The Madison Board of Estimates began the process of holding operating hearings to listen to individual agency requests within the Executive 2017 Operating Budget Monday night, which includes increased funding for opioid initiatives and decreased funding for certain women’s programs.
Mayor Paul Soglin introduced his $299.5 million operating budget last week to city council.
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At Monday’s meeting, the Board of Estimates looked into a third of the agencies’ individual operating budgets including public health, the Monona Terrace, parks and fire.
Public Safety and Health counts for approximately 41 percent of the expenditure by function, which includes fire, police and public health.
The proposed budget includes funding for the Heroin/Opiates Poisoning Initiative.
They also plan to have a decrease in contract funding for the Wisconsin Well Woman Program, which provides preventative health screening services to women with little to no health insurance coverage, and the Woman, Infants, Children Program, which is a special supplemental nutritional program that provides grants for supplemental foods, health care referrals and nutrition education.
Janel Heinrich said the Well Women Program Grant runs on a state fiscal budget cycle and the amount requested in the budget reflects this. She said with a renewal of the state grant on July 1,PHMDC would submit a budget amendment.
She also said if the state grant remains stable, there would be no funding decrease.
The budget request is based on caseload data and so with decreasing caseload numbers the budget has also diminished somewhat, Heinrich said.
She said if the client load increases, there could be a mid-year adjustment from the state. Soglin notes this is not a cut in women’s funding, but a modest reduction in some state supporter programs.
Gregg McManners, executive director of the Monona Terrace Community and Convention, said they plan to spend 2017 updating their technology.
McManners said in the future they might hire a social media manager because there is a strong demand for social media work to help manage client messaging.
“Over half of the conventions and conferences that came to the Monona Terrace last year, asked for us to assist them to get out their messaging on social media,” McManners said.
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McManners said they could use social media to provide a service and enhance a visit for clients. He said there is one person currently monitoring for Monona Terrace online. McManners said they will respond on social media and it gives them a face and a personality online.
The board members had concerns about wages, recruitment and retention of seasonal employees on the Madison Parks Division budget.
Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4 asked if Soglin’s initiative to increase minimum wage to $15 for city employees would help with seasonal employees.
Eric Knepp, the Madison Parks Division superintendent, said a wage increase would help with retention, but there is still a cap on hours for seasonal workers of 1,100 hours, which causes a problem.
“You could pay someone a lot of money, $30 an hour and that’s still a $30,000 a year job,” Knepp said. “It will absolutely help and we appreciate that, but we don’t want to mislead anyone.”
Knepp said he was speaking for his staff who have mentioned the issue to him. Verveer said he remembers talking about the difficulties with the limited hours last year.
Ald. Barbara Harrington-McKinney, District 1, said she would like to see the goals in the budgets move toward a greater diverse work force representative of the city’s overall population.
“One of their goals should be specifically addressing that diverse workforce,” Harrington-McKinney said.
The Board of Estimates plans to listen to more operating hearings throughout the week before making amendments, which will be due next week.
A previous version of this article did not include information concerning the nature of funding for the Wisconsin Women Well Program. This article has been updated to convey these details.
