Tuesday, April 25th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Living @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Drama
Rated PG-13; 1 hour, 42 minutes (2022)
In 1950’s London, a humorless civil servant (Bill Nighy) receiving a grim medical diagnosis suddenly takes time off from work to finally experience life… while he still can. Bill Nighy was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for this bittersweet film. Seniors in the Park filmgoers will fondly recall his portrayal of Billy Mack, the burned out rock and roller in “Love Actually.”
Thursday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 71. Sunrise is 6:03 AM and sunset 7:43 PM for 13h 39m 20s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1836, Congress passes an act creating the Wisconsin Territory:
Aldi and Starbucks are global retail businesses, and there is a good prospect that Whitewater will have one of each along Main Street. If that should prove true, both grocery and coffee shop are likely to be successful. They won’t be successful because of any enticements, if they receive any to locate here. They will be successful because Whitewater will have a clientele for each.
They are unlikely, however, to have the same clientele. While there’s an old debate about whether the distinction between needs and wants holds up (what do you really need, what do you really want?), Aldi and Starbucks will play different roles in Whitewater.
Aldi’s offerings are meant to provide a wide range of low-cost produce and staples. Starbucks offers coffees for a clientele that may have no need of a particular grocery, or any grocery, and will be less cost-sensitive. If the needs-and-wants distinction has meaning, then it has meaning between these businesses.
Those preferring one may dislike the other. That’s to be expected. Support for each will come from different parts of the community, but Whitewater is large enough to support these two businesses with notably different customer bases.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 54. Sunrise is 6:05 AM and sunset 7:42 PM for 13h 36m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 0.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
[these] last months, notably the last eight to ten months, have seen both local malaise (the city) and local turmoil (the school district) in Whitewater….as [residents’] complaints stem from unique local actions and reactions, some known, some inscrutable, it’s hard to tell where this community is heading. As a baseline assumption, one could begin with the view that past is prologue, and that the community is in for more of the same.
As true now as then.
Which leads to an apparent paradox: nothing succeeds like failure. The easiest course for anyone, already charted, is to do what one has already done, in good times or bad. While in bad times that’s a bad choice, it’s an easy one, an already-on-the-table plan. There’s that definition of insanity that comes to mind: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. (The observation is often attributed to Einstein, but it’s unlikely the remark originated with him.)
The easiest path for government in both the city and school district is to implement, revert really, to an old policy of more of the same. It’s only at that moment, after local government has regrettably returned to type, that the hard work for residents in response begins.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:07 AM and sunset 7:40 PM for 13h 33m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 3.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
There are aspects of Whitewater’s local scene through which broad political categories must be understood: (1) there are differences between politics in the city and in the other towns of the school district, (2) a significant portion of Whitewater’s recent politics concerns management of the school district rather than left-right ideology, and (3) in any event the Whitewater area has socio-economic challenges that are not susceptible of quick ideological or governmental remedies.
City & Towns. Whitewater proper is a city of 14,889 and is part of the larger Whitewater Unified School District of 20,444. A key change over the last twenty years is that the city and the remaining small towns of the district increasingly share a different politics.
A moderate-conservative candidate could once do as well in the city as in the other towns of the school district. (The late Jim Stewart comes to mind as a candidate like that.) Over time, this kind of conservative has been supplanted (nationally and locally) with a more assertive, populist type. See The Kinds of Conservatives in Whitewater.
This difference is now so pronounced that opponents of school district referendum spending accept the premise that the towns of the district share their concerns but a majority of city voters do not (“what will you do to address the rural community’s discontent with board spending habits”). Emphasis added. There were once fewer political and ideological differences between city and towns. Those differences are now, correctly, assumed.
But that divide is much more than over school funding. It’s probable that some of the concerns that the 2022 Civic Fracture & Renewal Survey identifies as civic fractures (e.g., “60% of Republicans who strongly approve of Donald Trump agree “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it,” versus 28% among Republicans who don’t approve”) are more prevalent in the towns than the district. The smaller number of conservative populists in the city are aligned more closely with residents of nearby towns than of the city in which they live.
Protasiewicz carried the city handily (and held her own in the rest of the district). See Wisconsin & Whitewater Election Results. In this respect, there is a local electoral limit to the populists’ cultural concerns (including concerns that might lead some of them to believe that they might need to use force). Nationally, populists are majorities in other communities, but not here. Listening to talk radio and watching cable might inspire them, but their inspiration runs up against an electoral wall they cannot climb. Simply parroting what they see on populist websites isn’t a recipe for success. The populists may well keep trying, as Conservative Populism Moves in One Direction Only and Populism Doesn’t Apologize, but in Whitewater Extreme Populism Presents as Trolling.
Again, and again, even if during the campaign spoken sotto voce or in euphemisms, candidates and residents expressed concern about the management of the district. Why it so hard to say plainly? After all, I just did.
There were unpersuasive attempts to tie local problems to diversity, equity, and inclusion, but that’s not Whitewater’s problem. Districts across the state and country, of whatever ideology, are outperforming Whitewater. A hundred PowerPoint slides won’t do the trick; complaints about DEI won’t either.
The Extent of Injury. Whitewater’s problems are socio-economic, and there’s no easy fix for those problems. Once they have progressed that far, an effective remedy requires more than one election, one candidate, one local public institution. There are necessary government actions, but government actions alone are insufficient. This libertarian has always felt that there would never be a time when government could address all Whitewater’s concerns, but anyone, of any ideology, would be delusional to believe a government-alone solution would work now. SeeThe Limits of Local Politics and What Ails, What Heals.
Whitewater can — and I believe will — overcome her challenges. The 2022 Civic Fracture & Renewal Survey points to problems many communities face, but our circumstances are similar to other communities only in part. Solutions for us will require particular plans, suited for this community.
Monday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 38. Sunrise is 6:08 AM and sunset 7:39 PM for 13h 31m 10s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 9.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1907, the Ellis Island immigration center processes 11,747 people, more than on any other day.
Yesterday’s post embedded UW-Madison’s 2022 Civic Fracture & Renewal Survey. Today’s post highlights the principal findings of the survey. Tomorrow’s post will assess the local implications, if any, of those findings.
First, here is the survey’s basic methodology:
The 2022 Civic Fracture & Renewal Survey was administered online by the SSRS survey firm from October 31 to November 14, 2022, with responses before and after the midterm election. SSRS supplied a demographically-weighted convenience sample of 3,031 adult Wisconsin residents and a probability-based nationally representative survey of 2,907 U.S. adult residents. We apply demography-based survey sample weights to better align estimates with the state and national populations.
Although non-probability samples do not have traditional margins of error, percentages from the full Wisconsin sample essentially have a margin of error of +/- 1.8 percentage points for point estimates near 50%, with smaller margins for estimates as they move toward 0% or 100%. Due to subsample size differences, the margin of error for estimates with Wisconsin Democrats (N=1,423) is +/- 2.6 percentage points, and the margin of error for estimates with Wisconsin Republicans (N=1,055) is +/- 3.0 percentage points. Democrats comprise 40% of the weighted sample, and Republicans comprise 42%.
We are recontacting the same Wisconsin respondents for a follow-up survey in March 2023 so that we may understand their civic orientations better with additional questions, and so that we can examine stability and change in their views across a changing political environment.
These are the principal findings that stand out from the survey:
Civic Fractures:
• End of discussion: 60% of Wisconsinites stopped talking about politics with someone with whom they disagree. • Ending relationships: 1 in 6 Wisconsinites have ended a friendship or spend less time with a family member due to political disagreement, including 25% of Democrats and 10% of Republicans. • Anti-democracy: 60% of Republicans who strongly approve of Donald Trump agree “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it,” versus 28% among Republicans who don’t approve.
Barriers to Political Participation:
• Safety fears: one quarter of Wisconsinites say they avoid politics out of fear, with higher levels among Black residents and religious minorities. • Difficulty voting: 8% of Wisconsinites report some difficulty in the voting process. That rises to 19% for the lowest-income Wisconsinites and 18% for people under 30, limiting voter access and representativeness of WI elections.
Paths Forward:
• Finding common ground: By a margin of 3 to 1, Wisconsinites endorse compromise to get things done over sticking to principle no matter what. • Trust in elections: 80% of Wisconsinites – including 78% of Republicans – are confident that their votes are counted, showing resilience against widespread yet baseless claims of fraud. Similar numbers trust counts for in-person, while smaller majorities in both parties trust mail, absentee, and drop-box voting. • Separating church and state: Wisconsinites favor keeping religion out of politics by a two-to-one margin, which helps preserve equal rights. • Making a representative government: Large majorities of Wisconsinites— including most Republicans – support non-partisan legislative redistricting.
Tomorrow: How do these results compare with the experience of Whitewater, in the city and school district?
Sunday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 59. Sunrise is 6:10 AM and sunset 7:38 PM for 13h 28m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 16.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1926, Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.
At the end of March, UW-Madison’s Center for Communication and Civic Renewal (CCCR)released the 2022 Civic Fracture & Renewal Survey. The survey of 3,031 Wisconsinites was the work of faculty, grad students, and staff affiliated with the CCCR. Dr. Michael Wagner, professor in UW-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, led the survey.
For today, the survey alone. Highlights and remarks will follow on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny in the morning, with afternoon showers, and a high of 80. Sunrise is 6:11 AM and sunset 7:37 PM for 13h 25m 39s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 26.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1970, the ill-fated Apollo 13 spacecraft returns to Earth safely.
It says Saturday on the calendar, but cat aficionados know that today is Caturday, a day for appreciating felines. As it happily turns out, while all cities have cats, and some have cafés, Whitewater, Wisconsin has a cat café.
At 135 W Center St, Whitewater, Wisconsin, one finds the BaristaCats Café. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting (and will keep visiting) this nearly-magical space. Pride for one’s own city notwithstanding, BaristaCats is the finest cat cafe that I have ever visited. The design of the space, and more importantly the care with which cats and people are treated, produces a serene atmosphere.
On a recent visit, my wife and I had the pleasure of meeting Sake, one of the cats available for adoption. He was a friendly fellow who greeted patrons in a violet-lighted main room. While we were there, some new cats arrived from a shelter, and the staff gently introduced those new arrivals from their carriers to the northside room.
Residents are not the only ones who have noticed this café. This Friday, CBS News broadcast about BaristaCats. I’ve embedded video of that broadcast below.
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 79. Sunrise is 6:13 AM and sunset 7:36 PM for 13h 22m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 37.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1912, the British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic and begins to sink.
It’s an economic axiom that free rides aren’t free. That’s true of literal rides on public transit and figurative rides through other government programs. While Whitewater neither has nor needs a public transit system, an article from Nicholas Dagen Bloom illustrates the value of income-targeted subsidies over blanket subsidies to all riders in Low-cost, high-quality public transportation will serve the public better than free rides.
(In Whitewater, an attempt in the early 2010s to fund a bus — and the serial justifications for it — is a good example of bad, and sometimes mendacious, public policy. Looking back, the late Aughts and early Teens were a time of weak public policy in the city. When Whitewater most needed good public policy ideas during and after the Great Recession, she sadly found herself with under-performing and over-promising city, district, and university officials.)
Despite flashing warning signs, political support for public transit remains weak, especially among conservatives. So it’s not clear that relying on government to make up for free fares is sustainable or a priority.
For example, in Washington, conflict is brewing within the city government over how to fund a free bus initiative. Kansas City, the largest U.S. system to adopt fare-free transit, faces a new challenge: finding funding to expand its small network, which just 3% of its residents use
A better model
Other cities are using more targeted strategies to make public transit accessible to everyone. For example, “Fair fare” programs in San Francisco, New York and Boston offer discounts based on income, while still collecting full fares from those who can afford to pay. Income-based discounts like these reduce the political liability of giving free rides to everyone, including affluent transit users.
There we are: public services like transit should (and can) be supported on the basis of riders’ incomes. ‘Reducing the cost’ for all riders neither truly reduces the cost nor distributes those costs fairly.
A call to let’s do this! matters less than how are you going to do it? The latter is harder to achieve, and more important to a community, than the former.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 79. Sunrise is 6:15 AM and sunset 7:35 PM for 13h 20m 05s of daytime. The moon is in its third quarter with 49.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 2006, someone photographs a rat in front of a toy piano, and that photograph goes on to become an annual April 13th meme (Neil Banging Out the Tunes) on the web.
Wisconsin has regained almost all the population it lost since 2020, despite the fact that deaths are outnumbering births in the state.
But even as more people move to Wisconsin, the state’s post-pandemic population gains have been uneven. Milwaukee County continues to shrink, while the Madison area in Dane County is surging. And several rural counties in northern Wisconsin are seeing relatively high population growth rates, recently released estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show.
Transplants account for statewide growth, as more Wisconsinites die than are born
Between the official U.S. Census count on April 1, 2020 and July 1, 2021, Wisconsin lost 13,624 people, a drop of about 0.23 percent.
But, by July 1, 2022, Wisconsin had regained most of that loss, according to the updated census estimates. The state had nearly 5.9 million residents in 2022, which was only 1,186 fewer people than were tallied just after the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
New people relocating to Wisconsin — whether from overseas or from other states — accounted for much of the population rebound between 2021 and 2022, said John Johnson, a research fellow at the Marquette Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education.
That’s because deaths have been exceeding births in Wisconsin every year since 2020.
“Even last year, which was an improvement for the state, we still had more deaths than births,” Johnson said. “Migration is going to be the driver of population change, growth or decline, going forward.”
….
Although Wisconsin has as a whole has attracted enough transplants in the last year to nearly make up for its post-2020 population drop, rebound patterns vary widely across the state.
Those divides could have lasting economic implications, as workforces grow or shrink. Population also translates to political power, since census counts are used to calculate representation in the U.S. House of Representatives and to help determine the boundaries of state and local political districts.
There’s a faction that would rather have fewer people, in the city, in the county, in the state. A preference for fewer, however, leads to lesser community prospects.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 80. Sunrise is 6:16 AM and sunset 7:34 PM for 13h 17m 17s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 60.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1861, the Civil War begins with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
Whitewater last had a large, standalone grocery store in December 2015. When that Sentry grocery closed, Whitewater’s principal source for groceries became the nearby Walmart. This lack of a grocery has been a chronic source of residents’ disappointment in the years since. Chronic: persistent, long-standing.
(While the loss of a grocer has bothered me less than it has many others, it’s obvious that it has bothered many others in Whitewater. If anything, bothered is an understatement of community disappointment.)
And so, and so, Whitewater had good news yesterday, in a press release that announced the prospect of an Aldi market on the west side of town:
Press Release FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact: John Weidl Phone: (262) 473-0104 Email: citymanager@whitewater-wi.gov
ALDI Has Submitted Plans for a Grocery Store
Whitewater, Wis. April 11, 2023– ALDI has submitted plans to the City of Whitewater for a 20,000 square foot grocery store on the west side.
Since 1976, ALDI’s number one priority has been to deliver great quality food at the lowest possible prices. ALDI is committed to making a difference in the communities they serve by offering market-leading wages and benefits for employees, using environmentally friendly building materials and stores to promote sustainability, and giving back to the community through product and financial donations.
The ALDI proposed location is the current site of Hawk Bowl and Hawk Apartments at 1380 and 1398 West Main Street. The property is zoned B-1 and does not need to be rezoned. The Pinnacle Engineering Group in Brookfield, which is working on behalf of ALDI, submitted plans for a grocery store on the site on April 10.
Chris Bennett, Neighborhood Services Director, shares, “Bringing a grocery store into town is long overdue. It is exciting to see it finally happening in Whitewater. A devoted standalone grocery store will be an asset to the community.”
The developer is proposing to demolish the existing structures, clean up the site, install stormwater and other utilities, and create two developable pads. The eastern pad will result in a 20,000 square foot ALDI store and, as proposed, the other developed pad on the west side will be retained by the original property owners for future development opportunities.
The City of Whitewater’s Plan & Architectural Review Commission (PARC) will conduct site plan review at their next meeting on May 8, 2023, and render its verdict. The site plan review is the only procedural matter ALDI must go through to receive clearance to build. Chris Bennett, Neighborhood Services Director, further explains, “During site plan review members of the Plan Commission will examine the proposed building for architectural integrity – it looks good and as it should – and ensure that landscaping, traffic, lighting, parking, street access and other factors are in line with city ordinance.”
Once PARC renders its verdict and accepts the ALDI design, then ALDI representatives will apply for building permits. Also, the City of Whitewater staff will begin working with the developer to outline an agreement to resolve the environmental contamination (asbestos) and redevelopment of the site. This agreement would then need to be vetted and approved by the Common Council, most likely in May or June.
The internal review by city staff will continue throughout the building process, with engineers and public works personnel ensuring the building and site are constructed in compliance with the city code. The ALDI plans are available for review on the second floor of the municipal building at the Public Works/Neighborhood Services counter.
John Weidl, Whitewater City Manager, shares, “Staff is unanimously supportive of this project for its immediate impact providing vital access to affordable food and long-term investment in the new tax base and jobs for the community.”
The City of Whitewater provides efficient and high quality services which support living, learning, playing and working in an exceptional community. Visit www.whitewater-wi.govfor community information and updates.
While I’ve never been to an Aldi market, they have a devoted clientele, and Dana McMahan’s review published at NBC News sees the grocer favorably.
There are steps yet ahead, including at Whitewater’s Planning Commission, but the prospects for a standalone Aldi look favorable.
The return of a grocery would be a benefit to Whitewater, overcoming a years-long retail deficiency in this small town. Aldi would prove to be a welcome addition to the community.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 6:18 AM and sunset 7:33 PM for 13h 14m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 70.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Aquatic Fitness Center Subcommittee meets at 6 PM.
The pandemic will soon end (as a national emergency declaration), but agitation and dyspepsia remain as strong as ever. For Whitewater and other places across America, too much is overwrought and under-thought. Far from overcoming the tensions of the pandemic, we’ve an edgy few approaching immediate concerns with pandemic-level stress, frustration, and suspicion.
It’s as though they’ve become addicted to (misplaced) intensity. Along the way, these few are exaggerating short-term problems but offering few long-range solutions.
Whitewater has always been a beautiful but rough-and-tumble place, yet many of these latest kerfuffles are notably needless and unproductive to the city’s future.
I asked an AI chatbot to write a haiku on lingering post-pandemic tensions, and here’s what it crafted:
At