Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 23. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:37, for 9 hours, 12 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 57 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1610,  Galileo Galilei makes his first written observation of the four Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa, although he is not able to distinguish the last two until later.

For today, a few points about development in our city.

1. Tax Incremental Financing Done Right. (Pay As You Go, PayGo). One of the oddest changes in Whitewater’s political scene is hearing older men, who flacked tax incremental financing their way for years, suddenly declaring tax incremental financing undesirable when now done the right way. I’ve been a critic of Whitewater’s old way for years, and how it is strange it is to hear the men who implemented the old way now complaining about the right way. (In years past, Whitewater spent too much up front to attract a developer. PayGo eliminates that risk.)

What’s the right tax incremental policy that the city’s pursuing now? It’s pay as you go, where incentives are only offered incrementally as development takes place. That’s not a small difference — it’s a fundamental requirement of a good, long-term plan.

On 12.19.24 there was a discussion at the Whitewater Community Development Authority on tax incremental financing. At that meeting, a consultant to the city, Kristen Fish-Peterson, thoroughly answered questions about the city’s new approach. Her breadth of knowledge¹ speaks for itself, with explanations (beginning at 14:12), on pay as you go incentives (14:17), up-front investment money from a developer (14:24), vetting of a developer’s plan (14:51), the developer’s need to meet a but-for test (15:54), and calculation of the details of a proposal (18:53). Fish-Peterson answered questions about the city’s method, each reply being sensible and satisfactory to a reasonable person. Even from the skeptical perspective of this libertarian blogger, this was good work. (If this isn’t good, then nothing in this town will ever be good.)

A story about our past: Over the years, people from outside the city have sometimes asked me about how development here was taking place. Typically, they were aware that Whitewater’s development was underperforming other communities. When I would describe how tax incremental financing was implemented in the city, where we had a failed tax incremental district, they reacted to that old approach the way someone would react to a flock of flying black hyenas².

2. History & Purposes of Tax Incremental Financing. Residents may have heard, as I have heard, that tax incremental financing isn’t meant for residential projects. That’s false. Across America, for decades, communities in Wisconsin and beyond have used tax incremental financing for these very purposes. Whitewater is simply catching up with the rest of America and rest of Wisconsin. That a given person has never had apple pie does not mean that apple pie doesn’t exist, isn’t tasty, or isn’t enjoyed in communities across Wisconsin and America.³

3. More than One Housing Option Going Forward. There’s an argument that because of Whitewater’s current mix of housing, the city should have only one kind going forward. That’s both false (there’s a reason that successful private developers come to the city with a mix of options, because those options meet actual consumer demand) and the claim that the present necessarily constrains future options is often an incumbent’s ploy to prevent options that an incumbent wants to prevent. ‘No further growth except what I like‘ rather than what many want and need places the first-person singular ahead of the far larger plural.

Of course we can do more than one thing at a time, indeed, we need to do several things at the same time for any single endeavor to succeed. (No one says I’ll eat, but I won’t drink; I’ll buy food, but I won’t buy liquid. At least, no one says that for very long.)

4. Mutually Supporting Initiatives. The relationship between public and private (when public is done right) its mutually supportive and should be synergistic. When Whitewater shores up her fundamental public fire and police services, she makes the city more attractive to private businesses and future private residents. No private person wants to build in a city where, for example, her business will simply burn down. She’ll build where she has well-staffed departments to help safeguard her property. That’s a public expenditure for a private, community gain.

Like private markets, a successful municipal policy, cannot be based on a selective pitting of one program against another. Private market transactions involve myriad interactions. Buyer & seller isn’t a buyer & a seller, but hundreds of each leading to the goods and services behind that seemingly single transaction. Try to separate or impede a single exchange, and you’ll have no transaction at all. If Whitewater’s locked in a false opposition between some public and much greater private opportunity, her public services will have been ill-used.

5. Modification as Means of Prohibition. Sometimes people will say let’s chop this project apart: how ’bout half? (It’s usually people who have not taken the time to create or nurture a project that say this.) As it turns out, half an animal is usually a dead animal. Some people will propose division sincerely, others insincerely because they know it will lead to a project’s ruin.

The same is true for endless delays with a project. The late Fred Thompson, while starring in Days of Thunder, explained succinctly how delay sometimes leads to ruin.

6. Opportunity Goes Where It’s Welcome and Some Losses are Irrecuperable. Oh yes, both undoubtedly true. Wisconsin’s a big place, and America’s even bigger. Capital goes where it’s wanted. And, once it’s gone, the moment is gone, and it won’t (and will have no need) to come back. In a free society, later often means never⁴.

1. It’s true, as someone said to me this week, that historically I have used the term ‘development man’ disparagingly in Whitewater, of those who for years pushed unsound ideas. Perhaps it’s time, these many years later, for the connotation to change. It’s not my field, but like a man who can tell the difference between a podiatrist who improves his patient’s gait and one who leaves his patient lame, there’s an evident difference. ↩︎
2. That is, they reacted with shock and concern. ↩︎
3. Apple pie does exist, it is tasty, and is enjoyed in many places. ↩︎
4. You might have said hello, she might have invited you to table, you might have had coffee, you might have learned something in conversation, but how sad if she’s already walked out the door… ↩︎