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MIDDLETON–Middleton High School juniors Elaina Jones and Molly Warholic said that they decided to open Next Chapter Academic Tutoring (NCAT) when they began to see an increasing need in the community.

“The school’s been doing a good job during COVID-19, but virtual learning poses a big challenge in our community,” said Jones, and said NCAT encourages teachers to become involved.

NCAT is a free service that relies on high school student as volunteers and offers tutoring for students in K-4. Warholic said, “We have 88 students interested tutors and 77 students interested kids.”

The service offers both one on one and small group sessions as well as a crafts area at their storefront location, 2532 Allen Blvd. The women said the spot has multiple rooms to help in social distancing and the majority of sessions are individual. Before they opened their doors in January, they began online tutoring in December. 

MIDDLETON–Two Middleton Police Department squad cars were damaged early Sunday morning when they were hit by an alleged drunk driver, while they had another car pulled over and were arresting the driver for Operating While Intoxicated (OWI).

Officers performed the traffic stop on Feb. 21, at approximately 1:25 a.m. on North Gammon Road near Fiskdale Circle and the driver was arrested for OWI. Both fully marked Middleton squad cars were parked on the side of the road with emergency lights activated. After the driver was taken into custody the officers made contact with the passenger. While both officers next to the stopped vehicle, an intoxicated driver crashed into the back of one squad car, which was pushed into the other. There was significant damage to one squad and minimal damage to the other. The arrested subject was in the back seat of the front squad and was later evaluated for injury and released from a local hospital.

MIDDLETON–Rebecca Price Middleton Public Lands, Recreation and Forestry Assistant Director outlined the city’s plan to have a Summer Day Camp in 2021 after a one year hiatus due to COVID-19. At the Feb. 5 Middleton Good Neighbor Hub meeting, she said that the main goals of the program are health and wellness, conservation and equity.

The program only enjoyed one year in existence and was born out of the Summer Swimming Program when it became clear that the swim program was some kids’ only opportunity for recreation all summer. Price said most participants were people of color or indigenous.

“They didn’t want it to end,” she told community leaders, even though many did not go in the water or have swimming skills.

“It got us thinking about how important these activities are to the entire community,” she said.

MIDDLETON–Responding to an increasing number of noise complaints the Middleton Airport Commission last week simplified the noise complaint reporting form aimed at making it more user friendly.

Commission Chair Ald. Robert Burck drafted a revised form that removed a space to insert the aircraft’s tail number, information many said was impractical if not impossible to obtain from a moving plane.

The form requires the street address of where the noise occurred, which has been a sore spot for those who have filed complaints and say they then had planes fly low and loud over their address in retaliation.

The section requiring the filer’s email addresses and phone number has been omitted from the new form.

“What information we do need is to identify the time, date and location of the noise concern,” Burck said, in order to investigate the complaint.

MIDDLETON–Middleton High School hockey player Ava Jambor is organizing the Third Annual Super Noah Hockey Game, a fundraiser for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. The fundraiser began a way to support Noah Sanger, a hockey lover who was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) at the age of four and a half. He has been cancer free since March 2020 after three and a half years of treatments.

This year Middleton High School hockey team and local community will be celebrating Noah’s victory over cancer. There will be raffle baskets, homemade food, and a 3v3 hockey tournament.

The event was to be held on Feb. 6 at Penni Klein Park, 8780 Airport Rd., Middleton, but cold temperatures have moved the event to Feb. 20 after previously being rescheduled for Feb. 13..

MADISON–No one was happy with the number of vaccines they received last week, Julie Willems Van Dijk, Wisconsin Department of Health (DHS) Deputy Secretary told a group of reports in a virtual press conference on Tuesday. Willems Van Dijk was referring to the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to health care providers and health departments that requested nearly 300,000 doses.

“We could only fulfill 27 percent of their requests,” she said.

She reiterated that more vaccine is needed in the state and said that supply is one of three things needed to deliver vaccines, public demand and infrastructure to deliver the vaccines are the others. “We have public demand, and we have built the infrastructure to make vaccinating successful,” she explained, and said she knew waiting was difficult.

TOWN OF MIDDLETON–An Oklahoma woman was arrested in the Town of Middleton last week for her alleged involvement in a homicide prosecutors and law enforcement have described as “grisly,” “brutal” and “bizarre.”

Kore Adams, also known as Kore Bommeli, 59, was arrested last week after law enforcement officials discovered the body of her former roommate, Talina Galloway, 53, dismembered and stuffed into a chest freezer that was dumped in an Arkansas national forest. 

Oklahoma District 27 District Attorney Jack Thorp said the Dane County Sheriff’s Office was contacted in the case when they learned Bommeli was in the area. Thorp said Bommeli’s mother lives in Dane County. 

“She was pulled over as she left work,” Thorp told the Times-Tribune over the phone and added she had been in the area for a few months, leaving Oklahoma after she was released on a charge of a Felon in Possession of Firearms.

MIDDLETON–Conversation at the Middleton Equity Team (MET) meeting last week centered mostly around the redistribution of wealth within the community and how that could be achieved. 

After watching a short video about redlining, the practice of rating neighborhoods and drawing red lines around those deemed least desirable, the committee broke into small groups to discuss the practice and what it means in regard to wealth, how racist neighborhood covenants have affected the city and the impact of redistribution of wealth. The members returned to as a whole and discussed the factors that affected wealth distribution. 

One concern was some of the neighborhoods with infill housing lack green space and transportation options. One idea was to include green space when planning infill projects in existing neighborhoods. 

WISCONSIN–Wisconsin Department of Health Services Deputy Secretary Julie Willems Van Dijk told a group of reporters at a virtual press conference Monday that slow shipment of COVID-19 vaccines by the federal government is to blame for the low number of doses administered in the state. She joined Gov. Tony Evers in asking that the feds step up their shipment of vaccines. She said that although Pres. Elect Joe Biden has said his administration will get one million doses shipped per day, at that rate it would still take nearly a year to vaccinate all adults in the United States. As of Monday, 151,502 doses had been administered, 11,586 of which were second doses.

“This is a great accomplishment, but it’s not enough,” Willems Van Dijk said.

DANE COUNTY–Meinholz Quarry LLC, (owned by Yahara Materials), filed a writ of certiorari seeking to have the Dane County Circuit Court reverse the Dane Town Board of Zoning and Appeals (BZA) decision, which affirmed the Springfield Zoning Administrator’s finding that the non-conforming use status of the quarry was invalid. Meinholz also filed a declaratory relief against the Town of Springfield. On Dec. 23, two years after the Town of Springfield Board of directors initially approved the quarry’s proposed expansion, both filings were dismissed by Judge Frank D. Remington.

At a Dec. 2, 2019 meeting the BZA made a decision on a piece of land slated for quarry expansion by Yahara Materials. The board found that the 40-acre parcel, known as the Meinholz property, was conforming status and did fall under the Town of Springfield ordinance jurisdiction, which would require a conditional use permit from the town for mineral extraction.