Local government officials met with student organization representatives Wednesday to discuss 2014 county and city funding for local issues, including homelessness and public safety.
Dane County Board member Leland Pan, a University of Wisconsin-Madison junior, explained the county budget is “as bare bones as possible,” and said extra funding necessary for new programming is scarce. However, 50 percent of the available funding is directed toward social services.
Responding to students’ widely-expressed interest in homelessness, Pan described a large provision for a permanent daytime resource center providing showers, locker storage space and bus passes to aid the homeless in job interviews. However, project organizers will need to acquire funding and approval from several committees before initiation.
Ald. Scott Resnick, District 8, said permanent housing is a much cheaper long-term homelessness solution than emergency services, and said the city is looking to contribute $300,000 towards single-resident housing for at least 100 homeless citizens.
Resnick also described several city initiatives to improve public safety, including a “three-prong” approach of prevention, enforcement and justice.
Preventative services that have had positive impacts on safety include the Downtown Safety Initiative, which stations more officers as “extra eyes” at critical times, as well as the “Mentoring Positives” program, which reaches out to youth on the streets at night. Additional safety measures include the installation of more surveillance cameras in high-profile areas, which have experienced marked success.
Although the city and county governments have collective authority over these issues, Resnick explained it “indirectly all comes back to students,” and said student input is invaluable in how these budgets are constructed.
