DCPREZ-0000-07389 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

'%tk .4'. • Z Members of the Town Board, First of all I need to introduce myself. My name is Rod Dahlen. My wife Kathy, our two children and I have been residents of the Town of Pleasant Springs since 1983. We lived at 1975 Tower Drive until 1991. Subsequent to that we rented a home in Stoughton for a short period while our current home was being built at 2165 County HWY B. We moved into our new home in late 1992. The reason I am writing this letter is that I am very upset that a preliminary OK was granted by the Town Planning Commission to allow Bob Burrell to rezone a 2 acre parcel of land, that lies immediately east of our property, from Al Agricultural to RH1. There are a number of reasons for my concern. I will try to. express them below. In early 1992, when we purchased our lot from Mr. Burrell, we were told by the Town Board that we could not build in the small (approximately 0.75 acre field) • that was a part of our lot. This was difficult for us to understand because we felt that you wouldn't even be able to turn today's large farm machinery around in this area. I would be lying if I didn't admit to being upset with the decision at the time it was made. However we accepted the decision and purchased the lot with a deed restriction to that effect in place. We subsequently put a huge amount of effort into clearing an area in the woods for our home. As a matter of fact, I am currently in the process of building a shed that is also "in the woods" because of this decision. Please don't misunderstand me, my point here is not to complain about the decision that was made relative to our lot, it is merely to point out the situation and question what has changed between then and now. The parcel of land Mr. Burrell is proposing to rezone consists of a narrow strip of box alder brush on what is in effect a terrace built to prevent erosion. The brush or"woods" as Mr. Burrell refers to it on this parcel is 40 feet wide at the maximum. He is proposing to rezone a parcel that is 150 feet wide by 600 feet long. Unless my math fails me, this means that even if the "woods"was 40 feet wide for the entire length of the parcel, which it is not, the parcel contains 1.5 acres of Al farmland (part of a large field) and 0.5 acres of"woods". Mr. Burrell may not agree that this is prime farmland but we need to let the facts speak for themselves. I have been told by a member of the Town Planning Commission that this land consists of ringwold type soil with only a 6 to 10 % slope and that its listed as being able to produce an average of 116 bushels of corn to the acre. Now I don't know about Dane county, but having grown up on a small dairy farm in the coulee country of western Wisconsin, we would have considered this prime farmland. There was also a breautiful crop of soybeans on this field this summer that we could see from our property. In fact, a number of people that visited us remarked that "they had never seen soybeans that tall". Considering the fact that there was only about 0.75 acres of Al land on our 4 acre parcel and 1