How Madison manages Halloween is a big deal.
Drawing crowds of 75,000 or more to State Street on the final weekend of October, Halloween partying is big business packing Madison area hotels, restaurants and taverns to capacity and big fun for the most part.
But the city has never quite gotten a handle on the underside of the festivities: deadly drunkenness, violence and crowd control nightmares. As a result, the cost of policing the party has risen to over $600,000 annually.
A lot of Madisonians would be just as happy if the party was canceled. But that’s not going to happen…