FREE WHITEWATER

Monthly Archives: February 2008

City, Police

The Upside Down Commission

by  • 

A reader wrote me, and observed that there would be no response to my Police Commission Series, or my follow-up post, because PFC members would be asked to step down if they acted independently. That’s turning the roles and responsibilities of those on the commission, and those under its authority, upside down.

That’s likely true, but if so, it shows how empty and hollow our Police and Fire Commission truly is. Anyone – official or citizen – could ask someone to step down; they have no power to compel it.

Consider what Wisconsin law says about the clear authority of the Police and Fire Commission, from Wis. Stat. § 62.13(3):

CHIEFS. The board shall appoint the chief of police and the chief of the fire department, who shall hold their offices during good behavior, subject to suspension or removal by the board for cause.

That’s an impressive and significant responsibility. It is what the law itself authorizes.

It’s sad and embarrassing that our PFC falls so far short of what I believe Wisconsin expects. Imagine a mature man or woman, who takes on a statutory responsibility, and behaves only compliantly, subserviently, and obediently. Those who hold the office can and should exercise its authority fairly and independently. If that duty is too much for these volunteers to bear, they should ask other citizens to help them to rise to this necessary task.

This is no dissipated, gilded aristocracy; we are a free and robust people.

It was a German philosopher who correctly observed that it is not enough to have the courage of one’s convictions – it is also necessary to have the courage to resist the contrary convictions of others. If we do not have at least as much – so that we cannot be cowed, silenced, or shamed into obedience – then we are not the people most useful to our free society.

A normal, mature man or woman should not fall silent because of the views of public officials (especially insecure or incompetent ones), laughable small-town aristocrats, or any number of self-important people. It is impossible for a serious person to be impressed by ordinary people ‘acting big.’

A person may act as though he were Yertle the Turtle, with all those self-important notions, but he would be a turtle, nonetheless. Mack the Turtle knew the truth of the American promise: “I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights.”

There is an odd, but persistent, notion that a few people in this rural town can silence those they dislike through community pressure. A dissipated, enervated, calcified town clique will resort to this approach. It will not, however, succeed. In this regard, it is true that they have not been paying attention to what I have been saying.

I am a true believer in the rights America affords all citizens. I do not doubt that it is difficult to exercise these rights; I will not fail to do so.

There’s much more to write, and so I will continue.

School District

School Board Meeting for January 28th

by  • 

Like most school board meetings, in districts across Wisconsin, budgets, finances, headcounts, and enrollment (all related, of course) occupied most of the meeting. Two topics, though, stood out.

The first was our 4-K program. Whitewater did not originate the program, but few cities in Wisconsin need it more than we do. We are, for so many, a hard-scrabble town, with poverty above the state and local average. The option of earlier programming is more useful to us than to a wealthier community.

Our schooling is closer to a safe harbor, for example, than a community like Williams Bay.

There’s a related point, and it concerns the preoccupation of education as budgeting: all the talk about finances begins to obscure the work of public education as instruction in substance. Different, more creative, and inspiring teaching need not always cost more, or be encumbered with endless talk of budgets, etc.

More time emphasizing, at each and every meeting, the substantive work of eduction, enumerating a few teaching successes, would be a good practice.

Finally, as I mentioned once before, an endowment — although a matter of money — is a good idea, if managed well, and directed toward advancing a core teaching mission.