There were a few topics at the June 3rd Common Council meeting that stood out. In this post, I’ll consider an aspect of the proposal to place a Common Council member on the Police and Fire Commission.
(I have not taken a position on whether I support this idea. There’s time enough to consider the proposal’s merits, as has not been approved, and would not take effect for a year, in any event.)
Instead, let me address the concerns of a citizen, resident, former police officer, and politician on the Walworth County Board of Supervisors who worried about micromanagement of the Whitewater Police Department should a Council member sit on the PFC.
Are you kidding?
I should create a category called “Are You Kidding?” or “Inapt Platitudes” for concerns as misplaced as the idea that the Whitewater Police Department’s leadership might suffer from micromanagement.
The Whitewater Police Department suffers from a lack of any reasonable, accountable management.
One cannot micromanage that department unless one first manages it. As they are managed so poorly they might as well have no management, one may rest assured that micromanagement is an unlikely risk.
It would be better to save a cut-and-paste platitude like ‘lets-not-micromanage’ for an occasion where it has more than a snowball’s chance in hell of being applicable.