At last night’s meeting, a local church sought a conditional use permit to move into a former liquor store’s location.

Although, I firmly believe that a church should be treated like any other conditional use applicant, I see easily the political and social risk in not treating the application delicately.

To serve the city well, a document for display should not have too many markings regarding a church or charity.

It should have a minimum of notes, as brief as possible.

Marking up a document for a proposed orphanage, for example, would just be giving a hostage to Fortune. It’s too risky that someone might grandstand on the issue.

That didn’t happen last night, but there is no reason to run that risk.

Part of our town’s Planning Commission meeting last night involved a discussion of the chairperson’s roles and responsibilities. It’s not a bad idea to review all members’ roles every so often, but citizen-volunteers are not the only ones with roles in these matters.

City leadership and staff might possess the authority to act expediently, but it is reasonable for them to explain the exercise of that authority. The matter is as much about professional staff as citizen commission members or legal counsel.

In any event, there were other matters on the agenda.

Whitewater, Wisconsin has a Plannining Commission, like most towns, that meets regularly. Last night was its monthly meeting.

Here are a some observations on a meeting with a ten-item agenda.

Citizen comments and staff reports. It makes sense to place citizen comments and staff reports early in the meeting. The order of the two changes what citizen comments might be like.

If staff reports follow citizen comments, then the public comment period will represent prior citizen concerns, and not comments on staff reports from the night’s meeting.

I have no preference in the order; I merely note how order might change the kind of comments one might receive.

(It’s vital to address citizen comments with equanimity; our Common Council meetings sometimes devolve when Council members interrupt those commenting to engage in an impromptue debate.)

The major parties are quick to applaud themselves at selecting, or even considering, ethnic or religious minorities for high office.

Both internally and externally, they spend a lot of time enlightening others on how enlightened they are.

The Libertarian Party’s vice presidential candidate is Wayne Allyn Root, who is Jewish. Thankfully and true to its principles, the LP chose a vice presidential candidate without a lot of identity-politics posturing.

For more on Root, here’s a story available online:

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The town is not, you know, Whitewater, Wisconsin; we don’t have a mayor.

No, the mayor in the town of Mount Isa in Australia issued a call for unattractive women to move to his community. He reasoned that the town had a preponderance of men, so women of any kind would be welcome.

(The mayor refers to the kind of women he has in mind as ‘beauty-disadvantaged.’)

It’s foolish, of course: a call like this won’t produce any sensible takers, of whatever appearance.

The solution is to make the town more beautiful – deeply, truly, in its institutions and character – not to worry about superficial qualities inside or outside.

No call to the outside will be half so valuable as the reform of our institutions within. If a town changes, and embraces free markets and personal liberty, then it will be truly attractive to others.

Here’s the link a story on the Australian effort:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5icmTQMacKESYU

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The Washington Post’s Libby Copeland offers a profile of a dour Bob Barr (reprinted at the CBS website).

Barr just doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.

Copeland includes an anecdote about Barr’s behavior at a charity event, when he licked whipped cream from two women in exchange for a charity donation. Needless to say, in Barr’s case there was nothing remotely shocking about the incident.

(The press would surely have a different reaction if the incident involved a more charismatic politician. Barr will never be so described.)

It may be part of the challenge with Barr’s candidacy – he’s rightly skeptical about government, but he has no expressed sense of irony to share with voters, no inside joke on which he might include others.

Here’s the link –

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/18/

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