Madison Mayor Paul Soglin released the second half of his 2016 budget Tuesday, which he stressed contains no layoffs.
“Layoffs have been avoided,” Soglin said of his budget. “We’re adding 31 new, fully funded positions, most of them in public safety.”
The 2016 operating budget totals $289 million, and includes an increase in taxes on the average home by 2.9 percent, which is a $66 increase from 2015.
“My goal was to have an increase of no more than 2.3 percent,” Soglin noted. “But with the cost of continuing operations, demand for basic services, we’re going to have to accept certain cuts on what I consider to be essential programming.”
$209 million of the operating budget’s revenues will come from property taxes.
Soglin said he decided not to reach the state levy limit, which places restriction on how much a city can receive in property tax revenue, in this year’s budget because of upcoming costs. Some costs include the recently approved Judge Doyle Square development project, as well as continued borrowing.
Exact Sciences, whose corporate headquarters will be housed in the $200 million downtown development, saw a sharp dip of 46 percent in its stock price Tuesday. Soglin emphasized that those numbers do not put the budget at risk.
Soglin cautioned the Common Council in not making many changes to spending levels in the budget because of the increased burden of borrowing.
“The trajectory we are on, especially if we eat up that gap, is sort of like walking down a long corridor that’s furthering the longer we go,” he said.
