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WEDNESDAY, JAN. 20, 2016
Vol. 18 • No. 24
Water rates to go up PSC recommends a two-year hike in rate By Tracy Ouellette EDITOR
Journalists in training
TRACY OUELLETTE East Troy Times
Clockwise from top: Southern Lakes Publishing Supervisor Randy Hawkins (far right) shows a group of East Troy Middle School seventh graders how the printing press works at the company’s Delavan plant on Jan. 13; T.J. Graser reads the Jan. 14 edition of the Mukwonago Times (sister paper of the East Troy Times) “hot off the press;” and James Storey (front from left), Andy Bong and Graser examinesone of the printing plates with a magnifying glass during the tour of the pre-press room.
The East Troy Village Board members accepted the Public Service Commission’s recommendation to increase water utility rates by 13 percent for the next two years with a reluctant 5-2 vote at Monday night’s meeting. In a memo to the board from Village Administrator Eileen Suhm, she explained the original request from the village was for a 14.25 percent increase, but the PSC proposed an interim rate increase of 13 percent “in order for us to meet revenue requirements, including all debt service payments and debt coverage requirements, for a period of two years.” She went on to say the limited increase period was to allow the village to address “outstanding issues and prior board actions” and the village would have to undergo another rate case study in two years. Jon Cameron, of Ehlers, spoke to the board about the reasoning behind the limited increase and the options for a long-term solution to the water utility shortfall. Cameron said the problem basically comes down to the building bust of 2008 and the fact that area municipalities haven’t seen new construction rebound. Impact fees, which help fund increased services, have dried up, so the utility has to be funded by the water rates. The Village of East Troy water utility’s debt cannot be repaid with impact fees like it was originally planned. “Therefore, there are debt issues that we will not be able to meet payments on if the PSC does not allow us to include these assets and the associated debt in the village’s rate base,” Suhm wrote in her memo. “It was originally anticipated some or all of this debt would be funded by impact fees. The PSC position on this has been that they are not willing to allow for items such as Well 7 and the booster station to be paid for by rates when it was to be funded by impact fees. This is very concerning, by 2026 they are projecting a
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East Troy students test above state average Department of Public Instruction releases ACT, Badger test scores
By Tracy Ouellette EDITOR
For the first time, every high school junior in the state was required to take the ACT test in the 2014-15 school year. According to a press release from the state Department of Public Instruction, last spring, 65,065 public high school juniors had the opportunity to take either the ACT Plus Writing or Dynamic Learning Maps, an alternate assessment that measures the academic progress of students with significant cognitive disabilities. Results from the DPI show 45.7 percent of students were proficient or advanced in English language arts and 35.9 percent achieved those performance levels in mathematics. In East Troy, the 11th graders performed higher than the state average, Director of Special Education and District Assessment Coor-
dinator Kate Harder said. “The percent that were proficient or advanced total for ELA was 53.9 percent and for math was 45.9 percent,” she said. Because this was the first year for every junior to take the test, Harder cautioned against making comparisons with ACT scores from previous years. “Being that the test was an elective before, it’s hard to say exactly what the new numbers mean,” Harder said. She went on to say the district doesn’t rely on a single test to measure student achievement. “Most of our students are meeting their growth targets, and that’s what we look for,” she said. “Our cohorts are doing above the national norms. The cohort, or grade-level, groups are followed throughout their school careers in the
district from grade school through graduation, with progress mapped as a whole and for each individual student. “The piece we always look at are how they’re doing and if they’re growing,” Harder said. The ACT is scored on a scale of one to 36 and consists of five subject area tests – English, reading, writing, mathematics, and science. The 2014-15 statewide composite score for public school juniors who took the ACT was 20.0, according to the DPI. East Troy’s composite score for 2014-15 was 20.4. In the past, ACT results have been released annually for public and private school graduates who took the test during their high school career, the DPI press release stated. For the 2015 graduating class, 46,738 students or about 73 percent of all graduating seniors, took the ACT and had a composite score of 22.2. In East Troy it was 23.1.
The composite scoring on the ACT for English language arts is: 1 to 14 is “Below Basic;” 15 to 19 is “Basic;” 20 to 27 is “Proficient;” and 28-36 is “Advanced.” In math, the composites scoring is 1 to 16 is “Below Basic;” 17 to 21 is “Basic;” 22 to 27 is “Proficient;” and 28-36 is “Advanced.” According to the DPI, more than half of the students in the state tested for a basic or less than basic understanding of the English language arts and nearly two-thirds of the state's students tested for a basic or less than basic understanding of math. According to the DPI, the differences in the number of students, the multiple times graduates may have taken the ACT, and the fact that many graduates take the test during their final year of high
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