Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:05 and sunset is 7:43 for 13 hours 38 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 13.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM and the Library Board at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1836, Congress passes an act creating the Wisconsin Territory (an act that would go into effect on July 3 of that year).
Whitewater, like other communities, has controversies over housing. Also like other communities — but often with greater intensity here in town — some of the claims about a housing proposal will be misguided.
The Whitewater Common Council will consider tonight the Stonehaven proposal for fourteen, owner-occupied, single-family homes on land that now sits vacant, as it has remained for so many years.
The question for tonight’s session: Can the Whitewater Common Council, after months of the proposal’s approval at several prior public meetings, craft with the project’s developer a plan to bring these owner-occupied, single-family homes to Whitewater?
Some of the claims about the Stonehaven project are the result of inaccurate information. A few of the claims made against the project, notably at meetings in February, have been oddly, even recklessly, overwrought.1 (There’s no surprise in this state of affairs. Those watching the months of meetings and discussions about the project would know that some of the opposition to the project has been outcome-driven: a series of claims at each moment, often disconnected from each other, simply designed to prevent these single-family homes by hook or crook.2)
A review of the council packet for tonight’s meeting provides answers to questions about the project. See City of Whitewater, Common Council Meeting Packet, Apr. 20, 2026.
1. Open, Public Consideration. Whitewater’s public bodies have considered and advanced this project previously following several open-session discussions:
On August 19, 2025, the Common Council approved the sale of two Community Development Authority owned parcels to Stonehaven Development. On December 18, 2025, the CDA reviewed and recommended the proposed project. On February 17, 2026, the Whitewater Common Council approved requested rezoning on these properties. On March 19, 2026, the CDA then recommended the development agreement to the Common Council for approval. On April 9, 2026, the Common Council considered the development agreement, and again tonight the development agreement is before the city in a public meeting.
There’s no secret here; this has been a recorded public process, repeatedly and thoroughly reviewed. Whitewater’s not Roswell, New Mexico: there’s no reason to insinuate that there’s a plot to conceal the Stonehaven proposal’s details as though officials were concealing the bodies of tiny extraterrestrials.3
2. The Interest Rate. It’s false to contend that tonight’s meeting aims to set a zero-interest rate for the project: the entire purpose of tonight’s meeting was, following a decision by the council on April 9, to seek a different solution. See Video beginning at 3:10:06, Whitewater Common Council, April 9, 2026. Anyone who had followed the discussion on April 9 would know this.
To contend otherwise after April 9 would be either a misunderstanding or an intentional distortion of the actions and deliberations of the Whitewater Common Council.
3. Financial Review. Ehlers, an independent, third-party financial advising firm, has reviewed this project thoroughly. See Common Council Meeting Packet, Apr. 20, 2026, at 71-86.
This is an incremental plan, designed as a revolving fund in which as homes are built in stages, the city is recompensed from the developer at each stage.
This is a well-reviewed proposal.
4. Overcoming Past Market Failures. This libertarian blogger is, by the very nature of being libertarian, a free-market man. And yet, and yet, as I wrote recently on the nature of economic demand, there are instances, undeniably, of free-market failure:
Nothing about correctly noting the vast powers of free markets for efficient coordination (superior both morally and practically to command schemes) denies that market action depends on effective demand. No rational economic arrangement runs on magic.
Whitewater is a community that, from the Great Recession through to this present decade (that is, 2007-2020) has suffered from market inadequacies of owner-occupied, single-family housing. I wish it were otherwise, and yet intellectual honesty compels one to see a problem clearly.
Whitewater’s student rental operators benefitted greatly during this time, but ordinary residents seeking single-family homes were left (far) behind. Policymakers of the last decade should have addressed these needs but did not. The only worse outcome than too few single-family homes over the last twenty years would be too few single-family homes for the next ten.
One returns to this question for the Whitewater Common Council: In a city of nearly sixteen thousand, where there’s a lack of adequate homes, can a plan to bring about even fourteen, single-family owner-occupied homes at a reasonable rate be crafted? Our council members easily possess the ability to arrive at a deal for these needed homes. If even this cannot be done — and of course it can reasonably and sensibly be done — then nothing can be done in this beleaguered market with an under-supply of owner-occupied, single-family houses.
A deal with this private developer can — and should — be reached tonight.
The full, thorough (indeed exhaustive) agenda packet for the session tonight appears below:
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- See Empty Allegations Against a Development Project, FREE WHITEWATER, Feb. 12, 2026. ↩︎
- Ahab pursued a whale with less fervor. Some pursuers, fictional or real, lose perspective in their pursuits. ↩︎
- It’s improbable that any bodies of tiny extraterrestrials were found in 1947 at Roswell. It would, however, be quite something if a few living creatures from another world landed in Whitewater. After a thousand other questions, someone might then ask: So, how do you manage social media misinformation on your planet? ↩︎
Upcoming posts (in no decided order): The Regents, Claims of Legacy, a Particular Species of Democrat, a Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, ‘What Ails, What Heals’ Reviewed, and Outcome Driven Opposition.