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President's Letter
Feb 21, 2012
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President's Letter

February 2012

Nadine S. Walsten

Last month I started to highlight the results of our community survey distributed in October, 2011, and given there are 30 questions, I will talk about a few each month rather than trying to write a complete summary of the report at once.  Last month, a summary of the findings are: the average age of our Village residents is 32.8 years old; 57.4% of the respondents have lived in the village less than 10 years; 63.9% work in Madison plus 13.9% work in Oregon; and the three most important reasons to move to Brooklyn are a) rural/small town atmosphere; b) cost of home; and c) quality of schools.  The 4^th question was about rate of growth/no growth with 78% of the respondents believing the village should continue to grow.

Question #5 lists the possible businesses the respondents would patronize if they existed in Brooklyn.  Aside from the businesses currently in the Village, people would like to see a pizzeria, restaurant, hardware and grocery store.  Forty-nine per cent (49%) would like to see a coffee shop/deli.  What is interesting is Brooklyn has had three businesses fail in the past few years:  pizzeria, coffee shop and grocery store.

Question #6, #7 and #8 addresses commercial development in the Village.  Question #6 asked where commercial development should occur:  north edge, downtown or a business park.  The answers were evenly split with downtown favored by 71 respondents and a business park by 67 respondents.  Fifty seven voted for the north edge.  Our Comprehensive Planning consultant, Rob Roth, interpreted these results to mean that respondents want to see economic development occur and the “where” is less important.

Questions #7 and #8 address revitalization efforts for the downtown—namely, using incentives to encourage businesses to locate downtown as well as offering incentives to owners to improve downtown buildings.   Question #7 was answered as “somewhat agree” by 31% of the respondents and the remaining were much less.  Question #8 “agree” and “somewhat agree” were tied with 29.8%, giving a total that is a slightly more positive response than Question #7.  I will return to the questionnaire next month.

At this months’ Board meeting, I reviewed my “green” goals for 2012.  One of my goals was for the Village to inventory its trees and create a management plan that also includes the latest recommendations for emerald ash borer management.  It is very exciting to report that the

Village has been awarded an Urban Forest Grant by the DNR for 2012 which will meet the inventory/emerald ash borer management plan goal.   The remaining goals are:  a) create a permanent home for the recycling committee, as a sub-committee of the Public Works Committee; b) create a Sustainability Ad Hoc Committee, with the creation of a Tree Board (which allows the Village to obtain grants from DNR and elsewhere); c) explore establishment and preservation  of a natural area in the woodland south of the cemetery; d) exploring energy conservation measures to decrease Village utility costs, and, e) ideally, to begin exploring the process of creating an energy conservation plan which can create opportunities for larger “green” grants.

I’m going to activate my Village President Facebook account so send me an email at president@brooklynwi.govor “like” me on Facebook.  I’m not technologically graceful so be patient.

See you next month.    

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