Homecoming is over, and this small city did all it could to emphasize progress and success. Along Main Street, during Homecoming, there was, if I recall correctly, a white banner that read, “How Does Whitewater Look to You?” I may not have the question just right, but the essence is clear enough. Not everyone who…
Free Markets
Free Markets, School District
The IT Dead End in Our Schools
by JOHN ADAMS •
Charlie Barr, the Technology Coordinator for the Whitewater Schools, recently presented at the school board meeting on the status and goals for computer technology in the district. Where to begin? Barr has done more to tie the district to a single operating system (any possible iteration of the Microsoft OS) and single hardware vendor (a…
City, Development, Economy, Free Markets
What Does Driving into Whitewater from Highway 12 Suggest about the City?
by JOHN ADAMS •
If a person saw what I described yesterday – a small sign, a ramshackle cluster of dull yellow motel buildings, a small cluster of private, single family homes, etc. – what should he reasonably conclude? First, he might see all of this as a failure of public development, a lack of sidewalks, street lights, directional…
City, Development, Economy, Free Markets
Arriving into the Whitewater from the West.
by JOHN ADAMS •
It’s bracing to enter Whitewater from Highway 12: the initial sights are non-descript, with little to distinguish Whitewater from a smaller town. We are a city of fourteen thousand, with a university campus, but our problems become apparent when entering the city from the west. Here’s what a traveler would find, as conditions are now:…
City, Development, Economy, Free Markets
Community Prosperity: Introduction
by JOHN ADAMS •
We hear much about community development in Whitewater, now more than ever. We depend on our fellow residents; their success or failure affects us greatly. It was Aristotle who famously remarked that one who freely lives outside a city is either a beast or a god. Americans are not so convinced of town, let alone…
City, Development, Economy, Free Markets
Whitewater’s Economy
by JOHN ADAMS •
I’ll write over the next few posts about the state of the economy in Whitewater. I mentioned economic problems as one of the challenges facing Whitewater when I wrote that Our municipal government is narrow-minded, with a poor grasp of economics, and clings to burdensome regulations that make Whitewater unattractive to businesses. We gain housing,…
City, Free Markets
Open Letter: “White, Non-Minority?”
by JOHN ADAMS •
UPDATE, 6-4-07 I received a reply from the Community Development Authority to my open letter, and the reply related that the CDA website is in transition. There will always be some positive achievements from the past that should be continued, but other perspectives and legacies should be relegated only to distant memory. Rome was not…
City, Free Markets
“White, Non-Minority?”
by JOHN ADAMS •
I believe strongly in growth for Whitewater, and in the the importance of attracting new businesses to our city. The Whitewater Community Development Authority is part of that effort. Here is how the Community Development authority describes itself, from its website: The Whitewater CDA is a Housing and Community Development Authority formed in 1983 by…