FREE WHITEWATER

Business, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Laws/Regulations, Legislation, Politics, Regulations

Daily Bread for 2.11.26: Data Centers Will Stay in the News

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 37. Sunrise is 6:57 and sunset is 5:20 for 10 hours 21 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 30.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Comprehensive Plan Work Group meets at 4 PM and the Equal Opportunity Commission at 5 PM.

On this day in 1970, Japan launches Ohsumi, becoming the fourth nation to put an object into orbit using its own booster.

This libertarian blogger has written about data centers before, arguing for a minimal set of regulations to allow the industry to develop, community by community. See Data Centers, Gubernatorial Candidates’ Views on Data Centers, and Microsoft’s View on Wisconsin Data Centers.

However one thinks about this issue, it’s not going away:

At a public hearing held by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission Tuesday, dozens of Wisconsin residents decried the effects massive data centers could have on the state’s electricity rates and ability to adopt renewable energy sources. 

The three-member PSC is considering a proposal from the Wisconsin Electric Power Company to establish a tariff system for providing electricity to massive data centers. Under the proposal, “very large” customers that would be subject to the tariff would have a combined energy load of 500 megawatts — the equivalent of powering about 400,000 homes. 

The first phase of Microsoft’s $13.3 billion data center project in Mount Pleasant is projected to require 450 megawatts. 

Critics of the proposal say that under this system, regular consumers will still be on the hook for 25% of the infrastructure costs associated with increasing the state’s energy load. 

Over the past year, the growth of data center development in Wisconsin has spurred an increasingly tense debate. Local governments have been tempted to allow their construction as a source of property tax revenue while local residents raise concerns over energy and water use, the conversion of historical farmland, the ethics of artificial intelligence and long-term environmental impacts.

The massive energy needs of data centers have become the central issue in the debate, with people in Wisconsin and around the country questioning how to manage the demands of giant corporations seeking to use orders of magnitude more energy than is currently being produced.

See Henry Redman, Wisconsin Public Service Commission data center hearing draws public outcry, Wisconsin Examiner, February 10, 2026.

There’s value for a blogger simply in spotting political trends, as there is value for a meteorologist to spot trends in weather and climate.

Well, data centers are surely one of those trends, with both economic and political implications combined.

Buddhist monks conclude 15-week ‘Walk for Peace’ in Washington:

A group of Buddhist monks has finally reached Washington, D.C., after completing a 15-week trek from Texas that captivated the country.

Business, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Local Government, Low Standards, Special Interests, That Which Paved the Way

Daily Bread for 2.10.26: Unfounded (and Irresponsible) Pessimism at the Common Council Lectern

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 40. Sunrise is 6:58 and sunset is 5:20 for 10 hours 22 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 39.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5:15 PM and there is a Whitewater Forward Community Round Table at 6 PM.

On this day in 1763, the Treaty of Paris, also known as the Treaty of 1763, was signed on 10 February 1763 following Great Britain and Prussia’s victory over France and Spain during the Seven Years’ War. The treaty’s provisions included the ceding of what is now Wisconsin (among many other places) from France to Britain.

Yesterday’s post addressed the over-reliance of one resident on one population projection for Whitewater in 2040. See Over Reliance on a Single Population Projection.

How odd, though, to hear a longtime resident, local landlord, former Community Development Authority member, former Community Development Authority chairman, former school board member, and former school board president warning of Whitewater’s supposed demographic decline.

(Every resident should and must have a right to speak at public comment. That right includes speaking bleakly about Whitewater’s future, speaking bleakly about Whitewater’s future on flimsy grounds, and even speaking bleakly about Whitewater’s future on flimsy grounds while ignoring one’s own below-average record of policymaking in this town.)

Let’s assume this gentleman believes, far too credulously, that a future of decline awaits the city.

If so, then what was he doing all those years on the Community Development Authority and school board? All those meetings, all those plans, and indeed all those controversies, only to lead to decline? Why did he bother?

One possibility is that he and others spent the last decade accomplishing nothing that would last. In this possibility, they were wasting others’ time and futures while live-action role playing at interminable meetings.

I’ll not say that our future is so bleak as that gentleman claims, but I do think he was wasting public opportunity after public opportunity. See from 2018 A Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA (‘This new EOZ program allows for private investments to be made, with significant tax benefits, in lower income communities like ours that need a boost to their economy,” said Larry Kachel, Chair of the Whitewater Community Development Authority’). (Emphasis added.)

A lower-income community for many residents over many years, but likely not a lower income for that former chairman of the Community Development Authority. (Perhaps, just perhaps, I’ve been misreading all these years. When I see the title of that public body, it says Community Development not Chairman Development.)

Wasting money, too, it turns out. See from that last decade Meeper Technology Loan Investigation, Memo and Documents (writing off more than $750,000 in loans).

It’s also possible that he simply wants to disparage the work of those now in office who will not bend to his will.1

And so, and so, in this man’s telling, it’s a slope of decline on the way to 2040. Well, if so, in his public roles he played a part in placing us on that supposed path. Of those who told the community time and again in the last decade that they were paramount — can’t they see that if Whitewater will have a bleak future, then they are culpable in that sad fate?

And yet, and yet, as I am a free-market man, and not a self-interested incumbent landlord, I do not share his pessimism (whether real or feigned, whether genuine or spiteful). Although I’m a tragic optimist, optimism is the noun, modified only by an awareness of human loss even in good times.

And look, and look — this is a city of many thousands, interacting freely every day. From those many come myriad possibilities in a spontaneous order. This community is not the possession of one man, whether landlord, city official, or libertarian blogger2. This community’s finest work has happened and will happen apart from any of those roles.

How sad, truly, that this isn’t obvious to everyone.

_____

  1. Of this second possibility I have no assessment to make, being neither a psychiatrist nor a priest; this libertarian blogger neither takes patients nor hears confessions. My role is much smaller. ↩︎
  2. Whitewater belongs to everyone yet no one. ↩︎

What happens when a satellite burns up?:

The European Space Agency’s Draco mission aims to study what happens in a satellite’s last fiery moments as it reenters Earth’s atmosphere.

City, Daily Bread, Local Government

Daily Bread for 2.9.26: Over Reliance on a Single Population Projection

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 38. Sunrise is 7:00 and sunset is 5:18 for 10 hours 18 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 49.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board holds a Legislative Breakfast at 8:30 AM. Whitewater’s Plan & Architectural Review Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1775, the British Parliament declares Massachusetts in rebellion.

On January 20, during public comment at a Whitewater Common Council session, a resident1 spoke about a population projection that he saw for Whitewater in 2040. His claim and an assessment of that claim appear below.

CLAIM:

Your report that you did for fire departments and EMS in Walworth County, which I believe came out in October of 2025, had some DOA numbers in them, from the Department of Administration, and they are projecting that Whitewater will lose 3,000 people in its population between now and 2040. They originally did it in 2020 and then updated it in 24, and that’s in the report that was done for the Walworth County Fire and EMS, breaking it down by individual communities.

See Whitewater Common Council, January 20, 2026 Video @ 46:54.

ASSESSMENT:

To begin, this wasn’t a City of Whitewater study. The study was from the Wisconsin Policy Forum. See Rob Henken & Ashley Fisher, One Step Ahead: Preparing for the Future of Fire and Emergency Medical Services in Walworth County (Wisconsin Policy Forum Oct. 2025).

The population projection that the study cites comes from Wisconsin’s Department of Administration (DOA), through the Demographic Services Center (DSC), as part of Wisconsin’s latest municipal projection series. See Wis. Dep’t of Admin., Demographic Servs. Ctr., Population Projections. Anyone who is serious about public policy should mark the difference between a projection and an inevitable outcome.

Any figures like these are hard for anyone not in the field to assess. There’s a huge risk of misunderstanding. There are a few things one can say confidently, however. DOA’s projections are statewide and standardized. That’s to be expected: the DOA does not have the resources to build a specific, boutique model for every municipality. It uses a method that can be applied across the map, so to speak, in a way that places local communities in larger totals.

DOA’s own methodology explains its approach: it uses recent annualized change (including a comparison that runs from 2010 to 2020 and another that incorporates 2020 to a recent estimate period), projects forward, and then adjusts smaller-area projections so they align with the totals implied by county projections. 

That approach does produce a baseline across Wisconsin. But every method has a flaw: the method also produces a projection that can be highly sensitive to short-run disruption — especially in places that are unusual in ways for which the model does not account.

Whitewater is one of those places.

The City of Whitewater’s own housing report flags the reality that the pandemic era and enrollment shifts create unusual conditions for interpreting population patterns, and it explains why it preferred a different approach for its own local projection work. See City of Whitewater, City of Whitewater Housing Report (Feb. 2022), prepared with assistance from Vandewalle & Assocs.

If the years one uses for a trendline are abnormal years, then the projection isn’t destiny but rather short-run disturbances extrapolated to 2040. A more recent report that doesn’t account for local fluctuations is less useful than one prepared a bit earlier that does account for those fluctuations.

There are other local-specific reports that show much higher projections. Whitewater’s Comprehensive Plan materials include a projection series reaching 19,250 by 2040. See City of Whitewater, City of Whitewater Comprehensive Plan: Chapter Two—Vision and Opportunities (adopted July 18, 2017). Whitewater’s Housing Report (cited above) projects 16,016 in 2040 using a linear growth methodology.

If one wants the most reliable way to think about Whitewater in 2040, one wouldn’t choose any single projection:

  • 13,091 is a state scenario produced by a standardized statewide method (DOA).
  • 16,016 is a local moderate-growth scenario offered in a housing planning context. (Housing Report).
  • 19,250 is an older plan-era high-growth assumption used for long-range planning (Comprehensive Plan).

Anyone who tells you that one of these numbers for 2040 is a ‘fact’ is simply wrong. The only fact is that there are several published projections.

Solid, rational planning for 2040 beats picking — cherry-picking, really — one estimate in remarks to the Whitewater Common Council.

_____

  1. Longtime resident, local landlord, former Community Development Authority member, former Community Development Authority chairman, former school board member, former school board president. ↩︎

When neutron stars merge, things get messy:

A NASA simulation shows the magnetic fields of colliding neutron stars meeting and entwining.

Daily Bread, Law, Litigation, Madison, Voting Rights, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.8.26: Wisconsin Elections Commission Challenges Madison’s Argument on Absentee Voting

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 30. Sunrise is 7:01 and sunset is 5:17 for 10 hours 16 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 58.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1950, the Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, is established.

On January 21, this libertarian blogger contended that the City of Madison Argues Wrongly on Absentee Ballots by contending that those ballots were a privilege, not a right. From that post: “This is an occasion when a lawyer, representing a public client, undermines the rights of those that the public client is, itself, obligated to represent. Always a mistake, always a serious mistake, and always a mistake requiring a genuine remedy. An immediate remedy would be for the City of Madison to withdraw its line of defense. A later remedy would be for a court to reject that defense if it is not withdrawn.”

Unsurprisingly, just about everyone, including the founder of a conservative public interest law firm, saw the error of Madison’s legal position:

The Wisconsin Elections Commission, filing its first ever friend-of-the-court brief, challenged Madison’s controversial legal argument that it should not be financially liable for 193 uncounted ballots in the 2024 presidential election because of a state law that calls absentee voting a privilege, not a right.

The argument presented by city officials misunderstands what “privilege” means in the context of absentee voting and “enjoys no support in the constitution or case law,” the commission wrote in its filing Tuesday, echoing a similar rebuke by Gov. Tony Evers last month.

“Once an elector has complied with the statutory process, whether absentee or in-person, she has a constitutional right to have her vote counted,” the commission said.

That both the commission and the governor felt it was necessary to intervene in the case should underscore “both the wrongness and the dangerousness of such a claim,” commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, told Votebeat.

[…]

Meanwhile, Rick Esenberg, the founder of the conservative group Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty — which cited the same 1985 law in its 2021 effort to ban ballot drop boxes — said on social media that Madison’s legal argument was likely going too far. 

“Madison is correct in noting that absentee voting is a privilege and not a right in the sense that the legislature has no obligation to permit it at all,” Esenberg said. “BUT if it does and people choose to cast their ballot in the way specified by law, it doesn’t seem crazy to say that Madison has a constitutional obligation to count their legally cast vote.”

See Alexander Shur, Wisconsin Elections Commission challenges Madison’s argument on absentee voting (‘A rare court filing adds to the growing condemnation of the city’s defense against a lawsuit seeking monetary damages for votes that weren’t counted in 2024’), Wisconsin Watch, February 4, 2026.

This is a clear legal issue (the law can and has created a right) but muddy legal representation. The City of Madison’s position was too quick in its effort to shield the city from damages in a voters’ lawsuit without considering the implications of that position.

Legal representation that doesn’t show foresight of implications and counter-arguments is weak (in this case, embarrassingly weak) representation.

Pigs, grizzlies, and humans share this one skincare secret:

Researchers have found telltale clues for how to revitalise skin by looking at curious structures known as rete ridges. Rete ridges are a hard-to-study feature of the skin that could harbour the stem cells needed to allow it to regenerate. There aren’t many animal models available to study them in detail, so these researchers scoured the animal kingdom to find the skin that most resembled humans’. Now they’ve found hints as to how these ridges form, which they hope could one day enable us to reverse ageing in skin.

City, Film

Film: Wednesday, February 11th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

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Wednesday, February 11th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Classical Musical/ Romance/ Drama Rated G

1 hour 31 minutes (1964)

Our early Valentine to you s this French classic romance film. In this tale of reciprocated love, a young woman (Catherine Deneuve) separated from her lover by war, faces a life–altering decision. This is a love story told entirely in song (no dialogue). It will be shown in its original French language with English subtitles. The musical score by Michel Legrand is most memorable. (Bring your Kleenex.)

One can find more information about The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at the Internet Movie Database.

Daily Bread, Nature, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.7.26: Nature Conservancy’s 2025 Wisconsin Annual Report

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 21. Sunrise is 7:02 and sunset is 5:16 for 10 hours 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 68.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1964, The Beatles land in the United States for the first time, at the newly renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport.

See The Nature Conservancy in Wisconsin, 2025 Annual Report (Dec. 9, 2025).

Heavy snowfall hits Japan on election day, some polling stations to close early:

City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Free Markets, Housing, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 2.6.26: 71% Means Far Less Than It Seems

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 35. Sunrise is 7:03 and sunset is 5:14 for 10 hours 11 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 76.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1919, in Paris the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce are signed by the United States and France signaling official recognition of the new republic.

In Whitewater, a university town, one often hears that a large percentage of residences are, understandably, apartments. A large number of these apartments are student apartments. The university is large in proportion to the whole city, and so no one should be surprised by this.

This environment produces a claim from landlords and a few other special-interest men that is closer to a mantra than an ordinary economic claim: 71% of Whitewater’s residences are apartments, and so there should be no more apartments. To people who are captivated more easily by a number than the economic realities that underlie the number, the 71%-but-no-more assertion must seem powerful, almost indubitably true.

It’s not. It’s not no matter how often repeated.

Here is the sensible, economically rational question Whitewater faces:

Will current and projected households be adequately housed — at reasonable costs — without leaving many residents paying too much while a few reap high rents or mortgage receipts?

That’s it: from where we are, what makes the city’s residents more able to live within the city without exorbitant amounts of their income going to rent or housing costs?

Student housing, and that’s what most of the apartments in Whitewater are, can inflate the apartment share without telling you much about whether non-students can find places to live.

Student and non-student apartments are not the same, and no one not self-deluding thinks they are. We do not have a fungible, universal type of apartment in this city designed generically for anyone. There are landlords who have built student apartments, and some who have built a few apartments for elderly residents dependent on federal assistance, but far fewer residences of any kind for a middle class resident who might want an apartment or a house.

That’s why any given percentage — even 71% — means far less than what people wielding the figure think it means. Consider: If 71% of the coats in a store are size Small, the store still fails if most customers wear something else. A percentage tells us what’s on the shelf but doesn’t tell us whether the shelf matches demand.

Part of the problem of large-scale home construction in Whitewater is that one or two large landlords think any smaller home that is similar in square footage to a middle class apartment might also be a threat and should be opposed.

A few landlords come close to a residential oligopoly over apartments in Whitewater, and they assert an anti-growth, anti-market agenda to preserve the first-mover advantage they have inherited from an earlier generation. They insist that the easier first-mover conditions of a generation (or more) ago should apply today to anyone building in the city in today’s more difficult conditions of affordability.

These are like men who were admitted to school when standards were easier, and now insist that all current students should meet standards they themselves did not, and probably could not, ever meet.

This maintains their near-oligopoly on existing student-rental apartments directly, but also denies the city middle-class, non-student options of rentals or home ownership.

This is also why vacancy rates in conditions of a near-oligopoly of student-rental landlords are deceptive vacancy rates: part of that vacancy rate comes because those student-rental apartments are not desirable (or even suitable) for middle-class rentals.

That’s not what a middle-class market wants. These student-rental landlords built for only one segment (when they thought that was the only market that mattered). Now they want to keep anyone else who would supply a middle-class market from building (either by outright prohibition or by imposing limitations not suited to suppliers’ and consumers’ present-day conditions.)

Whitewater’s solution should include more missing middle housing (apartments, duplexes, townhomes) to broaden the non-student market with flexible standards in parking and design rather than a blunt rejection of anything.

That’s the difference between a self-intested incumbent landlord and a free-market advocate. The self-interested incumbent will fight for his profits (student-rentals, senior-citizen apartments) even if the rest of the community gets little or nothing for itself.

The free-market advocate will advance proposals that uplift the general good, acknowledging that today’s proposals are more difficult to achieve than the first-mover conditions of fifty years ago.

Architecture, Art, Cats

Friday Catblogging: A Subway for His Cats

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Check out my latest project! A subway train and station in mini-scale! #minisubway #miniaturerailway #minirail Hi, I’m Xing, I spent two years making a mini home for my pets. Please subscribe to see all the cool miniatures and DIY projects I come up with to enjoy with my family and our pet dogs, cats, and hamsters!

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, February 10th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, One Battle After Another

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Tuesday, February 10th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of One Battle After Another @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Action/ Dark Comedy/ Political Thriller/ Drama Rated R

2 hour, 41 minutes (2025)

Washed–up Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) exists in a state of stoned paranoia, surviving off the grid with his spirited, self reliant daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti). When his evil nemesis, Colonel Stephen J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) resurfaces after 16 years, and Willa goes missing, Bob, the former radical, scrambles to find her, now father and daughter both battling the consequences of his past. The film also stars Regina Hall and Benito del Toro.

One can find more information about One Battle After Another at the Internet Movie Database.

City, Daily Bread, Development, Housing

Daily Bread for 2.5.26: More Housing for Whitewater

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:04 and sunset is 5:13 for 10 hours 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 84.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1919, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith launch United Artists. (UA is now a label within MGM, an Amazon Company.)

On a first reading, the Whitewater Common Council unanimously approved a change to the city’s comprehensive plan for future land use and a zoning change for a possible residential development along Bluff Road. A video of the discussion appears above, and excerpts from the Whitewater Common Council packet appear below.

PROPOSAL:

Stonehaven Development, LLC seeks a Comprehensive Plan Future Land Use Map change from Highway Commercial to Single Family Residential. The requested amendment would allow for the development of 14 new single-family homes, providing much-needed housing within an established residential corridor.


This proposed rezoning aligns with existing land-use of the immediate area. All properties along East Bluff Road are currently developed with low-density housing. This land use change would provide improved compatibility with the nearby area, as compared to potential commercial developments. Overall, this proposed change is consistent with the city’s comprehensive plan, supports sustainable growth, and preserves the residential character of the neighborhood.

[…]

Stonehaven Development, LLC seeks to rezone multiple parcels on Bluff Road from Highway Commercial to One-Family Residence-Small Lots. The requested amendment would allow for the development of 14 new single-family homes, providing much-needed housing within an established residential corridor.

This proposed rezoning aligns with existing land-use of the immediate area. All properties along East Bluff Road are currently zoned Single-Family Residence and are currently developed with low-density housing. This rezone would provide improved compatibility with the nearby area, as compared to potential commercial developments. Overall, this proposed rezoning is consistent with the city’s comprehensive plan, supports sustainable growth, and preserves the residential character of the neighborhood.

See Whitewater Common Council Agenda Packet (Feb. 3, 2026) Agenda Items 22 and 23.

The community has a choice on whether there will, practically, be more single-family homes in the city. Supporters of a project like this — and this libertarian blogger would be among those supporters — offer, by their support, a genuine and concrete option for the community.

Opponents, however, cannot expect that opposing each new proposal without offering a real and practical alternative will fulfill the community’s desire for more single-family homes. Merely objecting (not here, not now, etc.) doesn’t offer a useful (or compelling) alternative.

That’s the problem opponents of every housing project that comes along face. It’s not enough for them to say that they support programs in the abstract, with sometime and somewhere yet to be determined. They’ve not managed to get past the point of being mere opponents, so to speak.

Because the desire in this community for additional non-student residences is so strong, opponents’ efforts need to include agreement with at least some significant actual proposals and projects.

Always opposing, supporting only conceptually, or supporting only seldom simply doesn’t meet community desire and demand.

Wisconsin dog wins Westminster agility title:

City, Daily Bread, Politics, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 2.4.26: Sen. Nass’s Retirement

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 24. Sunrise is 7:06 and sunset is 5:12 for 10 hours 6 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 91.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin found Facebook. 

One reads, unsurprisingly, that state Sen. Steve Nass is retiring. For many (too many) of those years his district included Whitewater. In the statement announcing this as his last term, Nass offers no specific reason for declining to run again. Having been in the Legislature for forty years, no stated reason is necessary. (The increasing likelihood of a WisDems majority in the state Senate perhaps played an unstated role.)

There is something about his career worth noting, about both Nass and also so many others in the WISGOP. He and they were once significant local figures in their communities. Nass, in particular, was a bête noire of the center-left, progressives, and the UW System. Through his frequent email blasts, written (or perhaps written for him) in a burn-it-all-down style, Nass was once an attention-getter.

Those were the days.

Were the days, not are the days — this state’s right-wing home office has long ago shifted from Wisconsin to Mar-a-Lago. For the right, Wisconsin has become a mere local branch, a single storefront, of a corporate behemoth with a home office in Florida.

Nass was around for decades, of course, and so retiring by now was to be expected. He stayed long enough, however, to have become a mere afterthought in a movement that looks to others located elsewhere.

Watch the moment a Greenland sled dog steals an AP camera:

When a 360 degree camera went missing during a shoot in the Arctic circle, the AP crew eventually found it among sled dogs they’d been filming with earlier. After the crew recovered the camera, they discovered the dog that had taken it and had also hit record.

City, Daily Bread, Local Government, Reasoning, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 2.3.26: Adventures in Underpowered Sampling

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 23. Sunrise is 7:07 and sunset is 5:10 for 10 hours 4 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.

Around this week in 1637, Tulip Mania collapses within the Dutch Republic.

CLAIM:

On December 16 of last year, during public comment at a Whitewater Common Council meeting, a local student-rental landlord offered examples of the property-tax assessments of some other homes in four communities along a narrow set of parameters. His transcribed remarks appear below:

I compared taxes and I brought some comparables from other communities around us.

It’s not a big sample. It’s just other houses in the other communities that are priced within $5,000 a month, fair market value. So my home has gone up, again, 71% since 21, on the city portion, and the school portion’s actually dropped nine.

I picked a home in Elkhorn that is, fair market value is within $2,000 of mine. Their property taxes on the city portion over the last four years are up 15%. Their school taxes are up 10%.

Their overall city portion of their tax bill in 2025 is $2,284. Mine is $2,732, $500 more. You can do the math on the percentage.

Picked a home in Delavan, $1,000 less fair market value than mine. Their property tax increase on the city portion of their bill since 21 is up 12%. The school district portion of their bill is up 17%. 

It’s kind of hard to compare school districts a lot because they maybe had a new building done, but everybody has school district referendums on their bills, different amounts of money. So again, their total city tax portion of the bill, $2,446, mine $2,731. Lake Geneva, they’re a different kind of an outlier, but I’m comparing the four cities.

Only have four cities that are predominantly in Walworth County. They have an awful lot of high-end homes out on Lake Geneva that kind of subsidize a lot of the other ones. Their property tax increase since 2021 for the city portion of the bill is 8%.

ASSESSMENT:

So one student-rental landlord of an inherited business picks a tiny group of homes from four other communities that are similar to his home in market value and offers this as a statistically meaningful sample for Whitewater?

If these remarks came from someone who was unfamiliar with any recognized empirical method, one would simply smile and ignore the comments. These are instead the words of a former member of the Whitewater Community Development Authority, former chairman of that body, former member of the Whitewater School Board, former president of that board, and (if I have this correctly) someone who claims a knowledge of finance.

He does admit, at least, that “it’s not a big sample.” No it’s not. His sample is the opposite of big.1

People have — and must always have — a right to speak to the Whitewater Common Council. That includes this gentleman as much as any other. That right, however, does not include having their arguments taken seriously.

Sometimes arguments are weak, sometimes samples are underpowered. This landlord’s public comments from December 16 would be one of those times.

_____

  1. The opposite of big is small. ↩︎

NASA delays Artemis II moon launch to March after fuel leaks during test:

NASA said Tuesday it will now target a March launch of its new moon rocket after running into exasperating fuel leaks during a make-or-break test.

City, Daily Bread, Local Government, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 2.2.26: Ill-Informed Speculation About City Hiring

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Good morning.

Groundhog Day in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 27. Sunrise is 7:08 and sunset is 5:09 for 10 hours 1 minute of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Earlier today, America’s finest meteorologist predicted six more weeks of winter.

The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 4:30 PM. Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1653, New Amsterdam (later renamed New York) is incorporated.

One aspect of a libertarian position is that government should be limited. Limited here means both in size (how many people, how much in costs) and reach (how those people conduct themselves). This is not, however, the most important libertarian claim — the most important claim is, and will always be, that each person possesses individual rights.1 See Tenets for my own description of libertarian positions.

CLAIM:

On December 2 and December 16 of last year, during public comment for Whitewater Common Council meetings, longtime and established residents asked about the number of employees that the city has recently hired, implying through their questions that the city government has embarked on profligate hiring.

CITY REPLY:

Clarification of Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) Changes Since 2022

Since 2022, the City’s total Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) count has increased by 17.5 FTEs. However, nearly all of these additions are the result of major organizational changes—not discretionary hiring.

A breakdown is as follows:

  • 9.0 FTEs – Fire/EMS Department

These positions were created because the Fire/EMS Department became a full-time, fully staffed municipal department in 2023. Prior to this transition, the City relied heavily on a volunteer/paid-on-call model that was no longer sustainable for service demand and emergency response requirements.

  • 7.5 FTEs – Police Department

These positions reflect staffing needed to meet operational requirements, ensure officer safety, improve response times, and address increasing service calls. Public safety staffing levels are routinely reevaluated to ensure the City meets industry standards and community expectations.

  • 1.0 FTE – All Other Departments Combined

Outside of Fire/EMS and Police, the entire City organization has added only one net FTE in the past two years. This demonstrates that the City has not engaged in broad, organization-wide hiring, but instead has focused on staffing increases where they were operationally essential.

(Emphasis added.) See Clarification on City’s Increase in Hired Staff, City of Whitewater, January 20, 2025.

ASSESSMENT:

Anyone who has organizational knowledge — anyone who positions himself as an established man worth listening to — would look at the number of employees in an organization and ask if they are full or part-time and why they’ve been hired. Those two questions are so fundamental that even those without organizational familiarity would likely hit upon that line of inquiry.

In this case, those who have been here for years should know that this city has had voter-approved referendums that mandated additional hiring. Some of these gentlemen can tell you when, in 1975, a squirrel on Prince Street developed indigestion but somehow they can’t figure out in this small city that most of the municipal hiring has come from these recent referendums.

I’ve always — unlike others — supported people speaking and discussing. See Yesteryear’s Familiar Tune. That’s because in most cases people have interesting and valuable insights.

Sometimes, however, it becomes clear that a few entitled men are simply talking out of their hats.2 This is one of those times.

See also A Baseless Speculation About the City of Whitewater’s Salary Scale.

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  1. If libertarianism were about no more than small government, then we would all be inherited student-rental landlords complaining incessantly about our own taxes. ↩︎
  2. Where hat is a euphemism. ↩︎

What’s Up for February 2026 Skywatching Tips from NASA:

Jupiter is at its biggest and brightest all year, the Moon and Saturn pair up, and the Beehive Cluster buzzes into view.
0:00 Intro
0:14 Artemis II launch window opens
0:45 Orion the Hunter
1:23 A planetary parade
2:05 February Moon phases