Whitewater, Wisconsin’s latest Common Council meeting was held this last Tuesday, September 16, 2008. Whitewater recently experienced a traffic fatality along its principal roadway through town. There was an extended discussion of which changes to traffic signals might be prudent. It might seem like an easy decision, but risk-reduction of this kind is seldom easy.…
City
City, Planning
Planning Commission Meeting for September 15, 2008
by JOHN ADAMS •
Whitewater, Wisconsin’s monthly Planning Commission meeting took place on Monday, September 15th. Part of the meeting — the principal part, I think — involved a discussion of re-zoning a neighborhood near our local college campus. Much of the neighborhood has evolved from single family homes into multi-unit student apartments, and our community faced the question:…
City
Assessing A City Manager’s Views on Leadership
by JOHN ADAMS •
In this single post, I will offer remarks in reply to the published or publicly recorded views on leadership of the city manager from Whitewater, Wisconsin. I am a blogger from Whitewater, but the Whitewater manager’s views are likely common to career public officials in your town, too. If anything, they’re likely familiar to you,…
City
A Technological Answer to a Municipal Problem: Dog Poop DNA Scanning
by JOHN ADAMS •
There are millions of pet dogs in America, and those millions leave millions of calling cards on lawns, sidewalks, and curbsides each day. While dog owners should clean up after their pets, dog waste is just another excuse for government to complain, cajole, and hector residents to do what they should. Since there are…
City
A City Manager’s View of Leadership, Part 2
by JOHN ADAMS •
Here is Part 2 of A City Manager’s View of Leadership. Part 1 appears in the preceding post. On Fostering Economic Development in Janesville [From a public recording of station WCLO of a 7/14/08 citizens’ panel interview of managerial candidates]: We are very fortunate in this particular state to have a tremendous work ethic,…
City
A City Manager’s View of Leadership, Part 1
by JOHN ADAMS •
I live in Whitewater, Wisconsin — a small town of 14, 296 in southeastern Wisconsin. You may live far away, in a larger city, but your form of city government may yet be similar to ours — an elected city council and its appointed city manager. Our government talks much about excellence and professionalism and…
City, School District
Microsoft’s Mediocre Ads for Its Mediocre Products
by JOHN ADAMS •
I saw this morning that Microsoft is abandoning the use of Jerry Seinfeld in a multimillion-dollar campaign to boost the Microsoft brand. Wired reports that Microsoft is describing the departure of Seinfeld as a planned ‘phase two’ of the campaign. That’s only true if ‘phase two’ is code for scrapping a bad campaign that consumers…
City
Sham Accountability
by JOHN ADAMS •
Accountability – being responsible for one’s actions – is easier when one measures one’s own performance. Deceptively easier. That’s the clear lesson from the example of a South Carolina school district that reported astonishing testing progress – until progress measurement shifted from the district to a third party. In the assessment of independent evaluators, supposed…
City
League of Women Voters — September Newsletter
by JOHN ADAMS •
The Whitewater-Area League of Women Voters has published their September 2008 Newsletter, and the latest issue includes a calendar of upcoming LWV events. A copy of the newsletter is available as a pdf link in this post, and as a link on my blogroll. The September Newsletter includes far more than a calendar: the issue…
City
Why Are Alaskans So Much Smarter Than We Are?
by JOHN ADAMS •
City, Free Markets, University
Whitewater Common Council Meeting for 9/2: Student Housing (Part 2)
by JOHN ADAMS •
On Neighborhood Associations. The Housing Task Force encouraged the creation of neighborhood associations. These associations will be well intentioned, but when they act on their own, they’ll risk overly intrusive actions toward their neighbors. When they seek action from the city, they find either too much or too little support. When they’re on their own,…
City, Free Markets, University
Whitewater Common Council Meeting for 9/2: Student Housing (Part 1)
by JOHN ADAMS •
In this post, I will consider the Common Council discussion on university housing, and off-campus student housing. It was the most heated portion of the meeting, but some of the quiet, scattered remarks during the conversation were no less telling. On Enforcement. Consider the situation of Atty. Terry Race, who lives near the university. …
City
Whitewater Common Council Meeting for 9/2: The Joint Court Proposal
by JOHN ADAMS •
Early in Whitewater’s September 2nd Common Council meeting, there was a brief mention of a failed effort to establish a joint municipal-university court, with jurisdiction over certain local offenses in Whitewater. I have watched this proposal since June, and wondered how long it would be before the effort was abandoned. It had to be…
City
Whitewater Common Council Meeting for 9/2: Downtown Whitewater Quarterly Report.
by JOHN ADAMS •
Whitewater has a collection of local merchants organized as Downtown Whitewater, Inc. Tami Brodnicki is the Executive Director of the group, and she presented last night as part of a quarterly presentation schedule. The group supports and seeks local merchants for Whitewater, and one example of that support is the upcoming September 12th and…