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F AMILY O WNED & O PERATED S INCE 1869 Stoughton • Madison • McFarland Deerfield • Sun Prairie • Waunakee
Thursday, August 9, 2018 • Vol. 137, No. 3 • Stoughton, WI • ConnectStoughton.com • $1.25
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City of Stoughton
Trailers seeks $8.2M TIF Mayor says city is preparing counteroffer BILL LIVICK Unified Newspaper Group
Photos by Kimberly Wethal
Asias Johnson, of Madison, colors in a patch of sidewalk with light blue paint above a storm drain on Main Street on Tuesday, July 31.
Concrete canvas
County arts program highlights storm drains, pollution SCOTT DE LARUELLE
Stoughton Trailers has requested more than $8 million in financial assistance from the city to help the company build a new corporate headquarters. Mayor Tim Swadley said the company – the c i t y ’s l a rg e s t p r iva t e employer – began discussing its plan to build new facility for administrative offices last summer. The two parties are still negotiating the amount of tax-increment financing the city can offer, based on the increased property
taxes the company estimates the new facility would generate. A TIF district would bundle those increased taxes across all jurisdictions and put the revenue in the city’s control. The company hasn’t decided whether to renovate its existing headquarters at 416 S. Academy St., to find another location in the city or to build in another community, Swadley and Stoughton Trailers president Bob Wahlin separately told the Hub last week. Wahlin said the company is waiting for the city to make a counteroffer, and Swadley said the city is “trying to figure out what kind of an offer to
Turn to Trailers/Page 4
Unified Newspaper Group
On a mission
Most people might not think twice about what goes down the average city storm drain, but now they might look twice. At least they will have a reason to around two Stoughton storm drains, recently painted as part of the Storm Drain Mural Program, which uses storm drains as a canvas to educate residents about stormwater pollution through art, and get them thinking about where the water goes. The program is led by the Madison Area Municipal Stormwater Partnership, Dane County and Dane Arts Mural Arts. On July 31, DAMA lead artist Emida Roller and a team of volunteers from Stoughton High School painted a catfish swimming alongside the words “Keep it clean
Ad hoc committee narrows focus to finding young families
Dane Arts Mural Arts artists designed and created a painting Turn to Drains/Page 2 that sits over the top of a storm drain on the sidewalk leading up to Stoughton High School.
Gas leak Friday forces evacuations through a gas main on the 200 block of South Henry Street. A contractor working for the city told the Hub the main was unmarked, and ALEXANDER CRAMER Alliant Energy spokesperson Scott Reigstad told the Unified Newspaper Group Hub the utility took responSeveral homes were evac- sibility for the incorrect uated for about an hour last marking, but it wasn’t clear week after contractors cut as of Tuesday whether the
City contractor slices through unmarked line
Courier Hub
maps the utility used in an old part of the city were incorrect or whether its subcontractor erred in the marking. Reigstad said Alliant received notice of the leak in the 2-inch main at 9:58 a.m. Friday, Aug. 3. The explosion that devastated Sun Prairie’s downtown last month was caused
by a rupture in a 4-inch gas main. Contractors on the site told the Hub they could smell the escaping gas and hear it hissing after slicing through the line, and they started clearing people from homes near the leak. They called Alliant Energy, which
Turn to Leak/Page 7
SCOTT DE LARUELLE Unified Newspaper Group
The Ad Hoc Committee of the City of Stoughton Common Council, Stoughton Area School District and Stoughton Chamber of Commerce h a s t a rg e t e d b r i n g i n g young families to Stoughton – and keeping current ones here – as its mission. The committee was started last spring to jointly address declining enrollment in the district and its effects on the community. Its latest meeting, July 23, was the first with
an almost entirely new set of voting members. Returning member and committee co-chair Jon Coughlin was joined by five newcomers – colleagues Kathleen Hoppe and Jill Patterson from the school board and council members Nicole Wi e s s i n g e r ( D i s t . 4 , co-chair), Sid Boersma (D-1) and Regina Hirsch ( D - 3 ) – i n a p p r ov i n g at that meeting a mission statement to “Make Stoughton a community of choice that attracts and retains young families.” “That’s the direction our committee is going to be focused on, because that’s our purpose that the city and the school board started to form this joint committee, specifically to attack that issue,”
Turn to Ad hoc/Page 4
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