The Common Council meeting began with a swearing in ceremony for three council members. Two were returning incumbents (Stewart and Taylor) and one was a new council member (Binnie).
Council President. The next action was an election for Council president. There were two nominees: Jim Stewart and Patrick Singer. Stewart is a retired employee of the university, and publisher of a local website, and Singer has served on both committees and other civic groups in the city. Singer was elected president of the council.
Afterward, there was a nomination for president pro tem: Max Taylor and Jim Stewart were the candidates for that office. Stewart was elected to that office, an office that is about a year old.
Whether it means a different direction for the city I cannot yet say. Sometimes a vote reflects a desire for a certain direction; other times it has no such meaning. It will be, at the very least, a different style of leadership.
That we need a different direction — a more tolerant, market-friendly city — I find beyond doubt. That it matters more to be right, than to look right, I am quite certain. There is more — far more — emphasis on marketing the city than in reforming its principal departments.
Committees. Representatives appointed to various committees: Alcohol Licensing (Singer, Taylor, Binnie); Cable TV (Singer); Community Development Authority (Stewart, Stauffer); Landmarks (Nosek); Library Board (Binnie): Parks and Recreation (Taylor); Planning and Architectural Review Commission (Kienbaum, and Taylor as alternate); Tree Commission (Nosek); Birge Fountain (Nosek).
Accreditation. Chief Coan talked about the onsite re-accreditation review of the Whitewater Police Department on April 23, 24, and 25. Citizens can call a local number, 262-473-1371, from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. on April 25th to offer comments about the accreditation effort. I may post on accreditation next week.
Zoning. There was a brief discussion of reducing the length of time that it one must wait for a re-determination a zoning decision. It’s 18 months in Whitewater now. There was an administration proposal that a petitioner would have to wait only six months. That’s more reasonable.
Eighteen months is far too long anywhere, and certainly in a city that needs all the incentives it can offer to new businesses. Nearby towns have either no waiting periods or far shorter ones.
Dr. Nosek was concerned that a developer or petitioner might re-petition endlessly. It’s an unreasonable worry. Endless re-petitioning doesn’t happen in towns that have no waiting period, where petitioners have to pay the costs of a re-zoning petition.
Nearby towns offer a competitive advantage, and they have stuck with it. Anti-market views are often presented in abstract ways, even when confronted with evidence that a custom works well in other places. It’s a impulse to set aside practice (even if it happens successfully elsewhere) in favor of narrow reasoning.
When City Manager Brunner, with consultation of the City Attorney, says that six months seemed historically implied, he ignores successful, market-friendly practices elsewhere. Why would the city manager, relying on the city attorney, know more about successful practices than many people and leaders, in several neighboring communities? Why rely on the dead hand of past-practice more than the successes current in competitive, neighboring cities?
If we adopted a foolish regulation in the past, must we keep that regulation or a portion of it now as a sop to precedent?
A quick (in more ways than one), better approach: remove a time restriction on re-petitioning.
Note and Update 8:55 PM: A reader wrote to note, correctly, that I neglected to mention that the Council voted to recommend, to the Planning Commission, that the current waiting period be removed from the existing city requirement. Two quick replies:
(1) My point was that the original recommendation, from the administration, to the Council was for a continued waiting period (6 months), and my comments were in reply to that initial recommendation. The reader is right that there was more to the discussion than that — the administration recommendation was my concern, but the discussion extended beyond, and apart, from the administration recommendation. I have added this update to be clearer about the discussion.
(2) The recommendation to remove the current waiting period was not, listening to the discussion, the same as the full council’s endorsement of no waiting period. It’s clear at least one member might favor a waiting period, and others were waiting to see what the Planning Commission might craft. That’s not the same as a unanimous endorsement that there be no waiting period.
I support removal of the waiting period, unambiguously and without hesitation. There was nothing in the discussion to suggest that sending it to the Planning Commission means that everyone on the council shares the view that there should be no waiting period.