Daily Bread for 11.8.22: A Solid Foundation for a Better Whitewater

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 4:38 PM for 9h 59m 06s of daytime. The moon is full with 100% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1923, in Munich, Hitler leads the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government.

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Today is the end of a long election year. There are two referendum questions on Whitewater’s ballot, and I’ve written previously in support of both. While no referendum is easy, and no referendum is perfect, these two (for a Whitewater Schools’ operational referendum and another for Fire & Emergency Services) offer a solid foundation from which the community may then make improvements in the city and school district. 

From In Support of the Whitewater Schools’ Operational Referendum:

For many years, in confident conviction as FREE WHITEWATER’s libertarian blogger, I have opposed school referendums, notably capital ones, for the Whitewater Unified School District. It is with equal confidence that I now urge my fellow residents to support the Whitewater Schools’ 2022 operational referendum.  The well-being of our students will best be served through operational stability, and, once assured, that stability will offer time for methodical adjustments in the district’s operation.

The rejection of this operational referendum — one that simply allows the district to continue needed services day-to-day — would plunge this district’s residents into destructive, internecine strife over budgets from one year to the next. Our community, managing through multiple challenges, would make no better choices, and find no better solutions, in the chaotic, uncertain political environment after a failed operational referendum.

There is a profound difference between wanting change and fomenting disorder. We cannot burn this village to save it. Many years ago, using a different metaphor, the noted libertarian Sheldon Richman proposed that the only way to manage the ‘onion’ of government was to smash it completely. He was wrong: a reasonable man peels away parts of government deliberately and methodically only after careful reflection. Opposition to this referendum is an unreasonable smashing in the place of careful peeling. 

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Academic performance will not improve by rejecting this referendum. It’s a diversion and a delusion to believe that if performance is insufficient now, students will somehow do better the day, month, or year after a failed referendum. They won’t do better, but they will be distracted with a year or more of battles over what’s to be cut, and when it is to be cut.

The opposition to this referendum has proposed not a single credible plan for improving learning. Not one. Complaining about academic past performance will not improve students’ present and future performance. (Indeed, opponents to this operational referendum haven’t even proposed an amount of cuts they’d prefer.)

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I urge this community to support the Whitewater Schools’ referendum to assure a continuity of services so that, in these next years, we can apply ourselves to constructive change from a stable foundation. 

In the months since this referendum was slated for a vote, opponents have offered not a single, specific proposal for what might be cut and when. Nothing. We have so many talented and hardworking students in our high school; not one of them would have turned in a paper with blank sheets for a proposal. 

We face difficult educational questions for our community. We will never reach those critical questions if we divert month upon month in debate over nothing except the chaotic aftermath of a failed referendum. By adopting this routine referendum now, the community will clear the path ahead for critical questions of learning. That work awaits us; we have no reason to put obstacles in our own way.  

From In Support of Whitewater’s Fire & EMS Referendum:

For many years, Whitewater had a volunteer, paid-on-call fire and emergency services department. For Whitewater and other communities, that model no longer provides enough volunteers or speedy response times. What once worked no longer does.

This libertarian blogger would have a preferred a private department, but preference does not decide good policy — response to human need decides good policy. While a private, libertarian perspective works best in most situations, it does not work exclusive of other, occasional options. Most of the time is not all of the time. 

A municipal department with a paid-on-premises model (where some fire and emergency workers are at the station and on the ready) is simply faster and more reliable for Whitewater.

Recognizing the importance of fire & emergency services, this libertarian supports the City of Whitewater’s Fire & EMS referendum.

We are a city of 14,889 people, with a distribution that skews both young and old. Emergency services are notably important for those age groups. 

One cannot emphasize enough: this Fire & EMS referendum is simply an effort to provide normal services to this town. It’s false and overwrought — if not mendacious — to contend that the Fire & EMS referendum represents something other supporting a Fire & EMS department. There is no sinister ideological motivation behind this effort; it represents only an effort at normal services for a normal town. That’s all.

These men and women who defend Whitewater against fire, accident, and injury do not act from a partisan or ideological purpose. Claims (false and nutty, as it turns out) that some civilian officials have ideological motivations are both irrelevant and immaterial. What is relevant and material is that Whitewater should have a stable, speedy, reliable department. 

It is sensible — common sense, one might say — to rely on the experience and expertise of those who have served. Embedded immediately below are the testimonials of Fire Chief Kelly Freeman, Emergency Services Chief Ashley Vickers, and Advanced EMT Jason Dean. 

Reasonably, rationally, their experience and testimony should guide one’s judgment. There is no evident error or omission in their testimonies. If this libertarian blogger could discern even a word askew, I would say as much. There’s nothing whatever askew. Their ideological views (of whatever perspective), other city officials’ ideological views (real or imagined), or my own libertarian position changes nothing of the facts they’ve plainly described.  Freeman, Vickers, and Dean speak simply and honestly about Whitewater’s needs. A professional, on-premises fire and emergency services department will ably preserve life and property in Whitewater.