Not long ago, Whitewater’s common council saw a proposal to regulate the drink specials that some taverns in Whitewater offer. After a half-hour discussion of the proposal, the matter was sent to an alcohol licensing committee for further consideration and recommendation to the common council. Not for unfettered consideration — for consideration to propose an…
City
City, Police
Whitewater, Wisconsin’s Tiny Chameleon
by JOHN ADAMS •
Whitewater’s police chief, Jim Coan, is a candidate for the director of public safety position in Mankato, Minnesota. I’ve written about his candidacy before, in a post entitled, Whitewater Chief Coan’s Interview with the Mankato Free Press: Dodgy! after reading his answers to questions from the Mankato Free Press. (Readers who’ve emailed remarking that Coan’s…
City, Planning
Haste Makes Waste
by JOHN ADAMS •
Whitewater’s City Manager, Kevin Brunner, trumpets what he considers a speedy advancement of a publicly-funded tech park for Whitewater. Brunner considers this a sign of accomplishment. He’s wrong, twice over. First, there’s less to Whitewater’s supposed accomplishments than meets the eye. Second, and even more important for our town, is the fundamental understanding among successful…
City, Free Markets, Libertarians
“Quiet Libertarian Victories”
by JOHN ADAMS •
Jeremy Lott has a brief essay entitled, Quiet Libertarian Victories, about how the last year has proved libertarians right about their core principles, and some successes effecting change toward more liberty. Lott observes that The last several years have not been easy for libertarians to stomach. The U.S. government, which had bloated under President George…
City
Whitewater Community Television
by JOHN ADAMS •
Whitewater’s public access cable station has a spiffy new website: www.whitewatertv.org. I have a link to it on the left sidebar of FREE WHITEWATER. Recording public meetings is one way to assure an accurate and honest description of meetings and events. A camera or tape recorder tells an honest tale. There are good newspapers and…
City, Police, Press
Whitewater Chief Coan and Mankato, MN Candidacy Update
by JOHN ADAMS •
There are a few updates on the search for a Public Safety Director in Mankato, MN, a search for which Whitewater Police Chief Jim Coan is a candidate. First, there’s a story in the Mankato Free Press, entitled, “Public Safety Candidates Go Public,” about the search for the next public safety director for Mankato. The…
City, Planning
Carts Before Horses, and Presentations Before Buildings
by JOHN ADAMS •
City, Police
Whitewater Chief Coan’s Interview with the Mankato Free Press: Dodgy!
by JOHN ADAMS •
Whitewater Police Chief Jim Coan has treated Whitewater, WI (and Mankato, MN) to one of the greatest examples of dodgy answers in their respective histories. Whitewater Police Chief Jim Coan is a candidate for the public safety director’s post in Mankato, Minnesota. I’ve written about his candidacy there before, in Signs of a Broken Police…
City
Traffic Lights and Limelights in a Small Town
by JOHN ADAMS •
Like many small towns, Whitewater, Wisconsin has one main thoroughfare through town, past our college campus, connecting the east and west sides of the city. At the campus, there’s a street named Whiton that runs into Main. At the intersection of the two streets, many college students, faculty, and workers cross from campus to homes.…
Cartoons & Comics, City, Dog X
The Debut of Dog X: On ‘Drink Specials’
by JOHN ADAMS •
Here in our small city, among all the advocates for individual liberty and limited government, one in particular has observed quietly, pondering town politics. He’s a stalwart defender of personal freedom, free markets, and honest, open government. He also enjoys a rawhide now and again — It’s my pleasure to introduce Dog X. In this…
City, Police, Press
Whitewater Chief Coan Interviews with Mankato [MN] Free Press
by JOHN ADAMS •
Whitewater Police Chief Jim Coan is a candidate for the public safety director’s post in Mankato, Minnesota. I’ve written about his candidacy before, in Whitewater’s Police Chief and the Job in Mankato, MN. The Mankato Free Press has published interviews with all four candidates for the job. The paper posed the same five questions to…
City, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Planning, Press
On Whitewater’s “Advancing” Tech Park, Part 2
by JOHN ADAMS •
The first part of this topic appears separately, in the preceding post. In this post, I will consider more of Whitewater City Manager Brunner’s published remarks, from a February 8th story entitled, “Whitewater Tech Park advances; panels to study second building.” A Unique Design. Here’s Brunner, remarking on the building’s supposedly unique character: “We are…
City, Planning
On Whitewater’s “Advancing” Tech Park, Part 1
by JOHN ADAMS •
Last Monday, over at the Daily Union, that paper published an online story entitled, “Whitewater Tech Park advances; panels to study second building.” The story is a solid example of Whitewater officials’ habit of stating the obvious, exaggerating their own achievements, and producing whatever airy speculation they can get into print. In the Daily Union,…
City, Planning
From the Washington Examiner: Parody — Resolved that Snow is Hereby Banned
by JOHN ADAMS •
In my small town of fourteen-thousand, in rural Wisconsin, we have both the seasonal inconvenience of too much snow and the year-round inconvenience of planning and scheming bureaucrats. There are differences of scale between the municipal meddling that afflicts us and that afflicting big cities like Atlanta or Los Angeles. We’re not an over-taxed, over-regulated…