🛒 Where to find cheap groceries in Madison

🏠 New Group Wants to Keep Men’s Shelter Running 24/7

• The city’s new permanent men’s homeless shelter will open next spring on Bartillon Drive, but the shelter is short of funds needed to keep it running around the clock. A new consortium, Shelter Friends of Dane County, wants to raise $1 to $1.5 million to close the gap.
• The group says that having the shelter open during the day would be essential for residents to connect with case managers and other resources that will help them find more permanent housing.
• Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said the city will match all private donations for the shelter up to $2 million. [WKOW]

💰 Committee OKs Short-Term Funding For Detox Center

• A Dane County committee has approved a short-term funding plan to keep the county’s detox services going in the hopes that a long-term solution can be found.
• The county Health and Human Needs Committee OK’d $325,000 in additional funding last week, which will keep Tellurian Behavioral Health’s program going through early 2026. The county has contracted with Tellurian for decades for detox services, but Tellurian said it lost $750,000 in 2025 and would end the contract at the end of the year.
• The plan still has to be approved by the full Board of Supervisors as part of the 2026 budget process. [WMTV]

🇵🇷 UW-Madison Starts Puerto Rican Studies Hub

• Two UW-Madison professors have created the first Puerto Rican studies hub in the Midwest, bridging together musical performances, lectures, film screenings, and more to bring together academics, artists, and the public.
• The new hub is funded through 2028 in part by a $3 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and comes at a time when ethnic studies is a hot topic of conversation on campus. Students, faculty and community members pushed back when a miscommunication from the Universities of Wisconsin suggested the ethnic studies requirement for students might be dropped. [Tone Madison, Daily Cardinal]

🤔 Got Questions For the Guv?

• This week, City Cast Madison host Bianca Martin will interview Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers as he wraps up his tenure in public office. So we want to know: what questions do you have for him? Nothing is too big or too small! Send us an email at at [email protected] and you might hear your question on the upcoming episode.

It’s a big year for classical music fans in Madison. This is John DeMain’s 32th and final year as music director of the Madison Symphony Orchestra. As he tells host Bianca Martin on the City Cast Madison podcast, DeMain has big plans for his farewell season, and looks back fondly at his long career wielding the baton.

The MSO is part of a symphony of classical music performances in Madison, from the biggest concert halls to the most intimate rooms. Here’s where to hear some of the most beautiful music the city has to offer.

Madison Symphony Orchestra

Now in its centennial year, the MSO is one of the best-regarded regional orchestras in the country. DeMain is world-renowned for his contributions to classical music, and the acoustics of the MSO’s home base in Overture Hall is the envy of many orchestras.

Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra

While the WCO is best known for its wildly popular “Concerts on the Square” series every summer, the orchestra conducted by Andrew Sewell (now in his 25th season as conductor) performs year-round in the Capitol Theater and elsewhere, including the upcoming “Eroica” series in November.

Madison Opera

Madison’s long-running professional opera company will stage three productions this year at Overture Hall (including next month’s production of Puccini’s classic “La Boheme”), as well as bringing opera to the masses with the free “Opera in the Park” in the summer.

Wisconsin Union Theater

For over a century the Wisconsin Union Directorate’s Performing Arts Committee has been booking touring classical and opera music acts into the theater, from masterpieces by Bach and Beethoven to new classical music.

Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society

This long-running summer festival aims to make classical music accessible and just plain fun for audiences, such as last summer’s “fire”-themed series of concerts at Hamel Music Center.