Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 55. Sunrise is 6:51 and sunset is 5:26 for 10 hours 35 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 3.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 2013, the Chelyabinsk meteor explodes over Russia, injuring 1,500 people as a shock wave blows out windows and rocks buildings.
At the February 3 meeting of the Whitewater Common Council, during public comment, a longtime resident, second-generation landlord, former member of the Whitewater Community Development Authority, and former chairman of that same public body, offered a curious comment about the very body on which he had served for so many years.
I’ll consider his comments this morning.
CLAIM:
While talking about the Whitewater Community Development Authority, the resident offered his opinion of the role of that public body within the city:
I believe the last org chart I saw, the CDA responds to the council. Nobody else.
CITY’S RESPONSE:
In the posted packet for the upcoming February 17 meeting of the Whitewater Common Council, one finds a memo describing the CDA’s actual reporting relationship under Wisconsin statutes and City of Whitewater ordinances. See Memorandum to the Whitewater Common Council, City of Whitewater Oversight of Community Development Authority (Feb. 17, 2026).
ASSESSMENT:
This is an easy assessment. No organizational chart this commenting gentleman cited would supersede state statutes, city ordinances, or judicial decisions (case law) in defining the role of a local development authority. Anyone even vaguely familiar with local government in Wisconsin would understand this.
To have been on the Whitewater Community Development Authority for years, and to have been its chairman, and yet not to look first (indeed, to know by heart) where to find the sources of that authority is absurd.
Honest to goodness — perhaps this resident’s confusion comes from being on a public board for many years and thinking of it as no more than a third-rate private clubhouse. If that should be true, then yes, of course an org chart, bathroom wall, or one’s inner monologue might seem like plausible descriptions of authority.
No and no again.
To the next generation in our beautiful city: live your lives so that your claims are not so superficial.
‘Cloud streets’ surround Florida during arctic blast in time-lapse: