The latest City Manager’s Weekly Report shows that, on principal fiscal metrics of the 2008 city budget, Whitewater is heading in the wrong direction:

Total city spending under the approved budget will increase 3.28% to $9,23,640 from 2007 and the city property levy will increase 4.27% to $2,718,958 up from this year’s $2,607,619. The city tax rate will increase a total of 4 cents per $1000 assessed valuation from $4.80 to $4.84 for the Walworth County portion of the City while it will rise 7 cents per $1000 for the Jefferson County portion (from $4.71 to $4.78).

By the way, how does City Manager Brunner describe Police Chief Jim Coan’s upending of his budget process, in which Coan grabbed a proposed contribution for a contingency fund, and forced elimination of other proposed positions, for another full-time police officer? Here’s how:

The Common Council at its meeting this week unanimously approved the City’s 2008 Budget but not without adding a new police officer while cutting a few items to accommodate this new position. The proposed additional community service officer position, part-time administrative assistant position for the CDA and Neighborhood Services and a classification/compensation study of city positions were all deleted from the Budget in deference to creating the new police officer position.

There’s no mention of the lost contingency fund contribution, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars….

If Wile E. Coyote dropped an anvil on Kevin Brunner’s head, would Brunner apologize for getting in the way of the falling object?

You are doubtless familiar with many people in town, but it is those you do not know who may be the most interesting. Perhaps a few of us, here and there, have made the acquaintance of Pierre St. Menteur, a shadowy French national, reputed to be a planner, consultant, and schemer. Nothing of certainty can be said about him, and even his existence seems improbable. I can only relate, to the best of my imperfect recollection, occasional conversations with him.

I mentioned once, previously, that most people in my family spent time in Europe, and they all made good and lasting friends among people there. Europe for us always meant France. The French are hardly of a single type. Some might be inclined to an over-reaching state, but there are many liberals (that is, favoring a free market) there, and my family and I always looked fondly on the friends made from among that group. There’s much fuss and pretentiousness said about the French, but the truth is that the closer one gets to them, the more erroneous notions fall away in favor of admirable truths. I have always had happy times among the French, as others in my family have.

As for St. Menteur, one would find the formidable, but not the admirable. He is apparently middle-aged, educated, superficially charming, being committed to a world of managed economies, and cultural preservation through government regulation of speech and behavior. Many of the French reject these commitments, but they are the foundation of St. Menteur’s world view.

I cannot say what professional role he plays, if any, in Whitewater. A consultant of his echelon travels widely, but discretely, to many parts of the world. To my knowledge, he has never stayed overnight in our town; this is a man who would find Marcus’s Pfister barely tolerable.

I’ll relate part of a recent conversation, so well as memory serves. St. Menteur’s accent may seem odd, but then whole story’s odd. In any event, I would not tease through a caricature of the French if I did not love the real people so much.

Adams: What brings you back to our part of the world? I cannot say that it’s a pleasure, but it is a curiosity.

St. M: I love, just love, the people of Wisconsin. It is the adorable town, Whitewater, that says so much about America. All the happy little pilgrims, eating the turkey and watching football, it is super. I adore the unspoiled frontier. Wisconsin – it was ours once, non?

Adams: That was then, and this is now. Perhaps you’re working to get it back. You must have more on your mind than American holidays.

St. M: True, all true, Adams. I arrive to see the state of progress on regulation, on enforcement, eh…on propriety, in the small city. It goes well, does it not?

Adams: I doubt that you’re the behind of all this, but I believe that you’re mistaken about it all going well.

St. M: A budget municipal to the limits of the levy, a property owners’ group that defeats sales of the downtown property, a true vigor for the regulation and enforcement of the undesirable behaviors — all a direction positive and favorable.

Adams: There’s a limit to these directions, directions that I consider neither positive nor favorable. The City of Whitewater cannot spend our town out of above-average poverty, it cannot draw sufficient retail to overcome a lack of light industrial employment, it cannot persuade retail to locate through cosmetic or marketing efforts, and it cannot offer good governance without budgetary and law enforcement reform.

St. M: You would like the pigs to fly too, non? What you want will not happen.

Adams: What you favor will not last. These efforts you cite are inadequate to uplift more than a few. They’ll prove inadequate, and what seems promising through spending now will prove disappointing three years from now. A managed economy is typically mismanaged; smart growth is typically slow-going and slow-witted; our educational technology plan will prove ignorant.

St. M: What you call prove is the wish of the minority viewpoint, that’s all. These little few, they are not the city. The city it is for the decent, the proper, the citizens upstanding, with their police guardians. The student, the foreigner, the destitute – these are the blight of the city. The marketing, it does not mention these people.

Adams: Interesting that you’ve mentioned marketing. I know that our city will soon announce a new marketing effort. Is that your doing?

St. M: The credit, the honor, comes only after the success, Adams. This you must know. For now, I am merely the visitor and spectator to these developments.

Adams: Sound fundamentals would be of better use to us than publicity. If our taxes are low, and spending constrained, and our regulatory approval rapid, we will have something fantastic to market to Wisconsin and the region. We can employ more, more productively, through expansion of light industry and grey collar services than though a push for retail that will prove cosmetic.

St. M: The marketing is the perception, and the perception, it is the reality. Is this the foreign interloper, the scrounger, the looker for work? Non, I do not see this man; he is not here. Is this the student, the maker of trouble and trash? Non, he is not free in the streets; he is inside the school only. Is this the neighborhood pig-sty, the dirty dwelling? Non, this is the Services of the Community that defends against the little pigs.

It is clean and beautiful in the video and the pamphlet. This is the little city.

Adams: Anyone will see that there’s more than that to the city. No one will build on marketing alone — visits will be more important than promotional efforts and chaperoned stops to specific areas of the city.

St. M: This you say, but I do not believe. It is the marketing that I believe …. à la prochaine.

This is Part 2 of my review of the latest Common Council meeting, on November 20th. Part 1 was posted previously.

On Tax Rates.

City Manager Brunner mentioned that tax rates in Whitewater have been declining year over year. That sounds impressive, but it’s not meaningful by itself. A reduction of tax rates in the city would be meaningful to spur growth among existing city residents only if (1) other fees and fines were stationary or falling too, and (2) the reductions benefited entrepreneurs or potential entrepreneurs in the city, and (3) no one could leave the city.

Our municipal economy is not an island. One key part of assessing the value of tax reduction is comparatively, one location to another. If taxes, fees, and other burdens decline more elsewhere, that relative advantage to another town means more than our absolute, but smaller, reduction. People will stay there, and others will flock there.

Our problem is more than absolute; it’s relative.

On Kim Hixson.

How many people are truly persuaded when Kim Hixson bloviates talks on an issue? Hixson doesn’t even speak to his fellow council members; he’s always mugging for the camera, with a louder-than normal, odd tone. Does he practice in front of a mirror? Hixson was the Council member who proposed that Whitewater purchase a super-duper leaf vacuum, at the cost of, I don’t know, about a gazillion dollars.

I’m here to help, Dr. Hixson. Instead of spending all that money on leaf vacuums, I can get you – yes, you — what you need to help the city. Over at the FREE WHITEWATER Department of Engineering for Better Everyday Living™, the design team’s built a device for leaf vacuuming. They estimate the cost per unit at only $76.94.

They have created a technical schematic. (If this should seem too complex, feel free to write me at adams@freewhitewater.com and a member of the staff will reply to guide through all the technicalities.)

Here’s the detailed schematic:

Amazing, isn’t it?

Hixson could play a role here, though – this device requires a human operator. The heavy duty Shop Vac attaches to an operator through the use of highly durable duct tape. Afterward, just plug in the extension cord, and vacuum away any loose foliage you find. Problem solved!

(This astonishing device even incorporates a Moisture-Alert feature. When the vacuum comes into contact with damp leaves or water, the operator immediately receives an unmistakable electric signal, alerting him to the presence of excessive moisture. Trials with monkey test-subjects confirm that the signal is, in fact, unmistakable. It’s just another fine innovation from FREE WHITEWATER.)

Dr. Hixson mentioned that some of his constituents would willingly have their taxes raised to give Jim Coan another police officer. Not everyone in the city shares that view. I am sure though, that if Hixson speaks for those who would pay more in taxes, he must be willing to volunteer his services without charge for leaf removal.

The rest of us would be grateful for each moment he spends outside, picking up leaves.

Congeniality out the Window!

I wrote before about the on-boarding session that the Common Council conducted earlier this year to improve congeniality. Here’s part of what I wrote, as harmony seemed to have improved:

The interesting question is whether this harmony will hold when the sessions are not fixed on budget presentations, department by department. If idle hands are the devil’s workshop, then an open agenda is a grandstander’s opportunity.

Well, it only takes one skunk to spoil a garden party. It’s funny about our politician-dentist: he’s his own worst enemy. Apparent anger and hostility overcomes him so easily that he undermines his own case and image, almost every time. He’s not alone in what he wants, but he is nearly alone in how he conveys it. The more exposure he gets, the worse he’ll do. I am convinced he could not run and win city-wide this way.

Socialists in the Dairyland.

Every time you don’t like a commercial development, does it make sense to ask the city’s taxpayers to purchase the property, to prevent the development from happening? No, because it shows that (1) you’re ignorant of economics, and (2) worse, your ignorance will wreck our economy. There’s considerable imbecility in an approach that favors municipal purchases of anything a cranky politician dislikes simply because he dislikes it. (Note to UWW students: Relax. The Thirteenth Amendment will keep you safe from an approach based on purchasing whatever a local politician dislikes.)

Our latest Common Council meeting was a packed night, with approval of the city’s proposed budget for 2008. Here are the highlights, Part 1.

Jim Coan’s Big Night.

Background — the Common Council, at its last meeting on November 6th, increased the amount of the tax levy to the maximum that Wisconsin would allow for 2008. The stated purpose of the increase was to put money into a contingency fund, on the theory that if the state allowed a given tax levy, the city should take advantage of it, to increase the tax levy to the maximum percentage allowed by law. At the time of the November 6th meeting, City Manager Kevin Brunner proudly declared that the increase was a good idea, as the city had to “use it or lose it.”

In the intervening two weeks, Jim Coan saw an opportunity to persuade Council members to advocate an amendment to the city’s budget proposal, to add an additional officer. That’s an approximately 80,000 dollar, annual expense. Coan proposed getting the money from the increase in the tax levy, plus elimination of other proposed (non-police) positions.

(I advocated, in my commentary on the proposed budget, that spending be reduced, and passed back to residents, by the equivalent of 5% per year below the levy. The Common Council moved in the opposite direction, rushing to tax to the maximum extent allowed by law.)

I knew about Coan’s plans, including taking Common Council members on patrol car rides around the city. I expected him to succeed in his efforts, on a 5-2 vote.

It was a success for Coan, winning on a narrow 4-3 vote. Jim Coan had a public relations problem after the string of burglaries that hit the city, and this was an opportunity to say that he needed more officers. The problem, you see, wasn’t that his force is ill-trained; it’s that they are understaffed!

His department took Common Council members on patrol car rides, at a time of public concern about crime and — poof! — there was an amendment to the proposed 2008 budget for another officer. I do not know, however, if Coan gave supportive Council members a sucker and a pat on the head after each ride.

Implications:

(1) For Public Safety. Coan has no evidence that another officer would have prevented the robberies. One more patrol officer on a poorly trained force will gain us nothing. The existing force bungled the investigation, and Coan cannot show how one more officer would have made a difference. His present force doesn’t make a sufficient difference.

(2) For the Budget. We will have an additional 80,000 expense, annually. The proposal to tax to the limit for a contingency fund lasted – wait for it – less than two weeks. The administration wanted its contingency, but Coan wanted his officer. Coan won.

(3) For Common Sense. Miss Kienbaum voted for the proposal on the theory that they’d have to approve an additional, full-time officer, sooner or later. Really? Why the presumption of inevitability? It’s not inevitable, any more than other human events are inevitable.

(4) For Kevin Brunner. I have been critical of our city manager’s reliance on planning, but worse still has been his politeness and deference to those causing real problems. All the quotations in the world won’t fix our police department.

A more honest forthright statement or two would help. When asked what he thought, about a proposal that turned his budget upside down in the space of two weeks’ time, the best that Brunner could say was that the council need not take action on the police request on November 19th. That’s true, but that’s not what really what Council members were asking. Did Brunner favor the additional of an officer or not? ‘Yes’ or ‘no’ was what people wanted to hear, and when they did not get ‘no,’ then went ahead and voted ‘yes.’

There are two possibilities: (1) Coan and Brunner were actually in agreement, but Brunner took a more neutral public position, or (2) Coan just ran around Brunner, and got his, Coan’s, way.

One thing’s certain: Coan set the agenda, either way. Coan got his majority, and showed the community who really runs this city. Either he did it through a behind-the-scenes agreement with Brunner, or by running around Brunner to upend the process. As an organizational and political matter, it’s more than a minor mistake to allow Coan to modify the process this way, on an amendment that cuts proposed personnel from other departments’ budgets.

Would the vote have gone the other way if Brunner had declared straightforward opposition? I don’t know. It would have been a sign, though, that a man appointed to manage the city can at least manage its administration and that administration’s budget proposal.

I do know that Coan is the most powerful man in town. He may be untrustworthy, but he can gin up a majority when he needs one. It’s not by accident that Coan sits at the table during the meeting, unlike any other department head. He has a small but vocal constituency, the Whitewater Register behind him, a compliant police commission, a cowed Common Council, and an overly deferential city administration. Jim Coan has not been held accountable in this town, and when he wants something – even something that he’ll squander – he gets it.