UPDATE: A clever reader writes with insight into the data —

Regarding your post about the ridiculous nature of calling the 101,000 population in the micropolitan area “Whitewater,” I just wanted to clear up that the census designates metropolitan and micropolitan areas based on counties, meaning that this micropolitan area is most likely all of Walworth County. (Looking at the data, that makes more sense) You’ll also notice that the 25th-ranked dream town is the twin cities of Watertown-Fort Atkinson (i.e. all of Jefferson County). Only separated by 30 miles or so. There are reasons for the Census to break down data in this manner, and they must call it something, so they pick the largest cities in that area. Unfortunately, this is just another example of non-planners misusing or misunderstanding data in a way that trained planners would hopefully not.

I live in Whitewater, Wisconsin, a town of 14,000 (that’s fourteen thousand) in south central Wisconsin. I’m a blogger in town, and I have been a critic of municipal policy and local culture here.

As you can guess, I am not popular with everyone.

Still, no one would love to wake up and learn that Whitewater’s a dream town more than I would. If we were a dream town, then by definition people would dream about living here, and we’d be a happy destination with few problems.

Imagine how thrilled I was, then, when I saw in our City Manager’s weekly report that we had been named a dream town in a study from an online business journal. That’s right – little Whitewater, Wisconsin was one of America’s dream towns. (We’re Number 22 on the list, actually).

Here’s what City Manager Kevin Brunner’s report for August 1st had to say:

Earlier this week, Whitewater was named one of the top “dream towns” in the United Sates by the on-line biz journals (see http://cll.bizjournals.com/edit_special/68.html). Whitewater was ranked 22nd among the studied 140 “micropolitan” areas in the U.S. that are defined as small
towns that offer the best quality of life without metropolitan hassles.

Bizjournals compared the 140 micropolitan areas in 20 statistical categories, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau. A micropolitan area consists of a central community with 10,000 to 50,000 residents, along with the surrounding countryside. It is, in effect, a small-scale version of a metropolitan area.

Like clockwork, this story was picked up, verbatim, on a local website. It’s likely to become a splashy headline in our local, weekly newspaper.

There’s just one problem – When the survey says Whitewater, Wisconsin, it’s not talking about just Whitewater, Wisconsin, population 14,296

No – the ‘micropolitan’ area that the study uses for Whitewater is an area of 101,000.

That’s right – what the survey calls Whitewater is actually an area 7 (that’s seven) times larger than the real town. The City of Whitewater is only about 14% (that’s fourteen) percent of the area surveyed.

Where are all these other people of the total 100,000? Presumably in nearby towns, over which our local government has no authority, has done no work, and deserves no credit.

It’s similar to saying that Milwaukee is in good health, when you surveyed an area as big as all Wisconsin, and called that area the “Milwaukee metropolitan” zone.

The survey does not describe Whitewater, Wisconsin at all – it describes an area far different.

An official should be able to tell the difference between big and small, without conflating the two. Even a private citizen should be able to do as much. For example, I am able to tell — even without advanced government training and years of taxpayer-paid municipal experience — the difference between the following pictures —

I am confident that they’re different, and that the one on the left represents a person who weighs less than the one on the right.

It’s risky, but I am willing to venture that assertion.

What’s worse – and if one reads the underlying data one will see – Whitewater, Wisconsin is actually below the average of almost every measure of the data in the 100,000 person area.

Here is the link with the data for the 100,000 person area that the study identified as “Whitewater, Wisconsin” : http://www.bizjournals.com/specials/pages/182.html

Those are not our statistics, for homeownership, or median income, not at all.

Those results from the larger area are far better than ours.

Consider these comparisons, using Whitewater-specific data from CLR and Dataplace.org, and the far larger Micropolitian area date from the BizJournal study:

Whitewater Median Household Income: $39,041
Micropolitan Area Median Household Income: $51,836

Whitewater Homeownership Rate: 36.2%
Micropolitan Area Homeownership Rate: 72.6%

(On the matter of homeownership, it was our City Manager himself, only as recently as May, at a Common Council meeting, who observed we had one of the lowest homeownership rates in the entire state.)

If we are part of a dream town, then Whitewater is the poor neighborhood of that 100,000 person town.

The BizJournal survey is a rebuke to us, that we are not doing as well as our neighbors.

Seeing it differently isn’t just cheerleading — it’s blind exaggeration. A person believing these results might feel good, but at the expense of acknowledging what we must do.

We could continue as we are, or we might (1) significantly reduce the size of city government, so that we could reduce the tax burden on residents, (2) eliminate fees for business permits and applications, (3) end a municipal reliance on ticketing students to balance our budget, (4) dismantle a costly and futile code-enforcement regime, (5) encourage true rather than sham community outreach, and (6) represent our current situation honestly even if it hurts the pride of a few.

In our small town, our city manager publishes a weekly report that he calls, helpfully, the City Manager’s “Weekly Report.” (He includes the quotation marks, presumably so that we know that “Weekly Report” is just a term of art for a weekly report.)

I read it each week, and if I stopped, I wonder if readership would plunge by one-third.

We are a town where there is great emphasis on producing good news, especially from and about a small local clique. Whitewater’s city manager, Kevin Bruner, gave a published interview recently in which he declared that the role of the city manager was to be a “cheerleader’ for the city.

Someone else might aspired to the model of impartial executive, or fair administrator, but I suppose some town in America was destined to find itself with cheerleading as its chief executive’s desired role.

Unfortunately, it’s the chief executive of my town.

Since being a cheerleader requires a positive message, you can guess that unfavorable news – no matter how true – might be discussed less frequently here.

We might try a motto to this effect: “Whitewater: Where the Only News is Good News.”

What happens, though, when the desire for good news is so strong that even suspect studies, reports, and events are presented as municipal triumphs?

That’s what happened when the June 27th weekly report had a proud announcement about the per capita cost of our local police force. The Wisconsin Taxpayer’s Alliance completed a study of the cost of municipal police forces across Wisconsin.

Here’s some of the Whitewater city manager said about the study:

Also, from a report issued recently by the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, the Whitewater Police Department ranks below the state-wide average for cities over 11,400 population in police expenditures per capita and slightly higher than the average number of officers per capita…

The average number of officers per capita was 1.33 per 1,000 people whereas Whitewater’s number per capita was 1.65. The highest number of officers in the State is in Milwaukee with 3.30 with Glendale a close second at 3.25 officers per 1,000 residents.

Unfortunately, our city manager provided no link to the study’s underlying data. No matter – blogger’s were made for Web surfing, and I found the study quickly.

Here’s the webpage link: http://www.wistax.org/facts/

Here’s the link to the Excel sheet with the statewide results:

http://www.wistax.org/facts/2006%20Municipal%20Police.xls

There are just three problems:

(1) The data are from 2006. Since then we have added a sworn officer, so our force is larger than the Wisconsin Taxpayer’s Alliance’s information.

(2) The data include only sworn officers (minus one addition), but we also have a staff of community service officers, who perform many tasks of officers, but do not have arrest powers. Some communities may not have these officers, but for Whitewater, they are part of the payroll, and play a role that covers much of what an officer might otherwise do in a day.

(3) We are a campus town, and although that means we have students among our total numbers, it also means the support of an additional campus police force that the study does not take into account. That force is not present in non-campus communities, and does not add to overall police numbers the way ours does.

If you received this study, knowing – as you must – these three things, what would you do?

You might (1) ignore the study, (2) you might publish its results with fair commentary about the limitations of the data, or (3) run it straight, with no link to the data for easy citizen review.

If you’re a politician in Whitewater, Wisconsin, it’s number (3), no doubt at all.

In almost every community with financial or political challenges, local officials will feel the temptation to respond to trouble with a feel-good public relations campaign.

It’s a foolish idea.

In a town like my town of Whitewater, Wisconsin, that favors local orthodoxy, the temptation is nearly irresistible.

There are three problems with officials’ use of a PR strategy: (1) it wastes time that should go into reform, (2) it distracts people from uncomfortable truths of local life, and (3) public relations is done so poorly in Whitewater that officials media efforts only undermine the diversionary case that they want to make.

Despite all the arrogant self-confidence from officials in Whitewater, this is a group that presents a poor case, and fails – startlingly and often – to understand the obvious, embarrassing implications of their own messages.