Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 40. Sunrise is 7:21 and sunset 4:23 for 9h 01m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 58.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Park & Rec Board meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1803, the Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans.
Yesterday’s post linked to the agenda and embedded the agenda packet for the Whitewater Common Council session for 12.19.23. Item 22 of the 12.19.23 agenda concerned the city’s Ethics Committee:
22. Discussion and possible action regarding possible retention of outside legal counsel for the ethics committee – City Clerk/HR
General background on procedural events that led to this item is available from WhitewaterWise @ Ethics committee to meet Thursday; council to consider outside legal counsel to advise committee.
A well-ordered town government should be a public institution of laws and procedures, limited in reach, and applied fairly and equally to all. There will always be questions in any community about who did what to whom? Villagers in the foulest hovel in medieval Europe could have asked these same questions, albeit in short lives plagued with disease and poverty.
It is not enough to ask those questions. A well-ordered American town answers those questions methodically, diligently, and fairly. In this way, an ethics committee must give each his or her due (rendre justice) to do justice (rendre la justice).
The advance from a community in the grip of status to a community of free and equal residents depends on doing so.
The city administration’s memo for Item 22 and the city’s Code of Ethics appear below:
Oops — Mission: Impossible Theme Song Interrupts House of Lords Ceremony:
this is a good, patient perspective. why not let’s see what happens? the story says they meet thursday. let’s hope they are thoughtful.
Thanks very much. I’ve written along these lines before, updated now with even higher totals:
“In the years during which I have written, so many officials have held office, many having come and gone, including interims: three city managers, eight chancellors, six district administrators, and dozens upon dozens of other municipal, school district, and university officials. A commitment to simple principles would have produced more stability and been far better for Whitewater.”
Yeah a lot of people have come along over the years.
Yes. Few left for ethical reasons, but they all left. They had plans, proposals, and schemes, and each plan, proposal, and scheme was contingent and dependent on their ability to fit within a decaying scene. Whitewater during these years mostly replaced status-based leaders with status-based leaders.
The reply these types made derived from entitlement without explanation or justification: they claimed right based on who they were, not what they could design or describe. (It’s for this reason that their explanations were so stunted, if not sometimes guttural; they were unaccustomed to explaining themselves the way that people routinely do in competitive endeavors. Unpracticed in offering coherent explanations, it seemed.)
So many departures of so many leaders are too much churn for a small town. Since the Great Recession, Whitewater has been in conditions of turmoil and disequilibrium. Attempts to perpetuate the pre-recession political and social order have been failures. Even now, what’s left of Old Whitewater’s culture wants a return to that time. A successful return is impossible. Old Whitewater, what’s left of it, at least, won’t let go of the impossible.
We’ll have better days with better practices and policies faithfully followed by all, in a city respecting its many residents equally.