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Guest Column
A Budget To Strengthen Our Communities
A Budget To Strengthen Our Communities
Through a new effort to reduce the time our disabled friends and neighbors wait for care, we will help dozens of
individuals and their families become more engaged in their communities and learn job and other skills to enhance
their quality of life.
I’ve worked with the United Way to create an innovative new pilot project to address the achievement gap in our public
schools. This kind of collaboration could help many kids succeed both at home and school in the years ahead.
Alcohol and drug addiction continues to place a great strain on families and public safety. My budget includes
additional treatment slots to help drunk drivers and drug addicts who want help, but are sitting in jail on treatment wait
lists. This investment will help more of them kick their addiction for good and make our communities safer.
My 2013 budget also makes investments to enhance our high quality of life, including a multi-million dollar effort to
clean up our lakes, the biggest highway improvement budget in the past decade and additional resources to ensure
our county parks remain crown jewels.
The county’s new office of Economic and Workforce Development better integrates and coordinates resources to
ensure Dane County is an effective partner and matching skills with jobs and helping more families succeed. I am
bolstering our green energy jobs economy through investments in home-grown compressed natural gas along with
wind and solar, energy.
My budget addresses our needs and invests in our families and communities to ensure all who live here have the
opportunity to succeed.
Together, we’re protecting our most vulnerable, addressing the root causes of our community’s challenges, cleaning
up our lakes, strengthening our infrastructure, and growing our economy.
Dane County Executive Joe Parisi
by Dane County Executive Joe Parisi
In these challenging times, it’s important for counties to pursue partnerships to
address challenges, protect core services, and work to strengthen communities.
My 2013 budget that I just introduced accomplishes these goals – investing in
new initiatives to help Dane County’s communities continue to thrive while
addressing our shared challenges.
Helping kids, seniors, and the disabled comprises over 50% of the total Dane
County budget. Our human services budget does everything from providing
meals for seniors to getting children out of abusive situations and into safer living
situations.
With three new child protective services social workers, including one that will
work directly with the District Attorney to ensure timely prosecution of these often
troubling cases, my budget makes a significant investment in keeping kids safe.
It does so at a time when reports of abuse and neglect are up nearly 15% in Dane
County.
In these challenging times, it’s important for counties to pursue partnerships to
address challenges, protect core services, and work to strengthen communities.
My 2013 budget that I just introduced accomplishes these goals – investing in
new initiatives to help Dane County’s communities continue to thrive while
addressing our shared challenges.
Helping kids, seniors, and the disabled comprises over 50% of the total Dane
County budget. Our human services budget does everything from providing
meals for seniors to getting children out of abusive situations and into safer living
situations.
With three new child protective services social workers, including one that will
work directly with the District Attorney to ensure timely prosecution of these often
troubling cases, my budget makes a significant investment in keeping kids safe.
It does so at a time when reports of abuse and neglect are up nearly 15% in Dane
County.