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CDA, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Good Ideas, Housing, Local Government

Daily Bread for 1.6.25: Proposals That Will Make Whitewater Stronger and More Prosperous

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 26. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:36, for 9 hours, 11 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 45.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1941, President Roosevelt delivers his Four Freedoms speech in the State of the Union address.

Whitewater has before her a better future, should she choose it. There are two proposals before Whitewater Common Council on Tuesday night that together will make Whitewater stronger and more secure. A link to the portion of the packet with these proposals is available here. I’ll use documents from that packet to describe each proposal. Each proposal was sensibly approved by the Whitewater Community Development Authority on votes of 5-1-1 (one of the votes in each case being an abstention).

A person, a prudent person, takes care of himself or herself adjusting to the different stages of his or her life. A household, a prudent household, takes care of its members adjusting to the different stages of their lives. So it is with a community: prudent communities take care of themselves by embracing the opportunities around them. Prudent people don’t willingly stop eating and breathing, prudent households don’t allow their members to stop eating and breathing, and prudent communities don’t stop adjusting and adapting. Those communities that stop decline and perish.

Communities that sensibly adjust and adapt thrive, for themselves and their posterity.

These proposals are an extraordinary (lit., remarkable) opportunity for Whitewater. One might say the success of these efforts is bringing to Whitewater the Extraordinary Ordinary from which successful communities elsewhere have been made stronger.

Together, the proposals are worth many millions in new investment for Whitewater.

A bit about each proposal — those who have crafted these opportunities will, certainly, address them far more thoroughly tomorrow evening and in the months ahead.

The first proposal, of Premier Real Estate Management, is an offer to purchase a 10.96 acre parcel of vacant land (Tax Parcel No. /A4444200001) owned by the City located on East Main Court to develop a 60-unit multi-family housing project on the property. The City of Whitewater would receive $317,840.00 for the sale of the now-vacant land. It’s a good price for land now unused.

The proposal has the support of the Whitewater Police Department, the Whitewater Fire Department, and the Whitewater Public Works Department for low call-volume or limited demand on city services. See Reports of Respective City Departments for Proposal @ Parcel /A4444200001.

The proposed construction presents with a design and features suitable for market-rate residences.

The developer has a record of success for market-rate residences in other Wisconsin communities. By design and location, these two-bedroom, two-bathroom units with private entrances and garages are obviously crafted for professionals and families looking for market-rate residences.

In the second proposal, the Neumann-Hoffmann project, Neumann Companies proposes a significant residential project at a portion of Tax Parcel WUP 00324 lying north of the Hwy. 12 Bypass and a portion of Tax Parcel WUP 00325 lying north of the Hwy. 12 Bypass and east of Indian Mound Parkway on about 67 acres.

This area is now vacant, but would bring to the community about 150 single-family homes
60 multi-family apartments. This is the larger of the two projects and quite impressive.

The city’s agenda packet shows the proposal has the support of the Whitewater Police Department and the Whitewater Public Works Department for low call-volume or limited demand on city services. See Reports of Respective City Departments for Neumann-Hoffmann.

This spot has been waiting for a project like this. Everyone gains from this proposal: those many who buy homes, a smaller number who rent apartments, and an entire community that gains more families with children for our schools, more employment, more shoppers our merchants, and more members for our clubs & associations.

In projects like these, with much-improved tax incremental financing (more about that and other points tomorrow), Whitewater fortifies and strengthens herself for the decade ahead.

Rain or shine, so to speak, our community will be stronger for these new additions.

Both proposals deserve the support of the Whitewater Common Council.

CDA, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Good Ideas, Housing, Local Government

Daily Bread for 1.5.25: At Last, the Right Economic Development Structure for Whitewater

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 21. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:35, for 9 hours, 10 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 34.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1933, construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay.

On the evening of December 19th, the Whitewater Community Development Authority held its monthly meeting. Embedded above is the full video of that meeting. Item 3 of the meeting agenda included PowerPoint slides describing the process tax incremental financing in Whitewater. (I’ll address general and particular elements of tax incremental financing tomorrow. For today, what’s of interest is the orderly & transparent process of Whitewater’s new Office of Economic Development and much-improved Community Development Authority.) Embedded below are the slides that describe Whitewater’s process:

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Methodical: an invitation to meet, a written proposal from a developer, a burden of proof on the developer, a review by the city of the plan’s feasibility, a calculation of a payback period, a legal draft agreement if the proposal meets the requirements of the city, and then a presentation to the CDA1.

What does a private man, this libertarian blogger, see in these slides? An orderly and transparent process, embodying principles of open government, visible and understandable to anyone in our city.

That orderly and transparent process offers the best chance of producing sound results through government action in support of a common prosperity. If there is to be government, and I recognize that there need be, then it should — and must — be like this.

How it should be — how it always should have been.

It hasn’t always been like this. Indeed, only four years ago, under a prior municipal administration, an effort at reform failed, and was quickly, regrettably abandoned.

On January 23, 2020, at a meeting of the Whitewater Community Development Authority, then City Manager Cameron Clapper proposed that Whitewater come into alignment with the best practices of other cities, by suggesting (as part of a longer discussion), placing the development director in our city hall to make his or her work more conventional and transparent.

His remarks begin at 2:58 on the video below, and a lengthy discussion continues thereafter:

One month later, for a February 20, 2020, the agenda for that meeting included an item for a new and more modern development structure. It was, however, pulled from the agenda and so left unrealized. At that meeting, the men who for so long dominated development in this city offered a revisionist history that cast their influence as the most productive, and self-servingly omitted their many mistakes2. See Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.

We’ve a new and transparent structure now. At last, we’ve something open, rational, reliable. Long time coming. The days under the old CDA of a distressed tax incremental district, a cease and desist order from the federal government over a conflict of interest, hundreds of thousands wasted on low-quality startups, and years without a grocery until this administration made it happen are now over.

Whitewater’s past development structure was opaque, its efforts ineffectual at best, and wasteful or conflicted at worst. How much did residents know about what was happening under the old structure? Not enough, that’s how much.

And look, and look: no one has to be a government man to see that these processes are objectively more open. (I’m not in the government, in any role, and never will be.) Open and transparent government, by the way, is a right of all private residents that benefits all private residents. It wasn’t easy to get to this point, I wouldn’t wonder. All the community benefits from it.

The fruits of that better process include a superior grasp and use of tax incremental financing3, and a high-quality set of housing proposals recently approved on 12.19.24 on a 5-1-1 (one abstention) vote at the Whitewater Community Development Authority.

Those are topics for Monday and Tuesday, respectively.

Update, evening of 1.5.24: I’ll switch the order, with discussion of high-quality set of housing proposals for Monday and various topics including tax incremental financing on Tuesday.

  1. Much better than times past when the CDA couldn’t even find its paperwork. (Those times were always blamed on someone or something else, making Whitewater’s old CDA perhaps the state’s biggest user of the dog-ate-my homework defense.) ↩︎
  2. They’ll talk about the past, if it’s their contrived version of the past. Otherwise, they’d rather move on. ↩︎
  3. I’ve been a longtime critic of how Whitewater approached tax incremental financing in the past, and rightly so. The municipal administration’s present approach is wholly different and far sounder. ↩︎

CDA, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Free Markets, Housing, Local Government, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 1.4.25: Reliable Measurements of the City

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 20. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:34, for 9 hours, 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 24.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1958, Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957, falls to Earth from orbit.

For today, before going further over the next three days about an upcoming proposal before the Whitewater Common Council on Tuesday, a word about reliable measurements for Whitewater. Sound argumentation rests on a trustworthy foundation.

First, and foremost, what are conditions like truly like? How do people live and carry on each day? Not how a few who have wrung profit out of the city claim Whitewater is, but how ordinary residents living each day know Whitewater is? Will you believe what they tell you, or your own experience?

Second, good data and good reasoning carry the day. A few — too many, really — people in this town have traditionally used bad metrics in bad faith to win the day at the expense of general conditions all around us. They’ll mix and match any number of inapplicable measures or standards to prevent change. Those peddling in fear, uncertainty, and doubt use those techniques to their advantage, at the expense of market opportunities for others.

Fair use. Link

Ferocious opponents of progress, no matter how edgy and agitated, no matter how long-winded, are then and there simply blocking opportunity with a puffed-up display. Even the most furious Tasmanian Devil, it turns out, is no more than a creation of Warner Bros.

Those who stick to sound observation and sound data will serve Whitewater well.

CDA, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Free Markets, Housing, Local Government, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 1.3.25: The Market Barriers in Whitewater

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 22. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:33, for 9 hours, 8 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 15.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1777, after victory at the Second Battle of Trenton the day before,  American forces under Genera Washington then defeat British forces at the Battle of Princeton, helping boost Patriot morale.

There’s a story one sometimes hears, including in Whitewater, that there are only two forces shaping an economy: private and public. In this story, the private endeavors of individuals and businesses are defined as necessarily encouraging of general prosperity, and the public reach of government as necessarily restrictive of general prosperity.

While it’s a story, it’s also a false story, and sometimes no more than a self-serving lie.

Prosperity rests on the free interactions between individuals, businesses, and government. The relationship (of free action) precedes the result. That’s why libertarians (bona fide ones, who read more than superficially) are free-market men and women.

Government constrains, but not only government constrains. There are private men and private business, including those who proudly tout their ‘pro-business,’ ‘pro-growth’ outlook, but who stifle growth and inhibit the economic liberty of others.

They’re not the champions of positive change but its adversaries. They oppose competition.

How does this happen, that private men and incumbent businesses work against the economic liberty of others?

Here are a few ways (and residents of Whitewater will recognize them):

Control of government agencies and boards to favor cronies and limit alternatives. These private men don’t bother to count to 15,000, but instead stop at 4 of 7, simply enough to run a board or commission for their benefit and to the detriment rival businesses or individuals. This is regulatory or agency capture (shaping regulations their way, or controlling the whole agency and dismissing anyone who won’t go along with their selfish ambitions).

They’ll say this is what the people want, but they’ve not bothered to poll a community; they merely assert that they know the popular will. They’ll point to a few co-opted people as though a few were many. To gather these few, a special interest will rely on any claim imaginable, spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about potential rivals with better ideas and new approaches.

Control of a market by monopoly or oligopoly. We think of this approach as applicable only on a large scale, but it happens in small communities, too. One or a few private men will control an entire market and fight to keep new, rival businesses (especially ones with fresh ideas) from forming. They’ll buy resources and deny access to those who’d like to compete in a free market. Many are the one-horse towns where the old horse fights like hell to keep new horses from showing up, so to speak.

Whitewater has had both of these problems for many years. In Whitewater, specifically, It’s not government that has held people back, it’s scheming and selfish private men who think that they own the place and work to keep new enterprises from taking root.

When they talk ‘pro-business,’ they mean their businesses, their opportunities, their way. Indeed, they simply deny, at bottom, that there could be any other way than their businesses, their opportunities, their way.

Here’s a key technique: they’ll argue against any better opportunity for others in favor of an imagined perfect opportunity that they know won’t arrive. They’re like bakers who tell the hungry not to make their own bread but instead to wait for cake and caviar.

Again and again: Who owns Whitewater? Everyone and no one.

There’s no reason for residents in this town to deny themselves better opportunities for the sake of a few old men who insist that it must be their way or no way. The adversaries of free markets in Whitewater are private men who want to deny opportunity for others. No one in Whitewater lives at the pleasure of these aged schemers, no one here was born merely to deny himself or herself better life on an incumbent’s behalf.

Open the market to alternatives, and let people freely choose among them.

CDA, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Local Government

Daily Bread for 1.2.25: The Extraordinary Ordinary

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 28. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:32, for 9 hours, 7 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 8.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1777, American forces under the command of General Washington repulse a British attack led by General Charles Cornwallis at the Second Battle of Trenton near Trenton, New Jersey:

After assaulting the American positions three times and being repulsed each time, Cornwallis decided to wait and finish the battle the next day. Washington moved his army around Cornwallis’s camp that night and  attacked [Lieutenant Colonel Charles] Mawhood at Princeton the next day.

Somewhere in America, perhaps even in Whitewater, a grammarian is pondering whether nouns or adjectives are more important as parts of speech. And so, and so, in the expression the extraordinary ordinary, that person might wonder: does the noun ordinary matter more, or might the modifier extraordinary tell the crucial tale?

The public policy of Whitewater offers an answer.

Bringing the city into an ordinary development position, like other cities, is for Whitewater an act that should be ordinary, but requires instead extraordinary effort.

It’s in this way that Whitewater’s politics (and culture) are best understood. What should be easy is often hard, and what should be embraced often meets special-interest opposition.

Whitewater’s like a community where a few people have always eaten well, but some of those few have left others with less and worse, all the while insisting falsely that less and worse is somehow more and better.

If we’d had better policies before, one could say that this city for the last generation was meeting an ordinary development standard; as we had worse policies before, Whitewater is only now overcoming below-average standards.

We’re now on a proper diet after years of missed meals and poor nutrition. It’s simply that a few would like the community to believe that the past’s poor nutrition is preferable to the present’s proper diet.

For Whitewater, it’s extraordinary to be, at long last, ordinary in policy. It’s from the ordinary — the normal, and business-standard — that we can at last take advantage of the national and state growth that other communities have enjoyed.

Whitewater has waited long for ordinary, long for normal, long for business-standard.

There’s the answer to a grammarian pondering whether the noun or adjective of extraordinary ordinary is more important. For Whitewater, it’s extraordinary to be, at long last, ordinary in policy. It’s from the ordinary — the normal and business-standard — that we can at last take advantage of the national and state growth that other communities have enjoyed.

That’s a notable accomplishment.

A methodical, patient look at recent development projects, post by post, is overdue. Not so overdue as the projects themselves, of course, but that fault lies with the past.

Looking at these projects, of the last two years, is a good way to begin this year.

That’s what this libertarian blogger will do.

Beautiful Whitewater, City, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.27.24: Christmas at Cravath’s Festive Lights

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 48. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset is 4:27, for 9 hours, 3 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 10.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1968, Apollo 8 splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first orbital crewed mission to the Moon.

By NASA – http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a410/ap8-S68-56310.jpg
Public Domain

In Whitewater, at the Cravath Lakefront, one finds this year Christmas at Cravath’s festive lights display. It’s quite beautiful, and unlike any display in the city within memory. The lights will be up through 1.6.25.

Highly recommended.

City, Daily Bread, Economy

Daily Bread for 12.26.24: Economic Growth Remains Strong

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 43. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset is 4:27, for 9 hours, 2 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 17.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1776, at the Battle of Trenton, the Continental Army under George Washington executes a successful surprise attack and defeats a garrison of Hessian forces serving Great Britain.

A reminder, as the year ends, that American economic growth has been strong:

The US economy expanded at a faster pace in the third quarter than previously estimated, owing in part to to stronger consumer spending and exports.

Gross domestic product increased at a 3.1% annualized rate in the third quarter, the third estimate of the figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed Thursday. That compared to a previous projection of 2.8%. Consumer spending was marked up to a 3.7% pace — the fastest since early 2023 — boosted by stronger outlays on services.

Exports expanded by 9.6% in the July-to-September period, up from 7.5% in the prior estimate. That was also entirely due to services.

The numbers reinforce the notion that the economy is still powering ahead despite expectations among forecasters for an eventual slowdown. 

See Matthew Boseler, US Growth Revised to 3.1% on Stronger Consumer Spending, Exports, Bloomberg, December 19, 2024.

Of inflation, a similar good story is true: national inflation peaked two years ago, and has since fallen drastically. See Greg Iacurci, Here’s the inflation breakdown for November 2024, CNBC, December 11, 2024.

The contention that the economy has been terrible, most notably these last two years, is false. And yet, and yet, one hears each day new contentions that distort to the point of mythology the state of the economy. If the economic continues to do well, expect the populists to insist that it was only strong from January 20th onward. If the economy does poorly, expect the populists to say that the fault lies with anyone and anything other than the populists themselves.

One more point, evergreen in Whitewater: Whitewater’s old guard, its special interest faction, has never produced through its policies for this city broad economic gains for individuals and households. For themselves, of course. For others, no.

On the contrary, even in solid national conditions they found themselves bemoaning their own policies’ inability to capitalize. See Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.

In this respect, these transactional, special-interest men in Whitewater are like the populists: they don’t care about the accuracy of what they’re saying, but only that what they’re saying serves their particular political interests.

PBS Wisconsin Visits the Yerkes Observatory:

City, Daily Bread, Economy, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 12.9.24: A Fundamentally Strong National Economy (and a Local Reminder)

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 49. Sunrise is 7:14, and sunset is 4:20, for 9 hours, 6 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 61.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board meets at 5:30 PM to review a community referendum survey.

On this day in 1775, British troops and Loyalists, misinformed about Patriot militia strength, lose the Battle of Great Bridge, ending British rule in Virginia.

Now, in December 2024, America has a fundamentally sound economy:

The economy added 227,000 jobs in November, making for a strong jobs report despite a slight increase in the unemployment rate. Although the labor market has cooled this year, the Trump administration stands to inherit a fairly healthy labor market, with decent job growth across many sectors.

The number of jobs was bolstered by the return of striking workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. Employment in transportation equipment manufacturing rose by 32,000 jobs. Boeing machinists who went on strike in September seeking higher pay and better retirement benefits reached a deal in November.

The agency also revised up the number of jobs added in the October and September reports by 56,000 jobs combined.

Although the unemployment rate ticked up from 4.1% to 4.2%, the economy is looking strong, particularly when you look at gross domestic product, said Louise Sheiner, with the nonpartisan Brookings Institution.

“It’s been remarkably strong. If you look at what the Congressional Budget Office projected the level of real GDP before the pandemic, it’s higher now. We’ve just had a really strong economy,” said Sheiner, who focuses on fiscal policy.

See Casey Quinlan, US adds 227,000 jobs in what analysts say is a healthy economy, Wisconsin Examiner, December 8, 2024.

There are three reasons to mark the present state of the national economy: (1) a simple affirmation of the truth, (2) a reminder that the national economy has been good before when local special-interest types failed to capitalize on it (notably 2014 to 2017 and 2019 to early 2020) in Whitewater, and (3) a reminder that these old-guard types expect deference today despite serial failures for many years.

Amazon is using generative AI to drive more same-day shipping using smarter robots and better routes:

City, Daily Bread, Holiday

Daily Bread for 12.6.24: Christmas at Cravath’s Parade of Lights

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:11, and sunset is 4:20, for 9 hours, 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 28.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Christmas at Cravath events tonight include a parade at 6 PM. The parade will begin in our downtown and end at the Cravath Lakefront. There is also a holiday market tonight from 5 to 8 PM at the Cravath Lakefront Community Center.

On this day in 1884, the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., is completed.

Armadillo on the move:

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, December 10th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Genie

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Tuesday, December 10th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Genie  @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building: Holiday/Comedy Rated PG 1 hour, 33 minutes (2023). Flora (Melissa McCarthy), a genie trapped in an antique jewelry case, is accidentally called into service by a workaholic Dad to win his family…

America, City, Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 11.6.24: Eight Years On

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 54. Sunrise is 6:36, and sunset is 4:36, for 10 hours, 4 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 23 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1971,  the United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, code-named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.

Eight years ago, after an election night, I wrote a post entitled Unexpected and Expected. The first paragraph from that post, with a few changes, is fitting yet again:

Last night’s election results are both [generally] unexpected (nationally) and expected (locally), I’d say.  Few thought that Trump would win the presidency, but many of the other results for Wisconsin or Whitewater were easier to predict.

Trump’s victory nationally will be the big topic for years, first about its cause and then about its effects. Because I believe that national shapes local (and that purely hyper-local assessments are short-sighted), Trump’s win (coupled with a Republican Congress [Senate and possibly House] and a conservative Supreme Court) will transform this city as it will much larger places.

None of us can say how this story unfolds, and in any event it matters still more how we in this small city respond to what unfolds. Each day, one begins anew, confronting the challenges of the moment.

For national, state, and local election results see AP Election Results and Journal Sentinel 2024 Wisconsin General Election Results.

NASA’s Perseverance rover captures Martian moon Phobos eclipse the sun:

The Mastcam-Z camera on NASA’s Perseverance rover captured the Martian moon Phobos on Sept. 30, 2024 as it eclipsed the sun.