Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 83. Sunrise is 6:28 and sunset is 7:15 for 12 hours 47 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 3.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1947, scientists discover the first computer bug after a moth lodges in a relay of a Harvard Mark II computer at Harvard University. (They taped the dead moth into the logbook for the computer. “First actual case of bug being found,” one of the team members wrote in the log.)
This summer, by his own admission, a resident who served on and chaired the old CDA, presided over the Whitewater School Board, and has claimed expertise in finance contended that the city’s budget doubled over the last few years. In response, the City of Whitewater produced a memorandum debunking that claim. See FREE WHITEWATER, No, Whitewater’s Budget Did Not Simply Double, September 1, 2026.
During the September 1 session of the Whitewater Common Council, the city’s finance director presented that memo to the community.
In reply, the same gentleman who advanced the erroneous claim attempted to rehabilitate his position. Embedded immediately below are his remarks:
What is one to make of this effort at rehabilitating a claim? The simplest assessment: wrong before and still wrong, stubbornly so. There’s something telling about a reply that concedes that the city’s analysis is “a very nice factual report” but refuses to accept the ineluctable conclusions that follow from those same facts.
The response never shows — because it cannot — that the original $24 million-to-$49 million comparison measures recurring operations, distinct expenditures, or property taxes. From the get-go, this gentleman’s claim of $49 million (however characterized) was off by over $5.3 million due to his double counting of that amount. And yet, and yet, in his September 1 remarks, he holds to the $49 million figure.
This was the August claim: “City budget, total spending in 2021 was $24 million. This year it was $49 million.” The September claim retreats from that position: it is now about ‘all-funds spending’ and shifts to the general fund or individual tax bills.” When one claim fails, changing the subject to a related but different claim does not rehabilitate it.
The shift (and concession!) from an erroneous claim about the budget to an all-funds view matters because that shift includes utility funds, capital projects, millions in temporary construction expenditures, a full year of Fire/EMS activity compared with a partial year in 2022, and approximately $5.3 million in transfers appearing in both the sending and receiving funds. Whitewater’s general fund increase is also explained clearly in the finance director’s memo: referendums, state aid, permit revenue, interest earnings, debt service, a TID closure, and net new construction. “There’s still a lot more in there” is not an answer to that reconciliation.
Of taxes, be clear: city taxes are higher, but for identifiable reasons: two public votes for public safety and council-approved borrowing for capital improvements. That history is an argument about whether those choices were wise — not proof that the city quietly doubled ordinary government. These increases should not be an opportunity to collapse gross expenditures, recurring operations, tax levies, tax rates, individual assessments, and TID increments into a single misleading claim that “the budget doubled.”
Let’s assume someday, on a day uncertain, this libertarian blogger finds himself in debate with Whitewater’s finance director over one claim or another. I should hope that, if that day comes, then I have the intellectual honesty to admit any errors she might find in my analysis.
The budget didn’t double. Would it have been so hard to admit this obvious error?
_____
Forthcoming topics (in no particular order): Development in Downtown Whitewater (Follow-Up), A New Ethics Ordinance, Polling Places in the City (Further Considerations), and Steps for a Public Interest Campaign.
Volcanic eruption on Indonesia’s Anak Krakatau causes widespread disruption: