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Thursday, February 7, 2019 • Vol. 137, No. 29 • Stoughton, WI • ConnectStoughton.com • $1.25
Stoughton Area School District
Reg. Hours: M-F 9-5, Sat 8-3
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The
Redevelopment Authority
RDA wants end to moratorium City ordinance has protected blacksmith shop for two years ALEXANDER CRAMER Unified Newspaper Group
Photo by Justin Loewen
Gavin Soza, 9, crawls through a snow tunnel built with snow from the preview two weeks’ storms in Stoughton Sunday, Feb. 3. The Stoughton Area School District closed for four days, two for snow and two for cold.
Weather disrupts schedule SCOTT DE LARUELLE Unified Newspaper Group
After a mild start to winter, the snow and Arctic temperatures that rolled through the region in the past few weeks have put the Stoughton Area School District’s allotted “snow days” on ice. After canceling school for two days due to snow and two days due to
subzero temperatures in the past two weeks, district superintendent Tim Onsager said any more weather cancellations would force the district to make up those minutes somehow. “This is unprecedented since I’ve been here,” he said. “We’ve had four (canceled) days in two weeks, two with snow and two with cold. “It’s been a wild two weeks.” Onsager said there are three options on how to deal with that situation if it arises. The first is adding 7-10 minutes to the school days until the time is made
up, though he said “as an educator, I’m not too keen on that.” “We’re really not going to get much instructional time out of a minute or two added to class, and we’ve already missed four days of interaction time,” he said. A second option is to add a day at the end of the school calendar, something Onsager said would have an impact on staff and students, since it would mean returning to classes on a Monday,
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Cummins celebrates a century Longtime Stoughton employer emphasizes community service SCOTT DE LARUELLE Unified Newspaper Group
Technical innovation is “at the heart of what we do,” said Cummins Inc. chairman/CEO Tom Linebarger, and this week, the company is celebrating 100 years of it, dating to the
development of the diesel engine. Since 1998, the company has been part of the Stoughton community, with its employees taking part in a variety of local causes. The connection really started 80 years ago, when Nelson Muffler was started in a Stoughton garage. Through the years, the company expanded into the old Mandt Wagon factory and moved to the present site along Highway 51 in 1960.
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Cummins purchased the business in 1998, and it has since opened facilities in Janesville, Mineral Point and Neillsville, with more than 320 employees in the area working on research and development of emission after-treatment and air and crankcase filtration for diesel and natural gas-powered equipment. The Stoughton research and development facility works
Turn to Cummins/Page 14
Turn to RDA/Page 7
By the numbers $20.7 BILLION
7,500
2017 sales of Cummins, Inc.
Dealer locations.
$1 BILLION
190
2017 earnings
Countries and territories served
58,600
500
Employees worldwide
Company-owned and independent distributor locations
(Source — Cummins, Inc.)
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Four built-in ‘snow days’ used up in last two weeks
The ordinance that has prohibited the demolition of the blacksmith shop for nearly two years should be rescinded, the group in charge of the building has agreed. T h e R e d ev e l o p m e n t Authority, at a special meeting Tuesday, Jan. 29, unanimously recommended the Common Council remove the demolition moratorium and the council is expected to take up the matter at its next meeting on Feb. 12. The vote doesn’t reflect a shift in the RDA’s position on whether the century-old building should be demolished, chair Roger Springman told the Hub. Rather, he said, the move would allow the body to be “nimble” in making that decision, Springman said. That way, he said, if demolition is required, it would not have to wait
an extra two weeks to go through the council. “We want to make sure the city and RDA are able to move quickly to take care of any needed potential demolition, with a building that fragile and with spring coming and more wind,” Springman said. Last fall, the council had tabled an attempt to remove the moratorium in November, with RDA member and Ald. Regina Hirsch (Dist. 3) calling it “flexibility we do not need.” RDA discussions indicate the group still plans to solicit proposals from developers for the redevelopment site that will include the possibility of incorporating the blacksmith shop. But an October wind storm has already taken a chunk out of the building, making the prospect of keeping it intact more complicated. “Everyone knows who drives by it, the building is very fragile,” Springman said, with two collapsed bays and numerous “gaping holes” on the