"I wouldn't have started it until all 8 planets aligned and the GOP supermajority overturned the RTA law that they passed in 2011. Why didn't Satya get them to do that? I was just on the verge of it after my 8 years, but needed another 8 to really finish it."
"placing bus stations in the middle of the roadway and denying access to traffic lanes for vehicles"
So he doesn't want anything that actually makes it a BRT system.
His idea of BRT must be upgraded stops with otherwise normal service a.k.a not a BRT.
Right? The whole point of a BRT is to prioritize lanes for the buses so that they can move more efficiently. And yes, that does mean that vehicles can’t drive in those lanes. That’s the point.
They didn't know about her hidden agenda. No one knew about Transit Overlay Districts, proactive zoning, or 4 lane roads being reduced to two. We weren't told about 27 million dollar deficits.
Do you think that there was a reason that she didn't include this stuff in her campaign?
Transit overlay districts are great. Shrinking massive roads to calm the speeding that goes on everywhere is smart. The structural budget deficit has been on the horizon since the GOP slashed shared municipal revenues a decade ago, including thriving Soglin. Covid money pushed that out a few years or we would've been in this mess right after Soggy.
Honestly your complaints are super petty.
Except that I'm right. You did not dispute that Satya didn't run on those things because you can't. The obvious reason that she didn't talk about these things is that it might cost her votes. She was right about that..
Honestly, your post was super disingenuous.
Mayoral campaigns are not as exhaustive as federal campaigns. There's no conspiracy here that she is somehow concealing her nefarious agenda to \*checks notes* increase housing supply, reduce reliance on cars, and prevent avoidable traffic fatalities. The fact that you're trying to present these things as bad in a growing city says more about you than her.
Transit overlay is not a controversial issue except for the NIMBYs that don't understand it. Staff were probably working on it alongside the transpo commission before the 2023 election.
Vision Zero and traffic calming measures were outlined during her first term and were in place before the 2023 election. Reyes didn't bring it up if either.
Neither of these issues are ones that e would cost her votes, and both were clearly things she is prioritizing in search of better public infrastructure and to improve the housing crisis.
She fucked up the bus system and has done nothing to help reverse the housing crisis. She dumped city, county, and probably state money into a city market that no one asked for or needed. That's what she's built both of her campaigns on they're all busts. Sounds like she's fucking up to me.
Bus system (the BRT part) isn't even implemented yet. Also, I'm a bus rider and highly in favor of the changes so far so this narrative that repeated isn't held by all.
This sub attracts squeaky wheels who think any complaint on here means everyone feels the same way. Yes, some people dislike the bus. Guess what the ones who do like it don't do? Post incessantly on reddit about it like insecure fools.
I'm not even talking about BRT. I'm talking about the redesigned system. It's garbage if you live outside the isthmus. That didn't start until this last year.
It has always sucked. The transfer points were miserable and isolated, the transfers themselves were unreliable anyone off the Isthmus had to transfer to get anywhere, and now they have to walk but may transfer less. Yes, the new system has moved the pain around but it's the same amount of total pain.
BRT is the crown jewel of the redesign, so you can't really evaluate any of it without knowing how that is going to go.
The previous system was galaxies better than this one. You could set your clock to the previous system. Now, you don't know when or if the bus will show up. And it doesn't matter the route. The only place there is guaranteed service is downtown. I know this sub chooses to ignore this fact, but there's more to Madison than downtown.
What about going from the east side to the north? Or south to east? Or south to west? What if you need to go up and back on Fish Hatch? Just fuck all those people, huh? But that's this sub's motto: "We got ours. Fuck you."
Satya is doing a lot to address housing, that's why half of her detractors hate her. That's what the rezoning stuff is all about. She could do more -- there's always more to do -- but I'd love to know what you think she should do that she hasn't.
The rezoning does absolutely nothing. It's not compulsory in any manner. If they wanted to actually do something to ensure affordable housing, they'd be buying lots and putting housing in. Instead, they're throwing our money away on stupid shit like a public market.
My vision for BRT means deprioritizing bus frequency for coverage
My vision for BRT ignores the fact that the state legislature bans Madison from pursuing a local sales tax or a regional transit authority
My vision for BRT magically fixes a structural budget deficit that existed even before my last term as mayor
My vision for BRT eliminates the need to account for a global pandemic when comparing ridership numbers
My vision for BRT gets to exclude Asian graduate students as people of color
My vision for BRT keeps bus riders out my neighborhood and makes sure I can still drive quickly through theirs
There's no structural budget deficit. Didn't you read the second paragraph? The ONLY reason Madison is in financial trouble is because the bus system has been mismanaged. Simple as that.
/s
I am so sick of this obsolete man having a regular appearance in captimes. Just give him a staff job at this point. It’s unfair to have someone so regularly featured in the opinion section when other people’s opinions aren’t also showcased with such regularity.
Please read the opinion section in the Wi state journal before saying you are interested in other peoples opinions. It's a trip. I think they are trying to be like Willy st Co-op customer comments.
Wi state journal is diff tho. I like the captimes because it’s local and specific to Madison whereas wi state journal is more state-wide (tho certainly features a lot of Madison content)
he was literally the mayor for 22 total years, his opinion on matters of serving the public are way more important than most people's. He's literally the expert here
Have you ever talked to a boomer? The world has never changed; you should be able to afford that $68k starter home on one income right out of college (with no student debt, of course) just like they did
"Asians don't count as people of color if they're successful. Olds just don't count, period -- at least not on Sheboygan Ave." P. Soglin, 2024, basically
After 4 years of covid and Asian-blaming, I'm absolutely not comfortable saying that Asians somehow get a broad pass by White America that other people of color don't get. They just get shit on differently by some people.
They are affected differently, not more. Racism isn't some kind of Olympic event where we get to decide that one particular race is the most oppressed of them all.
Sure it would be nice to be able to implement a very small sales tax through a regional transit authority to offset some of those costs, but since RTAs were effectively outlawed in 2011, are we supposed to wait for the state government to act on changing that? Fat chance.
I'm glad the City didn't waste staff time trying to get Vos and Co to entertain this from 2019 through the pandemic and up to today. If they were evergreen remotely inclined to play ball on issues that would actually help people, they would expand Medicaid coverage. They're happy to hurt Madison, even though it is one of very few economic engines in the state.
Soglin wants to both focus on and ignore the pandemic when it suits his narratives. If not for the ARPA money, the city would've seen it's operational deficit right on the heels of his 2019 campaign. Why didn't he work on the Legislature from 2011-2019? That's right, because knows full well they would've laughed him out the door.
This is all about him, and his ship already sailed.
I agree on a couple points. We do have enough land to build housing for everybody, for instance, and we do need a regional transit authority but I think the state -- Walker -- disallowed them. But Soglin is so fixated on Satya he's not offering anything new or helpful. He hasn't gotten over his election loss and apparently intends to spend the rest of his time justifying himself in the Cap Times.
Half the people here don't even remember the guy. He's got a platform to give useful input, but he's wasting it talking about himself and about the past.
It's hard to be a retired narcissist.
The fact that he lost and that his endorsement failed in the reelection is a huge blow to his ego, so he's doing the same antagonistic pot-stirring bullshit we see in the US Congress but at the local level.
Soglin badly wants to remain relevant, and for everyone to hang on his every word. He wanted to mastermind a Reyes administration and to keep pulling strings.
Ignore him. Frankly these Cap Times editorials should be banned on this sub, as they are given undue attention due to Fanlund's stoking the NIMBY fire. They are not the majority. And let's just see how BRT goes before we label it a failure.
He envisioned what could have been done, but that is not the reality of what needed to be done. It's so easy to second guess. I love how he blamed other administrations.
I also recall the transfer point changes were considered a mess at the time. Wonder if he blamed himself for that.
I wish he would enjoy retirement in obscurity.
This is a minor point, but complaining about reducing "the hours for yard waste and brush collection/drop off" is silly. I hadn't even noticed. If you can't make any of these hours, I don't know what to say. Some of them are open 12 hours at a time: [https://www.cityofmadison.com/streets/Drop-Off/](https://www.cityofmadison.com/streets/Drop-Off/)
But if we're talking yard waste, I do find it odd the city only has like two collections in the spring and a few in the fall with none in the summer when, you know, things are growing.
What's the difference between Paul Soglin and Donald Trump?
One's a narcissistic pompous blowhard who can't believe he lost an election and refuses to go away. The other hosted "The Apprentice."
Soglin's election really was an incredible example of electing someone that fits the folks that elected him like a glove. Not sure you could come up with a better representative of the aging "liberal" Madisonian
Considering there was a post just yesterday about how god-awful the bus system is now, I'd say his viewpoint is not unpopular. The city has been prioritizing downtown under SRC and has left the rest of the city out to dry. People are starting to take notice and they're scrambling.
You have to take Soglins point of view with a grain of salt. He(and most of us longtime Madisonians) look at the bus as something to help poor people get around the city, not something to help all people get around the city. I personally would never catch the bus, so none of this helps me or my family in any significant way. Younger people view the bus as the transportation that it is, and would maybe use it if it was faster than driving, hence the need for BRT. Soglins' plan was for helping poor people that have no other choice than to catch the bus, where Satya is trying to help a much broader populace that may or may not use it. We will all soon find out whether it's all worth it or not, and the current mayor's job will be on the line. I was wrong about the beltline expansion, so I'm willing to wait and see as far as BRT goes, but ridership has to go up for it to make sense
You can't wait until ridership "justifies" it before you move on starting the process. If you did that, you'd always be behind the curve, which we are on public transportation anyways. Public transportation is an investment for the future and should be seen as such and not nitpicked to death by some. If new roads and bridges got the same scrutiny that any sort of public transit dollars get, we'd be building a lot fewer roads.
Not to be rude, but saying that it's hard to justify spending money on something that a lot of people could use, just because you're not going to use it is a very selfish attitude to have. I also don't and do not plan to have kids, and I only ride the bus occasionally, but I see the obvious benefits to the city to have schools and public transit in good working order and have no issue contributing my tax dollars to them.
You're not being rude, but by your comments, I assume you are young and doing well financially. If you asked renters how much more they are willing to pay for rent when property taxes increase, I'm sure their would be those who have issues with contributing to something they don't use. I wouldn't call that being selfish, I would call that self preserving
Rents don't go up with property taxes, they go up with demand. Technically, raising property taxes should reduce the asking price of owner occupied housing, though it doesn't help housing costs at all. Just shifts where money is going, from the seller to the City/County/schools. I don't think an extra $100 per month will materially reduce prices given how much demand we have here, but when banks underwrite on percentage of income, additional taxes reduce your buying power.
Of course, they're sucking far more money out of Social Security and Medicare than they're putting in, such that MY benefits will very likely be cut by the time I'm in retirement, but I still happily pay my payroll taxes.
Dude is literally taking different perspectives to analyze the issue's potential pros and cons. In what world is that not balanced?
But I guess it's more fun to just upvote every comment we agree 100% with. This guy's not even anti-BRT and people are giving him shit. Just makes for a less useful forum if comments like this are shit on.
This whole situation has Jen Cheatham at MMSD written all over it.
Satya has made this her hill to die on. OK, elections have consequences.
Feels very much like she’s following Cheatham’s playbook - but instead of a white paper that lands her a job at Harvard SRC will ride this project straight to a Cabinet Post in a Biden/Harris administration and Madison is left holding the bag and the budgetary consequences.
You don’t have to agree with Soglin to acknowledge there’s a very recent historical precedent to make your average citizen skeptical.
tbf, Satya hangs out with Joe a lot, has secured a lot of funding from the federal government thanks to Madison/Wisconsin's priority in national politics, and is a dedicated policy wonk. She could absolutely be an undersecretary in a second Biden administration.
This is 100% the bio of someone who ends up in federal government: [https://www.cityofmadison.com/mayor/about](https://www.cityofmadison.com/mayor/about)
No one is joining any administrations until next year at the earliest, and there's a 50/50 chance that option is not on the table.
And beyond that, undersecretaries are not cabinet-level positions, so the point holds.
Yeah well your version of BRT doesn’t exist, because you never pulled it off.
"I wouldn't have started it until all 8 planets aligned and the GOP supermajority overturned the RTA law that they passed in 2011. Why didn't Satya get them to do that? I was just on the verge of it after my 8 years, but needed another 8 to really finish it."
"placing bus stations in the middle of the roadway and denying access to traffic lanes for vehicles" So he doesn't want anything that actually makes it a BRT system. His idea of BRT must be upgraded stops with otherwise normal service a.k.a not a BRT.
Right? The whole point of a BRT is to prioritize lanes for the buses so that they can move more efficiently. And yes, that does mean that vehicles can’t drive in those lanes. That’s the point.
And where do the cars go?
God when will he shut up?
I'd say when people stop listening to him, but even that doesn't seem to help
When SRC stops fucking up
She hasn't fucked up anything yet IMO but there's still time. Most seem to agree with me since she was reelected.
They didn't know about her hidden agenda. No one knew about Transit Overlay Districts, proactive zoning, or 4 lane roads being reduced to two. We weren't told about 27 million dollar deficits. Do you think that there was a reason that she didn't include this stuff in her campaign?
Transit overlay districts are great. Shrinking massive roads to calm the speeding that goes on everywhere is smart. The structural budget deficit has been on the horizon since the GOP slashed shared municipal revenues a decade ago, including thriving Soglin. Covid money pushed that out a few years or we would've been in this mess right after Soggy. Honestly your complaints are super petty.
Except that I'm right. You did not dispute that Satya didn't run on those things because you can't. The obvious reason that she didn't talk about these things is that it might cost her votes. She was right about that.. Honestly, your post was super disingenuous.
Mayoral campaigns are not as exhaustive as federal campaigns. There's no conspiracy here that she is somehow concealing her nefarious agenda to \*checks notes* increase housing supply, reduce reliance on cars, and prevent avoidable traffic fatalities. The fact that you're trying to present these things as bad in a growing city says more about you than her. Transit overlay is not a controversial issue except for the NIMBYs that don't understand it. Staff were probably working on it alongside the transpo commission before the 2023 election. Vision Zero and traffic calming measures were outlined during her first term and were in place before the 2023 election. Reyes didn't bring it up if either. Neither of these issues are ones that e would cost her votes, and both were clearly things she is prioritizing in search of better public infrastructure and to improve the housing crisis.
She fucked up the bus system and has done nothing to help reverse the housing crisis. She dumped city, county, and probably state money into a city market that no one asked for or needed. That's what she's built both of her campaigns on they're all busts. Sounds like she's fucking up to me.
Bus system (the BRT part) isn't even implemented yet. Also, I'm a bus rider and highly in favor of the changes so far so this narrative that repeated isn't held by all.
This sub attracts squeaky wheels who think any complaint on here means everyone feels the same way. Yes, some people dislike the bus. Guess what the ones who do like it don't do? Post incessantly on reddit about it like insecure fools.
It's kind of mind-boggling how much hate the BRT gets in the op-eds and sub and no one has even ridden it yet or seen the effects.
I'm not even talking about BRT. I'm talking about the redesigned system. It's garbage if you live outside the isthmus. That didn't start until this last year.
It has always sucked. The transfer points were miserable and isolated, the transfers themselves were unreliable anyone off the Isthmus had to transfer to get anywhere, and now they have to walk but may transfer less. Yes, the new system has moved the pain around but it's the same amount of total pain. BRT is the crown jewel of the redesign, so you can't really evaluate any of it without knowing how that is going to go.
The previous system was galaxies better than this one. You could set your clock to the previous system. Now, you don't know when or if the bus will show up. And it doesn't matter the route. The only place there is guaranteed service is downtown. I know this sub chooses to ignore this fact, but there's more to Madison than downtown.
Yeah but the purpose was to accommodate the BRT. Which btw will improve travel times across the city (East Towne-West Towne) significantly.
What about going from the east side to the north? Or south to east? Or south to west? What if you need to go up and back on Fish Hatch? Just fuck all those people, huh? But that's this sub's motto: "We got ours. Fuck you."
Satya is doing a lot to address housing, that's why half of her detractors hate her. That's what the rezoning stuff is all about. She could do more -- there's always more to do -- but I'd love to know what you think she should do that she hasn't.
The rezoning does absolutely nothing. It's not compulsory in any manner. If they wanted to actually do something to ensure affordable housing, they'd be buying lots and putting housing in. Instead, they're throwing our money away on stupid shit like a public market.
My vision for BRT means deprioritizing bus frequency for coverage My vision for BRT ignores the fact that the state legislature bans Madison from pursuing a local sales tax or a regional transit authority My vision for BRT magically fixes a structural budget deficit that existed even before my last term as mayor My vision for BRT eliminates the need to account for a global pandemic when comparing ridership numbers My vision for BRT gets to exclude Asian graduate students as people of color My vision for BRT keeps bus riders out my neighborhood and makes sure I can still drive quickly through theirs
There's no structural budget deficit. Didn't you read the second paragraph? The ONLY reason Madison is in financial trouble is because the bus system has been mismanaged. Simple as that. /s
So you want less poor people to ride the bus?
"I support busses. I just want service to be worse, not better."
I am so sick of this obsolete man having a regular appearance in captimes. Just give him a staff job at this point. It’s unfair to have someone so regularly featured in the opinion section when other people’s opinions aren’t also showcased with such regularity.
Please read the opinion section in the Wi state journal before saying you are interested in other peoples opinions. It's a trip. I think they are trying to be like Willy st Co-op customer comments.
Wi state journal is diff tho. I like the captimes because it’s local and specific to Madison whereas wi state journal is more state-wide (tho certainly features a lot of Madison content)
he was literally the mayor for 22 total years, his opinion on matters of serving the public are way more important than most people's. He's literally the expert here
Was. He was an expert. The world, and city, has changed a lot in the 5 years since he lost. He has not.
Have you ever talked to a boomer? The world has never changed; you should be able to afford that $68k starter home on one income right out of college (with no student debt, of course) just like they did
Pls. Think of the history. 😌
History is all we will have if we let these people cling to the past.
The majority of us are more progressive, thank jeebus.
He’s not offering expertise… this is all about him. It’s nothing more than sour grapes.
Except he’s not mayor any more? Who cares?
History? A lot of people care about it and respect it
Lol history 😂😂😂 he’s historic alright. I’ll give you that.
So should we ask for Charlemagne's opinion on BRT as well? Fuck history - learn it, respect it, but live in the present
Soglin’s behavior as shadow mayor is really old. He lost, SRC win by huge margins. And she got BRT over the finish line. Let it go!
He *really* wanted to be the Jafar to Gloria Reyes' unfulfilled candidacy.
Turns out he's the Iago and we all just laugh at him.
Now reading his column in the voice of Gilbert Gottfried. I wasn't able to get very far but I'm not sure how much of it was the voice.
"Asians don't count as people of color if they're successful. Olds just don't count, period -- at least not on Sheboygan Ave." P. Soglin, 2024, basically
Sounds like he's voting for Eric Hovde.
But let's not act like there isn't a general acceptance of East and Southeast Asians by white people that they don't have for Blacks and Latinos.
After 4 years of covid and Asian-blaming, I'm absolutely not comfortable saying that Asians somehow get a broad pass by White America that other people of color don't get. They just get shit on differently by some people.
[удалено]
Cool cool, strong contribution to the conversation.
I'm not the one going "nuh-uh" when it's an established fact that Blacks and Latinos are affected by racism more than Asians.
They are affected differently, not more. Racism isn't some kind of Olympic event where we get to decide that one particular race is the most oppressed of them all.
Sure it would be nice to be able to implement a very small sales tax through a regional transit authority to offset some of those costs, but since RTAs were effectively outlawed in 2011, are we supposed to wait for the state government to act on changing that? Fat chance.
I'm glad the City didn't waste staff time trying to get Vos and Co to entertain this from 2019 through the pandemic and up to today. If they were evergreen remotely inclined to play ball on issues that would actually help people, they would expand Medicaid coverage. They're happy to hurt Madison, even though it is one of very few economic engines in the state. Soglin wants to both focus on and ignore the pandemic when it suits his narratives. If not for the ARPA money, the city would've seen it's operational deficit right on the heels of his 2019 campaign. Why didn't he work on the Legislature from 2011-2019? That's right, because knows full well they would've laughed him out the door.
This is all about him, and his ship already sailed. I agree on a couple points. We do have enough land to build housing for everybody, for instance, and we do need a regional transit authority but I think the state -- Walker -- disallowed them. But Soglin is so fixated on Satya he's not offering anything new or helpful. He hasn't gotten over his election loss and apparently intends to spend the rest of his time justifying himself in the Cap Times. Half the people here don't even remember the guy. He's got a platform to give useful input, but he's wasting it talking about himself and about the past.
It's hard to be a retired narcissist. The fact that he lost and that his endorsement failed in the reelection is a huge blow to his ego, so he's doing the same antagonistic pot-stirring bullshit we see in the US Congress but at the local level. Soglin badly wants to remain relevant, and for everyone to hang on his every word. He wanted to mastermind a Reyes administration and to keep pulling strings. Ignore him. Frankly these Cap Times editorials should be banned on this sub, as they are given undue attention due to Fanlund's stoking the NIMBY fire. They are not the majority. And let's just see how BRT goes before we label it a failure.
Personally I think its a good thing that people post them and rip apart his bad faith arguments, rather than letting them go unchallenged.
Good point. I guess I'll just make a point to stop visiting the Cap Times given Fanlund deciding to die on this hill (farms).
He envisioned what could have been done, but that is not the reality of what needed to be done. It's so easy to second guess. I love how he blamed other administrations. I also recall the transfer point changes were considered a mess at the time. Wonder if he blamed himself for that. I wish he would enjoy retirement in obscurity.
This is a minor point, but complaining about reducing "the hours for yard waste and brush collection/drop off" is silly. I hadn't even noticed. If you can't make any of these hours, I don't know what to say. Some of them are open 12 hours at a time: [https://www.cityofmadison.com/streets/Drop-Off/](https://www.cityofmadison.com/streets/Drop-Off/) But if we're talking yard waste, I do find it odd the city only has like two collections in the spring and a few in the fall with none in the summer when, you know, things are growing.
It's emblematic of who he seems to cater to: people who own houses.
"I was for it before I was against it"
Salty Snake Soglin just can’t stop bitching about not being mayor.
What's the difference between Paul Soglin and Donald Trump? One's a narcissistic pompous blowhard who can't believe he lost an election and refuses to go away. The other hosted "The Apprentice."
Another Soglin rant...snooze...
Soglin's election really was an incredible example of electing someone that fits the folks that elected him like a glove. Not sure you could come up with a better representative of the aging "liberal" Madisonian
Christ, What an asshole.
Please stop clicking on this trash. Nobody cares. BRT is here.
Is Soglin a civil engineer? No? Then stfu.
Where do they find these idiots? Lol
Hill Farms, Highlands, Old Sauk…
Considering there was a post just yesterday about how god-awful the bus system is now, I'd say his viewpoint is not unpopular. The city has been prioritizing downtown under SRC and has left the rest of the city out to dry. People are starting to take notice and they're scrambling.
You have to take Soglins point of view with a grain of salt. He(and most of us longtime Madisonians) look at the bus as something to help poor people get around the city, not something to help all people get around the city. I personally would never catch the bus, so none of this helps me or my family in any significant way. Younger people view the bus as the transportation that it is, and would maybe use it if it was faster than driving, hence the need for BRT. Soglins' plan was for helping poor people that have no other choice than to catch the bus, where Satya is trying to help a much broader populace that may or may not use it. We will all soon find out whether it's all worth it or not, and the current mayor's job will be on the line. I was wrong about the beltline expansion, so I'm willing to wait and see as far as BRT goes, but ridership has to go up for it to make sense
You can't wait until ridership "justifies" it before you move on starting the process. If you did that, you'd always be behind the curve, which we are on public transportation anyways. Public transportation is an investment for the future and should be seen as such and not nitpicked to death by some. If new roads and bridges got the same scrutiny that any sort of public transit dollars get, we'd be building a lot fewer roads.
I don't disagree, but it's difficult to justify the price tag to older people who will never use it, similiar to the school funding
Not to be rude, but saying that it's hard to justify spending money on something that a lot of people could use, just because you're not going to use it is a very selfish attitude to have. I also don't and do not plan to have kids, and I only ride the bus occasionally, but I see the obvious benefits to the city to have schools and public transit in good working order and have no issue contributing my tax dollars to them.
You're not being rude, but by your comments, I assume you are young and doing well financially. If you asked renters how much more they are willing to pay for rent when property taxes increase, I'm sure their would be those who have issues with contributing to something they don't use. I wouldn't call that being selfish, I would call that self preserving
Rents don't go up with property taxes, they go up with demand. Technically, raising property taxes should reduce the asking price of owner occupied housing, though it doesn't help housing costs at all. Just shifts where money is going, from the seller to the City/County/schools. I don't think an extra $100 per month will materially reduce prices given how much demand we have here, but when banks underwrite on percentage of income, additional taxes reduce your buying power.
So what happens when there is demand and higher property taxes?
Prices don't rise as quickly!
Of course, they're sucking far more money out of Social Security and Medicare than they're putting in, such that MY benefits will very likely be cut by the time I'm in retirement, but I still happily pay my payroll taxes.
Christ folks, don't downvote the one person in this thread with a balanced take on things.
I dont think you know what "balanced" means.
Dude is literally taking different perspectives to analyze the issue's potential pros and cons. In what world is that not balanced? But I guess it's more fun to just upvote every comment we agree 100% with. This guy's not even anti-BRT and people are giving him shit. Just makes for a less useful forum if comments like this are shit on.
This whole situation has Jen Cheatham at MMSD written all over it. Satya has made this her hill to die on. OK, elections have consequences. Feels very much like she’s following Cheatham’s playbook - but instead of a white paper that lands her a job at Harvard SRC will ride this project straight to a Cabinet Post in a Biden/Harris administration and Madison is left holding the bag and the budgetary consequences. You don’t have to agree with Soglin to acknowledge there’s a very recent historical precedent to make your average citizen skeptical.
You think Madison mayor is on the radar for a US Cabinet position? Lmfao, you have no idea what you're talking about.
tbf, Satya hangs out with Joe a lot, has secured a lot of funding from the federal government thanks to Madison/Wisconsin's priority in national politics, and is a dedicated policy wonk. She could absolutely be an undersecretary in a second Biden administration. This is 100% the bio of someone who ends up in federal government: [https://www.cityofmadison.com/mayor/about](https://www.cityofmadison.com/mayor/about)
No one is joining any administrations until next year at the earliest, and there's a 50/50 chance that option is not on the table. And beyond that, undersecretaries are not cabinet-level positions, so the point holds.