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City Meetings and Updates Week of February 23

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  • City Meetings:
    • Common Council 2/24
    • Board of Public Works 2/25
  • Madison Parks Writing Park Development Plans for District 3 Neighborhood Parks, Input Events Planned 
  • Heads Up: Prescribed Burns Planned at Certain Parks and Stormwater Properties
  • Plant Dane Program Accepting Native Plant Orders
  • Events & Announcements

City Meetings

Common Council

The Common Council meeting will take place on Tuesday, February 24, at 6:30 p.m. in hybrid format. Agenda items include:

  • Item 5: A resolution authorizing a Trail Stewardship Agreement with Capitol Off Road Pathfinders for volunteer management and improvements to biking facilities on City property, including Sycamore Park in District 3, for five years (I’m a cosponsor). 
  • Item 23: A resolution designating Madison polling locations for the 2026 spring election. 
  • Item 32: A resolution allocating $2.97m City Affordable Housing Funds for financing the development of up to 27 affordable owner-occupied housing units and funding five homeownership service programs.
  • Item 41: Chief of Police 4th Quarter 2025 Report from MPD Chief John Patterson. Here’s a link to the report for those interested. 

Meeting info:

Board of Public Works

The Board of Public Works meeting will take place on Wednesday, February 25, at 4:30 p.m. in virtual format. Agenda items include Public Works contracts, including a resolutionestablishing a special assessment district for the traffic signals coming to Milwaukee Street and Sprecher Road bordering District 3. Per the resolution, the purpose of the assessment district “is to install, operate and maintain traffic signal improvements at the intersection of Milwaukee Street & Sprecher Road”. These long-awaited traffic signals will be installed in late summer 2026. Note: this is a reapproval of a previous resolution back in January because that first assessment district resolution contained an error. Staff confirmed that the resolution’s reapproval will not impact the construction timeline.

If you would like more information about becoming a member of a City board, commission, or committee, please visit the page linked here.

Madison Parks Writing Park Development Plans for District 3 Neighborhood Parks, Input Events Planned

In coordination with the Southeast Area Plan effort, Madison Parks is holding a series of virtual public input sessions for the Southeast Park Development Plan process for neighborhood parks and mini parks in the Southeast planning area. 

The parks planning process will result in a one page “park development plan” which will guide the improvements to the park for the next 10 to 12 years. This planning process will provide transparency regarding future plans for each park and allow park patrons to weigh in on existing and potential recreation opportunities. Additional public engagement will take place when the actual park improvement has been funded in the budget, which is a separate process.

These upcoming meetings will include an overview of the planning effort's goals, a review of the neighborhood parks included, and an opportunity for area residents and park visitors to share their thoughts on future park improvements.

The engagement sessions are organized by alder district, and the first series of meetings for Southeast area parks will focus on the neighborhood and mini parks in District 3:

  • Heritage Heights Park
  • Honeysuckle Park
  • Kingston-Onyx Park
  • McGinnis Park
  • Portland Park

The virtual open house dates for the District 3 parks are:

  • Session 1 - Thursday, March 5 - Evening Open House: 6:30 - 8:00pm by Zoom; Register Here
  • Session 2 - Tuesday, March 31 - Noon Open House: 11:30 am - 1:00 by Zoom; Register Here

Hope to see you at one of these!! 

Map showing District 3 neighborhood and mini parks
Image credit: Madison Parks

(Note: Kennedy Park and Hiestand Park are “community parks”, larger-scale parkland properties that serve more community stakeholders than just their immediate surrounding neighbors – e.g. Kennedy Elementary School families for Kennedy and the Madison Ultimate Frisbee Association for Hiestand. As such, writing plans for community parks would be a much larger endeavor and is outside the scope of the Area Planning process due to staff capacity. That doesn’t preclude eventual plans for community parks, but any such effort would need to take place separately from and after the Area Plan’s process for planning the many neighborhood and mini parks in the southeast area. City staff continue to record and document public input received about Kennedy Park and Hiestand Park.)

Heads Up: Prescribed Burns at Certain Parks and Stormwater Properties

2026 Prescribed Burns: The Parks and Engineering Divisions are again collaborating to coordinate volunteers, notify the public, and apply for a permit to conduct prescribed burns at various locations throughout the City. Prescribed burns are the intentional use of fire, under specific environmental conditions, to manage and suppress invasive vegetation. Many of Wisconsin's native species have adapted to survive or benefit from fire events, while at the same time, the presence of invasive or undesirable species is reduced. 

Prescribed burns are conducted by trained and experienced staff, contractors, and volunteers under a permit from the Madison Fire Department. Burns only occur within strict weather parameters that limit the intensity of the fire and prevent smoke from creating a hazard to the public. Because burns are so weather dependent, they cannot be scheduled in advance. Postcards have been or will be sent to residents near planned burn sites.

2026 prescribed burn locations in District 3 include these Parks and Stormwater properties:

  • Galaxy Park, 132 Milky Way
  • Hiestand Park, 225 Wittwer Road
  • Kennedy Park, 5104 Retana Drive
  • Sycamore Park, 4514 Nakoosa Trail
  • Caldera Biobasins; 6031 Saturn Dr & 6031 Caldera St
  • Saturn Dr N Pond; 6212 Saturn Dr
  • Saturn Dr S Pond; 401 Galileo Dr
  • Saturn Dr N Greenway; 130 Rustic Dr
  • Ragan St Pond; 6029 Driscoll Dr

Questions can be sent to Hannah Quinlan, Madison Parks Conservation Resource Manager: HQuinlan@cityofmadison.com or (608) 267-4918.

Note that not all Stormwater locations are appropriate for prescribed burns due to their mix of vegetation. Most of City Engineering’s Stormwater land in Madison is comprised of nonnative grasses and other vegetation that would not survive fires, and those are mowed annually instead of burned. When I asked about this, Engineering staff shared with me that "there is a misconception that the occasional burn will help push a system that is primarily vegetated with non-natives plants towards a native-dominated, fire-adapted ecosystem. It takes a lot of other inputs such as targeted herbicide applications, timed hand pulling/digging or spot mows, supplemental seeding with native plant seed and the repetition of all of these actions over the course of several years.” The workload to convert low-native Stormwater properties into burnable natives is well above City Engineering’s current staffing levels. The Stormwater Utility Vegetation Management Plan has more information for those who want to dig deeper into this topic.

Plant Dane Program Accepting Navie Plant Orders

With spring right around the corner, Dane County’s Plant Dane Program is now accepting orders – through March 17th or while supplies last. The Plant Dane program provides Dane County residents access to native plants at the discounted price of $3.00/plant ($12.00/4-pack), about half the normal retail price. It's open to schools, non-profit organizations (lake and neighborhood associations, youth groups, faith centers, clubs, etc.), municipalities and individual residents in Dane County, Wisconsin.

Not only are native plants beautiful, but they provide important ecosystem services such as habitat for pollinators and wildlife and improved water quality. Native gardens act as sponges helping rainwater to soak into the ground preventing stormwater runoff and pollution from washing into our lakes, rivers and streams. We’ve started a few pollinator gardens and a rain garden at our house with Plant Dane plants. It’s a great opportunity to diversify our urban ecosystem, doing pollinators and our lakes a favor.   

Resources from Plant Dane:

Events & Announcements 

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.

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Portrait of Alder Derek Field

Alder Derek Field

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