Courier Hub The
Stoughton
Thursday, April 11, 2019 • Vol. 137, No. 38 • Stoughton, WI • ConnectStoughton.com • $1.25
“Our family will take good care of your family.” Family Owned, Family Operated, Celebrating 97 Years Of Service
(608) 873-4590
www.gundersonfh.com East Madison/Monona • West Madison/Middleton • Stoughton Oregon • Cross Plains • Fitchburg • Lodi • Black Earth • Mt. Horeb
adno=60762
Yahara River Grocery Co-op closing after 11 years
Conservationminded
AMBER LEVENHAGEN
Unified Newspaper Group
Dunkirk approves rural preservation referendum SCOTT DE LARUELLE
Unified Newspaper Group
The Yahara River Grocery Cooperative (YRGC) will be closing on or before June 1 after more than a decade in Stoughton. The announcement was made last week in a letter from the YRGC board of directors to the co-op “owners,” or members, and employees. “Unfortunately, the financial situation of the co-op has continued to decline since the March 2018 owner meeting,” the letter stated. The board had been working with a lawyer, recommended by the UW Center for Cooperatives, and based on their advice, Wisconsin statutes and the cooperative’s bylaws, the board made the decision to close the store, the letter said. A meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 16, at the co-op, to share more information about the board’s decision to close the store, as well as answer questions from the owners and employees. Co-op representatives did not respond to request for further comment. The co-op opened March 2008 and faced early financial struggles. Despite work to recoup early debt, the letter sent last week detailed continued financial difficulty. “We believe the co-op is clearly insolvent,” the letter said. “This conclusion is based on the fact that sales have not been sufficient to sustain the business for at least two years.” The topic of a possible closure was discussed at last year’s annual meeting, when issues with limited parking and competition with other grocery stores were discussed. The primary creditor, Summit Credit Union, has the primary legal rights to determine how the store will close and how the remaining proceeds will
17 years of music Series highlights area musicians
AMBER LEVENHAGEN Unified Newspaper Group
John Beutel lingered to say hello to as many of the nearly 50 audience members at the Stoughton Opera House as possible before covering the grand piano and closing up the auditorium on Monday, April 1. It was the first performance of this season of the Music Appreciation Series, a free, weekly concert series that he has been running for 17 years. “(The purpose) is to offer great music to the people of Stoughton,” he said. “It’s open to everyone who wants to come.”
Beutel retired from Stoughton High School in 2001, after teaching for 35 years. The former music teacher said that in retirement, he found himself in talks with then-Stoughton Area Senior Center director Dennis Ganshert about starting a music series. “In teaching music, I was teaching kids to enrich their lives and give them a better, more rounded idea of what music is,” Beutel said. “Music is so integral in life, and this is a great opportunity.” After some planning, the first season started in the spring of 2002. The series was held at the
Turn to Music/Page 5
Series schedule All performances are at 3 p.m. at the Stoughton Opera House, 381 E. Main St. For information, call 8738585. April 15: SHS music students April 22: Aaron Yamei, violin; Kyle Johnson, piano April 29: UW-Madison jazz quartet May 6: Heywon-Ruh, Piano May 13: The Ancora String Quartet
Turn to Dunkirk/Page 13
Outgoing library director turning the page JUSTIN LOEWEN Hub correspondent
A week before he stepped down as library director, Richard MacDonald sat in his office and was asked to reflect on his proudest accomplishments. Instead of mentioning the progress the Stoughton Public Library has made under his leadership – including a reconstructed second
floor and improvements to programming and the library’s holdings, for example – MacDonald highlighted “hiring the people that I managed to hire.” He then paused and pulled out a picture. It showed MacDonald standing with the library’s staff. The outgoing director proceeded to name every person in the picture and tell a story about each.
“I like to think we have a really unique staff,” MacDonald told the Hub. “Everybody has some exceptional talent.” And from the moment he took over as director in 2011, MacDonald worked to make sure as many people as possible could access that talent by embarking on construction projects to work toward Americans with Disabilities Act compliance.
Closely directing renovations, managing a growing catalog or performing his clarinet at Music on the Mezz, the director’s presence characterized the library. But if you ask MacDonald, a director does not define a library. He described a library to the Hub as a “really interesting place to find information, different kinds
Turn to Library/Page 13
Courier Hub adno=66263
Turn to Grocery/Page 7
Photo by Amber Levenhagen
Shun-Jung, a native of Taiwan, is working on her Doctorate in the Musical Arts at UW-Madison. She was the first performance of this season of the Music Appreciation Series, which started on April 1.
A few years ago, when Ingrid West looked out the window of her rural Dunkirk home at the fields across the street, she scanned the familiar, pastoral sights she’d grown to love and saw a “For Sale” sign. But it’s what she didn’t see that worried her. “I thought, ‘Well, I can’t afford it, but what’s the game plan for it?’” West told the Observer last week. “It looked like it might be high-density housing, so I started to do a little research.” What she found was she was not the only Dunkirk resident concerned about keeping the town’s rural character. A growing group of residents has been pushing for that for more than a decade. After creating a committee that spent the past few years educating people on the program, those plans culminated April 2 in a successful town advisory referendum vote (353-219) to create a Rural Preservation Program. The program – which still needs approval from the Town Board – would tax residents 50 cents per $1,000 of assessed value to set aside money to purchase rights to keep farmland and open spaces from being developed. West said when she approached Town Chair Norm Monsen about the idea of a rural preservation a few years ago, she was surprised to hear his response. “He said, ‘We’ve thought about this 10 years ago, when (the Town of) Dunn did it,’” she said. “They were just looking for people to kind of take the initiative and move it forward.” She began going door to door to see whether residents were interested in a similar program in Dunkirk. Soon, a committee was formed of town supervisors, Plan Commission members and other residents. The Rural Preservation Monthly Committee held four well-attended educational