Mayor Soglin's Budget Wrap-up Message
Dear Fellow Madisonians,
First, let me express my sincere appreciation to the many citizens who participated in our community budget conversations or filled out the online survey. Your willingness to spend the time to either come to a meeting, fill out the survey, or both were very helpful to us.
You consistently ranked basic services as most important. My executive budget maintains basic services. Other examples of services that you told us were important were election administration by the City Clerk's Office and Madison Metro bus service. I have provided an additional $345,000 to the city clerk for additional expenses next year due to the implementation of Voter ID. Madison Metro's budget maintains fares and services at 2011 levels.
Just as important as your ranking of services was the thoughtful discussion at each meeting about the values that our community considers to be important and how these values relate to the provision of services. This is a discussion that we must continue.
While your elected officials and city staff learned from you this year, I hope that you learned during this process too. We heard from several of you that you were not aware of many of the services that the City of Madison provides before you filled out the survey or came to a meeting. We hope that you found this information interesting and helpful.
We made some adjustments to our process during the summer and plan to use your feedback to help make more improvements for next year. I hope that you will be back then and will encourage your friends and neighbors to attend as well. Thank you again for your participation.
Mayor Paul R. Soglin
First, let me express my sincere appreciation to the many citizens who participated in our community budget conversations or filled out the online survey. Your willingness to spend the time to either come to a meeting, fill out the survey, or both were very helpful to us.
You consistently ranked basic services as most important. My executive budget maintains basic services. Other examples of services that you told us were important were election administration by the City Clerk's Office and Madison Metro bus service. I have provided an additional $345,000 to the city clerk for additional expenses next year due to the implementation of Voter ID. Madison Metro's budget maintains fares and services at 2011 levels.
Just as important as your ranking of services was the thoughtful discussion at each meeting about the values that our community considers to be important and how these values relate to the provision of services. This is a discussion that we must continue.
While your elected officials and city staff learned from you this year, I hope that you learned during this process too. We heard from several of you that you were not aware of many of the services that the City of Madison provides before you filled out the survey or came to a meeting. We hope that you found this information interesting and helpful.
We made some adjustments to our process during the summer and plan to use your feedback to help make more improvements for next year. I hope that you will be back then and will encourage your friends and neighbors to attend as well. Thank you again for your participation.
Mayor Paul R. Soglin