Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will see light rain with a high of 48. Sunrise is 7:20 and sunset is 4:22 for 9 hours 2 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 2.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1865, Secretary of State William Seward proclaims the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery throughout the United States.
Yesterday’s post mentioned that there were other points about the City of Whitewater’s budget to consider. I’ll take up one of those points today, about City of Whitewater employees’ positions on the city salary scale.
CLAIM: “I think you have gone in a lot of your employment brackets where you’re hiring or you have staff that you are moving a lot of people up to the top part of the bracket.” See Video @ 28:13, December 2, 2025 Common Council meeting.
CITY REPLY:
As of December 5, 2025, the City employs 119 individuals, of whom only 10 employees are currently
compensated at the top of their designated salary range. Of these 10 employees:
- 2 are recent hires, whose placement reflects market conditions and the qualifications necessary to
successfully recruit for their positions; and- 8 employees have served the City for no fewer than 18 years, with the majority exceeding 20 years
of service. These individuals have reached the top of their respective ranges through long-term
tenure, sustained performance, and adherence to the City’s established compensation structure.- On average, employees across the City are positioned at 53.74% of their respective salary ranges.
This means that, on average, employee pay sits just over halfway between the minimum and
maximum of each position’s established range.
Salary placement decisions are influenced by various factors including, but not limited to, market
competitiveness, availability and qualifications of applicants, internal equity, and the City’s ability to
recruit and retain skilled employees.
(Emphasis added.) See Employee Salary Ranges Memo, City of Whitewater, December 16, 2025.
ASSESSMENT: The claim on December 2 came from a student-rental landlord who was, it turns out, speculating baselessly. (About what he thought, which it turned out had no factual basis.) ‘Just asking questions,’ that sort of thing. It’s as though Edna and Gertrude took their across-the-clothesline conversation to the Whitewater Common Council lectern.
The speculation was always an improbability: an organization of the City of Whitewater’s size is too small to hire heavily at the top of the scale; that practice comes, if at all, only in much larger organizations with far more employees to bear the weight of top-scale salaries for a few. It’s only a much larger organization — public or private — that would be able to do so (or would even try to do so). The December 2 question comes from a failure to understand the load-bearing requirements of scale.
For an employer like the City of Whitewater (or Fort Atkinson, Milton, etc.) the best you’re hoping for is to attract employees who like public work and (this is key) stay in public work because they like their colleagues. (Legal and medical clinics attract talent the same way — dedication to the work and affection for colleagues. It’s not for salary, honest to goodness; they’d make far more in the private sector.)
Although the claim about the salary scale was easily refuted, it has another attribute. It’s uncreative. If someone wants to advance a conspiratorial claim, why not go big?
Something like this: Is it true that Bigfoot keeps an office in Whitewater’s municipal building?
‘Cause, you know, I saw something on the internet…
