COTTAGE GROVE — This election Cottage Grove residents will be asked to spend millions on a new library and recreation center.

After these two referendums, they'll have to decide how to deal with an overcrowded village hall, a police department that will eventually lose its lease and a public works department that has so little space they've got to truck the road salt in from Madison.

While residents might be overwhelmed looking at that list, officials say Cottage Grove is far from alone. Fast-growing communities across the country are facing tough choices and big bills. While their population has been booming, infrastructure improvements have been piling up.

"Citizens in lots of other communities have gone through this," said Dan Thompson, executive director of Wisconsin League of Municipalities, citing Middleton, Fitchburg, Waunakee and DeForest as some examples of communities that experienced periods of rapid growth.

Residents have to figure out what kind of community they want and how much they can afford to pay for service, he said.

"Growth, no matter how positive it is. . .is also almost always politically destabilizing," he said. Growth implies changes and some people like change, but others don't, he said.

"It's not just Dane County," Thompson said. "This is a pattern that has been repeated time and time again around the country."

While school referendums have been front and center in recent years due to state imposed levy limits and school overcrowding, city, village and town governments also have been forced to go to referendum on a variety of issues — many resulting from growth.

In April, city and town of Verona residents voted whether to consolidate the two communities; in 2004 Mount Horeb residents voted whether to construct a water tower and well; and in 2005 McFarland residents voted on whether projects over $1 million should go to referendum.

On Nov. 4, two other communities will hold referendums — Fitchburg regarding a new library and the town of Cottage Grove to exceed the state-imposed levy limit for road maintenance.

Cottage Grove has more than doubled its population in the last 10 years, going from 2,730 in 1998 to 5,525 residents in 2008.

"The village is a relatively young," said Village Administrator Kim Manley. "As the village grows, there will be a demand for additional services."

Maintaining the needed level of services and programs while also trying to attract new residents to the area is not an easy — or cheap — thing to do. Here are some other issues the Cottage Grove Village Board is grappling with that may find their way before village residents in the near future:

• The police department, which is renting space, will be forced to find a different and likely permanent home when the lease is up in three years.

• The village hall is bursting due to lack of document storage.

• The public works and public utility department is at capacity and relies on storing off-season equipment in a rented shed.

Inadequate space for village services was exemplified this winter when road crews had to haul every load of sand and salt from county storage near Madison to service village streets during the winter's record breaking snowfall.

And because it has no outside storage of its own, Cottage Grove also had to haul back any extra salt at the end of the treatment.

The recreation department houses the village's utility meters, the police department is the keeper of the street sweeper and there's no place to put material such as extra gravel for road work.

"It's like we're all over," Manley said of the village's services and supplies. "With fuel prices and labor costs it needs to be consolidated to make things more efficient."

For now, however, the village is focused on gauging the public's interest in contributing $3 million toward a new library and $3.7 million toward expanding Fireman's Park to include tennis courts, a recreation center, skate park, playground, shelter and parking lot.

"Cottage Grove is a growing community and we have a fairly active recreation program," Village President Ken Dahl said. "Some of the fields that we need for certain things are pretty well getting booked out for practice and game times."

If the expansion to Fireman's Park is approved, an additional $2 million would still need to be raised. But Dahl said the recreation program should pay for itself in a couple years because of all the additional programs.

"It's an exciting time," he said. "It's nice to see some of this stuff happening."

Diane Wiedenbeck, a Cottage Grove village trustee and president of Library Board, said while she knows other issues — such as space for public works — need to be addressed in the village, items such as libraries and parkland are needed to enhance the village as well.

"A library is going to be a good economic return on the dollar," she said. "It's proven by many, many communities that when you put a library by businesses ... it brings people to the library who then go to the businesses."

Fitchburg, which has been researching the feasibility of a library for more than four years, also is going to referendum on the issue this fall.

Like Cottage Grove, Fitchburg officials say they hope a library will add to the community's identity and create a city center.

In Cottage Grove, the Library Board already has purchased five acres of land near the new Glacial Drumlin School and the proposal is for an 18,000-square-foot library that would cost just over $7 million. The referendum asks residents if they support the village funding $3 million of the project and the other $4 million would come through fundraisers.

The library is expected to serve the village population from 2010-2020, Wiedenbeck said. After that "we can expand west and on the south of the building."

Jack Henrich, a village trustee, said amenities like a library and recreation center would help give the village an identity and people might view it less as a bedroom community of Madison.

"It kind of gives a sense of community you don't get if you just live here and work in Madison," Henrich said.

But as the village puts the proposed library and park expansion to the voters on the heels of a referendum to build the new Glacial Drumlin School in 2006, there is concern that residents will start to feel overtaxed.

"It's always a concern that village residents will get weary of being asked to pay for more things," said Harvey Potter, a village trustee.

"Is it too much? We hope not," he said.