Republicans have publicly expressed their concern over the general bonding level proposed in Governor Evers' capital budget and, as was anticipated, all four Republicans voted no on all projects in the budget after attempting to forward the budget without recommendation to the Joint Finance Committee (JFC). Because the commission is evenly split by party, this means that they did not recommend any projects to the JFC.

 

This does not mean that the state budget will not include capital projects. We expect that legislative Republicans will negotiate and decide on an acceptable bonding level and work on crafting a package of projects based on that number. We will continue to work with legislators from both parties as well as the Governor's office to ensure that our expansion project is included in the final 2019-21 state budget. 

 

To that end, we continue our legislative tours, which in March  included members of the Joint Finance Committee. Co-chair John Nygren reported on his visit and the school's work in his newsletter, which you can find here. During the state building commission discussion, several members spoke up about the importance of the school to the state and the critical need to expand our facilities. 

We remain optimistic and appreciate your ongoing support of this important campaign .

 

This past month we also had an opportunity to review the Linden Drive parking garage plans. The current project time frame is that construction will start in September 2019 and conclude in late 2020 for occupancy in early 2021. As you would expect, during construction we will lose over half of the parking stalls available to our employees and students, but we will ultimately gain approximately 200 parking stalls when the ramp is completed. If you haven't already, you will soon hear from UW Transportation Services about your options for selecting parking during the ramp's construction. Please carefully review these guidelines so that you will be assigned a parking stall ideally not too far from the School of Veterinary Medicine.

Last, but certainly not least, I'd like to encourage you to enroll in the NIH All of Us research program. UW-Madison is a key partner in this massive NIH research project occurring over the next five years that will collect health data from one million individuals and contribute to the future of precision medicine. Not only is UW Health providing expertise to support the data collection and research, but all of us also have the opportunity to become part of this historic research project by volunteering as study participants. Look for further information from the school regarding an opportunity to enroll in the program this spring at the SVM.