What happens when the municipal officials of a small college town repeatedly malign – in print and on camera – a private business and college residents for the conduct of unrelated third-parties? This is what happens: The City of Whitewater Clarifies Recent Comments Regarding Spring Splash, Encourages Residents to Celebrate Responsibly Whitewater, Wis., February 11th, 2017…
Local Government
City, Local Government, Planning
At Whitewater’s Planning Commission: ‘Have you heard any rumors about..?”
by JOHN ADAMS •
There’s a brief discussion about a rumor that a new convenience store might come to small-town Whitewater that illustrates not only the problem of rumors, but others’ unwillingness to point out the problem of rumors. It’s the latter problem that is, in fact, the more serious one for Whitewater. First, I’ve transcribed the exchange from…
America, Local Government, Newspapers, Press, Trump
Trump Will Force Choices the Local Press is Too Weak to Make
by JOHN ADAMS •
A sound critique of the national print press says that it has a limited time left. See, concerning the work of Clay Shirky, A Prediction of Print’s ‘Fast, Slow, Fast’ Decline. Market forces will also take their toll on the local print press, and even now local papers are useful only for The Last Inside Accounts (rather than…
Local Government, Politics
More on Local Problems Now Gone National
by JOHN ADAMS •
I posted in November that Fake News Was a Local Problem Before It Was a National One. (That post described “local fake (or low-quality)” news, but strictly speaking fake news isn’t merely of low quality or error; fake news is deliberately manufactured to deceive. See, How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With…
Charity, City, Culture, Good Ideas, Hip & Prosperous, Local Government
More on the Right Social Conditions in a Small Town
by JOHN ADAMS •
I posted yesterday that Gentrification Requires the Right Social Conditions, contending in part that a small city like Whitewater remains divided (and by consequence limits its own attractiveness to newcomers) because it remains divided by town and gown (and divided within the town, itself, too). Whitewater’s problem is not that different factions do not have a…
Charity, City, Culture, Development, Economy, Local Government
Gentrification Requires the Right Social Conditions
by JOHN ADAMS •
I’ve written that Whitewater faces a choice between decisive action now (to lessen government’s role) or years of stagnation and relative decline before eventual gentrification (at which point longtime residents will have almost no say in redevelopment). See, How Big Averts Bad. As I doubt Whitewater’s local political class has the will for near-term changes, the best…
City, Government Spending, Local Government
At Whitewater’s Planning Commission: Millions But Still a Politician’s Unsatisfied
by JOHN ADAMS •
Last night, Whitewater’s local government conducted its (mostly) monthly Planning Commission meeting. It’s mostly because there aren’t always enough new projects each month to justify holding a meeting. At Item 4 on the agenda, the commission held a public hearing “for consideration of a conditional use permit for an automotive shop at 113 E. Main…
City, Culture, Local Government, School District, University
On Lake, McHenry, and Walworth Counties
by JOHN ADAMS •
In August, I wrote that dorm-construction wasn’t the big story at UW-Whitewater, but rather it was the federal lawsuit against former Chancellor Telfer and [then-current] Athletic Director Amy Edmonds. Even in her mundane story of residence-construction, the Journal Sentinel‘s Karen Herzog got it wrong: the bigger story was an increasing number of out-of-state students (now about…
City, Culture, Hip & Prosperous, Local Government, Marketing, New Whitewater, School District
How Big Averts Bad
by JOHN ADAMS •
If it should be true that small-town Whitewater faces a choice between difficult times now or an extended decline before an out-of-town-led gentrification, that her decline will otherwise be slow but no less signficant as a result, that stakeholder (special interest) politics grips the city, and that this stakeholder politics is really an identity politics…
City, Local Government, Politics
The Simplest Explanation for Whitewater, Wisconsin’s Politics
by JOHN ADAMS •
In my last post, I mentioned Noah Rothman’s perceptive post on the failings – and they are many – of a non-ideological politics, a politics without principle. Whitewater’s politics, unlike that which Rothman describes, certainly isn’t a politics of radical populism; there’s no radicalism in Whitewater whatever. (Those who see radicalism here likely see unicorns…
City, Indolence, Local Government
Indolence Over Something as Simple as a Parking Lot Repair
by JOHN ADAMS •
Embed from Getty Images Here’s a simple observation: if full-time department managers in a small town’s government can’t develop and execute repairs to the city’s parking lots without repeated prodding from the town’s part-time council members, then there’s not much that city government can do. Full-time, publicly-paid leaders should have enough pride in their town…
Local Government, Politics
Stakeholder’s Just Another Word for Special Interest
by JOHN ADAMS •
In a small town like Whitewater, there’s much emphasis on finding and listening to stakeholders. In fact, local policymaking is mostly stakeholder policymaking. As stakeholders aren’t merely and exclusively residents, but are more often influential residents and local special interests (business groups, business people, etc.) there’s a double-counting of connected residents, as though one gets…
Local Government, Newspapers, Politics, Press
Fake News Was a Local Problem Before It Was a National One
by JOHN ADAMS •
There’s post-election consternation about the amount of bogus news sites on social media. This concern pairs with the worry that fact-checking from major news organizations doesn’t work well when candidates simply lie and refuse either correction or apology. This may be a recent national development – at least on this scale – but local news for…
City, Development, Economy, Free Markets, Government Spending, Local Government
The Local Economic Context of It All
by JOHN ADAMS •
Over a generation, Whitewater’s big-ticket public spending (where big ticket means a million or more per project in a city of about fifteen-thousand) has come with two, often-contradictory justifications: (1) that residents needed to spend so much because Whitewater was the very center of things, or (2) that residents needed to spend so much to assure that…