
Some of Van Zeeland’s biggest influences in life have been her economically disadvantaged upbringing, late grandmother, and knowledge of Catholicism’s social teachings. She was the “poor” kid in Catholic school and wasn’t able to finish her college degree for financial reasons, which, she feels, has given her a unique point of view on political issues.
In 2017, she ran a one-month-long write-in campaign against a 14-year incumbent and got 13% of the vote. She ran against him because she thought it was important to have a choice in the election after she saw that he was running unopposed. When the next election cycle came around, the incumbent stepped aside, and she ran unopposed in 2019. “I think it’s good to have to ask people to vote for you every once in a while,” said Van Zeeland.
In 2020, the second year of her first term, she became Vice President of the Common Council, and was elected Council President in 2021. She works closely with Council Vice President Vered Meltzer and has enjoyed helping him expand the role beyond merely being ceremonial.
Van Zeeland said that her disadvantaged background drove her to run for this position. “I know what it’s like to be disappointed in life, but I [also] know what it’s like to have received the kindness of others,” Van Zeeland said. “That’s what I bring as an elected official — that spirit of really wanting to serve and not serving my own interest, my interest is in serving this community.”