Sussex-Lisbon — Worsening economic conditions constrained the legislative bodies of both communites as they passed their recommended 2009 budgets this week. Final versions will be approved before Thanksgiving after public hearings in November.

Lisbon's town meeting, open to all voters, will vote on the town levy, highway budget and Town Board salaries — http://www.townoflisbonwi.com/otherinfo.html — at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 20, at Hamilton High School. Sussex has yet to schedule its public hearing on the village budget.

Shopko Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael MacDonald said the Sussex store, which will employ about 100 workers, was built to make shopping more efficient for "time-starved" customers.

It will feature low racks in the center of the store and higher racks along the walls, so customers can find what they’re looking for at a glance and wide aisles for older and disabled customers and an optical center and pharmacy.

The Public Works Department will conduct a village-wide curbside brush pickup Sept. 22-26.

Department trucks will go through the village just once, so brush must be on the curbside by the morning of the first day, Monday, Sept. 22.

Sussex — Friday is the deadline for Pheasant Farm subdivision developer Mike Schutte to comply with the village's demand that he qualify for a permit to continue bring fill material to the development site on the west side of Highway 164, north of Richmond Road.

Village officials say they will issue a citation Monday that carries a $1,000 fine for each day of non-compliance with the village ordinance.

Sussex has already issued an identical citation to Bielinski Homes demanding that the company stabilize or remove the pile of ground concrete on its Mammoth Spring development site on Main Street and Waukesha Avenue.

Village Engineer Eric Nitschke told the Village Board on Tuesday that both companies were violating the village ordinance that limits stormwater runoff, erosion and pollution of the village's waterways from construction sites.

The Wisconsin National Guard 32nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, the state’s largest with 3,500 soldiers, will be deployed to Iraq early next year in the state guard’s largest operational deployment since World War II.

Notification began Friday, Sept. 5, and continued through that weekend. The unit – including Sussex’s 108th Forward Support Company and Oconomowoc’s Det. 1, 32nd Military Police Company – has been on alert since last December.

According to a Dec. 3, 2007, Defense Department news release, the brigade "will have a security force mission and be assigned tasks which will assure freedom of movement and continuity of operations" in Iraq.

The Wisconsin units will report for duty at their local armories in mid-February, then train at a U.S. Army installation in Texas for about two months before deploying to Iraq for the next 10 months.

The Village Board voted Tuesday to reduce the width requirements on neighborhood streets in new subdivisions.

Village staff had recommended the board reduce the requirement from 37 feet to 33 feet, based on a survey of neighboring communities. They pointed out the village is responsible for road maintenance, even though the developer is responsible for installing the streets in the first place. They also said narrower roads slowed down traffic and reduced storm water runoff from impervious surfaces.

Sussex Fire Chief Colin "Corky" Curtis objected, claiming firetrucks needed wider roads to get to fires and other emergencies quickly.

The board split the difference, settling on a 35-foot width requirement.

The village wants Bielinski Homes to clean up the gravel piles left on the old Mammoth Spring cannery site from the demolition of the cannery’s remaining structures more than a year ago.

Village trustees at their meeting Tuesday ordered the village staff to write a letter to the builder demanding that the site be cleaned up by Sept. 1.

Bielinski ground up the cannery's remaining concrete structures last year after the village demanded then that the rubble be removed, but left the ground rubble on the ground. Businesses and homeowners nearby complained then that the site, often called a a neighborhood "eyesore," had been neglected for years.

Karen Schroeder of Sussex will ride in this year's Community Memorial Hospital Wheeling for Healing bike ride Saturday to support the Menomonee Falls hospital's Cancer Care Center, celebrate cancer survivors and memorialize those who’ve fallen to the disease.

After four operations over the last two years, she is "doing all right" today, she said. She no longer sweats the small stuff and hopes that cancer has made her "a better person."

For the full story, read next Wednesday's Sussex Sun.

"Community Memorial Hospital is not working with the YMCA to build a facility in Sussex," Beth Earnest, the hospital's media specialist, wrote in an e-mail Tuesday.

The Waukesha Family YMCA pulled out of the Pheasant Farm Development northwest of Highway 164 and Richmond Road about two months ago, according to Pheasant Farm developer Mike Schutte, who also said Y officials told him they were "partnering with a major health care provider" on another site along Highway 164 in Sussex.

Research into Waukesha County property tax records revealed that the hospital does own property along the 164 corridor through a company it owns, Horizon Ventures. "We do own that property," Earnest confirmed in a telephone intervew Monday, "but we don't have any definite plans for it."

Sussex — The Village Board has dropped its lawsuit against its former assessor, Grota Appraisals, in the wake of its state Supreme Court victory last month against a company that sought "enhanced" property assessment information that Grota had compiled.

Sussex had sought the "enhanced" data from Grota to respond to WIREdata, a division of Multiple Listing Services, which had sued the village for that information. Sussex also replaced Grota with Accurate Appraisals as its assessor when it sued Grota.

Village Attorney John Macy told the board at its meeting last Tuesday that the case was moot, now that the high court had ruled that the village had not violated the state's open-records law when it supplied WIREdata with both printed and digital copies of the standard assessment data Grota had provided the village.

Sussex — A Wisconsin Department of Commerce official will attend the reopening of the old Tombstone Pizza factory, W227 N6088 Sussex Road (off east Main Street), this Wednesday.

The new owner, Nature's Path Foods of Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, has spent the last several months refitting the plant to manufacture the company's line of organic breakfast cereals, breads and snacks.

(An earlier report that Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle planned to attend the event was incorrect.)

The department began concrete paving Highway 74’s roadway, curbs, gutters, sidewalk and driveway aprons July 8. Access might be limited until the work is completed, the release said.

Waukesha - Matthew A. Pagel, 24, pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual assault of a student by school staff at his plea hearing today in the Waukesha County Courthouse.

Two counts of second degree sexual assault of a child and three counts of sex with a child 16 or older were dismissed. Judge Lee S. Dreyfus said he might take the five dropped charges into account when he sentences Pagel at 3 p.m. Sept. 19.

Sexual assault of a student by school staff is a class-H felony that can result in fines up to $10,000 and incarceration for up to six years, three in a secure facility and three under probation. The state prosecutor will not make any sentencing recommendation.

Pagel is a 2002 Hamilton High School graduate who was employed there as a coach and special-education professor during the 2006-07 school year. The charges involved sexual acts that took place between Pagel and the victim near the end of January 2007.

Waukesha — Sussex teenager Michael Hollnagel was charged with homicide by negligent operation of a motor vehicle today for the death of 16-year-old Brian Jackson of Menomonee Falls who had been "surfing" on the hood of the car Hollnagel was driving.

The 17-year-old Hollnagel faces a 10-year prison term if convicted in the death of his friend and fellow Hamilton High School wrestling teammate.

Hollnagel crashed the car into a tree around 9:30 p.m. on Fair Oak Parkway west of Hickory Tree Lane, Menomonee Falls Police said.

Assistant District Attorney Pablo Galaviz told Court Commissioner Thomas Pieper that the vehicle had been traveling between 50 and 60 mph when Jackson was thrown from the hood. Jackson died on a helicopter taking him to Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa, according to the district attorney's criminal complaint.

Pieper set Hollnagel's bail at $1,000 cash and a $10,000 signature bond and ordered him not to drive unless he needed a car to get to or from work or attend a class.

Sussex — The village will close Waukesha Avenue from Main Street to Good Hope Road for a $1.9 million facelift June 4.

Village Engineer Eric Nitschke said the north-south street would remain closed to traffic, except for residents who live there, for about four months, depending on the weather.

Sussex — The Village Board voted unanimously Tuesday night to keep the once-controversial pedestrian crossing "bumpouts" on Main Street, and to keep them as they are, without adding new warning signs.

Public Works Committee Chairman Steve Berger said his committee voted 2-1 to maintain the status quo because it would be too expensive to remove the bumpouts or add new signs.

A study commissioned by the village also confirmed that the structure made it safer to cross Main Street at that spot between the Pauline Haass Public Library and the Piggly Wiggly parking lot.

"It is functional," Village President Tony Lapcinski said.

The study also recommended against planting tall grasses or colorful flowers that might obstruct a driver's view of a child crossing there, and in favor of installing "pavers" instead.

Lapcinski and Berger organized and led a slate of challengers who roundly criticized the bumpouts in their successful bid for Village Board seats in the 2007 elections.

Sussex — Lt. Pete Chycinski will end his 12-year tenure as head of the Waukesha County Sheriff's Sussex Office and as the village's director of police services next Thursday, May 22.

According to Sheriff's Department officials, Chycinski will report for duty the next day in Waukesha as his last day on the job for a department going-away party. 

Village officials have already recommended someone they'd like Sheriff Dan Trawicki to name as Chycinski's replacement, but have not revealed his name yet.

Sussex — Kurt Roskopf needs a dozen more villagers to commit to the blood drive he is organizing for July 23 before the American Red Cross will agree to send a mobile unit here.

Roskopf said he needs 25 blood donors in all by the end of this week to get the Red Cross to participate, and that he was about halfway there as of the beginning of this week.

For more information, to donate blood or to volunteer help for the blood drive, call Roskopf at (262) 253-6509.

Sussex — The Minnesota Crime Wave will hit the Pauline Haass Public Library next Monday. This mystery writers group will lead a fast-paced, humor-laden discussion at 7 p.m. April 21 in the Quad/Graphics Room.

Mystery writers William Kent Krueger, Ellen Hart and Carrl Brookins — who collectively have written 30 novels and won more than 16 national and regional awards — will explain how they've developed their own individual writing styles.

For more information, call (262) 246-5181, visit the library's website at www.wcfls.lib.wi.us/phpl or the library itself at N64 W23820 Main Street.