Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny, with a chance of late afternoon showers, and a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:15 AM and sunset 8:34 PM for 15h 19m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 13.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
The city and school district’s Aquatic Center Subcommittee meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1775, the Continental Army is established by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of the United States Armed Forces.
For over two years, Whitewater’s residents have waited, with hope, for access to a $1.9 million housing fund that would support owner-occupied housing in the city. Now, at the last moment, a few interested men have proposed to the Community Development Authority that the fund should be available to landlords or non-occupant investors to subsidize rental properties in a city that is, already awash in rental properties.
No, and no again. There is a notable temerity (lit., an excessive confidence or boldness; audacity) in those who would ask a Community Development Authority for a special interest purpose on behalf of rental properties in a city flooded with rental properties. Worse, of course, would be any agency claiming to represent community development, or professing to be a common council, that allowed even a dime’s diversion for so-called ‘investor-owned’ properties.
This community needs and wants more residents living in their own single-family homes. This is a nearly universal understanding. There are few topics in Whitewater so clear to residents as this one.
Below, I have embedded a copy of the changes that a local banker has reportedly made to the original draft. One sees where he (and perhaps those few of his ilk) have removed, in red strikethroughs, each and every requirement for owner-occupied housing, thereby opening the door to landlords and so-called “non-occupant investors.” Toward the end of these revisions, he strikes the requirement that recipients of this public money be part of a public meeting process. (It’s a convenient way for landlords and non-occupant investors to take public money while shielding themselves from public notice.)
This edited draft is both exemplar and parody of regulatory capture, where special interests manipulate a public process for their own private ends. To adopt these revisions, and allow landlords to take from this housing fund (when we have a glut of rental properties), would create a crisis of legitimacy for the Community Development Authority and Whitewater Common Council. Individual members of the CDA and Common Council should recognize that serving a particular interest like this, when the result is both unwanted and unnecessary, would be a fundamental break from responsible policy and representation of the community. No one is appointed, and no one is elected, to serve only a few men. That’s what one-horse southern towns are for.
The chairman of the Whitewater Community Development Authority, the president of the Whitewater Common Council, and all the members of each, have an obligation to preserve their institutions’ reputations in conformity with good policy and public expectations. Adopting these revisions, for those who would do so, would be a fundamental break with their own community. No one in office took an oath to serve a special interest; the oath is for public service.
People choose freely, sometimes well and sometimes poorly. Some poor choices, however, are fundamentally wrong, and impossible to rectify or repair. Such wrongs change irrevocably an official’s or institution’s legitimacy within a community. If the Community Development Authority should choose wrongly, and if the Common Council should choose wrongly, those doing so will not be able to say that so many in the community, one libertarian blogger among them, did not caution them against that wrongful choice.
Link: Draft Proposal.
This is a completely ridiculous proposal. No one wants it. Well I guess we all know who does but that’s about 1% of the town. Residents will need to hold the line against this “re-routing” of money. Why do we bother to elect people who only serve a few? Same old, same old right? We are going to have to watch every penny of this.
The second draft is so far outside community expectations (or suitable policy for Whitewater) that the community will have to track the program much more closely than would otherwise have been necessary. One looks, then moves, toward need.
Good morning John. My buddy posted so now it is my turn.This is so UNBELIEVABLE that it fits Whitewater like a glove.That’s not what theu money was for and EVERYONE knows it. Says it all right there “That’s what one-horse southern towns are for” I thought this was a government of “we the people”.
The large sum of money was sure to be tempting for illegitimate grabbing, as it will be for plaintive cries about the needs of the few (at the unmentioned expense of the many). Someone is sure to carry about a big sack of rationalizations and empty justifications. (There’s been much of this already, and more will be on the way.)
No one in Whitewater needs more rental or investor non-owner occupants. The draft obviously wasn’t planned to be discussed. It was planned to be passed without notice. This is why people work here but live elsewhere. No city is perfect but this is not a normal local government if it passes this. Whitewater is trying so hard for owner-occupied to become a more balanced place. This will exacerbate Whitewater’s problems. Campus has its own challenges but there are sensible people who will see this as a bad sign.
Your theory/claim/perspective that the government has historically been a tool of special interests just got a lot of confirmation! At least you can’t say that the town doesn’t supply contradictory and self-defeating examples for you to point out. On this one the whole town (and staff on campus) probably sees it the same way.
No, no one needs more, and Whitewater should not subsidize more. You know, these last months have seen, as the last seven or so years have seen, a sense of unjustified, unmerited entitlement from a few community members and their willing enablers in local office that’s been as blatant and embarrassing, again and again on camera, recorded for review.
The world has enough small places beset with cronyism. This small and beautiful town needs, and deserves, better standards. That has been Old Whitewater’s way, and it’s beneath normal American standards.
For it all, these gentlemen have received only mild, occasional replies. Perhaps they’ve concluded that they are immune to any response. How they think, in the end, matters less than what they do, and what others do. It’s been many years since this city has seen a diligent, dogged public policy critique. Commenter Attendee listed a few days ago the troubled or ridiculous projects of the past.
I’ve thought about his remark since he made it. The pandemic was disruptive for everyone, and there have been concerns about other recent actions in the city or schools, but a disciplined, determined, and successful campaign on a specific public policy question hasn’t happened in Whitewater in years. Concerns, of course. Responses, of course. A cause to be fought with diligence and discipline, whatever the odds, to a successful conclusion? No, it has been years. (Some recent community efforts, however sincere, have been undisciplined and uncoordinated.)
A person starts with a set of principles, applies them to his community, and acts accordingly if, but only, if necessary. It doesn’t matter if a few others are convinced they are variously immovable, irresistible, or invincible. All justified campaigns begin with clear principles, under animating conditions, with the diligence and determination of a dark horse underdog.
I think it’s a good way to see the world, and play one’s small part in it.
Why would anyone think this was a good idea for Whitewater? We need owner-occupied homes! We have enough of the rest! Why won’t anyone listen to the community?
Thanks for reading and commenting. You’ve asked the central question. It plagues many places, and our small city seemingly more than most. And yet, and yet, there’s no iron law of determinism that dooms us; we can live differently.