[media-credit name=’Kelsey Fenton / The Badger Herald’ align=’alignright’ width=’336′][/media-credit]

Despite tight financing from the state, Mayor Paul Soglin unveiled the city’s 2013 operating budget Tuesday that placed an emphasis on maintaining basic city services, strengthening neighborhoods and public safety.

Madison received $4.8 million in state-shared revenue in 2012, while Milwaukee received $217 million, Soglin said. He added if Madison received the same amount of shared revenue per capita as Milwaukee, it would have received $85.3 million, causing the city severe difficulty to provide services to its citizens.

Soglin said the city started the planning process for the 2013 operating budget with an approximately $10 million gap, a discrepancy the city is addressing by increasing ambulance fees for the first time since 2009. The measure is expected to raise more than $2 million.

He added the city has acquired significant savings in terms of health insurance costs.

“In Dane County, we are very fortunate to have very competitive, reasonable health care insurance rates combined with very high-quality health care,” Soglin said.

Additional funding will be provided to citywide safety initiatives for the Madison Police Department Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, Soglin said. The city will also accept a federal grant that allows it to hire 18 additional firefighters for a new fire station on the far east side of Madison.

Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, said he is generally very pleased the mayor had the right priority with public safety and to fully fund the downtown safety initiative, which provides additional police downtown on weekend evenings.

With the new budget in place, the city will increase public bus fares by 25 percent, increasing the fare from $2 to $2.25, Soglin said. This is the first increase to Madison Metro fare in several years.

Soglin said with the increase in revenue from the bus fares, the city will now be allowed to fund a bus to service what he called one of the city’s most challenging neighborhoods, Owl Creek.

“I’m very pleased the overall funding for community service and block grants will continue,” Soglin said. “This reflects our deep concern for Madison neighborhoods, and providing the highest quality services to all the neighborhoods regardless of household incomes.”

Soglin said the city is unable to provide the level of support for community services he would like to see. He added he hopes City Council will allocate the $500,000 in the budget it has to work with to the Overture Center, which received $1 million fewer in funding than in the 2012 operating budget.

Verveer said he was disappointed with the dramatic cut Soglin made to the Overture Center by over 50 percent. He added he is worried the Overture Center will not be able to sustain such a deep cut to the budget without impacting its programming.

Soglin said the distinctive challenge in the budget is maintaining city services without cutting back on necessities such as snow removal and garbage collection.

Property taxes produce 75 percent of the budget, a dependency Soglin said frustrates him. He added he does not know of a city that is more property tax-dependent than Madison.

“The frustrating part is I have a dream of what the city looks like and what we could do, and I know it would work if we could just get the resources to do it,” Soglin said. “I want every kid to have three meals a day regardless of their family’s income. I want every kid, regardless of their income, to live in adequate housing. I want all 22 to 24-year-olds to have an opportunity to have a career that’s going to take them somewhere.”

Dane County Executive Joe Parisi said the Dane County operating budget focuses on the Clean Lakes Initiative, which addresses the source of runoff pollution that is responsible for the challenges the lakes in Madison face. He said the county is also launching a program to address racial disparities in elementary schools and make sure children are signed up for 4-year-old kindergarten.

Parisi said he is pleased with the budget, but wishes he could have allocated funds in the budget to launch more pilot programs throughout the county to improve the achievement gap.

“All in all it’s a pretty strong budget, we’re on a strong fiscal foundation and we’re focused on the need our community wants and needs us to focus on the most,” Parisi said.

The Board of Estimates will begin discussion of Madison’s 2013 operating budget next Monday and Tuesday and will continue until the second week in November, when the City Council will vote on the budget, Verveer said.