Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 21. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:38, for 9 hours, 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 67.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Lakes Advisory Committee meets at 4:30 PM.
For today, a quick update on two votes from the 1.7.25 Whitewater Common Council on development. I supported both proposals, but I’d say the Council’s votes (with 6 council members present) went as one would have expected. There were no genuine surprises, to my mind:
1. A 4-2 vote against the proposal of Premier Real Estate Management 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 units on the property.
2. A 6-0 vote in favor of the proposal (letter of intent), for the Neumann-Hoffmann project, where the Neumann Companies will develop 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 for 150 homes and 60 multifamily units.
Dr. Amanda Bauer is reimagining the future of Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay as a historic outpost for space exploration and future artistic collaboration.
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.
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.
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. ↩︎
Apple pie does exist, it is tasty, and is enjoyed in many places. ↩︎
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… ↩︎
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 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. SeeReports 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.
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.
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. SeeWhitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.
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.
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.) ↩︎
They’ll talk about the past, if it’s their contrived version of the past. Otherwise, they’d rather move on. ↩︎
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. ↩︎
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.
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.
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.
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 81. Sunrise is 5:41, and sunset is 8:21, for 14h 39m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 67.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Home prices and rents have surged statewide since the pandemic, and relief isn’t coming fast enough.
That’s according to a report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum, which found that despite pushes from lawmakers — and strong demand from homebuyers and renters alike — Wisconsin still isn’t building enough new housing.
Since the Great Recession kneecapped the state’s homebuilding industry, Wisconsin hasn’t added enough new apartments, condos and single-family homes to keep up with demand, which in turn has pushed prices up. And after a surge in construction in the early days of the pandemic, homebuilding has stagnated, the report found.
The soaring cost of housing “is a glaring indicator that the state’s housing inventory remains insufficient to meet demand,” the report said.
The answer to this demand is more supply. All the rest is bad economics and bad public policy.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 87. Sunrise is 5:15 and sunset 8:34 for 15h 18m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 34.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The storm virtually leveled New Richmond on the day the Gollmar Brothers Circus came to town. At the time, New Richmond was a prosperous town of 2500 people and one of the most scenic places in Wisconsin. On the day of the storm, the streets were filled with residents and tourists waiting for the afternoon circus parade. Shortly after the circus ended, the tornado passed through the very center of town, completely leveling buildings. Over 300 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Massive amounts of flying debris resulted in multiple deaths in at least 26 different families. In all, the storm claimed 117 lives and caused 150 injuries.
On this day in 1944, American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division secure the town of Carentan, Normandy, France.
The consumer price index showed no increase in May as inflation slightly loosened its stubborn grip on the U.S. economy, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.
The CPI, a broad inflation gauge that measures a basket of goods and services costs across the U.S. economy, held flat on the month though it increased 3.3% from a year ago, according to the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a 0.1% monthly gain and a 3.4% annual rate.
Excluding volatile food and energy prices, core CPI increased 0.2% on the month and 3.4% from a year ago, compared with respective estimates of 0.3% and 3.5%.
….
Following the report, stock market futures pushed higher while Treasury yields slid.
Though the top-line inflation numbers were lower for both the all-items and core measures, shelter inflation increased 0.4% on the month and was up 5.4% from a year ago. Housing-related numbers have been a sticking point in the Federal Reserve’s inflation battle and make up a heavy share of the CPI weighting.
(Emphasis added.)
The cost of shelter continues to increase nationally, forcing the many to pay more of their income to the few for a place to live.
Tuesday in Whitewater will see afternoon clouds and evening thunderstorms with a high of 85. Sunrise is 5:25 and sunset 8:17 for 14h 52m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Lakes Advisory Special Committee meets at 9 AM and the Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1792, a lava dome collapses on Mount Unzen, near the city of Shimbara on the Japanese island of Kyushu, creating a deadly tsunami that kills nearly 15,000 people.
Witness conflicts of interest and hear self-serving claims long enough, and one risks becoming accustomed to them. The claims offered may be no better than a child’s connivances, yet repetition will cause hesitation even among reasonable and independent-minded people. FREE WHITEWATER published a few words on Monday about Whitewater’s new Common Council and Community Development Authority majorities. SeeOn a New Common Council & New Community Development Authority. Today, a few remarks will follow about specific contentions from holdovers of yesteryear’s CDA.
The video of the Whitewater CDA meeting from 5.16.24 is embedded above. In remarks below, I will refer to specific claims from that meeting, and from earlier public meetings.
A few points worth remembering:
1.Whitewater lacks adequate housing. This condition should be evident to everyone and anyone. See Video, CDA Meeting of 5.16.24@33:02.
2.Whitewater’s new CDA majority has proposed a residential development on South Moraine View Drive.See Video, CDA Meeting of 5.16.24@31:47 and professional reporting from WhitewaterWise, CDA recommends approval of 128-unit multifamily development on Moraine View Parkway. This proposal is well-located and would provide a needed boost to our housing supply.
3.Rents in Whitewater are high for many residents.
4. A former CDA chairman, a second-generation landlord, when arguing against these new opportunities for others, concedes his belief that the proposed developments will affect his financial condition:
He [a consultant] mentioned that it would have no effect on student housing. And he’s absolutely wrong.
It’s a candid admission: an acknowledgment that his view is particular, specific, and biased, impacting his interests.
These are not the views of an independent, unbiased analyst. It’s as though someone asked a Volkswagen salesman on commission which car to buy. (Be careful: someone may try to slip in some TruCoat.)
It is an implicit concession that rents will decline in conditions of steady demand and increased supply. With holdings in incumbent properties, this gentleman has a financial interest in preventing an increase in supply that might affect his bottom line.
5. He follows with a disingenuous assertion that he knows of no instance in which the city has provided financial assistance to a project like this.See Video, CDA Meeting of 5.16.24 @36:37.
The claim that there hasn’t been an effort to subsidize is disingenuous because policymakers (and self-interested men) can influence policy not merely through spending but through zoning. They can pay to make something happen, or they can argue against zoning regulations to limit competitors.
Later, when, as incumbents, they decided that they’d rather not have competition, they began to argue against others’ new properties. From 2014 seeDaily Union, Whitewater council eyes zoning for Campus Edge development, where the CDA chairman produced a parade of horribles against more development.
See alsoFREE WHITEWATER @ Boo! Scariest Things in Whitewater, 2014 (“So a new apartment building at Main & Prince is ‘too extreme’ in design for Whitewater? Well, I would guess that existing landlords must think so. [Update: For consumers, it’s a good thing, and a bad joke that anyone from the CDA would shill against it.]”)
Years later (they’re tenacious!) they similarly fought in 2018 against a project on Tratt Street. See Daily Union, Common council rezones annexed land.
That project has been quite helpful and attractive.
As with the 2014 effort, they argued up and down against more supply to meet demand.
6. Perhaps, as someone now contends, he’s simply an advocate of affordable single-family homes. No, he’s not. These gentlemen have argued against affordable homes in Whitewater. In 2022, they argued against smaller homes, insisting on larger ones instead.
Whitewater’s Common Council, by a vote of 5-2 at its 9.20.22 session, sensibly approved on first reading the creation of an R1-S zoning district for detached, single-family homes on smaller lots. A zoning change that offers some builders and buyers, even in limited areas, more options is, prima facie, the right decision.
So what a this lights on for us, lights off for you public policy? It’s this:
A tiny clique of landlords has for years addressed this issue opportunistically. These few wanted to liberalize Whitewater’s ordinances to permit more student housing. And so, and so, there were more student apartments in the center of town. Ah, but when competitors sought approval to build on Prince or Tratt Streets, an incumbent landlord (and sometime public official) used one claim after another under the city’s ordinances to prevent or restrict those competitive projects.
These are proud, private businessmen right up until the time they hold public offices and entreat public bodies to bend to their special-interest desires.
The larger homes these men advocated would have been out of reach for many residents.
It’s as though you told a struggling person that he should hold off buying tuna until he could afford caviar. A person taking that advice would go hungry waiting.
They opportunistically shift from one position to another while leaving residents without genuine, real options. Wait a bit is easier for men who already have than men and women who would like something affordable.
These gentlemen want the law liberalized when it liberalization suits their bottom line, but want the law restricted when restriction suits their bottom line. They could not be more obvious if they tried. (In my own case, the best policy would be fewer restrictions all the way down, but that’s not the point here. The point is that their views have shifted with their interests rather than the common good, and their interests are not the same as the city’s interests
7. Tax incremental funding comes up as an objection to this project. One should remember that the new CDA’s program here is to meet an existing need for affordable housing. A reminder: food, clothing, shelter. Any tax incremental fiancing now would meet a fundamental need. (I write this, by the way, as a long-standing critic of tax incremental financing; yet, this critic can see that some cases are more important than others, are more understandable than others.)
For years, these older men were involved in tax increment financing for Whitewater. They weren’t critics then; they’re raising doubts now they see competition. (These are not free-market men; they’re a few self-helping businessmen.)
Expressing optimism with perceived economic improvements, members of the Whitewater CDA recently discussed a number of the areas of the city designated as tax incremental financing (TIF) districts.
Officials briefly went over TIF districts 5 to 8 during a meeting Oct. 23. TIFS 5 and 7 are designated for mixed-use, a term denoting a blend of commercial and residential uses. TIFs 6 and 8, meanwhile, are earmarked for industrial use.
“We’re kind of getting out of the doldrums of this economy,” said CDA Chair Jeff Knight, expressing optimism of future development within the city.
Our current housing needs are, by far, greater than those of any tax incremental plan or other plan that a former CDA has ever advocated in this city.
If these few holdovers from another time would like to lecture others about tax incremental financing, they should first look to their past roles in tax incremental financing in this community.
Most important of all: it’s a city of 15,000 equal people, many of whom have good ideas for our future. A few older men who keep insisting ‘we’ve never done it that way’ or ‘that’s not our history’ only bolster the case for encouraging new officials, new voices, to advance a different way. We’ve not benefited from the public policy advice of the last generation. SeeA Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA and Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.
It’s time — well past time — to blaze a new trail.
The first full day of Spring in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 40. Sunrise is 6:55 and sunset 7:08 for 12h 13m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 81.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1815, after escaping from Elba, Napoleon enters Paris with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule.
For generations, the National Association of Realtors® has controlled (as though it were part monopoly, part cartel) the process of buying and selling homes. That control has now come to an end with much of the credit going to a personal injury lawyer in Missouri and his five clients.
The end of the Association’s stranglehold on the housing market is a legal victory that’s brought about a free-market victory for buyers and sellers. See Powerful Realtor Group Agrees to Slash Commissions to Settle Lawsuits (‘The National Association of Realtors will pay $418 million in damages and will amend several rules that housing experts say will drive down housing costs’) and Five Ways Buying and Selling a House Could Change (‘The National Association of Realtors has agreed to change its policies to settle several lawsuits brought by home sellers — a move that could reduce commissions’).
These changes won’t solve housing shortages in Whitewater or other small towns, but they will benefit buyers and sellers across the nation in reduced commissions. (America has had among the highest commission fees in all the developed world.)
Well, done, Missouri attorney Michael Ketchmark and clients. You’ve helped all the nation end entrenched, expensive, anti-competitive practices.
Good morning. Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 88. Sunrise is 5:21 AM and sunset 8:36 PM for 15h 14m 55s of daytime. The moon is full with 100% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater’s Independence Holiday events continue today at the Cravath Lakefront with a carnival. On this day in…
Good morning. Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny, with a chance of late afternoon showers, and a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:15 AM and sunset 8:34 PM for 15h 19m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 13.9% of its visible disk illuminated. The city and school district’s Aquatic…
Good morning. Wednesday in Whitewater will see scattered morning showers with a high of 52. Sunrise is 6:31 AM and sunset 5:44 PM. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 72% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1893, electrical engineer Nikola Tesla gives the first public demonstration of radio in St. Louis, Missouri.…
Good morning. Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 58. Sunrise is 6:49 AM and sunset 6:40 PM for 11h 50m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM. On this day in 1781,…
