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F AMILY O WNED & O PERATED S INCE 1869 Stoughton • Madison • McFarland Deerfield • Sun Prairie • Waunakee
Thursday, November 15, 2018 • Vol. 137, No. 17 • Stoughton, WI • ConnectStoughton.com • $1.25
They’ve got questions Committee using ‘do-it-yourself’ model to find answers SCOTT DE LARUELLE Unified Newspaper Group
A joint city-school committee seeking wa y s t o a t t r a c t a n d keep young families in Stoughton might come calling for your advice this winter. Last month, the group – the Ad Hoc Committee of the City of Stoughton Common Council, Stoughton Area School Coughlin District and Stoughton Chamber of Commerce – began creating a list of questions to ask young people what they like about the city, with the help of couple of Stoughton residents who expressed interest in the committee’s work. I t ’s p a r t o f a “do-it-yourself” guide” to conducting a case study, ad hoc committee chair Jonathan Coughlin explained last week. He told the Hub i t ’s s i m i l a r t o t h e o n e U W- E x t e n s i o n researchers completed
Inside Photos from Stoughton’s Veterans Day celebrations Page 16
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Find out more For more information on the ad hoc committee or to participate in interviews, email jon.coughlin@ stoughton.k12.wi.us earlier this year on “Gaining and Maintaining Young People i n R u r a l Wi s c o n s i n C o m m u n i t i e s .” T h e lead researcher of that guide, Randy Stoecker, presented his findings to the committee this summer. “That was … the first set of information that our committee felt we could use to try to wrap our heads around what attracts people,” he said. The “core group” – comprising ad hoc members Nicole Weissinger, Sid Boersma, Kathleen Hoppe and Jill Patterson, and two residents will spend the next several weeks “assembling any data or research we can get our hands on” to understand the area’s demographics to make sure they are interviewing people who represent “the whole demographic spectrum of the
Turn to Ad hoc/Page 12
Photo by Jeremy Jones
Sophomore Sofia Bormett reacts after touching the wall in first in the 200-yard freestyle Friday at the WIAA Division 2 state swimming meet. She become the first state champion in school history with a time of 1 minute, 53.3 seconds.
Bormett’s historic swim Sophomore Sofia Bormett and the Stoughton girls swimming team capped a second-straight season with an historic finish Friday at the WIAA Division 2 state meet. Bormett became the first Viking to win a state swimming championship, claiming the 200-yard freestyle in a school record 1 minute, 53.3 seconds. Her finish was one-hundredth of a second faster than Badger South rival DeeDee Walker of Madison Edgewood at the UW Natatorium. Stoughton got a third-place finish from Bormett in the 100 free (52.36). The Vikings also had a pair of top-10 finishes with school records in the 400 (3:41.6) and 200 free relays (1:41.85) to finish 11th as a team with 74 points. Stoughton scored a program-best 77 points last year to finish 10th. Sophomore Ava Schigur, senior Sophia Thompson, sophomore Savy Boroughs and Bormett finished seventh as a 400 free relay. Junior foreign exchange student Leire Begona joined Boroughs, Schigur and Bormett took 10th place in the 200 free.
Inside Full coverage of state swimming Page 9
Library director to retire in March 2019 MacDonald’s 8 years saw renovations, Sunday hours ALEXANDER CRAMER Unified Newspaper Group
Richard MacDonald will step down from his position as Stoughton’s library director at the end of March 2019 after eight years in the post. The Library Board will soon start the process of finding his replacement, MacDonald said, advertising the position later this month or in early December. That would put a timeline in place for the next director to be hired in the spring. MacDonald is a classically trained clarinetist, and said he’s looking forward to having more time to play
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music in his retirement, though it’s the klezmer rather than the classical that gets him going these days. Early on in his directorship, MacDonald oversaw the library’s transition to LinkCat software, and in 2015, extensive renovations to the building’s top floors. In 2016, the library restarted Sunday hours, something he said hadn’t MacDonald happened since the 1950s. Sunday is now the third-busiest day for the library, he reported, after Friday and Saturday afternoons. Before his hiring in 2011, the Library Board refashioned the director’s job description, something that probably won’t need to happen this time around.
When Amy Jo Gillingham was hired as the city’s human resources director, she asked for a review of job descriptions, MacDonald said, so this one has been kept up to date. After advertising the position, the board will set a deadline for applications, which, because of the holidays, might mean the board won’t review applications until January. After that, the board will send written questions to a narrowed field of candidates and then invite the top respondents to Stoughton for interviews. And after a candidate accepts the job, he or she will probably have to give their current employer a 30-day notice. MacDonald’s hiring was the result of a nationwide search that yielded
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