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It’s your paper! Friday, November 13, 2020 • Vol. 7, No. 9 • Fitchburg, WI • ConnectFitchburg.com • $1
City of Fitchburg
Teen center won’t be in 2021 budget
Fitchburg celebrates Halloween
Compromise plan fails on mayoral tiebreaker
Page 2
Community
Girl with rare genetic disorder communicates with eye gaze device Page 7
Business Promega tests wastewater in the Village of Oregon Page 12
KIMBERLY WETHAL Unified Newspaper Group
Photos by Kimberly Wethal
From left, Ald. Tom Clauder (Dist. 4), veteran Marc Jones, committee member Mike Croft and veteran Eldon McLaury took at the newly installed monument during the Veterans Memorial Park committee meeting on Monday, Nov. 9.
‘A project in motion’ Committee makes progress on city veterans memorial park
KIMBERLY WETHAL
Did You Know?
Unified Newspaper Group
Sports
D
Boys cross country: Richardson commits to Badgers Page 14
Schools Panel will bring more info to board Page 17 Plans in place for middle, high school return Page 19
ecades ago, Fitchburg residents and armed forces veterans Marc Jones and Eldon McLaury got a letter stating that “their friends and neighbors” invited them to serve their country. “I said to my dad, ‘which ones?’” Jones said as he recollected briefly on his time in the service after a Fitchburg Memorial Park meeting on Monday, Nov. 9, as he sat a few hundred feet from a new monument. While it was actually the government alerting them they’d been drafted to serve, both Jones and McLaury, and a citybased committee of other veterans and Fitchburg residents, are hoping that their current “friends and neighbors” are appreciative of the sacrifices made by veterans while serving their country. “We’ll never erase what happened to those folks
Ald. Tom Clauder (Dist. 4) speaks to committee members during the committee meeting. – at least we can maybe pacify it a little bit,” McLaury said. They’re hoping to do that through the expansion of the Fitchburg Veterans Memorial, located at the existing Gorman Wayside Park on Fish Hatchery Road, where a monument to fallen Civil War, World War I and Vietnam veterans already stands. The new monument is the result of fundraising, which the committee now hopes to do more of so
that other monuments can be added to the park, Ald. Tom Clauder (Dist. 4) said. Clauder, a former mayor and police chief who has been leading the effort since the group started in 2018, is not a veteran himself, but said he wants to see more recognition for those who served within Fitchburg. He told the Star last month that the newest addition to the park had been installed at the front
The original monument, which takes the shape of a soldier leaning down in mourning, was dedicated to Fitchburg resident Robert J. Schley, 23, who died in Vietnam in 1967. Schley was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross and Purple Heart for saving the lives of other soldiers.
There apparently won’t be a teen center in the Jamestown neighborhood in 2021. The Common Council said no to the purchase of a vacant building for that use, something alders had previously agreed to in approving the city’s capital improvement plan over the summer, but Mayor Aaron Richardson had left out of his budget proposal. The council, on a mayoral tiebreaker, also rejected several amendments proposed by District 1 Ald. Joe Maldonado that would have funded its operations. The discussion was the most time consuming part of a six-hour budget meeting that included dozens of spoken and written public comments in favor of the proposal and 29 alder amendments to Richardson’s budget overall. Fifteen of those amendments passed, including funding for a study for a teen center, with the cumulative effect increasing the budget by $161,796, to within $531 of the state-mandated levy limit. T h e fi n a l bu d g e t i n c l u d e s $78,000 in additional staffing from 2020, split among two positions, and a 2% cost of living adjustment, as well as $10.2 million in capital expenses in 2021, including $6.4 million to rebuild part of South Syene Road and $1.7 million to rebuild part of Lacy Road west of Seminole Highway. Richardson’s proposal, unveiled in September, had called the budget a tight one, owing to increased debt services, the COVID-19 pandemic and a desire to rein in taxes. It had proposed a city property tax rate of $6.73 per $1,000 of assessed value before the council’s additions on Tuesday night. The resulting impact had yet to be calculated by the end of the meeting.
Teen center fails
of the park: A monument that recognizes the six branches of military service. “We wanted that to be the cornerstone piece so
Alders had debated the teen center since June, when they voted to add it to the capital improvement plan at Maldonado’s request. The 2017 Anton Drive Redevelopment Plan had outlined a need for such a center, stating that community
Turn to Veterans/Page 11
Turn to Budget/Page 11 151
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