Starting in September the Common Council will be tackling one of the hardest budgets in memory, and many decisions about priorities will be made. In the coming weeks the Mayor and Common Council are asking for your input to help guide what changes, and cuts, we will make. A new city budget website has been set up, and this year the City of Madison is trying a new way of seeking public input. Five public meetings will be held, starting, as you may have heard, tonight, July 26, at 7pm at the Urban League at the Villager Mall to discuss Community Development and Services. While each meeting has specific topic areas, feedback on any area is always welcome both at the meetings, by email, by phone, etc. The address for the first meeting is:
Urban League
2222 S. Park Street, Suite 200
Madison, WI 53713
Four more will follow, and you can find the information about those conversations here: https://www.cityofmadison.com/budgetProcess/conversations.cfm
As part of this revamped process a new website has been set up: https://www.cityofmadison.com/budgetProcess/
The site brings together a large amount of information and also hosts the budget survey, another way to provide feedback on what you feel our budget priorities should be. Any and every area of the city budget is open for discussion, so it is important that we hear what the most important city services are. We’ve seen changes, often cuts, to basically all services over the last several years, so it is very important that the Alders and Mayor hear what your priorities are.
I hope to see or hear from you in the next several weeks!
Alder Chris Schmidt, District 11