🚌 City hires new transportation chief

🚌 Urban Planner Hired as New Director of Transportation

• Christof Spieler will head Madison’s Transportation Department, which oversees Metro Transit, the Parking Division, and the Engineering Division. Spieler is an urban planner who is currently vice president of a Houston consulting firm and a lecturer at Rice University.
• Spieler wrote a book, “Trains, Buses, People,” that analyzed every rail transit and bus rapid transit system in North America and offers ways to make transit more successful. He takes over at an eventful time for Metro Transit in particular, as the department launched Bus Rapid Transit last fall, plus bus drivers are involved in ongoing contract negotiations, and security safeguards have been upgraded after several physical attacks on drivers. [City of Madison, WPR, WMTV]

💰 Madison Braces for Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’

• As they prepare their 2026 budgets, city officials are watching and waiting to see how federal spending cuts could increase demand for local service or impact infrastructure projects. Around 17% of Madison’s capital budget was funded by federal dollars, and about 6% of the operating budget was federal, including 175 permanent full-time positions.
• President Donald Trump’s proposed budget passed the U.S. House of Representatives and will likely face revisions in the U.S. Senate. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates it will add $3.8 trillion to the deficit.
• The proposed budget would also cut $700 billion from Medicaid and impose work reporting requirements nationwide. On May 31, protesters will gather at the Capitol to speak out against cutting Medicaid and in favor of expanding BadgerCare in Wisconsin. [Isthmus, Action Network]

🏗️ Deluxe Apartments Will Feature Lakefront Food Hall

• City Cast Madison listeners and Madison Minutes readers say one of the city’s “toxic traits” was the lack of lakeside dining. A new luxury apartment building opening this summer a few blocks from the Capitol Square hopes to change that.
• The 14-story One 09 development at 109 E. Wilson St. will include 340 apartments, a rooftop pool, and room on the ground floor for a 9,000-square-foot dining hall featuring up to seven vendors overlooking Lake Monona.
• 🎧 Dig deeper: The City Cast Madison podcast team dug into some of the big developments in town on the Friday news roundup today. They also talked about the UnityPoint Health-Meriter nurses’ strike and a fatal boating accident on Lake Monona. [ 🔒 WSJ, 🎧 City Cast Madison]

This week’s Friday Floof is Neville! He’s a four-year-old sheepadoodle, and every year he celebrates with an elaborate photo shoot like this one. Seriously, has any creature on Earth looked more dignified in one of those vehicles?