Courier Hub The
Stoughton
Fri., Dec. 6, 7:30 pm & Sat., Dec. 7, 1:30 pm
presents
Stoughton High School Auditorium
Tickets: Adults $14, Students/Seniors $8 Available at the door and online:
StoughtonHolidayShow.com Based on the poem by Clement C. Moore Book and lyrics by Jennifer Kirkeby Music by Shirley Mier
Thursday, November 28, 2019 • Vol. 138, No. 19 • Stoughton, WI • ConnectStoughton.com • $1.25
Produced by special arrangement with The Dramatic Publishing Company of Woodstock Illinois
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Spring election
Handful of open seats to be filled this spring At least two races will not see incumbents in April KIMBERLY WETHAL Unified Newspaper Group
Photo by Mackenzie Krumme
Two students act out the role of “aggressor” during the safe school ambassador training on Wednesday, Nov. 20. The girls are pretending to exclude a peer from their sleep over party.
Changing the norm MACKENZIE KRUMME Unified Newspaper Group
The walls of room 204 in the Stoughton Area School District’s administrative building are lined with hundreds of colorful sticky notes – “Someone poured chocolate milk inside my fleece jacket,” or “Mr. Johnson, I don’t want her in my group,” the notes read.
On the Web
handwritten posters explaining the result of such behavior, the “Costs of mistreatment: suicidal thoughts, Stoughton Area School District has a bullying/ depression, not wanting to come to harassment reporting form online on the district school.” website. Students and families can report The roughly 40 students in this incidents and plan to have a response from the room are being trained as safe school district within 48 hours. To access the reporting ambassadors as part of a nationwide form, visit: program to empower students to stick stoughton.k12.wi.us up for their peers. They are given six skills to help support the target and discourage the aggressor. The sticky notes describe real sitThe six skills are: Balancing, supuations students at River Bluff Mid- porting, reasoning, distracting, active dle School have witnessed or experi- listening and getting help. Some skills enced. Adjacent to the sticky notes are Turn to School/Page 10
Parks considers alternate whitewater plan Keeping dam, extra drops could put $400,000 grant at risk RENEE HICKMAN Unified Newspaper Group
The initial plan for a whitewater park on the Yahara River could be complicated by state requirements and make the city
ineligible for a grant. That has led the Parks and Recreation commission to consider a second design that would not risk the grant. This means removing the Fourth Street dam in its entirety, which would also eliminate some of the park’s key amenities. T h e w h i t ewa t e r p a r k plan, designed by Colorado-based Recreation Engineering and Planning, is
Courier Hub
envisioned as part of the long-term redevelopment of Stoughton’s downtown waterfront, designed to provide recreation opportunities for visitors for around the region. The initial concept would install rapids and other water elements to allow paddlers and surfers to navigate multiple drops and a surfing wave on a roughly 1,000-foot stretch of the
Yahara River. Those would make the park the only one of its kind in the Midwest, director of parks and recreation Dan Glynn told the Hub on Nov. 22. However, most of those functions are dependent on keeping part of the dam at Fourth Street in place, which could make the park ineligible for a $400,000
Turn to Whitewater/Page 11
Turn to Election/Page 3
Stoughton library checks out fine-free approach Library would join a growing trend across southwest Wisconsin RENEE HICKMAN Unified Newspaper Group
Stoughton library director Jim Ramsey has been watching for several years as the trend toward eliminating library late fines gathers momentumacross the country. But he says it was a conversation with a Stoughton Area School District teacher that made him realize it was time to address the issue in Stoughton, too.
The teacher told Ramsey she fears accruing daily charges at her nearest library location, he said, so she started traveling to check out books at other libraries in the South Central Library System that have gone fine-free. The regional and national trend toward fine-free libraries, as well as experiences like the teacher’s, have Ramsey and the Stoughton library’s board of directors exploring the possibility of removing fines for late items. In a darkened meeting room in the library basement on Wednesday, Nov. 19, the board of directors
Turn to Library/Page 5
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River Bluff’s anti-bullying program empowers youth to stop peer mistreatment
While many incumbents in the Stoughton area on local or regional governmental bodies are choosing to re-run in the spring election, there are a few seats that will be filled by a newcomer. Most notably in the City of Stoughton is Ald. Matt Bartlett (Dist. 4), who has decided against running for the seat. Bartlett cited conflicts with his children’s schedules and his plans to get a master’s degree in business administration. Another seat on the Common Council has had no one declare candidacy. Ald. Timothy Riley (D-1) hasn’t said whether he
plans to run for his seat again, a seat he was chosen for in June 2018 after Mayor Tim Swadley vacated the seat after a successful mayoral bid. One-third of the seats on the nine-member school board of trustees for the Stoughton Area School District will be up for re-election this year. Incumbents John Coughlin, Tim Bubon and Steve Jackson will all see their three-year terms end in April. District clerk Becky Egan said none of the candidates has yet filed non-candidacy statements stating their intent to not run again. The towns of Dunkirk and Dunn voters won’t have any local races to vote for this year – all of the elected officials, five in Dunkirk and three in Dunn, are decided in