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January 18, 1995 Dane County Zoning & Natural Resources Committee Sup. Lyman Anderson, Chairman !y 2 3 Room 116, City-County Building 210 Martin Luther King, Jr. , Blvd. fECdV1a Madison, WI 53709 RE: Rezoning Petition #6159 - Myron & Betty Timm Dear Chairman Anderson and Committee Members: Under Rezoning Petition #6159, we are proposing to rezone our Town of Windsor property and then sell it to Eurovet, a company that develops and markets colostrum-based veterinary supplies. We were out of the country when your Committee first reviewed our application. We were very surprised to learn that the Village of DeForest opposed our application and want to set the record straight on several matters: (1) Our proposal fully complies with the Town of Windsor's Master Plan, and has been endorsed by both the Windsor Town Board and Plan Commission. As a past Town Chairman, I know from experience that Windsor has a well-deserved reputation for supporting farmland preservation and for closely reviewing any proposal that would convert farmland to a non-farm use outside of the Town's Urban Service Area. The Town of Windsor does not allow new commercial uses in its farmland preservation area, with one exception - Windsor's Master Plan allows for agribusinesses to be located in such areas when there is a clear need, due to the nature of the business, to have production agricultural land or livestock facilities be part of the operation. Examples of this in Windsor are American Breeders Service and Asgrow Seed Research. In our case, Eurovet hopes to have livestock demonstration sites as part of its operation in order to show its products. Such an operation meets the tests of the Town of Windsor Master Plan. I would doubt very much if either DeForest or Windsor would want a new business in their regular industrial parks that had farm animals. You might also be interested to know that the Village of DeForest and the Towns of Windsor and Vienna jointly promote new businesses locating in our community through the DVW Growth Corporation. DeForest's opposition to our proposal thus seems particularly odd in light of the fact that the DVW Growth Corporation has been trying to concentrate much of its efforts on attracting new agribusinesses to our community. (2) DeForest states that Windsor and DeForest have an agreement prohibiting commercial development along Highway 51 outside of the Urban Service Areas. I checked with Windsor officials regarding this agreement. Although the two municipalities have been discussing having such an agreement, there is no actual formal agreement at this time. More importantly, Windsor officials have stated that the Town would need to insist on retaining the exception of allowing certain agribusinesses to locate in its farming areas, businesses that simply cannot locate elsewhere because of the farming nature of their activities. The Village of DeForest also does not have an extraterritorial zoning arrangement with the Town of Windsor