📝 Got parking tickets?

🌶️ Why a Neighborhood Meeting Got Spicy

• More than 100 West side residents crammed into a public meeting last Tuesday night at Vel Phillips Memorial High School to express their discontent with a draft of the city’s West Area Plan, oftentimes interrupting officials with yells, jeers, and boos.
• Some context: The West Area Plan is part of a new framework for urban planning the city approved in 2022. It carves Madison into 12 areas, each of which will have its own 10-year plan to lay the groundwork for future development, zoning, and the like to make the city more equitable as it grows.
• The details: The plan recommends adding more housing density in areas that are currently mostly single-family homes. It also suggests adding more mixed-use developments near transit corridors and creating a paved and lit pedestrian and bike path through the Sauk Creek Greenway. Meeting attendees, which Cap Times reported as mainly homeowners over 50, raised concerns about the character of their neighborhoods.
• The bigger picture: Madison is facing a housing crisis, rent prices continue to climb, and the city’s population is expected to grow by 40% by 2050. [WORT, Isthmus, City of Madison, Cap Times]

🎓 Is UW Elitist?

• UW-Madison is planning to launch a statewide marketing campaign to address the notion that the school is too "elitist" and "leftist." Why? Funding.
• The university hopes to dispel claims of liberal biases in hopes of swaying lawmakers into thinking favorably of the institution when budget writing season comes around. (The university has some pretty expensive plans in the works.) [Cap Times, Daily Cardinal]

🍆 Meet Aubergine

• The Willy Street Co-op. has opened a new community space across the street from its East Side store. The space, dubbed Aubergine (a nod to the co-op’s logo), offers classes, hosts events, and seeks to be a gathering space for the Madison community. You can check out all the classes and events the co-op has to offer here. [Madison Magazine, Willy St. Co-op.]

🐟 New Rules For This Fishing Season

• The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has announced new guidelines for the upcoming fishing season. Some of the new rules include a daily bag limit of three walleye and sauger per day on all inland waters and a daily bag limit of 10 panfish in Lake Mendota. You can see the full list of regulations here.
• Related: Wisconsin’s walleye are in trouble. [WDNR, City Cast Madison 🎧]

This week, Dane County Humane Society would like to introduce you to Curly. This three-year-old guinea pig is a curious fellow, always eager for a sniff. But like many guinea pigs, he’s not big on being picked up. But once he’s in your arms, he’s happy to receive some snuggles and pets. Curly has lived with other animals in the past and has enjoyed interacting with small dogs.

Curly is a gentleman of refined taste and loves to munch on oranges, lettuce, and other greens. But his favorite of them all are green peppers. Curly is looking for a new home to explore and a family who will spoil him with all of his favorites – especially green peppers!

How to Fight a Parking Ticket in Madison

Parking tickets. We’ve all been there… rushing back to the meter just a few minutes too late or forgetting to move the car when the street sweepers come. And don’t get us started on Madison’s even-or-odd side snow-day shuffle.

One man holds the power to take the sting out of those tickets... and he’s actually more reasonable than you might think. Madison Municipal Court Judge Dan Koval is on a mission to make Madison’s local court more accessible to the public.