City of Madison

Cuts will be imposed across Madison services from buses and libraries to ice rinks and nonprofits if voters reject a first-ever property tax referendum on the November ballot, according to a pair of unprecedented dueling budgets presented by Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway on Tuesday.

One version of the budget is for a city that passes a $22 million referendum to simply cling to existing services. The other version is for a city that rejects the property tax increase and makes $5.6 million in budgets cuts — with more austerity to come.

During his controversial wave of budget reforms and cost-cutting in 2011, former Gov. Scott Walker promised “true property tax relief” for homeowners.

Under his budget bill, Walker locked property taxes in place, preventing cities from raising them beyond the net increase in the value of new construction. At the same time, state aid for municipalities was cut deeply. Those two moves knee-capped the two main streams of revenue for local governments.

Madison leaders have long blamed Republicans in the state Legislature for the city’s unsustainable budget gap, but, with Democrats poised to gain legislative seats in November, the city sees a fresh opportunity to build a coalition and lobby for policies that could bolster cities around the state.

Since former Gov. Scott Walker’s reforms in 2011, Madison’s direct support from the state has fallen by millions of dollars, when adjusted for inflation, according to city budget data. Other state restrictions on property taxes and creating new fees puts additional limits on the city’s revenue streams. And even though there was historic legislation last year to give more financial aid to cities, Madison received among the least per resident among Wisconsin’s 1,800-plus municipalities.

Half of Madison’s renters already spend at least a third of their income on rent — a level that experts consider a burden on someone’s life.

But if a trio of Madison School District and city referendums are successful this fall, that burden on renters could get worse.

Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway unveiled a relatively lean $418.3 million capital budget for 2025 that reduces Madison’s borrowing and reflects how the city’s budget crisis on the operations side is affecting its capacity for new projects.

New investments in the mayor’s proposal include a $46 million Far West Side public works facility and the consolidation of a South Side police precinct with new space for evidence storage.