Dane County supervisors unveiled an updated 2027 budget package this week that pours $7.25 million into affordable housing and shelter programs while pulling back some of the human-services cuts originally proposed by County Executive Melissa Agard. The amendments, known as Substitute 1, also temporarily freeze two vacant sheriff's deputy positions and redirect $70,000 already sitting in the Human Services budget toward a mental-health crisis program. The full Dane County Board is scheduled to deliberate and vote on the final 2027 budget at 6 p.m. Wednesday.
According to WKOW, the changes modestly altered Agard's original spending plan, restoring funding for some health and human services and overflow shelter services. Board Chair Patrick Miles also discussed the budget and fiscal pressures, per the same report.
As reported by WMTV15 News, the package cleared the Personnel and Finance Committee with unanimous approval on Oct. 29. That station also reported the $7.25 million affordable-housing and shelter allocation, along with the $70,000 shift toward Journey Mental Health's crisis-intervention programming, which addresses a projected contract shortfall without adding new county dollars.
Deputy Positions Frozen, Funding Set to Return
Two vacant Dane County Sheriff's Office deputy positions will be temporarily frozen for 2027, reducing expenditures by $367,067, the station's report notes. That funding is expected to return automatically to the 2028 base budget.
The freeze is a scaled-back version of an earlier, more aggressive amendment. An amendment co-sponsored by Supervisor Heidi Wegleitner in October would have eliminated three vacant deputy positions entirely and redirected about $500,000 toward the Human Services Department and nonprofit partners including Urban Triage and the YWCA, according to WMTV15 News. Wegleitner had also floated setting aside $96,000 for outreach and overflow-shelter support and $234,000 for housing case management, plus $750,000 in borrowing proceeds for a potential homeless campground, as reported by the Capital Times. A separate Wegleitner proposal to strip a $3 million body-camera allocation from the budget failed; the sheriff's office piloted body cameras in three areas in 2024 using 32 cameras at a cost of $320,000, per the Capital Times.
Wegleitner said departments, services and nonprofit partners were still absorbing earlier budget reductions, and that the new amendments address critical service gaps and reduce harm from the cuts, WKOW reported. Resident testimony helped shape the final package, according to the same account.
Record Homelessness Frames the Budget Fight
The housing investments land against a grim backdrop. A record 880 people in Dane County were experiencing homelessness near the beginning of 2026, the highest count since 2009, according to WORT-FM. Of those 880 people, 819 were sheltered at the time of the count, including those in the cold-weather hotel program. Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom unit jumped 15 percent in a single year to $1,694 a month, the steepest increase on record, and the number of seniors experiencing homelessness rose 60 percent from 2023, with 217 people older than 55 counted this year, WORT-FM reported.
The spending plan also arrives amid the county's second consecutive year of budget cuts, with residents asked to prepare for difficult decisions, according to Madison.com. Agard described the overall 2027 proposal as a $946.8 million budget that reduces general-purpose-revenue spending by $10 million for a second straight year, while lowering the county's tax rate for residents for the second consecutive year, according to the Stoughton Courier Hub. Agard said the county's projected structural deficit had fallen to approximately $15 million as the 2027 budget process began, per the same report.
Memorial Proposal Postponed
A proposed $25,000 memorial resolution was postponed, with a capital amendment intended instead. The sponsor intended to work with Dane Arts on a related project.
With committee approval already secured, the full Dane County Board is set to take up the budget Wednesday evening, when supervisors will decide whether the amended package, including its housing investments, deputy-position freeze and mental-health funding shift, becomes final.
