City Meetings and Updates Week of Oct 27

• City Meetings:
  • Finance Committee Hearing 10/27 on 2026 Operating Budget Amendments
  • Common Council 10/28
• Reminder: Canter and Woods Farm Park Planning Meeting 10/29
• Williamson Street Safety Experiment – Survey Closes 10/31
• Events & Announcements Meetings

City Meetings

Finance Committee Hearing Monday on 2026 Operating Budget Amendments

The Finance Committee meeting will take place on Monday, October 27, at 4:30 p.m. in hybrid format. Agenda items include deliberations on the 2026 Executive Operating Budget.

The finance committee will consider 8 amendments at their meeting on Monday. If they follow the wise advice from Finance staff to leave a $200k cushion under the State's Expenditure Restraint Program spending limit to make sure we don’t breach the limit, Finance committee members have $218k of yet-unallocated funds to spend and the 8 amendments together would cost $254k if all are adopted, so I suspect they'll have to deny one or a couple of them. The amendments are:

1. Civil Rights Department - Increasing three translator positions from 0.6FTE to 0.8 FTE to offer more capacity for helping speakers of the Spanish, Hmong, and Chinese Mandarin languages navigate City services - $80k.
2. Economic Development Division: increasing the City’s contribution to the Double Dollars program that helps low-income families buy food at farmer’s markets with SNAP/FoodShare: $12,500.
3. Economic Development Division – requiring a competitive Request For Proposals process for downtown programming: $0, no tax levy impact
4. Economic Development Division: increase the City’s contribution to the Downtown Business Improvement District: $12,225.
5. Engineering – add a 1.0 FTE surveyor position: $69k.
6. Office of the Independent Monitor – increase the Data Analyst position from 0.6 FTE to 0.8 FTE: $18,258.
7. Parks – Add a 1.0 FTE Parks Program Coordinator position for more activities in parks: $63k.
8. (I’m co-sponsoring this one) Public Health – reallocate $276k City funding within Public Health that the County will no longer match to instead go to the Violence Prevention Unit, which provides services to the Harmony Apartments here in District 3, no new tax levy funds are required because this amendment represents a reallocation, not an overall increase in budget. The added funds in the Violence Prevention Unit would convert three existing 0.5 FTE positions to full-time and add much-needed staff capacity, and provide supplies for direct client support in communities affected by violence.

Here is a document with much more detail about each of the proposed amendments. If you would like to provide input on these to Finance Committee members, you can register for/against any of them using the “Register for Public Comment” link below or send an email to: financecommittee@cityofmadison.com.

Meeting info:

• Meeting Details
• Meeting Agenda
• Register for Public Comment
• Watch Online

Common Council

The Common Council meeting will take place on Tuesday, October 28, at 6:30 p.m. in hybrid format. Agenda items include:

Agenda items include:

• Item 1: An honoring resolution recognizing October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month
• Item 11: A resolution approving plans, specifications, and schedule off assessments for the reconstruction of MacArthur Road, MacArthur Court, Larson Court, and Sycamore Avenue in District 3 in 2026. This project has been to the Transportation Commission and Board of Public Works with recommendations for approval and feedback for Engineering staff on the particulars of the project design. More information is available on City Engineering’s webpage for the project.
• Item 28: A resolution adopting the 2025-2030 Park and Open Space Plan as a supplement to the City of Madison Comprehensive Plan (I’m a sponsor). I wrote more about the draft Plan in this blog post from August.
• Item 37: A resolution approving plans and a bidding process for 2026 playground replacements, including for Kennedy Park in District 3. Playground plans are available here.
• Item 43: A resolution authorizing a five-year contract with Diehl & Neumaier to recycle metals and appliances collected by the Streets Division.
• Item 44: A resolution authorizing an eight-year contract with Pellitteri for the sorting, processing, and marketing of recyclables collected by the Streets Division (There’s a fun fact in the resolution: apparently the City of Madison Streets Division began a curbside recycling program in 1968, making it the first such program in the nation!)
• Item 54: A resolution authorizing the Parks Division to apply for a grant from WI Dept of Administration for funding for up to $1million to help renovate the Bolz Conservatory at Olbrich Botanical Gardens (I’m a cosponsor). There is a local match funding requirement, which would be split between the 2026 Parks Division Capital Budget and private fundraising through Olbrich Botanical Gardens.

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  Image credit: City Engineering

  Item 68: A resolution approving applications to WisDOT for federal Transportation Alternatives Program funds for future projects, including the Autumn Ridge Path Extension in District 3 (I’m a cosponsor). This project would extend the new All Ages, All Abilities ped/bike path from the current bridge over Hwy 30 to the west (along the south side of Hwy 30) and a new bridge over Stoughton Road near the top of the Garver Path, proposed to extend through the new Starkweather neighborhood at the old Voit Farm site.

Meeting info:

• Meeting Details
• Meeting Agenda
• Register for Public Comment
• Watch Online

Reminder: Canter and Woods Farm Park Planning Meeting Wednesday 

Image credit: Madison Parks

Park improvements are coming to two new City parks in District 3! Both Woods Farm Park and Canter Park on the far northeast side are approximately 5 acres. In anticipation of further growth in nearby neighborhoods, Madison Parks is writing master plans with resident input to guide the development of these two park properties. The first Public Information Meeting for resident input was held on September 4th. Residents were also invited to fill out a survey, which has since closed.

Parks is hosting another virtual public input meeting on Wednesday, October 29th from 6pm-7:30pm. The goal of this meeting is for staff to present draft plan options that they prepared based in input, and get more feedback on those before compiling a final draft of the plan for approval and adoption by the Board of Park Commissioners.

• Where: Zoom, please register here to receive the Zoom the link
• When: Wednesday, October 29th from 6pm-7:30pm

Williamson Street Safety Experiment – Survey Closes Friday 

Image credit: City Traffic Engineering

Since September 9th, City Traffic Engineering has been running an experiment and study on Williamson (Willy) Street by removing the morning and afternoon peak-hour travel lanes between Blount Street and Thornton Avenue. Members of the City’s Transportation Commission requested and approved this experiment to see if the resulting traffic volume/speed data suggests that this is a safer arrangement, or not. My understanding is that this experiment is primarily a response to nearby neighborhoods’ outrage about recent instances drivers crashing into buildings along Williamson Street, which for some reason happens more on Williamson than on other comparable street types like Monroe Street, unfortunately.

As part of the study, Traffic Engineering requests feedback from members of the public, particularly those who use the Williamson Street corridor. The survey closes on Friday, October 31st. At some point in the future, likely this winter, staff will present findings to the Transportation Commission – watch for mentions of that in one of my future blog posts.

Here’s the link to the public survey, which closes this Friday.

More information is available on this project webpage.

Events & Announcements

• City, County Officials Encourage Flu & COVID Vaccination This Fall: Public Health Madison & Dane County is reminding everyone that getting up to date on flu and COVID vaccines is the best defense against getting seriously sick this respiratory virus season. [posted October 23, 2025]
• Overnight Closures Scheduled for Northbound John Nolen Drive Next Week: Beginning Monday night, October 27, the northbound lanes of John Nolen Drive will be closed overnight between Olin Avenue and North Shore Drive to accommodate storm sewer installation work. The nightly closures will occur from 7pm to 6am for…[posted October 22, 2025]
• Hayride Around the Capitol | Movie at the Top of State, Wednesday, October 29: We've partnered with Madison's Central BID for the Downtown Madison Family Halloween (link is external)to bring you back-to-back events! Take a haywagon ride around the Capitol Square and see a movie at the Top of State Street.
• Vaccination Clinic at Goodman Community Center, Saturday, November 1: All vaccines are free for eligible individuals. Children six months and older who lack insurance, are under 19, and are either Alaskan Native or American Indian, as well as those with BadgerCare or most other types of insurance, can receive vaccinations at no cost.

Please visit the City news webpage to find additional news and announcements and to subscribe to receive notification of news releases as they are posted. Additional upcoming events can also be found on the City events calendar.