Please see a Downtown Whitewater 2013/2014 Board of Directors Nomination Form: The Downtown Whitewater, Inc. Board of Directors is the legal entity responsible for overseeing Whitewater’s downtown revitalization program under the guidance of the Wisconsin Main Street Program, including the budget, staff, and program effectiveness. We are currently seeking nominations to fill five seats of the…
City
CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, Press Release, State Government
Press Release Tips for the WEDC
by JOHN ADAMS •
Let’s assume you’re a troubled, controversial public-private hybrid agency in Wisconsin, like the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. While spending vast sums of public money, you decide to issue a press release announcing taxpayers’ your largesse. You must know – and hope residents of a small city don’t know — that you’re politically toxic, across the…
CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Law, Official Misconduct, Open Government, State Government, Taxes/Taxation, Wisconsin
The Truth about the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation
by JOHN ADAMS •
A person should be able to make simple distinctions, as between the sensible and foolish, or practical and impractical. Sometimes those distinctions should be clear, and as stark as the difference between the contents of a sample cup and a glass of Chardonnay. You’ll hear a lot locally over the next few days about a…
City, History, Politics
Millard Fillmore
by JOHN ADAMS •
I’ve no idea if Pres. Fillmore ever visited Whitewater. That’s Millard Fillmore, the political disaster: supporter of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, the Know Nothing Movement, and a thorn in Lincoln’s side during the Civil War. Simply put, Fillmore would be a hard sell to anyone looking at his record honestly. That’s…
CDA, City, Economy, Gov. Walker, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Local Government, Technology
The New Whitewater Start Up Grants (in Proper Perspective)
by JOHN ADAMS •
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority has been working on a seed capital fund (working on this fund for some time), and today the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation has announced a $150,000 matching contribution to the CDA, and two grants – each in the amount of $10,000 – for entrepreneurs from that fund. The matching grant from…
City, Development, Hip & Prosperous, Local Government, New Whitewater
Which Homeowners for Whitewater?
by JOHN ADAMS •
The preceding post, Who Should Live in Whitewater?, was about immigration. Here’s a second question, a bit more specific: which homeowners for Whitewater? One hears repeatedly that out city could use more families with children. I don’t disagree: it would help our public schools to have a stable, or growing, school-age population. Here’s where I…
Business, City
Design and the Downtown
by JOHN ADAMS •
Downtown Whitewater’s (DTWW) design committee met today, at 8 AM. DTWW is the publicly-subsidized business-advocacy association for this small city’s center-of-town merchants. There’s much to be said for design, for the look and feel of a place. In the end, however, there are few more attention-grabbing sights than empty storefronts. (Peeling paint and trash on…
City, Hip & Prosperous, New Whitewater
Why Williamsburg, Brooklyn?
by JOHN ADAMS •
I’ve written before about Williamsburg, a neighborhood within Brooklyn. (See, TNIW, The Williamsburg Neighborhood in Brooklyn, and The Pickleback.) It’s not because Whitewater will one-day look like just like that neighborhood. There are at least two reasons Williamsburg is relevant. First, that neighborhood shows how very different ethnicities (Italian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Hasidic) can live…
Business, City, Government Spending
Whitewater’s Downtown, January to December
by JOHN ADAMS •
Like many towns, Whitewater has a downtown, and a merchants’ association, in our case Downtown Whitewater, Inc. (DTWW). I’ve written occasionally about DTWW, and not long ago in support of continued municipal funding for that organization. See, The City of Whitewater’s 2013 Budget: Downtown Whitewater, Inc. There’s been a wider effort to reorganize and consolidate…
City, Haiku, Local Government
Winter Haiku
by JOHN ADAMS •
City, Local Government, Politics
The Martians’ Next Campaign
by JOHN ADAMS •
Stories, even short, science-fiction stories, offer lessons beyond their pages. Near the final pages of Wells’s War of the Worlds, the narrator ponders his future, months after the Martians succumbed on our world. He considers the possibility of another invasion: A question of graver and universal interest is the possibility of another attack from the…
City, Local Government, Politics
The Political Risk of Appointment (and How to Avoid It)
by JOHN ADAMS •
About a month ago, Whitewater’s common council filled an at-large vacancy left after Marilyn Kienbaum’s passing. I thought the process – applicants speaking on behalf of their possible appointment – was a good one. See, Common Council Session of 12.18.12: A New Councilmember. My remarks here aren’t about those four initial applicants, but about applicants,…
City, Local Government
About those performance evaluations…
by JOHN ADAMS •
In Whitewater and communities far beyond, cities and public bodies are evaluating their administrators’ annual performance. That’s true for Whitewater’s municipal manager, and for the Innovation Center director, among others. These evaluations are closed-session reviews, but (as I write) I have no particular interest in how they’re conducted or the substance of the evaluations, in…
City, Good Ideas, Hip & Prosperous, Local Government
Model practices are the new exceptional
by JOHN ADAMS •
The signs that welcome visitors to Whitewater assure newcomers that we are an exceptional community. It’s an odd slogan for a city: exceptional needn’t mean better. One can be exceptionally talented, for example, but exceptionally narrow and stodgy, too. The slogan was meant, no doubt, to imply good qualities, but it’s a measure of our…