An End-of-Year Message from Our Director

Holiday greetings to our friends and partners across the region! As CARPC staff prepares to enjoy some well-deserved time off for the holidays, we reflect on the many highlights of 2024.

Staff Changes

Our agency saw some significant change in 2024, as I came aboard to be the new Executive Director and Steve Steinhoff retired as Agency Director. We offer sincere thanks to Steve for his years of leadership and service to CARPC. We also were able to convert several valuable team members into full-time roles: Administrative Services Manager Tanya Sime, Environmental Planner Liz Levy, and Community Planner Matt Krempely. We’re particularly excited about the data and mapping skills that these planners bring to our services.    

Strategic Planning

All CARPC staff and commissioners joined in a strategic planning process this year. The resulting plan focuses on the relationships with our many partners in the region and helps us prioritize our efforts as we work to support communities.

Water Resources

Our commitments to water quality led to a few wet feet this year as staff got out into local waterways. Our work in the Starkweather Creek watershed was elevated by the addition of real-time monitoring to track the impacts of winter salt use as it happens. We also started inventorying road stream crossings (culverts and bridges) to evaluate flooding and fish passage issues. We completed two townships in 2024 and are working to secure funding and partnerships that will allow us to inventory the full county over the next few years.

Dane County Water Quality Plan

We worked with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to complete eight sewer service area expansions and an amendment to the plan to allow the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District to discontinue the return of treated effluent to Badger Mill Creek. We look forward to continued collaboration with everyone involved in the Badger Mill Creek process to ensure the health of that waterway in the coming years. After years of preparation and valuable input from a Steering Committee, we also completed an updated draft of the Environmental Corridors Report, a key appendix of the Dane County Water Quality Plan that will be considered for adoption in January 2025.

WI Salt Wise

WI Salt Wise Program Manager Allison Madison spent the year deepening partnerships with industry professionals and expanding the program’s national peer network. In addition to hosting nine equipment open houses,10 individual agency trainings, and 16 smart salting workshops, Allison’s work engaging communities around salt pollution prevention was featured in the November edition of Snow Business Magazine.

Tree Canopy

CARPC staff continue to serve as leaders and convenors in our regional efforts to promote a healthy and equitable urban tree canopy. For example, CARPC staff fill key roles in the Dane County Tree Board and the Tree Canopy Collaborative, and we built and released the Growing Shade equity mapping tool (featured on the Larry Meiller Show!). We also provided mapping assistance for the Southside Canopy Project, a grant-funded effort to plant 100-125 trees per year in south Madison, and worked with local schools to grow and distribute heritage oak tree seedlings.

Community Assistance

This year’s community assistance projects included helping the Towns of Rutland and Bristol with their comprehensive plan updates and working with Rock County to develop a scope for the impending update of their county comprehensive plan. We put together a Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan and a Forestry Management Plan for the Village of Shorewood Hills. In preparation for the Town of Burke’s annexation into incorporated communities, CARPC staff developed an interactive mapping application for two of the Town’s cemeteries. We also partnered with the Lake Waubesa Conservation Association to create a comprehensive lake management plan for Lake Waubesa.

Midwest Climate Collaborative

CARPC is proud to be co-hosting the Midwest Climate Collaborative’s 2025 Midwest Climate Summit, occurring April 30–May 2, 2025, at the Memorial Union. Preparations have been underway since this year’s conference in Indianapolis, and we look forward to highlighting the incredible climate work taking place in Dane County communities.

Data, Data, Data

Collecting, evaluating, and sharing data in useful ways is a core function for CARPC. We have been working on several initiatives that will go public in 2025, including first-time mapping of residential units across Dane County and updated 2050 population projections for the County and its many jurisdictions. We anticipate some lively conversation about growth trends and impacts in the coming year.

Partnerships

The challenges we face as a region are diverse and complex, and we are heartened by the many capable organizations with whom we get to collaborate. One such partnership between CARPC, the Dane County Office of Energy & Climate Change, and several local communities helped CARPC achieve a Bronze-level SolSmart designation this year.

In addition to the local government partners, we have many public agency and non-profit partnerships. A partial list of our active partners in 2024 includes:

• Dane County departments (Planning and Development, Land & Water Conservation, Office of Energy and Climate Change)
• Madison Region Economic Partnership (MadREP)
• Greater Madison Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO)
• Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce
• Groundswell Land Conservancy
• Clean Lakes Alliance
• Yahara Pride Farms
• Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
• Wisconsin Department of Transportation
• Downtown Madison, Inc.
• Madison Area Builders Association
• Smart Growth Greater Madison
• UW-Madison (Dept. of Planning & Landscape Architecture)
• Dane County Towns Association
• Dane County Cities’ and Villages’ Association
• AARP
• The State Cartographer’s Office
• Eco-Latinos
• Operation Fresh Start
• The Urban Tree Alliance
• Sustain Dane
• Trout Unlimited