I am one of the few people who bothers to read the Weekly Report of Whitewater, Wisconsin’s City Manager, Kevin Brunner. Read it I do, and in the August 13th edition, one sees this announcement about a second tenant for the under-construction Innovation Center:

Construction on Schedule for Whitewater Innovation Center; Another Tenant to Lease Space in Center
See Pictures.

Construction of the Whitewater Innovation Center, the first building in the Whitewater University Technology Park, is right on schedule with an anticipated completion date of January 1, 2011. All of the structural steel has been erected and interior walls are currently being installed. The exterior walls will be constructed soon with a projected early October total enclosure of the building planned.

Also, a second tenant in the building has been announced. The Jefferson Eastern Dane Interactive Network (JEDI), a distance learning/virtual classroom consortium that serves nine southern Wisconsin school districts will lease an 800 square foot module on the Innovation Center’s second floor. JEDI’s five employees, including JEDI Director Dr. Leslie Steinhaus, will be moving to the Center next February from their current offices in Milton.

This announcement is nearly beyond parody.

The second tenant for the center is, like the first, a publicly-funded educational tenant now located in Milton, Wisconsin. In fact, this “second tenant” now shares space in the same building as CESA 2, the Cooperative Educational Service Agency, the selected anchor tenant for the Center. That’s right — the larger school agency is moving, and so the tiny school agency — now located in the same building at 448 E. High Street, Milton, WI 53563 — is moving too.

They not only have a public source of funding in common, and the same address, they also have the same phone number (608-758-6232)!

Actually, the connection is closer still, as the JEDI Network’s own history page reveals:

JEDI is leased by the Wisconsin Department of Adminstration [sic] on behalf of the participating school districts and MATC. The DOA issued a competitive Request for Proposal (RFP) from a consortia of the region’s telephone and cable television providers. The basic technical requirements were defined and cost estimates prepared based upon the required features, engineering studies, and vendor consultation.CESA #2, as management agents for JEDI, made application to the Wisconsin State Trust Fund Loan program in order to obtain the necessary funding for the project.

Emphasis added. Here’s a link to a website screenshot.

This is hardly a second and independent tenant, by any reasonable definition. Calling this a true second tenant is laughable. There’s a shady, dodgy aspect to these descriptions that conceals the real and distorted nature of this project.

I have no doubt that CESA 2 does good work, but here’s their own description, from the CESA 2 webpage, to which I’ve linked:

….[CESA 2] help[s] school districts share staff, services and purchasing, and provide a link between local districts and the state. All services provided are determined by participating member school districts. Special education for disabled students is the service CESAs most commonly provide schools….

Here’s the JEDI description, from its website:

The Jefferson-Eastern Dane Interactive (JEDI) is a distance education network of the following school districts: Cambridge, Deerfield, Fort Atkinson, Jefferson, Lake Mills, Marshall, Palmyra, Parkview, Whitewater as well as
MATC and UW Whitewater

These are not private tech businesses, or new startups — they are publicly-funded entities moving to a new, multi-million dollar building, itself the result of taxpayer dollars and taxpayer debt (through bonds).

Brunner is well-past shameless in describing this as an “Innovation” Center and “Tech” Park. It’s closer to a public-sector employees’ remodeling effort. But it says much about how tone-deaf Brunner is, that he cannot see the ridiculousness of his own announcements.

(Funnier still is Brunner’s implication that mentioning Dr. Leslie Steinhaus — former administrator of our public school district — is somehow a positive contribution to his announcement. For more on Steinhaus, whose entire school district tenure was as an extended exercise in mediocrity — see, Dr. Steinhaus vs. Student: Student Wins!)

And yet, for it all, we surely have not heard the last embarrassment concerning this wasteful, shameless project.

There’s a story at the Janesville Gazette‘s website that offers a chance to consider yet again Whitewater’s Innovation Center. It’s a welcome opportunity. For the Gazette‘s story, see UW-Whitewater is a serious player in economic development.

First, an observation about the Innovation Center and Tech Park:

This is an eleven million dollar publicly-funded project, using federal tax dollars and bonds (in this case, public debt). The anchor tenant for the project isn’t a tech concern, or even a private concern: it’s CESA 2, the Cooperative Educational Service Agency.

CESA 2 is publicly-funded, and here’s what it does, from its own description:

For over 100 years, school districts in Wisconsin counties were serviced by county superintendents. As school district reorganization developed and school districts became larger, the role of the county superintendent changed substantially. The 1963 Legislature and various school organizations studied the pattern of Wisconsin school organization and concluded that the county superintendency should be replaced with Cooperative Educational Service Agencies.

The function of the Cooperative Educational Service Agencies is clearly defined in Section 116.01 of the State Statutes.

The organization of school districts in Wisconsin is such that the legislature recognizes the need for a service unit between the school district and the State Superintendent. The Cooperative Educational Service Agencies may provide leadership and coordination of services for school districts, including such programs as curriculum development assistance; school district management development; coordination of vocational education; and exceptional education, research, special student classes, human growth and development, data collection processing and dissemination, and in-service programs.

This anchor tenant is neither a tech concern, a business incubator, nor even a private business of any kind. I’m sure they do good work; it’s just not the right kind of work for a tech park.

These millions will help to transfer a taxpayer-funded entity now using conventional accommodations in Milton, Wisconsin to fancy digs in Whitewater, Wisconsin. (I know they’re fancy digs, because pictures of it, and descriptions of it, trumpet how amazing the building is, with — wait for it — a large lobby and reception area.)

Along the way, from the announcement of this project, I’ve posted on it.

Two more points are worth noting about the project.

First, the City of Whitewater has moved Heaven and earth to make this project happen, and in times when a focus might have been on local problems, there’s been a “let’s put on a show” push for all of this. The efforts, expenditures, and imprimatur of the City of Whitewater are conveying a dubious benefit the university. Yet, however misplaced, they are the City of Whitewater’s efforts.

It’s both ridiculous and funny to see for all his work, Whitewater City Manager Kevin Brunner doesn’t even show up in the story. It’s all UW-Whitewater and Chancellor Telfer now.

I’ve thought that Brunner might be pushing all this as a line item on his resume, but now I’m not sure if that would even be possible — perhaps he needs to ask Telfer for permission to mention the project.

One can be sure that this project is a huge effort for a small town with serious problems — problems that this wasteful “Innovation Center” will not solve.

(The speculation about what the Innovation Center will actually produce is simply nebulous, with ideas that it might help produce video games, or have something to do with Google, or be a business incubator. As for an incubator of private businesses, one could simply ask those in the building to look at the publicly-funded anchor tenant, and then do the opposite. As for video games — something once ludicrously suggested at a public meeting — one would hope that for all the money involved, we get something on the order of another Halo. Sadly, it’s looking more and more like the best we could hope is Raving Rabbids, if that.)

Second, it’s telling that UW-Whitewater seems to treat this as one project. The recent $5.9 million federal taxpayer grant is lumped with the Innovation Center’s funding, the Innovation Center being the recipient of a separate taxpayer grant and separate bond (debt) issue. These are not one project, but two. Yet, they’re lumped together as one.

One supposes that it’s all meant to show how they’re complementary to each other, the millions for the Innovation Center and the millions for the job-training program. And yet, the tighter the link to a university program, the more questions it raises about the City of Whitewater’s entry, obligations, and ongoing involvement in the Innovation Center project.

That’s a topic for another day.

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.

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.

I’ve posted cards about Whitewater from earlier times, but it’s a card from Iowa that I’ve embedded today.

Imagine someone passing along a card from Ames, Iowa, site of a recent International (!) Town and Gown Association meeting on sustainable partnerships. Here’s that recent find:

The postcard that I’ve embedded is a parody, but the actual description of the conference, from Whitewater’s city manager, is no parody. It’s more like a self-parody.

Here, from his early June Weekly Report, is what Whitewater’s city manager had to say about the conference:

Presentation at International Town and Gown Best Practices Conference

I had the opportunity and privilege of making a presentation at the 5th Annual Best Practices in Building University/City Relations Conference at Iowa State University earlier this week. Jan Bilgen of the UW-Whitewater Office of Career and Leadership Development and I spoke about the Whitewater Technology Park and the Whitewater Innovation Center.

Our presentation focused on how quickly this project has come together primarily due to the extraordinary partnerships that have been developed between the city and its Community Development Authority and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Attendees at our session told us that they were very impressed with the speed at which this project has evolved. There were representatives from Michigan State University, Florida State University, Northwest Missouri State University, Eastern Kentucky University, Iowa State University, Clemson University among others at our session. We received many favorable comments and requests for additional information on three items: (1) how our new University Technology Park is organized on the principle of shared governance; (2) information on the green and sustainable restrictive covenants that have been developed for the park; and (3) specific architectural information on the Innovation Center itself.

In addition to making our presentation, Jan Bilgen and I were able to attend a number of educational sessions on improving and building University and community relations. There was considerable sharing with both City and University officials on some of our ideas for future projects and initiatives that might bring our Town and Gown relationship even further in the future.

Of the requests for additional information that Brunner and Bilgen received, not one involved the kind of businesses that will locate in the park, how many will be private businesses (unlike the anchor tenant), how many new, private jobs will be created, etc. Those are the significant and substantial issues about any tech park. Instead, they received peripheral requests about less important concerns. Say what one wants about the attendees at Brunner and Bilgen’s talk, but at least those attendees didn’t waste time asking for follow up on significant questions for which there are no clear answers, anyway.

I’m not sure what to make of the paltry list of attendees at Brunner and Bilgen’s presentation. One school represents the host university, and another (Clemson) is the headquarters of the International Town & Gown Association.

(International, I’d guess, because someone from Canada once joined. That’s silly, and it’s like a tiny airport claiming it’s an international airport because a private plane from Canada once crash-landed on a runway.)

I wouldn’t imagine that too many ordinary residents were able to travel out-of-state to attend a pricey conference of sundry universities. There’s a membership application to the ITGA available online, but it’s not focused on ordinary people, any more than the conference was. The group wants better town & gown relationships, but a conference like this is mostly a few self-important public employees talking to other self-important public employees. Actual conditions in a town are unaffected positively by such bureaucrats.

I have no idea if Whitewater’s attendees enjoyed any of the special events at the conference, each and every one useless to our city during a deep recession, but surely fun for participants nonetheless:

• a reception and walking tour (“Regular shuttles will run between the conference hotels and campus to ensure attendees can participate whenever they arrive!” — so much for “green” living),

• dinner and a concert at one of the “most beautiful locations at Iowa State University. The evening will feature a unique reception and dinner amidst the12 distinctive gardens and lake that make up this beautiful venue. Situated on 14 acres, the conservatory will provide a backdrop to this great networking. Enjoy wandering about the unique rose gardens, which will be at their peak at the time of this event.”),

• or a downtown reception with a concert (“To complete your town and gown experience, on the last night we will take attendees to the Ames Main Street Cultural District. Attendees can take part in a favorite community outing, enjoying one of the first Band shell concerts of the summer, or wander through our downtown, experiencing the unique retail and dining opportunities that are available to them. A reception will be held at the Ames Community Center, conveniently located in the Cultural District. Shuttles will be offered until late that evening, to allow attendees enough time to not miss a single location!’)

Even if Whitewater’s attendees didn’t visit these events, it’s an embarrassment to attend a conference where people waste money on these events. Learning about city-school relations requires meeting with common people, not attending fancy events, or associating with fancy people who think these events tell them anything about ordinary life. There’s no investigation here; it’s just entertainment. No, and no again — there’s nothing useful to be learned in these vanity excursions.

For prior FREE WHITEWATER coverage of the grossly wasteful project that the Innovation Center/Tech park is shaping up to be, several posts are available in their own category.

In a state with high unemployment, with temporary census workers masking the true weakness of the job market, and with the prospect of upcoming tax increases that will retard economic growth, there are still ways for local governments to improve their own prospects. I posted earlier this year on the suggestions of Stephen Goldsmith of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government about government strategies to avoid. See, “Red-Ink Tsunami: Why Old Ideas Can’t Fix the New Government Perma-Crisis”.

Goldsmith listed five “Strategies of Yesteryear that Won’t Work Today”:

1. More federal aid
2. More government debt
3. More taxes
4. More delaying tactics
5. Incremental, stopgap measures

Goldsmith picked up on that those suggestions in a subsequent article, entitled, “Burdening the Future: It’s Not Just the Feds.”
Goldsmith describes the problems that many state and local governments face:

The recently released federal budget has shed a harsh spotlight on government’s tendency to spend today while leaving the bill for our children to pay. The budget projects $8.3 trillion in deficit spending between 2011 and 2020 on top of an already massive debt….

Government budgets, unlike private sector accounting, make it possible to ingeniously “kick the can down the road”….

A clearer understanding of the ways the future gets burdened with the debt of the present is a good place to start.

1) Paying employees with promises
Set aside any discussion as to how much public officials ought to be compensated. Instead, focus solely on how they get paid. In general, public workers earn both current salary and benefits plus credit toward promises of future compensation, most notably pension and retiree health care benefits. The problem with this is that today’s elected officials rarely put away enough to cover expected payouts….

2) Borrowing to stay Afloat
The amount of municipal debt presents challenges to city and state governments. And when government borrows for capital purposes leaders need to make the case for why the investment produces a strong foundation for the community and why the debt matches the life cycle of the asset. A riskier problem occurs when officials borrow to manage operating deficits. Essentially this is the difference between a family that takes out a mortgage for their home and one that takes out a second mortgage to help finance their credit card purchases….

3) Accepting Medicine That Makes the Patient Worse (a Short Term Fix)
No stressed mayor or governor faced with layoffs and budget cuts can rationally turn down stimulus money. But instead of investing the money in transformative approaches to public services that will permanently reduce the cost of production, the federal government forced local officials to temporarily keep public jobs at unsustainably higher levels – thus ensuring an even steeper cliff event when the money runs out….

4) Deferring maintenance on infrastructure
Very few governments maintain a true capital budget reflecting depreciation. Therefore officials have little incentive to defer today’s needs to prepare for tomorrow’s infrastructure crisis. Yet this deferred maintenance comes at a very steep price eventually as the neglected small repairs of today become the huge replacement expenses of tomorrow. Recently enacted GASB rules 43 and 45, helpfully require governments to account for the costs of unfunded liabilities on their balance sheets, belatedly forcing some attention to this issue….

Not every state or municipality has all these problems; those that have even some of them are struggling under that burden. Whitewater, Wisconsin has a particular problem of focusing on grand projects rather than simpler undertakings. The cost in taxpayer earnings, municipal debt, and the redirection of city workers’ priorities to build something like the Whitewater-University Innovation Center is an example of mistaken priorities. It’s a capital project, but it’s hardly maintenance of infrastructure. It’s something far worse — setting out on another new, bad idea rather than fixing underlying problems from former bad ideas and ignored present needs.

The best immediate fixes for Whitewater would be to scrap the Innovation Center and Tech Park, recognize the many wasteful mistakes from failed tax incremental financing schemes, abandon any further tax incremental schemes for the city, and to focus on basic maintenance, and choose simple governance over showy cheerleading.

I’ve written before about Whitewater’s tech park and Innovation Center, and some of the coverage it’s received. The groundbreaking ceremony for the Innovation Center, held this Tuesday, is another opportunity to review officials’ flimsy claims. Statements at the event were sadly, but predictably, empty.

Prior Posts. I’ve written about the Tech Park and Innovation Center before. See, On Whitewater’s “Advancing” Tech Park, Part 1, On Whitewater’s “Advancing Tech Park, Part 2, On the Innovation Center’s Anchor Tenant, and On the Innovation Center’s Anchor Tenant, Part 2.

Press Release and Story. There’s both a press release and a story, Ground broken for Whitewater Innovation Center.

A 125-Acre Park. One learns that the Innovation Center will be the first building in a “125-Acre Whitewater University Technology Park.” It certainly sounds impressive, until one realizes that the 125 acres are empty, and that the large size of the field is no assurance, or even probability, that the rest of the space will fill up.

Of course it’s the “first building,” but similarly, the presence of one does not show — no matter how much the use of the word “first” is meant to imply — that there will be others.

There should be other buildings — millions of dollars in taxpayers’ stimulus money and public debt went into financing this project. That kind of subsidy at taxpayers’ expense should have led by now to lots of tenants!

There’s mention of “preliminary talk of a second building.” There might just as well be preliminary talk of cold fusion, for all the difference it makes. Repeating the insubstantial and unsubstantiated claim serves an official line, while revealing not the least skepticism.

If I put a postage stamp on an open, green field, I’d still have a postage stamp on an open, green field.

The Business Park Nearby. Look less than a thousand yards from the site of the new tech park, and you’ll find our old business park. They have lots of space, too; quite a few acres, actually.

Go to the corner of Prospect & Endeavor, and here’s what you’ll find:

That’s a lot of space, too, but those expansive plots didn’t lead to buildings; they lead to a bumper crop of weeds and grass.

I’m not sure how many jobs these now-ignored plots were supposed to produce, but they’ve probably been good for at least one job — someone has to mow the grass now and then.

Jobs Mentioned Repeatedly, but Quantified Never. Look at coverage of the groundbreaking, and one hears claims of that the project will “create jobs and foster economic development,” but one never hears an estimate of how many. All these clever people, and not a single concrete number. One assumes that job creation is meant to be more than jobs for the contractor, etc., from the public dime.

When these politicians, bureaucrats, and sycophants talk about all that’s being spent, it’s not their money they’re investing . They didn’t contribute a dime of this — they took tax receipts and incurred public debt for this project.

Google, 3-D Television, Whatever. Imagine being at an event like this, where everything’s about “the future,” “jobs,” and “economic development,” and as concrete an idea as one hears is that

I understand that Google is looking for new headquarters, and wouldn’t this be a wonderful place for them. I tell you this because so many of us use technology, and technology is just zooming in places we cannot imagine, like 3-D television.

Too funny — “so many of us use technology” — not all, but at least so many!

Nice Digs. The Innovation Center’s anchor tenant, CESA 2, is rather thrilled: “…. a tremendous opportunity to partner with a university.”

Yes — much nicer than CESA 2′s current building in Milton, Wisconsin, I’m sure. I know that CESA 2 does good work — still, it was unnecessary and laughable that a publicly-funded educational agency would get upgraded accommodations as an anchor tenant in this tech park.

Collaboration. One learns, finally, that this is a “collaboration,” that there were individual thanks offered to “city and UW-Whitewater staff members, architects, consultants, state and federal personnel, and construction companies who have helped in the process of creating the Innovation Center.”

Every one of those named is either on the public payroll as an employee, or receiving federal funds or money from local debt for this project.

This collaboration was hardly a private, charitable venture, and speaking of it as though it were a community charity drive, or a church fundraiser, is both arrogant and misleading. There’s a common practice among managers, bureaucrats, and politicians, to talk about collaboration, etc.

By the way, there’s a place where there are millions of collaborative transactions each hour — it’s called the free market. Buyers and sellers come together, and freely decide whether to sell or purchase goods at a mutually agreed upon price.

It’s not collaboration to take money from productive private citizens, by power of taxation or issuance of debt, then spend it on flashy public projects, while mugging for the camera.

Where’s the Community? The photos of the groundbreaking are unintentionally funny. The closest that Whitewater will come to its own version of A Chorus Line: a group of mostly aging politicians, bureaucrats, and hangers-on, wearing ill-fitting construction hats, and posing as those they might possibly know how to did a proper hole.

For all the talk of innovation, this is a conventional group shot, dull and predictable, a staple of every groundbreaking one might ever see — hats and shovels, coats and ties.

The line of officials looks little like the city itself. They could scarcely be more unrepresentative as a sample.

Where are ordinary people, gathered to celebrate a supposedly epic event? If this project is all that these town squires say it is, why has the community not poured out in interest and appreciation? I’m sure one bureaucrat or another will whine that people just don’t understand, or need to be led, etc.

Nonsense, twice over. These self-important few are no better than anyone else in talent or accomplishment. They’re likely less so, because common people aren’t airy in their descriptions.

It’s also nonsense because most people know where to look to see how this grand project of tomorrow is likely to turn out.

They need go no farther than the corner of Prospect & Endeavor, where they’ll find the remains of yesterday’s grand project of tomorrow.

It’s Groundbreaking Part Deux for Whitewater today. Last September, there was a groundbreaking for the tech park, and today there’s one for the Innovation Center. (I’ve no word on whether there will be upcoming celebrations for the warmest tech park afternoon in July, smallest squirrel to frolic nearby, or best children’s depiction of a taxpayer-funded white elephant.)

So how’s it going with all those taxpayer stimulus funds and taxpayer municipal debt, for a taxpayer-supported anchor tenant?

Great! Whitewater officials have thrown away less than they expected. I’m sure they’d appreciate your praise and appreciation.

I’d say it’s time for another celebration.

See, Whitewater OKs Innovation Center Contracts.

The first part of this topic appears separately, in the preceding post. In this post, I will consider more of Whitewater City Manager Brunner’s published remarks, from a February 8th story entitled, “Whitewater Tech Park advances; panels to study second building.”

A Unique Design. Here’s Brunner, remarking on the building’s supposedly unique character:

“We are excited about the building, too, because it will be unique in design and meeting environmental standards of the LEED program.”

Here Brunner exaggerates, shamelessly. The Innovation Center will be an office building in a city of many such buildings, in a country that has — wait for it — millions of buildings. (For national statistics on commercial office space, see the 2010 Statistical Abstract: Commercial Buildings, from the Census Bureau.)

As long ago as 2003, America had over four million office buildings! Four million, six-hundred sixty-five thousand, actually! Odds that this one’s unique in design: a good portion of four million to one.

There’s no reason to pretend that we’re building Châtres, but that’s Brunner’s (all-too-common) inclination.

Even as early as 2003, using the federal data to which I have linked above, hundreds of thousands of office buildings in America were about the same size as the planned Innovation Center. That’s not unique, that’s commonplace.

What of the unique design that Brunner trumpets? In neither aesthetics nor in so-called respect for the environment does this forty-thousand square foot building deserve praise.

Looking at an artist’s illustration of the building, it’s not different in appearance from countless other modern office buildings, and less impressive than many.

The Innovation Center won’t even be the largest building in Whitewater. The recently completed Hyland Hall, at 180,000 square feet, will remain over four times as large:

At 180,000 square feet, Hyland Hall is more than twice the size of the former business building and boasts 50 percent more classroom space. It includes 34 flat and tiered classrooms, three computer labs, two 150-seat lecture halls, one seminar room and four student project rooms.

Even if one finds anything of the Innovation Center’s design exceptional or unique, one should keep in mind that it’s that way through public money, not private initiative.

Environmental impact. What of the sustainability & environmental regard to which Brunner makes mention? I support private initiatives such as the Nature Conservancy, because I believe in the conservation of natural resources. One should be skeptical, though, of claims for how ‘green’ something is. Those who care about the environment should not be deceived by a possible Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) designation for the Innovation Center.

That’s because constructing an office building like this is so destructive to the environment, that pretending the LEED designation mitigates the harm is like contending that band aids and aspirin mitigate for the loss of a limb.

LEED certification doesn’t mean buildings don’t cause significant environmental stress. They do. An assessment from the National Trust for Historical Preservation, entitled “Sustainability by the Numbers,” found that it “takes a lot of energy to construct a building – for example, building a 50,000 square foot commercial building requires the same amount of energy needed to drive a car 20,000 miles a year for 730 years.”

That’s for a building not much bigger than the planned Innovation Center.

I would surely favor reduced regulation and taxation to spur private construction of homes and offices. I think that, on balance, it’s good for society. I’m not simple-minded enough, though, to pretend that offices can be made good for the environment. They can’t. Constructing an office building will always be an environmentally destructive act, and is about as far from green as one can get. I’m realistic about the choices.

Let me help Whitewater’s city manager and his ilk see the difference between office buildings and green living. Let’s look at two pictures. On top is a photo of plants and flowers from Whitewater, and on the bottom is an artist’s illustration of the Innovation Center:

The one on top is ‘green,’ and the one on the bottom is ‘brown.’

My pleasure, I’m sure.

An official’s weak arguments don’t become better or more convincing on repetition. On the contrary, stubborn repetition only reveals additional errors and mistakes, offering more opportunities for a robust critique.

Last week, I wrote about the selection of CESA 2, a taxpayer-funded agency, as the anchor tenant for Whitewater’s upcoming Innovation Center, a taxpayer-funded and debt-financed building in a planned tech park. See, On the Innovation Center’s Anchor Tenant. On Tuesday, Whitewater’s Tech Park Board issued a press release touting the selection of the agency as anchor tenant.

In my original post, I offered four arguments against the suitability of CESA 2 as an anchor tenant for the Innovation Center. The Tech Park Board’s press release both strengthens the argument against that selection of anchor tenant, and reveals how flimsy is the case in favor.

First, a summary of my initial, four arguments against a schools agency as an anchor tenant in a tech park:

• What’s an Innovation Center and Tech
  Park?

America has excelled at this sort of private,
entrepreneurial initiative time and again. For it, we are the envy of the world. It distorts and stretches the meaning of both innovation and technology to apply it to any organization, anywhere, at any time.

• CESA 2 is not a Reasonable Choice for a
  Tech Park Anchor Tenant

CESA is, I am sure, a fine organization. It’s just not a technology concern, and it never will be, by any reasonable definition. It’s not even a private organization — CESA itself discloses that “[t]he leading source of CESA funds, in all cases, was revenue from member school districts which totaled $68.1 million, or 63% of all monies received. Revenue from federal ($16.7 million, 15% of the total) and state governments [sic] ($14 million, 13%) were the other major sources of funds.” CESA isn’t a technology concern — not one bit. It’s a state-mandated agency, feeding from tax dollars, that will fill up space in a technology park built on tax dollars and public debt

• Carts Before Horses

Having departed from a commitment to following private demand, and thus addressing true community
needs, the City of Whitewater embarks on a presumptuous project of public debt to accommodate a public agency anchor tenant.

• Press coverage has been unquestioning and fawning
  See, CESA 2 tenant for Tech Park. The story presents unquestioningly city manager Brunner’s opinions on the topics therein.

There’s now a press release, issued January 26th, from the Whitewater University Technology Park Board that touts the CESA 2 as an anchor tenant. See, CESA 2 to lease space in Whitewater University Technology Park.

I’ll consider the contentions contained from the release, and reply to them. The release’s text is in italics, my replies are in a regular font:

The Whitewater University Technology Park continues to take shape
as CESA 2, the state’s largest Cooperative Educational Service Agency….The agency offers extensive training for more than 70
school districts in southern Wisconsin …. Brunner said. CESA 2 serves more than 135,000 students and 7,200 teachers in 74 school districts in the seven counties of Dane, Green, Jefferson, Kenosha,
Racine, Rock and Walworth. The agency provides professional development opportunities for teachers and helps school districts with its regular and special education programs. Last year, nearly 3,000 students went through the agency’s various driver education
programs.

The size of the tenant across many counties will not benefit Whitewater — services in other counties, or — wait for it — the number of students in driver education programs! — offer no gain for Whitewater.

We have a McDonald’s in Whitewater, but no one would be foolish enough to claim that the billions of hamburgers that chain sells nationally benefit Whitewater’s local economy. McDonald’s employs countless thousands, but no one would say that these are jobs for Whitewater.

Touting the size of a taxpayer-funded agency across distant counties doesn’t demonstrate a local benefit. It certainly doesn’t justify millions in federal spending a municipal public debt.

“CESA 2 is a great match for the Whitewater Innovation Center,”
said University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor Richard Telfer. “CESA 2′s mission of providing education and training support services for the area districts is a natural fit with the work already being done on campus in the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s College of Education. We look forward to partnering with CESA 2 and the many school districts it serves.”

Well, I am sure the university gains from a bond (public debt) issue on the city’s tab. I can see why Chancellor Telfer would like an educational tenant for the park. This tenant doesn’t match, however, the Tech Park’s own Mission Statement attributes.

Either Chancellor Telfer hasn’t read, doesn’t remember, or otherwise ignores the attributes of the board’s own mission statement, a board of which he is president.

Here’s what they are:

Attributes

• The park will establish an innovation center which offers space, facilities, expertise and services to
  technology-based entrepreneurs and businesses.
  
• Scientific and technological advancement will be promoted through the development of green and sustainable facilities.
• The Whitewater University Technology Park is established to enhance the area’s quality of life, provide higher property values through improved building standards, and to strive for living wages and sustainable economic development.

Emphasis in red added.

(See, Mission Statement, three attributes.)

This anchor tenant is neither a technology-based business nor an
entrepreneur. It’s not a business, at all — it’s a publicly-funded agency.

[Gary] Albrecht [CESA 2 administrator] said 30 employees will work in the Innovation Center space.

Thirty? That’s 30, a whole number between 29 and 31. I am sure that the CESA 2 administrator, whose agency is renting the space, would know the correct number of employees who will need taxpayer-funded accommodations.

How very odd, though, that only a week ago, Whitewater city manager Brunner gave an interview with the Daily Union, and declared that CESA 2 would have “50 full- and part-time employees to work at the Innovation Center.”

See, CESA 2 tenant for Tech Park.

Brunner’s number is two-thirds higher than the figure that the very administrator of the anchor tenant cites in the Tech Park’s own press release.

Let’s assume that Brunner really meant fifty full-time employee equivalents, and the figure can be reconciled. I’m not sure that’s what the city manager meant, but let’s be charitable. If that’s true, then the earlier declaration of 50 is confusing, and exaggerates the effective number of employees, with a bigger-sounding, but erroneous, number. The earlier interview claim is grand; the actual number is considerably more modest.

Perhaps Brunner keeps a bottle of Miracle-Gro in his desk. In his Daily Union interview from last week, cited above, Brunner contends that the Innovation Center will host daily teacher and administrator training sessions that typically have between 20 and 100 attendees. In the Tech Park Board’s press release, there’s the claim that “upwards of 100 people per day visiting the facility.”

It only sounds impressive until one considers how vague the claim truly is. What does it mean that upwards of 100 people will daily be visiting the facility? To what do these visits amount, and how upward is upwards of 100? Are they the same as the 20 to 100 attendees Brunner cited a week ago, or would that bigger number include anyone — delivery people, lost motorists, vagrants, etc.?

The cost of the facility has been going upward, too, from its initial proposal. That cost, though, will finally settle on a definite amount to taxpayers in federal and local debt. The benefit remains vague and those numbers remain less credible than ever before.

In a more recent interview about the Tuesday press release, one finds that Brunner implicitly acknowledges that CESA 2 is not a traditional business candidate for a tech park.

Laughably, he tries to evade the selection of an unsuitable anchor tenant by contending that CESA 2 really is a support ‘business’:

City Manager Kevin Brunner said CESA 2 might not be a small startup business – a typical tenant of a business incubator – but it offers support to other business and could help attract small businesses to the park.

“We recognize the need for support businesses,” he said. “CESA 2 has the potential to offer support, and we’re already seeing interest from other education-related business in being a part of this.”

CESA 2 is not, itself a support business at all, as it’s not a private business. Using the word ‘business’ does not make the choice any more reasonable, as they designation is itself unreasonable.

(I am sure CESA 2 is a fine and needed taxpayer-funded agency — I don’t doubt they do good work. They’re just not a business. Here’s what they do — CESA 2 is a state-created agency “to assist districts in providing quality educational opportunities for students….[to] help school districts share staff, services and purchasing, and provide a link between local districts and the state.”

More about CESA is available at the following link:
http://www.cesa2.k12.wi.us/about/)

Selection of this anchor tenant is a poor decision, poorly defended.

Small-town Whitewater is spending about eleven million dollars in federal money and municipal debt for a Technology Park, with a showcase Innovation Center. The amount is more than the annual budget of the city, and it’s federal deficit spending, and municipal public debt, that will make this project possible.

(Note: I will comment generally on the bond issue for the project, and the rating attached to it, tomorrow.)

Here’s an artist’s depiction of the planned Innovation Center:

It’s stylish in a contemporary way.

The Innovation Center has been looking for an anchor tenant, and now it has one: CESA 2, a Cooperative Educational Service Agency.

Here’s the announcement from Whitewater’s city manager, Kevin Brunner:

Anchor Tenant for Whitewater Innovation Center Confirmed This Week

The Cooperative Education Services Administration (CESA) District 2 Board approved a ten-year lease this week for space in the new Whitewater Innovation Center. CESA 2 will be an anchor tenant for the Center and will lease about 10,000 square feet in the new building which is scheduled for construction beginning in early spring.

CESA 2, which is currently leasing space in Milton, provides educational support and training services for over 70 school districts in southern Wisconsin. CESA 2 is expected to bring over 50 full and part-time employees to work at the Innovation Center as well as host daily teacher and administrator training sessions that typically have between 20 and 100 attendees.

As a member of the Whitewater Technology Center Board of Directors, I am very excited about having CESA 2 come to Whitewater and the new Innovation Center. CESA 2 will bring a lot of economic activity and jobs to the community as well as the Whitewater University Technology Park.

What’s CESA? It’s a forty-seven year old state-created agency “to assist districts in providing quality educational opportunities for students….[to] help school districts share staff, services and
purchasing, and provide a link between local districts and the state.”

Much of the work that CESA performs concerns laudable services to schools, including special education students. The CESA branch serving our community is CESA 2. Our CESA serves a large number of districts.

More about CESA is available at the following link:

http://www.cesa2.k12.wi.us/about/

A few observations on choice of this anchor tenant, for the Tech Park’s Innovation Center.

What’s an Innovation Center and Tech Park?

When one thinks of technology, and innovation, one typically thinks of pioneering American companies, that created products or services that were attractive, and from that attraction, whole new fields and opportunities arose. There’s a good reason for this — America has excelled at this sort of private, entrepreneurial initiative time and again.

For it, we are the envy of the world.

It distorts and stretches the meaning of both innovation and technology to apply it to any organization, anywhere, at any time.

There’s a way, of course — empty and thin — that one might describe most activity as technology-related. One might say that because a taxi company uses two-way radios, it’s a technology-based company.

One might also say that a company whose employees have found a better use for a photocopier in their building has been innovative. Before, they might have stapled documents after copying them; now, they’ve discovered that the photocopier can staple documents for them. That’s hardly an innovation as one would reasonably define it.

In the end, calling something an Innovation Center, or a Technology Park, does not make it so. Yet, the name sounds fancy, surely. The value of the park should depend on the work done, and not the name.

The City of Whitewater might as well have produced an even grander name, something like Genius Enclave, if inapplicability were the goal.

It’s so very characteristic of a limited perspective that one hears about jobs (in this case relocated, not new ones) but not about the cost of those jobs, and whether this community benefits from this multi-million dollar projects as against other possibilities (e.g., tax reduction, reduction of regulations).

There’s also something insubstantial about a bureaucrat insisting that a tenant will produce a ‘synergy’ – that is, literally, interaction of two elements such that the total result is greater than the sum of the two. (See, Brunner’s comments in the interview to which I link, below.)

Easy to say, of course, and saying so sounds very modern. It’s much harder to verify.

Without verification, it’s just another smooth-sounding word, unsubstantiated.

CESA 2 is not a Reasonable Choice for a Tech Park Anchor Tenant

CESA is, I am sure, a fine organization. It’s just not a technology concern, and it never will be, by any reasonable definition. It’s not even a private organization — CESA itself discloses that

“[t]he leading source of CESA funds, in all cases, was revenue from member school districts which totaled $68.1 million, or 63% of all monies received. Revenue from federal ($16.7 million, 15% of the total) and state governments [sic] ($14 million, 13%) were the other major sources of funds.”

CESA isn’t a technology concern — not one bit. It’s a state-mandated agency, feeding from tax dollars, that will fill up space in a technology park built on tax dollars and public debt. I’m sure they do good work; it’s just not a tech enterprise.

Our great find of an anchor tenant amounts to giving a taxpayer-dependent agency about one-quarter of the space in a taxpayer-funded Innovation Center.

We’ve created nothing new and innovative — we’ve relocated an agency from its current location in Milton, Wisconsin. I would say that their loss is our gain, but then Milton’s not spending millions for all of this.

Carts Before Horses.

When a park for technology comes before the demand of technology companies for space in Whitewater, bureaucrats will scramble to fill the place with any tenant. Having departed from a commitment to following private demand, and thus addressing true community needs, the City of Whitewater embarks on a presumptuous project from a few middling bureaucrats and their back-patting supporters.

There’s a story about all this, over at the Daily Union. See, CESA 2 tenant for Tech Park. The story mentions other matters, some of which I will address tomorrow. The story presents unquestioningly Brunner’s opinions on the topics therein. This is unsurprising: it’s part of our sad, local tradition toward officials, and what one fading paper did for so long another now does.

There’s nothing surprising in this – it’s very much to be expected, about the project, its description from Whitewater officials, and in press accounts.

I have had doubts about a multi-million dollar Innovation Center and Tech Park for Whitewater, Wisconsin. The costs are certain and rising, the benefits uncertain, and the city’s planning shifts from one Big Thing to another, like a series of teenage fads.

Here’s what the Innovation Center is supposed to look like:

Impressive, isn’t it?

Perhaps I should reconsider my opposition. I saw a post at the website BoingBoing that really gave me pause, and made me re-think my doubts about an innovation center. Their post, entitled “Levitating Cat” persuaded me to reconsider.

Here’s a photo of the cat:

All these years in Whitewater, and I have never seen a cat that could levitate. I like cats, and have blogged about them, but I have not once seen a telekinetic feline.

Not once.

I’m stunned. Somewhere on earth, perhaps far from Whitewater, there are cats that can fly with the power of their minds.

In Whitewater, at the groundbreaking for our Innovation Center, nearly a dozen humans needed shovels just to move a little bit of dirt. More concerning: these were supposed to be Whitewater’s super-smart, visionary humans. Even they needed shovels.

Meanwhile, there’s a place somewhere where cats can levitate, and presumably move other objects, too. What if it’s a communist country? These cats could be Reds, from North Korea, perhaps.

North Korea is a brutal, oppressive hell, terrible to its own people, and a threat to its neighbors. It would be far more dangerous if that regime had a force of brainy, but evil, cats.

Whitewater may be facing an unfavorable feline levitation gap.

There is no time to lose – we need a bigger Innovation Center to help teach Whitewater’s cats to fly. If we were prepared to waste spend eleven million on a center before, we should be ready to commit at least twice as much now.

The existing proposal is probably too small. At least the entire first floor would need to be turned over to a litterbox, and there would need to be adequate space for cat toys and scratching posts. We’ll have to double the size from the current proposal, at a minimum.

He who hesitates is lost – time to plan and spend big, really big.

Not long ago – only about two years ago, I wouldn’t wonder – Whitewater, Wisconsin was getting ready for a retail plaza and green grocer on the east side of town.

It’s been green (and brown) in the time since, as the area’s still just an empty lot.

We did build – as a transportation requirement – a lovely roundabout in front of the lot. Passing motorists can drive around, and around, the erstwhile site of proposed retail establishments.

Millions that might have gone to that project will go to an Innovation Center and Tech Park, not far away. Where only two years ago we heralded a future of retail, now the future is technology. One might wonder about the switch from one Next Big Thing to another, when they are so very different.

Whitewater’s small-town planners can’t make up their minds: rock star or brain surgeon?

Can they be blamed? A few million in grants here, a few million more in bonds there, and suddenly everyone’s on the cutting edge of fusion, jet cars, or if we’re really lucky, carbonated beverages that never lose their fizz.

I am not sure, though, how innovative the Innovation Center will prove to be. There’s little innovation in the same old local dodge of tax money and public debt, with the benefits of the project to show up … at an undetermined time in the future.

Candidly, no one should be awed by a project that sounds grand, but seems less consequential with each, successive description.

It’s predictable that when someone suggests that the costs might exceed the gains, he might be branded backward, dull, or uncooperative. Actually, I’d just like to know if it will be worth all the cost, effort, stress, and fuss.

I suppose the Titanic, Ford Pintos, and Space Shuttles were innovations. I’d simply suggest that the resulting sinking and explosions might have justified a different investment.

We can be sure that we’ll build an Innovation Center in Whitewater. All the rest is uncertainty cloaked as vision, inspiration, and a future-oriented outlook.

There are times when public works projects in a small town have a kind of Andy Hardy ‘let’s put on a show’ quality to them, where there’s a huge effort of time and publicity about a current project – a new building, for example.

There are two measures of a city that are good indications of community well-being: that the community is prosperous and government doesn’t obstruct economic opportunity, and the ordinances and regulations of the city are fairly enforced.

If, by these two standards, a city is doing well, then officials can confidently say that they have discharged their duties well.

By either of these measures, Whitewater is a struggling community, more even than some neighboring, rural towns.

Over one in four children in the city live in conditions of poverty, and the city’s poverty rate is above that of nearby towns. There is prosperity in Whitewater, surely, but it’s hardly a general one. Some have gained, yet countless others are impoverished.

As for the enforcement of our ordinances, there are few who are satisfied with enforcement. The typical criticism of a small town is that laws are enforced with bias and favoritism. Incompetence and lethargy are possible explanations, too.

There are some who contend that we have a problem of under enforcement, and others – I would be one – who feel we are over-regulated. In fact, both may be true, depending on the ordinance: a town may have a problem of over and under enforcement.

It is in matters of enforcement that management slowly gives way to governance. By degree, it’s no longer a matter of making sure the trains run on time, but assuring that fare-paying passengers have an equal chance to board.

I can’t say that the city’s leaders have done either well. Community meeting after community meeting only confirms the result: the same problems are topics at every discussion, unimproved despite the celebration of our city manager as someone of vision, etc. (One presumes his vision is sharpest at a very great distance, far beyond the actual experiences of the residents in the town he manages.)

One would be wrong to think that a city leader is necessarily closer to his fellow residents in a small town. We have no elected mayor, but instead a city manager. Here one imagines that being closer to one’s fellow residents involves more than talking to the same small circle of people in a rural town of thousands, or relying on The Same (Safe) People Everytime.

The image of a small town is that of a folksy and popular elected mayor; many small towns have, instead, the ersatz humility of an unelected, small-town bureaucrat.

If we don’t concern ourselves with general prosperity and equitable enforcement of limited regulations, then what do find most of concern?

1. Spending large amounts (of taxpayer money or in public debt) as a measure of how advanced, sophisticated we are. The amount spent becomes its own measure of success, with the cost and benefit to the community almost secondary.

As though, necessarily, ten million spent must be better than nine million.

2. What we build at taxpayer expense. If we build something big or new, that becomes justification enough. A new building, an Innovation Center, say, would look great, and comes with a great name, too.

3. Self-Description. There’s great concern that we describe ourselves in the most affirmative, most supportive way. It’s as though we are merely the sum of our self-selected adjectives. To speak in less than superlative terms is to speak inappropriately.

I see no reason to think that we’ll talk ourselves to prosperity, but we keep trying.

You may be sure that these days are scarcely ordinary – we are on the cusp of the extraordinary, the exceptional, and innovative.

Nearly a month ago, Whitewater broke ground on a taxpayer-funded tech park, along a street renamed Innovation Drive, beside our existing business park.

There was a brief ceremony, filmed for those who could not attend. I have embedded the video below, along with the website link where the video may be found:

http://www.blip.tv/file/2688983

You may have already seen the video. Some of these speakers address the group in such grandiose terms that one would think they were describing the work of Edison, Goddard, or Salk.

I’ve been asked, over the last few months, what I think of our latest, next big thing. I’ve written about it before, but along cultural lines: a truly large and thriving tech park would change the town, and would transform much of the existing culture.

Yet, a park like that would employ thousands, on the scale of the university. There’s no dependable expectation that this tech park will ever be so large. A federal grant (taxpayer money, federal deficit spending) and local public debt will pay for much of this project. Someone will cobble the rest together, and a building or two will be built.

Now, I drove to the groundbreaking, but sadly didn’t make it in time. I arrived to find only a large tent, and some chairs, as one sees in the video of the groundbreaking. It was an overcast day, with no one nearby.

I got out of my car, looked around, and walked up and down the road. It’s an empty field to one side, toward Bluff Road, of which an artist’s illustrations depict the completed Innovation Center.

But it’s in the other direction that one sees the future most clearly. Look in the opposite direction, and one sees our existing business park, with dozens of businesses.

The existing business park is far larger than our tech park will likely ever be. If we are, as some grandly claim, just a few buildings away from utopia, then what was everything before? (Likewise, what of an entire university now?)

We’re like a struggling musical group, waiting on this project to deliver us, the way overly optimistic band members are sure, absolutely sure, that a major record label will call, and they’ll have their big break.

Three, four, or five buildings built on grants of taxes and bonds will not be enough. We’ll spend so much, and our fellow Americans will spend so much (in grants to us) that there’ll be scant net gain for this project.

There will be a short-term gain of one kind, though: so much crowing about how the project has transformed the town.

The claims are so outsized that they are hard to justify. There’s an underlying arrogance to it all, in the place of hard but quiet work. There’s a difference between being proud and indulgence in pride.

We’ll have change, but of the kind that will fade and be forgotten, in the search, a few years from now, for the next, next big thing.

It’s in Romeo and Juliet that Shakespeare gave the world the observation, from Juliet’s lips, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Well, it’s time to brush up your Shakespeare, because Whitewater’s renamed Corporate Drive as ‘Innovation Drive’ for the new technology park to be built there.

Changing a name is the last thing most would care about, but, I don’t know, it may be a vital step to someone here.

I think we fall short when we substitute the superficial for true reform.

If Shakespeare’s wrong, and names and name changes do have such power, then how about a few other changes?

Center Street could become Center of Opportunity Street. Once renamed, lucrative offers would roll in to residents there. For example, super-smart, highly-evolved people already contend that if you take a place named Whitewater, Wisconsin, and simply start calling it the Center of Opportunity (with no other changes), well, it’s sure to become a gold mine.

We could change Whitewater Street to Accountability Avenue. I’d go with Accountability Avenue if reform were the goal, and simply saying (or accrediting) something would make it so.

Alternatively, those who are already smugly complacent could cement their grandiose and self-important views with Pinnacle of the Known Universe Boulevard. That way, when some bureaucrat insists that he’s so significant, he could just point to the street sign for confirmation. If it says so on an official City of Whitewater street sign, then it must be true.

For everyone else, time to brush up your Shakespeare. While reading away through histories, comedies, tragedies, and sonnets, how ’bout a song from Kiss Me Kate, aptly entitled, “Brush Up Your Shakespeare.” These two guys, in their own way, are too literal, also.

Enjoy.

I’m sure someone has a story to tell about how one of his Scandinavian ancestors swam across the Atlantic, hiked through the forests and prairies of America, and helped found this city with his bare hands.  It’s just another version of the commonplace, “when I was a child…” stories one hears from crusty old relatives.

It was probably never like this years ago; it’s surely not like this now.

Consider the words, from one of Whitewater’s career bureaucrats, on planning and grants that might come the city’s way:

I just want to let the Council know that if it wasn’t for the foresight that you all had it putting together a capital improvements plan, started last year, we wouldn’t, it was about thirty-thousand dollars worth of planning, we wouldn’t be sitting here today with a two-and-a-half million dollar grant.  And, I guess that’s the benefit of planning. I know that sometimes we think that it’s expensive to plan, and put together plans, but they really are necessary in order for us to go forward as a community.

Later, these remarks:

…we’re very close to having an announcement from the Economic Development Administration, the federal administration, for the development of our technology park and innovation center within the park….believe it or not, the federal government wants to give us more money than we’ve requested…

See, the first remarks, beginning at 10:35, and the second, beginning at 11:05:

A few quick observations.

Hayek thought that the purpose of planning was to compete; now the purpose of planning is to get grants.  In the new scheme, planning doesn’t lead to productive, private opportunity; it leads to state and federal grants.  The private activity could continue, grow, and evolve; the grants only last as long as a government budget holds out (not a good bet, these days).

It’s the difference between giving fish to someone, and teaching someone to fish.

These grants aren’t free to Whitewater, Wisconsin, or America.  It’s taxation (and federal deficit spending and consequent higher interest rates) that make these grants possible.  Whitewater didn’t get $2.5 million for $30,000.  America spent $2.5 million by obligating taxpayers for $2.5 million plus interest.

The men who founded our city, and the tribes that lived here before them, didn’t need a federal grant.  All the stories about how wonderful it must be to descend from Scandinavian or German settlers ignore two truths.  First, the original settlers to this area were mostly unwashed, vulgar Europeans.  (Only in hindsight do living descendants portray their forefathers as would be Rockefellers or Vanderbilts.)  Second, the settlers didn’t do what they did with all the dependency on government common today.

There’s another irony here.  It’s predictable that progressives — committed to government intervention and assistance — might applaud a government grant.

What, though, of conservatives?  There used to be small-government conservatives.  (In fact, no one needed to add ‘small-government’ before conservative, at least for American conservatives.)  Not now — many conservatives like government just fine, when it gives them something for their pet projects or political interests.

It’s a deep descent from Goldwater & Reagan to Bush & McCain.  When so-called proud conservatives defend their politics, while crowing about state and federal money, they may be defending their politics, but they’re not representing the better understanding they’ve foolishly abandoned.