WHIRLWIND TRAVEL
Support staff goes above and beyond to enable UW to face Northwestern, Maryland this week
SPORTS. B1
WHIRLWIND TRAVEL
Support staff goes above and beyond to enable UW to face Northwestern, Maryland this week
SPORTS. B1
WHIRLWIND TRAVEL
Support staff goes above and beyond to enable UW to face Northwestern, Maryland this week
SPORTS. B1
WHIRLWIND TRAVEL
Support staff goes above and beyond to enable UW to face Northwestern, Maryland this week
SPORTS. B1
South Badger Road, including the Badger Building, left, Centro Hispano, center, and Metro Transit’s South Transfer Point on Madison's South Side. A proposed tax incremental financing (TIF) district could help deliver about $115 million in improvements to the area, including $4 million in development loans for a project at the transfer point.
Metro Transit’s South Transfer Point is seen through the windows of Madison College’s Goodman South Campus.
In an ambitious move, Madison is seeking to create a potent tax incremental financing district that could help deliver a record $115 million to support an array of initiatives on the fast-changing South Side.
If approved, the district would mean tens of millions of dollars for South Side housing, streets, parks, bus rapid transit stations, bike and pedestrian improvements, development loans, land purchases, small business assistance and more.
The borders of the TIF district, called TID 51, would be the Beltline, Fish Hatchery Road, John Nolen Drive and Wingra Creek. It’s intended to address long-overdue infrastructure needs, historical inequities and needs from absorbing much of the town of Madison last fall, city officials said.
Rev. Alex Gee talks about change happening in South Madison
All told, TID 51 is projected to have $99.4 million in costs eligible for TIF funding, and $15.5 million in costs that would be repaid through assessments to property owners or with state or federal grants.
“The creation of TID 51 will allow us to make significant, needed investments in South Madison, particularly in affordable housing and small business support,” Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said in a statement. “The TID 51 plan is guided by what we heard over several years of deep engagement with the South Madison community, and the projects it will fund will be shaped by community engagement as well.”
"This collection of projects is going to transform the city."
To jump-start the effort, because some TIF districts take time before they start producing new tax revenue, the city also is looking to amend the project plans of two successful TIF districts on the Near East and East sides to donate $65.2 million in support of TID 51 over its first five years.
The proposed TIF district on the South Side is expected to deliver millions of dollars to improve John Nolen Drive.
The proposals will be shared in an informational meeting at noon Friday of the Madison Joint Review Board, made up of representatives from the city, Madison School District, Dane County and Madison Area Technical College. It would have to approve any new TIF district or make changes to existing ones.
In January 2022, the City Council adopted the South Madison Plan, which recommended the creation of a new TIF district to help address displacement due to gentrification, increase home ownership and maximize opportunities for existing residents and business owners.
With TIF, the city’s most potent economic development tool, the city and other local taxing entities agree to freeze property values in an area. Tax revenues from growth are then invested in private development, initiatives or public infrastructure. When investments are repaid, the district is closed and the higher-valued property is fully returned to the tax rolls.
For TID 51, the city also intends to apply a so-called “half-mile rule” that allows the city to spend tax revenues within a half-mile of the district’s boundaries.
“We recognize there’s a strong, existing neighborhood there today,” city Economic Development Director Matt Mikolajewski said. “We want to foster investment in South Madison in a way that respects the existing neighborhood while addressing a historic lack of investment.”
Ascendium Education Group's $2.5 million donation comes as inflation, supply chain shortages and rising construction costs have pushed the pro…
The initiatives include:
“The proposed investments in parks, affordable housing and small business support are more significant than in past TIF districts,” Mikolajewski said.
A proposed TIF district would deliver $4 million for improvements to Penn Park on the South Side.
Donor districts
The 35-page project plan anticipates development that will occur to serve as economic “generators” of new tax revenue, including 65,000 square feet of commercial development at the corner of Badger Road and South Park Street; more than 330 housing units and commercial development at South Park Street and North Avenue; hotels around the Alliant Energy Center; and an already approved housing project to redevelop the Coliseum Bar property at John Nolen and Olin avenues.
The city, however, has learned that without significant upfront and public investment, growth through redevelopment and revitalization can be slow.
A proposed TIF district project plan envisions spending $4.5 million to acquire and clean up All Metals Recycling along South Park Street.
To help speed revitalization, the city intends to use a pilot TIF financing strategy for TID 51 through amendments to the project plans and boundaries of two other TIF districts.
The city is negotiating with Maurer's Urban Market, based in Wisconsin Dells, to fill the 24,000-square-foot commercial space in a mixed-use p…
Also, the city is looking to amend an existing district on the South Side, TID 42, to provide $2.8 million for stormwater and parking structure costs at the Village on Park mall.
The picnic pavilion at Heifetz Park on the South Side. A TIF district is expected to deliver $485,000 to remodel the shelter and make other improvements there.
The City Council and Joint Review Board are expected to consider approvals of TID 51 and amendments to the three other TIF districts in the spring.
It’s been a year of change possibilities in Madison with major advances in aid to the homeless, funding for the Public Market, passage of swee…
Gov. Tony Evers, foreground, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in 2019.
Gov. Tony Evers delivers his State of the State address Tuesday in the Assembly chambers.
In the first State of the State address of his second term, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on Tuesday proposed boosting mental health spending and increasing funding for public education and local governments — proposals that may see some support from the Republican-controlled Legislature, depending on the price tag.
You decided a bitter election and now, those people you elected started their terms. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers on Tuesday, Jan. 3 laid out his…
Evers also unveiled proposals to cut taxes, invest more than $100 million to confront PFAS contamination, and support child care providers. All told, Evers’ list of proposals would increase state spending by more than $1 billion.
Citing the state’s surplus, which is projected to reach nearly $6.9 billion, Evers said: “We have roads and bridges to fix, schools to fund, kids to support, communities to keep safe, water to keep clean and a future we’ve built together after years of neglect that, today, we must work to protect.”
Absent from Evers’ speech were many of his recent talking points, such as repealing Wisconsin’s abortion ban, legalizing marijuana and expanding Medicaid — topics he highlighted in his recent inaugural address, a speech Republican legislative leaders described as too partisan.
Most measures Evers proposed will be included in his upcoming 2023-25 biennial budget proposal, which he will present Feb. 15, and would require Republican approval — a big ask for the Democratic governor.
“That is a lot of money,” Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August, R-Lake Geneva, said after Evers delivered his address. “We have to keep in mind a lot of the surplus that we have is one-time money and it seems that the governor tonight was spending down that one-time money on ongoing expenses, which could put us in a massive deficit in the future.”
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, from left, delivers his State of the State address as Rep. Kevin Petersen, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate President Chris Kapenga, all Republicans, listen from their seats.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said in a Tuesday interview with WisconsinEye he expects the GOP-led Legislature to handle Evers’ proposal as they have the past two cycles, by stripping the budget down to its base and starting over.
Speaking with reporters after Evers’ speech, Vos said he’s “open to being persuaded” on some of the governor’s ideas, but reiterated that Republicans’ top priority this coming budget session is cutting taxes.
“We’re not going to grow the size of government and then, whatever the scraps are, give those back to the taxpayers,” Vos said.
Calling 2023 the “Year of Mental Health,” Evers said his upcoming two-year budget would spend around $500 million to expand access to mental and behavioral health services.
That includes $270 million to permanently fund a state program providing school-based mental health services. His proposal comes after the Office of Children’s Mental Health found in its 2022 report that around a third of children feel sad and hopeless almost every day, a 10% increase over the last decade.
“Improving student mental health can also improve student learning outcomes and school attendance, while reducing bullying, risky behaviors, violence, involvement in the juvenile justice system and substance misuse,” Evers said Tuesday.
Other mental health investments he will propose in his budget include $3 million for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline call center and a $1.8 million investment to establish a 25-bed psychiatric residential treatment facility for youths with “intensive behavioral health needs,” according to a press release from the governor’s office.
Asked whether he would support Evers’ $500 million request to fund mental health services, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, said, “that’s a lot of money,” but declined to say what amount he would support.
Evers also proposed using some of the state’s surplus to fund local schools
“For years, communities have raised their own property taxes to keep their local schools afloat,” Evers said. “And while some school districts have successfully passed referenda to help keep the school lights on, many have tried and failed.”
He called for spending over $20 million to recruit, develop and retain teachers and student teachers.
Evers has proposed a $2 billion increase in funding for public schools. Vos and LeMahieu have said they’d be willing to consider an increase if Evers approves expanding the state’s private school voucher program.
But Vos previously called the governor’s proposal excessive, and Evers said universal school choice is a nonstarter. It remains unclear where the Republican leaders and Evers would compromise on education.
Evers also highlighted the lack of child care options in communities across Wisconsin. He proposed spending $340 million to continue a pandemic-era program that provides payments to child care facilities to increase wages and offset other operating costs.
Evers pledged to deliver tax relief to Wisconsinites, though he and the GOP legislative leaders have floated drastically different proposals for doing so.
Evers has called for tax cuts that benefit the middle class. Specifically, he has floated a plan providing a 10% tax cut for individuals earning $100,000 or less a year and married filers making $150,000 or less. Republican legislators, on the other hand, have released a plan to switch Wisconsin’s progressive income tax to a 3.25% flat tax, which Evers criticized Tuesday.
Speaking with reporters after Gov. Tony Evers' speech, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said he's "open to being persuaded" on some of the governor's ideas, but reiterated that Republicans' top priority this coming budget session is cutting taxes.
“Spending billions on a flat tax isn’t a workforce plan or an economic development plan,” he said. “We need to bolster the middle class, we need to maintain our economy’s momentum, and we need to reduce barriers to work and recruit and retain talent to address our state’s workforce challenges.”
Evers also unveiled a plan to send up to 20% of the state’s sales tax revenue back to local communities through the shared-revenue program, which provides money to local governments to help fund basic services. LeMahieu has floated the idea of diverting 1% of the state sales tax to replace shared revenue.
Evers said his plan “means more than half a billion dollars more per year in new resources to invest in key priorities like EMS, fire, and law enforcement services, transportation, local health and human services, and other challenges facing our communities.”
LeMahieu and Vos have expressed support for increased funding to local governments, but both said specifics were not available Tuesday.
Evers also wants to spend $106 million in the upcoming budget to combat PFAS contamination. The money would go toward helping local communities, increasing staff and resources at the state Department of Natural Resources, and increasing PFAS testing, sampling and monitoring.
“The work we must do to address PFAS and other contaminants grows harder and more expensive with each day of delay,” he said. “Partisan politics cannot keep getting in the way of this work while Wisconsinites worry about the water coming from their tap.”
Evers also proposed spending $50 million on a grant program that would provide up to 5,000 businesses with $10,000 grants they could use toward expenses such as mortgage payments and building updates.
My first year at the Wisconsin State Journal gave me — and hopefully our readers — several stories worth looking back on.
Gov. Tony Evers discusses his abortion referendum proposal at a news conference on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023.
Shanika Lucas assembles pans of lasagna at Little John’s temporary space in the banquet room at the Verona Athletic Center in 2021.
As a Meals on Wheels volunteer, Judi Duncan said she serves “a delightful collection of homebound people” who look forward to her arrival.
When she got an email Monday that Little John’s, the service’s food provider, was suspending its deliveries indefinitely to Meals on Wheels, she worried about what that would mean to the clients she’s gotten to know and for whom her food drop-off was often the only human contact they had all day.
When Chef Dave Heide said Monday that he’s largely suspending operations at Little John’s, it threw lots of food systems for vulnerable populations into disarray.
Heide said his nonprofit organization was making about 16,000 meals a week for the Madison community, mainly for contracts with the county, schools, senior programs and other nonprofits.
He said he was losing the temporary kitchen he was operating from, and a backup site on Madison’s North Side fell through at the last minute. He said he plans to still make about 3,000 meals a week, and might do that from his restaurant, Ollie’s, in Fitchburg.
The nonprofit organization produces about 16,000 meals a week to the Madison community, mainly through contracts with the county, schools, sen…
Little John’s began providing meals for SSM Health’s Meals on Wheels last summer, and started off with a bang, said Duncan, 72, who has been volunteering with the organization for four years.
“Then the bang became a crash as service deteriorated,” she said, adding that Little John’s delivery drivers often arrived an hour or more late at the sites where volunteers wait for their food, “leaving our customers in the lurch.”
Meals on Wheels is also a well-being check for many, she said. “I know SSM is looking for someone to take over the catering, but it will be hard to get that set up very quickly,” she said. “In the meantime, what becomes of the customers?”
Sarah Karleskint, program manager for SSM Health at Home, which provides Meals on Wheels, was scrambling Tuesday to get meals for the 325 people who depend on them through her operation.
Seven Acre Dairy in Paoli is a former dairy plant that was converted into a boutique hotel and restaurant using locally sourced food.
Karleskint wonders why Heide’s news came so abruptly.
“Somebody knew what was happening, we just didn’t know what was happening,” she said. “And so after our meal deliveries yesterday, we didn’t even have a chance to tell people as we delivered the meals that it was going to be the last one for a while.”
She said SSM Health at Home had staff call every client Monday or at least leave them a message. They began calling again Tuesday morning. For those without phones, they’ve been calling their emergency contacts.
Karleskint said her team has also contacted its volunteers to keep them informed.
She said they’re working to come up with a solution, which may mean splitting the food preparation between caterers on different sides of town.
The chicken restaurant, which started as a popup stand in a parking lot on Hollywood Boulevard, was named America's fastest-growing restaurant…
“If we can’t get the volumes that we need, we can look at shelf-stable (food), we can look at frozen,” she said. “At this point we’re keeping our options open and just trying to see what we can put together to try to help these people that need it.”
Heide said Monday he hasn’t “taken a penny out of Little John’s.” In fact, he said, he took out a $100,000 home equity line of credit against his house to make sure he could continue operations. He said he also put in about $80,000 of his own money.
He said Tuesday that he had no advance notice that his new kitchen was going to fall through.
“Nothing was done maliciously or with knowledge or foresight,” Heide said. “We tried our hardest and we did our best. No one else was willing to take on those contracts. We were the only (one) who put in a bid.”
He said he tried to help as many people as possible, “and we just weren’t able to make that happen.”
Chef Dave Heide at a Madison College dinner made with donated food in 2016.
Carly Sobye, director of homeless services for Catholic Charities, which runs The Beacon, the only homeless day resource center in Dane County, said she was in a panic Monday but found out Tuesday that Little John’s will continue to provide meals to the facility four to five times a week, as usual.
The Beacon serves breakfast and lunch to about 150 people every day, she said.
Sobye said Little John’s provides a high-quality entrée and a side. Meal costs are covered by Catholic Charities, the United Way of Dane County, the city of Madison and donations.
Had The Beacon been cut off, Sobye said she doesn’t know where she would have turned. “Options out there are pretty slim to none,” she said.
But services were suspended for the 29 residents at the city’s first legal tiny shelter encampment on Dairy Drive on the Far East Side, said Siddiq DeShazer, the campground liaison.
DeShazer said word came that services would pick back up when operations resumed. Meanwhile, DeShazer has been forced to look for service providers.
Little John’s was coming to the site Mondays and Wednesdays and providing food for about 20 people, DeShazer said. The food would be eaten right away and also throughout the week.
The camp opened in late 2021 and had worked with Little John’s almost from the beginning, initially indirectly through Feeding the Youth, DeShazer said.
A Little John's delivery van parks outside the nonprofit's temporary space at the Verona Athletic Center in 2021.
Little John’s has provided 1,500 to 2,000 meals since the camp’s opening, DeShazer said.
“The nearest store requires crossing a highway that has no walk path,” DeShazer said. “I would say (this) elevates the importance of any provider who works with us.”
Oregon village President Randy Glysch said he was caught off guard by Heide’s news and said he learned Monday night at a Village Board meeting how many communities have senior centers like Oregon’s that relied on Little John’s.
Glysch put feelers out Tuesday morning for a commercial kitchen and then learned that Dane County said food could be prepared in kitchens that weren’t commercial quality.
The Oregon Area Senior Center provides meals for about 40 people a day and staff there will be able to do that work, he said.
“So people are regrouping,” Glysch said. “I just think it caught everybody by surprise. ... We’ve got to make sure that folks who rely on those meals are taken care of.”
Karleskint, from SSM Health at Home, said she’s working to find a new food vendor. She said they’ve also started working with the Goodman Community Center to do a small number of hot meals for the Meals on Wheels clients most in need. For some, it’s their only food.
Duncan, the Meals on Wheels volunteer, said Little John’s started out doing a great job. She said customers were impressed, the packaging was colorful and they liked the food.
She said the delivery drivers she got the food from were reliable. But in the last few weeks, they began showing up late or not at all.
Duncan said SSM Health’s Meals on Wheels planned to not renew Little John’s contract after it ended but was going to get deliveries for another six months.
She said Heide stopped responding to her supervisor’s emails. “He was a figure in the community that people seem to look to and respect,” she said. “So this is just kind of disappointing that he seemed to have dropped the ball.”
Using more than 50 projectors casting 500,000 square feet of imagery, the popular "Immersive Van Gogh" multimedia installation draws crowds in…
NEW YORK — Documents with classified markings were discovered in former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana residence last week, his lawyer said, the latest in a string of recoveries of confidential information from the homes of current and former top U.S. officials.
The records, which were taken into FBI custody, “appear to be a small number of documents bearing classified markings that were inadvertently boxed and transported to the personal home of the former vice president at the end of the last administration,” Pence’s lawyer, Greg Jacob, wrote in a letter to the National Archives shared with The Associated Press.
He said Pence was “unaware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence” until a search last week and “understands the high importance of protecting sensitive and classified information and stands ready and willing to cooperate fully with the National Archives and any appropriate inquiry.”
The revelation came as the Department of Justice is already investigating the discovery of documents with classification markings in President Joe Biden’s home in Delaware and his former Washington office, as well as former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate.
Democrat Biden has indicated he will seek reelection, Trump is already a declared candidate, and Republican Pence has been exploring a possible 2024 presidential campaign that would put him in direct competition against his former boss.
The newest discovery, which was first reported by CNN, thrusts Pence, who previously insisted that he followed stringent protocols regarding classified documents, into the debate over the handling of secret materials by officials who served in the highest ranks of government.
Trump is under criminal investigation after roughly 300 documents with classified markings, including at the top-secret level, were discovered at Mar-a-Lago. Officials are trying to determine whether Trump or anyone else should be charged with illegal possession of those records or with trying to obstruct the months-long criminal investigation.
Biden is also subject to a special counsel investigation after classified documents from his time as a senator and in the Obama administration were found at his properties.
While a very different case, the Pence development could bolster the arguments of Trump and Biden, who have sought to downplay the significance of the discoveries. The presence of secret documents at all three men’s homes further underscores the federal government’s unwieldy system for storing and protecting the millions of classified documents it produces every year.
Pence’s lawyer, Jacob, said in his letter that the former vice president had “engaged outside counsel, with experience in handling classified documents” to review records stored at his home on Jan. 16 “out of an abundance of caution” amid the uproar over the discovery of documents at Biden’s home.
Jacob said the Pence documents with classification markings were secured in a locked safe. According to a follow-up letter from the lawyer dated Sunday, FBI agents visited Pence’s residence Thursday night at 9:30 p.m. to collect the documents. Pence was in Washington for an event at the time.
Four boxes containing copies of administration papers — two in which “a small number” of papers bearing classified markings were found, and two containing “courtesy copies of vice presidential papers” — were discovered, according to the letter. Arrangements were made to deliver those boxes to the National Archives on Monday.
