A buy local movement in my town has issued an ‘eat local’ challenge. I’ll take that challenge. I’ve questioned parts of the buy local campaign, but I’m open to eating locally.

(Readers know that I’ve opposed city officials’ meddling in what should be a private merchants’ campaign. It’s not the business of our city government to endorse some merchants over others; that’s the role for consumers in the marketplace. I have also had doubts about the definition of ‘local’; residents employed at our Walmart are just as local as any other workers in town, and I will not demonize the employer who offers them work, or the consumers who rely on that retailer.)

I’ll happily take a challenge, though, to eat locally, if that challenge truly means all businesses in Whitewater. I frequent our famers’ market, for example, and picked up some fine produce there again yesterday.

Thirty days’ worth of local dining? My pleasure, I’m sure.

Here’s the flyer the buy local campaign is distributing:

At the City of Whitewater website, one finds notice of a public hearing about a fiscally-distressed TID [tax incremental district]. There’s much to say about all this, but for now, two remarks about the hearing notice –

The notice lists only the name of the CDA coordinator, but City Manager Kevin Brunner’s name should appear above hers on any notice about the fiasco that is TID 4. Brunner’s been running (and been compensated for overseeing, I believe) the CDA. He’s quick to show for a photo when there’s an event for which he can somehow claim credit. Particularly, he’s touted himself as knowledgeable about tax incremental financing; now that TID 4 is gasping for air, Brunner’s name is nowhere to be seen.

Could there be a less convenient time for public input than 4:30 PM in the afternoon? (Perhaps 2 a.m. in the morning was already taken.) The public hearing should be at a time like meetings for Common Council — 6:30 p.m., when people can attend following work.

Here’s that public notice, in full:

Public Hearing Notice on TID 4 Distressed TID Project Plan Amendment

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Community Development Authority of the City of Whitewater will hold a public hearing on September 27, 2010, at 4:30 p.m. at the City of Whitewater Municipal Building Community Room located at 312 West Whitewater Street, Whitewater, Wisconsin, for the purpose of providing the community a reasonable opportunity to comment upon the proposed Project Plan Amendment for designation of Tax Incremental District No. 4 as a distressed Tax Incremental District within the City of Whitewater, Wisconsin. The public is hereby notified that the life of a distressed tax incremental district may be extended, that it may receive excess tax increments from a donor district, and that the life of the donor district may be extended to provide such increments. The cost of the amendment will include additional staff time, additional interest costs, bond refinancing and underwriting fees, publication costs, and additional Department of Revenue administration charges. All interested parties will be given a reasonable opportunity to express their views on the proposed amendment. A copy of the Project Plan Amendment will be available for viewing at the offices of the City Clerk located at 312 West Whitewater Street, Whitewater, Wisconsin, during normal business hours and will be provided upon request. Such hearing shall be public and citizens and interested parties shall then be heard.

Mary S. Nimm, Coordinator,
City of Whitewater Community
Development Authority
312 West Whitewater Street
P. O. Box 178
Whitewater, WI 53190

In December 2009, the City of Whitewater announced the results of a “2009 Comprehensive Plan Community Survey.” Whitewater’s City Manager, Kevin Brunner, predictably touted the results as proof of satisfaction with his municipal administration. Around that time, I saw the survey results online, but I’m sorry to say I didn’t comment on the survey or the city manager’s characterization of the results.

One key note: the City of Whitewater created this survey, sent it out, and thereafter turned it over to academics to try sort it all out. Those academics who received these results for review received a mess.

Similarly, no matter how skilled an academic, no one could make the city’s method good.

I have embedded that public document, below, and have a few remarks to offer.

A Skewed, Unrepresentative Sample. A survey with a poor sample is representative of nothing except the unrepresentative. The ‘Introduction’ to the study is misleading, as it contends that

This report summarizes residents’ perceptions of the overall quality of life in Whitewater, their evaluation of facilities, services, and safety in Whitewater, and their preferences for future development in Whitewater.

Perhaps, the City of Whitewater’s administration did not suppose that readers could remember words from one page to the next, because only one page later it’s clear that this was not a survey of residents’ views. In the discussion of ‘Sampling Method’ under ‘Methodology’ one learns the true subjects of the survey:

The City of Whitewater Comprehensive Plan Community Survey was designed and administered by City personnel. Questionnaires were mailed at the end of June, 2009, to all property owners and business owners who received water bills. Access to the survey was also made available on the City’s website, and residents who did not receive utility bills could complete the survey by coming to the municipal building, or to the public library and filling one out in person.

Not a representative sample of actual residents, but property and business owners, even if they lived outside in the City of Whitewater. For those not property or business owners, there was a wholly different method of outreach, making the survey data even less reliable. Not a different, secondary collection, but a different primary collection for vast numbers of actual residents.

Needless to say, under a discussion of ‘Demographics’ there’s an acknowledgment of the unrepresentative nature of the survey:

The method for mailing the instrument as well as the timing of the survey completion (mid-Summer), likely affected the demographic profile of respondents. For example, five percent of the survey respondents were between the ages of 18-24, 20 percent were between the ages of 25-44,38 percent were between the ages of 45-64, and 37 percent were age 65 or older. As such, the data are skewed toward a much older age group within the actual population of the City.

So, was this a residents’ survey? No. Was this a community survey? Well, if one is willing to accept an inaccurate representation of the community instead of an accurate one, then I suppose it would be.

Sadly, our current municipal manager would rather tout anything than produce something credible.

Rationalizing the Unrepresentative. Although the City of Whitewater published a sample in a report that acknowledges fatal flaws, there’s still an attempt to rationalize other glaring problems. Consider how the study’s section on ‘Demographics’ describes the ethnic background of respondents:

With respect to race and ethnicity, the data were less skewed and fairly representative when compared with U.S. Census data with 94 percent of the respondents identifying as White/Caucasian and the remaining six percent of the respondents fairly evenly distributed across the other five racial/ethnic response categories.

First, the Census data to which these remarks refer is from 2000, not 2009. The contention that the 2009 survey is ‘less skewed’ depends on stale, 2000 data. There is no one — no one sensible — who believes that in 2009 Whitewater had a population that was 94% white. Candidly, the 2000 Census data were probably over-stating whites, but in 2009, it’s just embarrassing to rely on the 2000 data for accurate demographics on ethnicity. The newer, 2009 survey should have shown a significant difference from 2000, to be in any reasonable way representative of Whitewater’s population.

This is yet another sign of how bad this survey’s sample is.

Second, it’s more than telling that the remaining non-white population (erroneously listed as 6%) is spread across all five non-white population groups. That’s additional proof of how bad the 2009 sample was. The City of Whitewater does not have an equal distribution of non-white ethnic groups, and no one thinks so.

In any event, since people list ethnicity as self-identifiers, perhaps Whitewater’s municipal administration could consider if, in fact, these respondents see no difference between one group of non-whites (the city’s term) and another? One would guess that can’t be true, as people choose a specific ethnicity for all sorts of reasons deeply meaningful to themselves.

Consider an old story about another attempt to make something ill-fitting into something fitting:

Next morning, he [the prince] went with it to the father, and said to him, “No one shall be my wife but she whose foot this golden slipper fits.” Then were the two sisters glad, for they had pretty feet. The eldest went with the shoe into her room and wanted to try it on, and her mother stood by. But she could not get her big toe into it, and the shoe was too small for her. Then her mother gave her a knife and said, “Cut the toe off; when thou art Queen thou wilt have no more need to go on foot.” The maiden cut the toe off, forced the foot into the shoe, swallowed the pain, and went out to the King’s son….Then he looked at her foot and saw how the blood was streaming from it. He turned his horse round and took the false bride home again, and said she was not the true one….

Even a Unrepresentative Sample Shows the Municipal Administration’s Unpopularity. Consider the answers to Table 2, Figure 3′s question, “As you think about the City as a whole compared to five years ago, do you think that things have stayed about the same, improved, or worsened?”

Here are the responses:

Same 24%
Improved 44%
Worsened 16%
Did Not Live in Whitewater [!] 16%

The City of Whitewater touted this as proof of satisfaction with life in town. That’s absurd — fewer than half of the respondents felt life had improved.

That’s not positive — over the years 2004-2009 (coinciding with the tenure of our current administration), one would hope that a significant majority would see conditions positively — as improving.

That’s not what happened — even a skewed sample shows that only a minority of respondents see actual improvement.

These paltry results come despite years of crowing, cheerleading, boosterism, puffery, grandiose claims, and skewed survey data. For it all, still only a minority of feels that conditions have improved in Whitewater.

True Popularity. When Whitewater’s town squires held a meeting for a new school administrator, by their own count about fifty people showed up. When the municipal manager held a meeting in a retirement home about the 2010 budget, only one person — a retiree living in the home — attended.

These efforts produced slight turnout, but it would be false to say that Whitewater’s residents are apathetic. (Although one could have guessed that the city manager — in print — would whine about low attendance at his first budget meeting, as though it could be anyone’s fault but his own. See, Come On, Whitewater! Stop Disappointing Your Politicians and Bureaucrats (Part 2).)

When Whitewater has something worth seeing, people pour out to attend and support the event. For our science fair, there were several hundred, for our Independence Day parade, over a thousand, for graduation, nearly a similar number.

And more important still, in parishes across the city, thousands attend worship each week.

Low attendance only occurs when the same tired bureaucratic class puts on a gathering for itself — then, the seats are mostly empty. A man or woman can see easily through the sophistry of our city’s announcements and declarations. The fault lies not with Whitewater’s residents, but with the bureaucrats who have alienated and condescended to people.

(I have a standing, yet unanswered, challenge to Whitewater’s city manager: where are the crowd shots of the taxpayer-funded Innovation Center’s ground breaking, where are all the pictures of residents turning out in support? I’ve yet to see anything other than pictures of a few fancy people and bureaucrats, standing around and mugging for the camera. I’d guess that I haven’t seen any crowd shots because they’re aren’t any. Outside of a small circle of back-patters, there’s no one who’s eager to turn out for a white-elephant in the making.)

A study like the 2009 Survey, designed and distributed so poorly, and producing such unrepresentative results, should never have been distributed, and never touted as a valid survey of Whitewater, Wisconsin. Any city official who cared about accuracy and proper survey techniques would have done a better job, and would have rejected results like these. The municipal administration’s reliance on these results is unpersuasive.

There’s popular support for many things in Whitewater; one will not find our municipal administration, and its bureaucrats, among those many things.

Whitewater, Wisconsin’s last Common Council meeting was held on August 17th. Part of that meeting concerned a proposal for transparency in government, with improved standards for posting meeting notices and agendas online, recording those meetings, and making the records conveniently available online for residents of Whitewater. I’ve written on this topic before. (See, for example, Beyond Paper Packets for Only a Few.)

I’ll consider only the discussion on transparency. That discussion begins at 45:55 on the recording, and continues through 1:05:45. I have embedded a video from that meeting, immediately below.

Here’s a link: http://blip.tv/file/4023240.

This video is a fine start – we can and should expand recording to other public meetings. Transparency and openness in government is valuable for many reasons, but consider just this one:

Transparency in government is about keeping citizens informed about public meetings of public officials at public expense with accurate and reliable readings. Does a community want to rely on what officials recall happened at a meeting, through mere notes, or should a community use the accurate and commonplace media of audio and video recording to assure that what was said is preserved accurately and reliably as a reference?

If people watch and record every experience of their children, relatives, and even friends, should government not record the actual words and positions of public officials in public meetings, supposedly held for the benefit of all residents?

From Whitewater’s Common Council, one heard several objections, however indirect, to the prompt adoption of the main transparency proposal.

What’s the rush? It’s all around us — in a city whose municipal administration would have made better decisions had there been a more transparent government years ago. I am convinced that this is true: that widespread awareness of the content of proposals would first have elicited more public comment, and those comments would have prevented so many closed-group decisions that plague us now.

No matter how intoxicating it may be for a small group of career managers to hear only their own voices, their decisions cannot be as sound as those informed by the opinions from among the thousands in this city.

No one person, no group of a dozen or so, is a match for the collective understanding of our city’s residents. Centuries of experience shows this, time and again, in place after place, and on this point one could successfully contend against any number of objections.

That’s the rush, and that would be the improvement in our quality of life — that we’ll be a more honest and practical city — than we are now. Every day delayed is a day we’re less than we could be, both in our principles and in the prudent gathering of community insight.

Committee Support. Saying that transparency depends on what committee members will prefer, as some at council did, is a gross misunderstanding. Those who who advocate inquiring of committee members think they’re being sensible, considerate, whatever. In fact, it only shows how confused they are about governance. These are not private committees and private topics, but public ones. Those who have volunteered for a public body, organized under law, shouldn’t be in a position to object, ‘we’d like a less transparent and less accurate way to memorialize our proceedings, please.’

Note, also, that any citizen may record open session public meetings, in audio or video. Wisconsin law allows, and encourages, the practice:

Use of equipment in open session. Whenever a governmental body holds a meeting in open session, the body shall make a reasonable effort to accommodate any person desiring to record, film or photograph the meeting. This section does not permit recording, filming or photographing such a meeting in a manner that interferes with the conduct of the meeting or the rights of the participants.

Wis. Stat. sec. 19.90.

A person who sought, using conventional means, to record an open session meeting would be within his or her rights under our law. That’s not just true for Council meetings, but for those of committees and commissions, too. Attempts to prevent conventional recording would be a violation of Wisconsin law, and would justify legal action against a Wisconsin municipality.

Members of a committee may have an opinion on what they’d like, but as they have no veto against private citizens’ recording of open session meetings, so they would have no legal recourse should the City of Whitewater choose to adopt a more open and honest approach. (Whitewater is not required to adopt a more accurate means of memorializing a meeting; she may not, however, prevent a resident from doing so.)

Public Support. Asking a community that’s been denied a more open politics if it’s clamoring for one is like asking a horse you’ve starved if he feels like galloping around. You might expect that it will take a while for interest to return. An at-large council member in Whitewater can win city-wide office with only several hundred votes in a city of fourteen-thousand. It’s lawful to govern this way, but hardly evidence of popular support. A small clique of a few hundred insiders is not — and never will be — the whole city.

It’s just an expression of temerity for those who have so wearied and exhausted this community to contend that they need to measure popular support. Our leading bureaucrats have so alienated this community than they can only get a retiree or two to show up — at a retirement house — for a community budget meeting.

When they say ‘popular support’ they may be thinking about a few, but they cannot plausibly mean the community.

(This is an opportunity to consider the last so-called community survey that Whitewater’s municipal administration trumpeted as evidence of popular support. I’ll address that flawed survey tomorrow, on Wednesday morning, September 1st, and demonstrate that it shows not popular support, but false bureaucratic claims.)

Cost. I am sure that it’s fair to know the cost of preserving public meetings. Two points are worth making. First, it should not require the very best equipment, but only what’s adequate. Nothing need be gold-plated. Ordinary equipment can produce fine results.

Second, if this proposal is found too costly for the city’s budget, then it’s fair to ask: will it have been less worthy than each and every item that the city does fund? One would be right to list every larger approved expenditure, or smaller ones combined, and say: Was each worth more than transparency?

Soon enough, transparency like this will be the standard across Wisconsin. We’ve much to gain by adopting these measures at the earliest opportunity.

The Wall Street Journal published a story recently on privatization, entitled Facing Budget Gaps, Cities Sell Parking, Airports, Zoo. Ianthe Jeanne Dugan writes that

Cities and states across the nation are selling and leasing everything from airports to zoos- a fire sale that could help plug budget holes now but worsen their financial woes over the long run. California is looking to shed state office buildings. Milwaukee has proposed selling its water supply; in Chicago and New Haven, Conn., it’s parking meters. In Louisiana and Georgia, airports are up for grabs.

For those who (erroneously) think that the Wall Street Journal writes only one way – to the right — consider Dugan’s description of privatization:

“Privatization” – selling government-owned property to private corporations and other entities- has been popular for years in Europe, Canada and Australia, where government once owned big chunks of the economy.

In many cases, the private takeover of government-controlled industry or services can result in more efficient and profitable operations. On a toll road, for example, a private operator may have more money to pump into repairs and would bear the brunt of losses if drivers used the road less.

While asset sales can create efficiencies, critics say the way these current sales are being handled could hurt communities over the long run. Some properties are being sold at fire-sale prices into a weak market. The deals mean cities are giving up long-term, recurring income streams in exchange for lump-sum payments to plug one-time budget gaps.

There’s a sale, and then there’s an under-sale. Dugan’s story makes the difference clear, and describes how some municipalities aren’t just making deals with private concerns, but bad deals with private concerns.

I’d contend that one of the reasons that many municipalities across America are in trouble now is because bureaucrats falsely believed that they understood business transactions and conditions well, and consequently dabbled in too many projects styled as ‘government-business partnerships.’ These deals were often expensive and ill-conceived (as some in my own, small town have been.)

Across America, some of the same men who made fiscal mistakes (often through these wasteful ‘partnership’ ventures) are now looking to sell as fast as they can – for fire-sale prices. In doing so, they’re compounding their initial errors with subsequent ones.

As they’re the same men, then and now, this is unsurprising.

There are, I think, two principal ways that a government spending proposal in a small town succeeds. (There are more than two ways, but here I’m simply considering principal ways.)

The first way is how all spending proposals should be considered — on the merits. Is it necessary to tax for a public purpose, and even if so, what’s the least burdensome amount that taxpayers should be asked to bear? The presumption should rest against taxation and public spending, in favor of a wage earner’s retention of his or her earned income.

What begins as the income of a man or woman, only later becomes money for government to take, and use for a supposedly public purpose.

(Genuine public safety needs, and emergency assistance to vulnerable people, come to mind as legitimate expenditures.)

There’s a second way, however, that creeps into the thinking of politicians, bureaucrats, and boosters (boosters supposedly of the community, but mostly of themselves). It’s the idea that people have to get on board, be part of the team, go along, to cheer for bigger and better government projects. There are deadly narcotics less intoxicating than need to fall in line that a few exploit to turn people into lemmings.

It’s a nearly irresistible siren call reminiscent of a childhood exhortation: “Hey kids, lets put on a show…”

It’s often a tax-from-others to build-for-our-own-pride undertaking. Those who raise objections are deemed misfits, malcontents, complainers, lunatics, anarchists, misanthropes, community-haters, etc. The pressure that a small clique — only a few hundred of a town of many thousands — will exert is too much for many people. They find themselves unsettled, and worried that if they don’t agree with the latest project proposal, they’ll be picked on, etc.

Sometimes, they’re right — that is what happens. It’s how small officials abuse their authority by exercising petty tyrannies over others. These can be big problems in a small town.

Mostly, however, those who raise objections are carefully and deliberately excluded from task forces and appointed public boards where they might demonstrate how ill-considered the latest Next Big Project really is. Instead, a weak and manipulative municipal manager, for example, will rely on the same collection of People Who Can be Depended Upon to Agree with Any Project Proposed.

That’s a loss for a community, but no great impediment for honest, determined, and diligent critics. Those placed on committees simply as yes men are dull and narrow. A dozen of them are less effective than one sensible, common person.

I’m curious, though, which line of advance one is most likely to see in my town in the months ahead. One could guess, but the answer’s sure to be just around the corner….

During the week, each morning, I’ve posted photos of wildflowers near a parking lot on our college campus. There are two reasons for posting them. Those photos appeared Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

First, the flowers make beautiful photographs, however poor the photographer. Seen as they are, they’re lovely.

Look back over the photos from the full week, seeing these plants closely, and I think you’ll agree. Even my poor photography cannot spoil them. They’re living wonders.

Second, they reveal not merely natural beauty, but diverse and plentiful life — each small patch is home to both plants and animals, a small ecosytem all its own. A person might conclude that plants like this are all a jumble, but they’re more than that — they’re beautiful plants and animals of an interdependent order.
Natural lawns are like this, too. I don’t have one, but I can see that they’re beautiful and representative of a created order. These beautiful but harmless lawns should not be mowed down, in whole or part, by municipal mandate.

There are things to be said in favor of a homeowner’s natural lawn.

It’s a legitimate use of private property, earned by private citizens, and cared for by them. No bureaucrat bought the properties on which these lawns grow — they were not earned at his labor, were not nurtured with his time, and should not be subject to his meddling. This is the arrogant presumption of publicly-paid officials: that they may not only draw a salary at public expense, but may restrict and control the fruits of others’ salaries at their whim and discretion. It simply shows an official’s disrespect for the boundary between public and private, to regulate ever father. To other communities, it makes Whitewater a subject of criticism by contrast with their own practices.

Sometimes an official will insist on regulating private property, but will wail, gnash his teeth, and rend his garments at the slightest criticism of his public performance. Regulations should rest on the presumption that private property should remain free of public meddling. Similarly, those regulations should be free of motivation from spite, pique, and retaliation for public criticism.

It’s wrong to contend that these are merely weeds, as that’s simply misinformed and ignorant. They’re not weeds, but a delicate, small ecosystem of living things. It merely battens on ignorance to contend otherwise.

Lawns like these, few in number across the town, cause no harm to others, although one can expect specious arguments along those lines. Should such arguments be made, they will merit a thorough and comprehensive refutation, debunking flimsy arguments. That’s a refutation that one should be happy to make, if the necessity were to arise.

Someone, somewhere, saw the beauty in the wildflower flowers planted near the campus this summer. He was right to do so. Plants like these, and other wild varieties grown with care by homeowners in town, and worth admiring, and defending.

I read, each week, the Weekly Report from Whitewater’s City Manager, Kevin Brunner. The August 13th issue has clippings that Brunner chose to include from news stories and columns published elsewhere. Brunner included one from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. Here’s the clipping Brunner included:

Krugman States Anti-Government Movement Hurting “Basic Government Functions.”
Paul Krugman writes in his column for the New York Times (8/8, A9), “We’re told that we have no choice, that basic government functions – essential services that have been provided for generations – are no longer affordable. And it’s true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn’t be quite as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at least some tax increases.” Krugman argues that “the antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud…But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.”

Although Krugman’s a noted, respected economist, but he’s a poor columnist. Worse than a poor columnist, though, is any appointed city bureaucrat who re-prints a column like this — the content is partly false, partly distorted, and the bureaucrat’s use of it is self-pitying and tone deaf.

First, Krugman’s column, one I presume Brunner actually read, talks about how America is unpaving roads because of a bad economy. That’s misleading, as Jack Shafer notes, in a column at the Washington Posts’s Slate entitled, What Krugman, Maddow, and the press corps don’t understand about gravel roads. Only a minuscule number of roads are returning to unpaved gravel, and in many cases that’s because they’ve been replaced by newer, paved roads. Furthermore, as Shafer observes, America’s been on a road-paving frenzy for decades. We don’t lack for paved roads.

Second, Brunner uses the headline — perhaps one that someone else originally vote — “Krugman States Anti-Government Movement Hurting “Basic Government Functions.” ” There’s really no significant anti-government movement in America — there’s a limited government movement, a limited and responsible government movement. All sensible people, of whom one includes libertarians, believe in the truly basic government functions of public safety for police and fire, for example. There are questions about policy for police and fire departments, but no one questions that American communities need both services. It’s just hyperbole and grandstanding to contend otherwise.

It’s a false dichotomy to contend that there are two sides to this debate: anti-government or pro-basic functions. That’s just silly. The question is what size for basic functions, not whether there will be basic functions. I can see how a columnist might exaggerate the debate, but what of Brunner? How can he contend that there are anti-government forces fighting basic services, when he’s been paid for a long career, at public expense?

His role is not nearly as fundamental as police or fire protection, and yet he’s enjoyed an long career as a city manager on the public tab.

Third, Brunner’s leadership is hardly a model of efficiency, sound management, or good governance. Whitewater has a tax incremental financing debacle, budget problems, high poverty, open storefronts, and problems of basic enforcement & the administration of justice, all of which I have written about before. If one is to look for someone who would stand athwart a supposed challenge to government, itself, perhaps it should be someone less connected with the many problems we now face.

Having committed so many resources to big-ticket project after big-ticket project, all the while wheedling for his own assistant to the city manager, in times of hardship for front-line employees and residents, Brunner’s just not a credible defender of good and sound fiscal policy.

There’s a serious examination due of Whitewater’s tax policy under Brunner’s administration, as well as our tax incremental financing debacle, his administration’s city budget policy, a full assessment of the Innovation Center, and beyond all that, issues of equitable enforcement of regulations, and administration of justice. Much of this will require a careful, line-by-line assessment (as of Brunner’s new Fiscal Analysis for the City of Whitewater).

It’s a task well worth undertaking in the months ahead — to see where we truly are, and how to walk the difficult terrain ahead. There are reasonable solutions and reform proposals to consider along the way. I am convinced that, no matter how challenging these times for Whitewater or America, a set of reforms can produce a fairer, more prosperous city. Not how things have been, but by change, to create new and lasting opportunities.

There’s an intriguing video on YouTube that records in time-lapse filming the construction of a tower in Tokyo. It’s the Tokyo Sky Tree. The video depicts work over an extended period. (Although the description on YouTube somewhat misstates the timespan of the recording, it’s still fascinating.)

Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb8MUeZrxbc.

Despite all its beauty, the video invites one to ask: who built this, why, and with what means? For the Tokyo Sky Tree, the builders are a combination of a Japanese railway and several Japanese broadcasters. The tower is designed, among other reasons, to transmit digital signals great distances past other urban buildings.

One could take pictures of a local project in a place like my town of Whitewater, too. The building wouldn’t be as large, but it would still be possible.

And yet…even afterward, the same questions would present themselves as they do for the Tokyo Sky Tree: who built this, why, and with what means?

For a place like Whitewater’s Innovation Center, the answers would be (1) the City of Whitewater and University of Whitewater-Wisconsin, (2) in part to house a publicly-funded anchor tenant, (3) with federal tax dollars and municipal debt.

I could take a picture of the building each week, for the full construction schedule, and the same would be true after each photograph.

It will be multi-million dollar public project when it’s one-quarter completed, one-half completed, two-thirds-completed, and when it’s wholly completed.

There’s no magic behind publicly-funded projects. When one takes ten or eleven million in taxes and public debt, using no money of one’s own, one can expect to find a contractor who’ll build something with it.

There’s a Police Commission meeting tonight in Whitewater, at 7 p.m. The agenda for the meeting appears below.

First the agenda, and remarks thereafter.

One standard for residents, an easier one for officials.

At the bottom of the August 4th agenda, one reads that on August 2nd it was

August 2, 2010
Emailed/mailed to PFC members
Faxed to the Whitewater Register for posting
Faxed to the Library for posting
Emailed to Channel 13 for posting
Emailed to City Clerk’s Office for posting on City Hall bulletin board
Posted on City of Whitewater Website (ci.whitewater.wi.us)

That’s two days’ notice before the meeting. For those who might need an interpreter, or access for a disability, however, the city has as a more demanding, three days’ notice requirement:

Anyone requiring special arrangements is asked to call the Office of the City Clerk, 262-473-0500, at least 72 hours prior to the meeting.

The Commission expects at least 72 hours. By their own standards, they’ve not provided enough time for entirely reasonable requests of those with special needs.

This isn’t a clerical matter. Is there no leader who reads this, and sees what it plainly means? I don’t even mean ‘is there no leader who cares’ about service to residents, but instead is there no leader who sees how embarrassing this is?

The shiver of excitement. Perhaps, every so often, officials here and elsewhere get a shiver of excitement of doing what they want, whatever they want, good policy notwithstanding. There’s probably been more than one person on this continent who’s mumbled to himself, “I’ll do what I damn well please.”

That’s predictable and unsurprising. I’ve often thought that officials gone wrong don’t get better; they get worse. They typically huddle together, supporting each other in one bad notion or another.

The history of the South from two generations ago is instructive. Those who were defiantly opposed to a better politics didn’t yield easily or become gentler.p They grew worse, for the most part.

Change came around them, and in spite of them.

In a different way, that will be true in Whitewater. A new generation will discard and hold in contempt the shoddy practices of this time. (In the interim, as some of the current group succeed each other, one can be sure that they’ll quickly turn on their immediate predecessors. They’ll prove faithless successors.)

A good point, still as useful as when first made, deserves to be made again. A few of those are in order:

About that notice. Look at how the Commission provides notice, apart from the amount of notice. It’s a lot of faxing for posting, but not much certainly that half of it gets up, and gets seen, in time.

If these men and women had a yard sale, they’d be sure to give more notice than what they give for a public commission.

The same small room. The City Manager’s Conference Room has a great sound to it (so very important), but this group belongs in a meeting room, not a conference room.

Link: http://cityofwhitewater.blip.tv/file/3910060/

Whitewater, Wisconsin held its last Common Council meeting on July 20th. There’s another session tonight, but a part of the last session deserves notice as an example of a dodgy discussion.

On the agenda of the last meeting, one finds this item, C-7, nestled in the middle:

C-7. Review of and possible direction regarding city ordinances related to grass, weeds and natural lawns and enforcement thereof. (Council member Olsen request.)

I have embedded and linked the video of that meeting, above, and the discussion of item C-7 is available for viewing beginning at 1:27:45 and ending at 1:48:30.

Everything about this is dodgy, and one can see that another common council member rightly asks about the origin of the idea. Others see that the three areas for consideration (grass, weeds, and natural lawns) involve, variously, separate issues of common rights of way as against private property.

There’s a significant difference between the treatment of common and private property.

Missing this lends a slapdash, sketchy, and dodgy aspect to the discussion. If one can’t describe a proposal simply and directly, there’s a problem.

One can guess that we’ve not heard the last of this, especially regarding natural lawns.

For now, four quick points —

First, no paid leader from the city staff who speaks sounds persuasive or clear about the topic. They jumble different concepts. It makes one wonder if some of the discussion is a fig leaf other concerns or motivations. Alternatively, these may be frivolous men who can’t think a topic through properly. The former is worse than the latter, but neither is reassuring.

Second, does Whitewater’s city manager, Kevin Brunner have a serious priority of his own, or is he led around by others? This is a municipal administration that cannot set meaningful priorities. Brunner came to town with great hopes from residents. He squandered them on too many initiatives, half-baked and ill-considered, and now he’s simply lost control of the agenda. Others have become the tail that wags the dog. Having shown himself to be ineffectual, thin-skinned, and glass-jawed, it seems that others simply push him around.

The Very Model of a Modern Municipal Manager has defended many of these officials, but they’ll not pay him back in reciprocal support. Instead of defending principle, Brunner’s administration caters to certain self-important men, like a hurried waiter with too many tables.

He looks frivolous and weak trying to justify these concerns.

It does no good to scurry for a few leaders, when frontline workers and residents are ignored or bullied.

Third, there’s no more commonplace justification for regulation than a public safety rationale. We just want to keep people safe, officials will say. They don’t and often can’t show a single actual hardship, but regulatory addicts will use the progressive idea of safety and public health to advance an anti-ownership, anti-property agenda.

It’s a tactical effort by which politicians and bureaucrats who would otherwise be seen as petty reactionaries can cast themselves as high-minded guardians of public safety.

If there are real safety concerns, that one can show, then so be it.

One will not find such concerns about natural lawns, or a few spruces on a terrace, however. It’s both laughable and ignorant that the meeting’s consideration of the topic mixes these situations with other concerns. (Note: neither of these situations apply to me. I’m not writing out of personal concern, or connection to any other resident. I simply know a dodgy proposal when I hear one.)

Fourth, apart from safety, there are problems of desuetude and selective enforcement that Brunner and his staff seem not to understand. It’s not always possible to leave a regulation unenforced and then start enforcing it. Selective enforcement of the dormant ordinance is another risk. (Do Brunner and his leaders really think that a declaration one night, with enforcement the next morning, would be permissible?)

It took only a short while for others in the room to make distinctions that those from the city payroll either didn’t, or couldn’t, make.

One can be sure, however, that Whitewater will hear much more about this, from city bureaucrats. They’ll be back for more – they’re suddenly motivated.

At the Wisconsin State Journal, there’s an investigative report about a doctor entitled, University of Wisconsin Cancer Researcher Quits Amid Conflict of Interest Investigation.

Reporter Doug Erickson summarizes the issue: “A prominent UW-Madison cancer researcher [Dr. Minesh Mehta] has abruptly resigned after university officials began investigating a potential conflict of interest involving his outside business interests.”

Best quote, from Dr. Eli Glatstein, a critic of the researcher, that Glatstein’s

beef was not just with Mehta but with “a generation of people who don’t seem to recognize a conflict of interest when it smashes them in the mouth.”

Dr. Glatstein, do I ever know what you mean! I’m a blogger from small-town Whitewater, Wisconsin, and we’re the conflict-of-interest capital of the planet.

Sure, you’re a prominent doctor, from a big school, and you travel in august circles. It’s still not enough — no many how many conflicts you discover, you’re living in a Sahara compared to the rich, lush Amazon of conflicts in which I live.

I wish you the best, Dr. Glatstein, and hope that you continue to stick up for sound principles. If you’d ever like a tip or two, however, feel free to write. I’d happy to help.

At the last meeting of Whitewater’s Common Council, on July 20th, one of the city’s common council members referred to a city bureaucrat as “Slick.” That’s Slick, as in “Come on up here, Slick.”

This was an official speaking in behalf of the council member’s agenda item, mind you. I’d guess the term was meant well.

I am sure, though, that the term never works well, under any circumstances. It’s not a term of endearment, and it’s too trite to work as an insult.

Best not to use it at all.

Here’s the format I will be using for live blogging tonight’s Planning Commission meeting. I’m interested in experimenting with live blogging to produce commentary more quickly. (My comments will remain after the meeting for later viewing.)

The window will become live just before 6 PM, and comments will appear with the newest remarks at the top of the window. (Update: For replay, comments will appear from top to bottom, first to last.)

Here are a few additional remarks — serious, both of them.

Explanations of the Law. Municipal counsel for a town should be able to answer a question on the law simply, concisely, and understandably. This is no trivial point — a good politics depends on it. If it seems impolite to say, then we have forgotten what a well-ordered municipality looks like, or stopped caring that Whitewater should be such a place.

Wasting Time. Worrying about the style of cart corrals at Walmart isn’t planning, it’s not landscaping, it’s decorating. We shouldn’t be wasting money on these genuinely trivial matters. It’s not sophisticated to think these subjects are public matters; it’s embarrassingly pedestrian. A city with significant economic problems shouldn’t pay a consultant to consider something like this. Walmart can decide for itself; attention to these details reveals a complete lack of weight and seriousness.

In the middle of a deep recession, especially, taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for this lack of seriousness.

A practice of good government isn’t a favor to someone who asks for it; it’s the standard that public officials should meet consistently. It’s not meant to be an occasional thing.

If you’ve watched Whitewater, Wisconsin’s Planning Commission in action, then you know that city employees and the city’s paid consultant will refer to public documents in a packet. “It’s in your packet,” they’ll say. They mean their packet, not one that residents get to see. Public documents, all of them, but not readily available.

I’ve written about this before. See, “It’s In Your Packet”. Afterward, a sharp reader wrote to me, and showed me that nearby Beloit, Wisconsin puts all of its meeting packets online, and even has an email sign-up where residents can get updates on when new packets go online. I wrote about Beloit’s good practice. See, It’s Online for All: The City of Beloit’s Good Government Example.

Whitewater’s July Planning Commission meeting put the packet online, but for tonight’s meeting about a possible Walmart expansion, there’s just the agenda.

Beloit is a city with every possible economic problem, but that hasn’t stopped them from doing the right thing.

If there’s any small, narrow, closed, self-declared elite in America, it’s to be found in Whitewater, Wisconsin. These gentlemen treat public documents on public matters created at public expense as Faberge eggs, to be kept locked away.

This isn’t an administrative problem, a clerical problem, or a website problem — it’s a leadership problem. When the gentlemen who now head departments commit to a change, as an ongoing commitment to a new and better politics, will this change. That might come from these men, but far more likely, it will come from a new generation that will discard current practices in favor of more open and modern ones, consistent with the promises of Wisconsin for good, open government.

It’s happening elsewhere in Wisconsin, and it will one day happen here.

It’s less than we need.

The story reports that a collection of local government associations estimated that, nationally, local governments may cut almost 500,000 jobs through 2011 (or 8.6% of their total workforces).

These are only estimates, and they say nothing about how any particular community will fare.

In any event, sacrifices should always begin at the top, as meaningful reductions in municipal compensation costs.

See, Bloomberg: Jobless Claims in US Declined by 11,000 to 457,000

I wrote earlier this week about the agenda of a Whitewater Community Development Authority meeting. The agenda seemed oddly vague, and some portions of it were so obscure that it provided no reasonable information about a subject’s contents. See, Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 7-26-10.

The agenda’s not a minor task; it’s a public announcement, and should be the responsibility of the person who runs the organization. Public officials should review announcements themselves, as should citizen leaders of boards or commissions for their own areas of responsibility. In Whitewater, for the CDA, that leader would be Kevin Brunner, Whitewater’s city manager. (That’s so much for the idea of an independent CDA with only limited participation of current officeholders.)

When one sees a sketchy agenda, and mentions it, I’m sure some officials feel the criticism is an unfair burden, as though it’s an imposition on their (visionary) work. That’s not true, and it’s self-flattering of officials to see it that way.

A vague agenda keeps the public in the dark about a meeting, and serves only insiders who want to keep matters quiet, although they’re on public boards considering public matters under Wisconsin law.

Even if officials won’t produce clear agendas as the law requires, they can still make accurate and through recordings of the meetings they conduct. Minutes may be sketchy, too, but there’s a may around that deficiency.

We have a community television station, and it offers the best and most honest way to learn the contents of a meeting. In all Whitewater, no record is more honest and complete than the video recordings of Whitewater’s public meetings. In a town of dodgy officials, Whitewater Community Television stands out for its accuracy and true public spirit. They record some of Whitewater’s leading boards and commissions, as often as they can.

They can’t be everywhere at once, but for those times they can’t, there’s a solution:

That’s it. A simple camera from an American company, available for less than 200 dollars, would allow Whitewater’s boards and commissions to record meetings where Whitewater’s Community Television would not be present. These videos wouldn’t look as sharp, but they would be more accurate than any agenda anyone in the city has ever typed as a meeting’s summary. Words, pictures, tone, and atmosphere: the camera would show all that.

It wouldn’t be as sharp as a professionally recorded video, but it would be better than no video. For those concerned that the video wouldn’t look right, a small introduction could appear before each video posted on the Community Television website:

We’re foolish to make the better the enemy of the good.

A citizen has the right to record any public portion of a public meeting in this way, and I’m sure that will start happening soon enough. It would be responsible if Whitewater took this step on its own.

Whitewater’s politicians and city manager should support recording all meetings, as a commitment to a more open politics.

I’ve written about poverty in Whitewater before, and the 2010 Census will offer fresh information on the state of Whitewater’s economy. It’s a subject that cheerleaders for the town probably wish would go away. An ordinary person would prefer economic arrangements that make poverty go away, but there you see the distinction between sensible & ordinary as against foolish & political.

I’ve emphasized three points (1) poverty is relatively higher in Whitewater than neighboring towns, (2) child poverty is terribly high here, and (3) all the grand public works projects we’ve undertaken haven’t brought those high figures down.

I emphasize our relatively greater poverty to show that as other towns do better, so we can, too. I emphasize child poverty both because it’s so damaging and because it puts lie to the contention that Whitewater’s economy looks worse because of non-working students in town. That’s not where Whitewater falls short — child per child, there’s greater economic hardship here than in other American towns, and excuse-making about this situation is unavailing.

Our grand public projects directed at the upper middle class are a waste of taxes and have not improved the conditions of those most in need. They’re merely monuments to bureaucrats’ pride and lines on officials’ resumes.

At the Wall Street Journal, there’s a Q&A about current poverty measurements, and how they’re changing. The changes in measurement are significant, but the extent of change from one measure to another can be tempered with a comparison of relative conditions between cities, using either measure.

Economist Bruce Meyer discusses the impending changes, and what he likes and doesn’t about them, in a story entitled, Q&A: Rethinking U.S. Poverty Measure.

I don’t believe that my small town, Whitewater, Wisconsin, needs to outsource everything. I do think that we have too many leaders in the city.

Reductions in number or compensation, if any, should begin at the very top.

It’s simply absurd for a small city’s principal bureaucrat to have his own bureaucrat to assist him. The municipal manager of a small town of only fourteen thousand should be able to manage the place on his own. It’s not, after all, a particularly big operation.

If the job’s that hard for someone, the problem lies with the job-holder and not the job. (That includes leaders’ sundry, wasteful preoccupations with big-ticket public projects.)

One of the problems in Whitewater is that bureaucrats and politicians grab headlines for themselves, while alternately ignoring and bullying frontline employees.

I’ll propose cuts to the municipal budget during budget season in the fall. For now, here’s a post about how Maywood, California was able to make cuts through outsourcing of tasks. (The article also links to an earlier story about Sandy Springs, Georgia.)

See, “A city outsources everything. Sky doesn’t fall.”

I’ve been a critic of Whitewater’s multi-million dollar, publicly-funded Innovation Center. Unsurprisingly, my invitation for a visit of that project hasn’t arrived, and so I did not participate in a recent bureaucrats’ tour of the construction site. No matter, a simple camera with a zoom lens, I was able to stand in the street and take some illustrative photos.

At first it looks impressive:

Then one sees that for all these millions, it’s not that large:

There are many public school buildings bigger.

There’s much talk about how innovative this Innovation Center is. In funding, there’s nothing innovative about using taxes and municipal debt to pay for a project. In design, talk about how green all this is would be persuasive only to someone who didn’t look a bit farther beyond the construction site:

The genuine green one sees is not at the site, but all around it, in those fields not yet torn up. I’d support private construction, but I’d also be clear that talk about a solar-powered sign, etc., doesn’t change how disruptive a new building is to the environment. This building isn’t green and sustainable; it’s brown and wasteful.

Finally, as a aside, I would note that a bureaucrats’ tour of this site, as though it were the farthest Amazon, is silly. Those touring aren’t working people, and donning construction helmets and vests — in a place on which they’re doing no labor other than spending tax dollars — only highlights how out of place they are.