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Crime & Safety

The Best of Patch: August

A month-by-month look back at the top stories of 2011.

As the year comes to a close, we all tend to look back at what exactly we've accomplished over the past 365 days.

In August, we saw the end to the historic recall races of 2011 as Republican Alberta Darling defeated Democrat Sandy Pasch. When all was said and done, Republicans kept control of the Senate with a 17-16 margin after losing two seats during the recall elections.  

In the historic recall elections, Darling topped Pasch to retain her 8th Senate District seat. Darling won the recall election with a 54 to 46 percent margin after a bitter campaign from both sides.   

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Halfway through 2011, crime in Shorewood was down 19 percent over last year, according to data released by Shorewood police in August.

Shorewood's parking issues reared their ugly head again in August when business owners and apartment managers pleaded with the Village Board for help. Business owners were irked with parking for customers and employees nearly a month after signs went up restricting daytime parking to two hours in a portion of the village in an effort to discourage University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students and staff from parking on Shorewood streets.  

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Residents and teachers implored the Shorewood School Board to involve the teachers when developing a new employee handbook, which spelled out working conditions. Shorewood — like school districts around the state — needed to create a handbook to set work rules on matters that used to be negotiated with the teachers union, such as benefits, hours and more. After the passage of the state budget repair bill, only wages are negotiated now.

Shorewood taxpayers got a bit of bad news when the village announced that it found an accounting error that misrepresented the value of a tax incremental financing district. Village property taxes could by 5.8 percent in 2012, according to village officials. 

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