12/13/18 Verona Press

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Verona Press The

Treat Yourself This Year

With a New Pair of Glasses with your remaining flex dollars! Dr. Tami Hunt Dr. Emmylou Wilson Optometrists

Thursday, December 13, 2018 • Vol. 54, No. 30 • Verona, WI • Hometown USA • ConnectVerona.com • $1.25

320 S. Main Street, Verona, WI (608) 848-5168 www.VeronaVisionCare.com adno=42436

Verona Area School District

Boundary maps show challenges New school attendance areas complicated by competing criteria SCOTT GIRARD Unified Newspaper Group

Photo by Kimberly Wethal

“Rudolph” eats in his pen while his owner Jeff Phillips, who owns Reindeer Games with his wife Cindy, talks about the animals with attendees during the Reindeer! exhibit on Saturday, Dec. 8, at the library.

Rocking with Rudolph The holidays have officially arrived in Verona. With the annual Hometown Holidays event, as well as the Verona Road Business Coalition’s Jingle and Mingle event in both the city and Fitchburg and the Arthritis Foundation’s Jingle Bell Run, there was plenty of holiday cheer to be seen around Verona on Friday and Saturday, Dec. 7 and 8.

Events included a tree lighting at Central Park at the corner of South Main and Paoli Streets with WISCTV weatherman Gary Cannalte, a chili dinner at the senior center with proceeds benefiting Badger Prairie Needs Network, opportunities for children to meet with Santa Claus, an ice sculpture carving demonstration and live reindeer at the library.

Inside More Hometown Holidays photos Pages 9 and 10

Members of the committee vetting options for new Verona Area School District attendance boundaries had plenty of issues with the first one presented to them. Until they saw the second one. And that’s the challenge of the committee’s work, as consultant Mark Roffers put it plainly at the group’s Wednesday, Dec. 5, meeting: “There is no option that’s going to get an ‘A’

Turn to Maps/Page 7

Criteria • Student Diversity • Contiguous attendance areas when/where possible • Fiscal efficiency • Logical feeder elementary school to middle school structure • Match projected enrollment with efficient building utilization • Minimize number of students impacted by attendance area changes • Neighborhood unity •Transportation efficiency

City of Verona

Room taxes continue increase Alders agree southeast City re-ups with chamber for marketing, grants JIM FEROLIE Verona Press editor

Room taxes 1996: $1,234 1997: $13,136 1998: $23,727 1999: $26,995 2000: $30,030 2001: $28,662 2002: $26,648 2003: $27,293 2004: $32,021 2005: $35,791 2006: $34,555 2007: $40,029

2008: $93,065 2009: $125,699 2010: $140,382 2011: $155,236 2012: $192,939 2013: $205,690 2014: $211,647 2015: $248,834 2016: $405,620 2017: $519,114 2018: $496,326* *First nine months

Nearly all of Verona’s hotel rooms have been built in the past 10 years, and half of them since 2015, so it’s no surprise the city’s room tax revenue is growing faster than ever. It’s on pace to bring in more than $600,000 this year. L a s t m o n t h , t h e Jordan city’s Tourism Commission reviewed the third-quarter numbers, and they totaled more than $200,000, almost as much as the total for 2014. That was before 136-room Hyatt Place opened, more the 91-room Fairfield Inn and the than doubling the number of hotel The

Verona Press

rooms in the city. That’s leaving a lot of room for the commission to plan future tourism and promotion activities, based on the 54 percent of the fund it controls. At its Nov. 20 meeting, the commission renewed its relationship with the Verona Area Chamber of Commerce, giving it another $280,000 to spend on media buys, the tourism coordinator’s salary, local event grants and running the Welcome Center. Nearly half of that will go toward promoting the city in a variety of regional publications, websites and social media through its contract with 6AM Marketing. “Most of the creative is stuff we feel like we can reuse,” Jordan explained. “Ours is seasonal, so if you use it for winter and spring and fall, when it comes around to winter,

Turn to Taxes/Page 16

plan will take years

There’s interest,, but concern over sewer, road infrastructure JIM FEROLIE Verona Press editor

A week after the Plan Commission showed interest but hesitation over a plan to develop a 200-acre chunk of land in the southeast as a residential subdivision, the Common Council came to a similar conclusion Monday. Alders spent far less time parsing the details of the plan – which calls for

around 600 homes and possibly a school – but had several questions and concerns about infrastructure that would be needed to continue to develop that area of the city, just west of Fitchburg. The assumption some made was that once one part develops, others will come soon and the country roads in that area would be incapable of handling the load. In addition, Public Works c o m m i t t e e c h a i r E va n Touchett (Dist. 4) queried the city engineer on sewer lines and was told current

Turn to Plan/Page 16

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