Here’s the Friday open comments post, following reader responses to a recent poll.
The use of pseudonyms and anonymous postings will be fine.
Although the template has a space for a name, email address, and website, those who want to leave a field blank can do so. Comments will be moderated, against profanity or trolls. Otherwise, have at it.
I’ll keep the post open through Sunday afternoon.
For this week, a suggestion for a topic: Did Whitewater City Manager Kevin Brunner overreact by supporting the abolition of Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission?
These tree commission problems have been while Kevin has been running Whitewater. We had problems before, but we did not have this kind of circle-the-wagons reaction to a tree commission and trying to shut it down two different times.
You hit the nail on the head when you said he can’t handle criticism. He may say he can, but his actions prove he can’t.
Trees? Yeah, yeah, that’s it, let’s all complain about some trees while people are out of work. Everyone in Whitewater must be crazy. Taxpayers don’t deserve antics like this. The people of Whitewater should demand a refund from their city for wasting time on this issue instead of fixing real problems like unemployment.
Hello, Mr. Adams:
You should have called this post “Pulp Fiction” because it reads like fiction. Bad, bad, bad, bad pulp fiction about trees.
If these politicians worry about what a few letters say, what would they do during an oil spill? Maybe they’d just try to abolish oil and then they’d say there was no problem.
Ridiculous!
Here’s the answer, people: http://www.greenplastic.com/lyrics/fakeplastictrees.php
You can’t get a refund if they spent the money
Talk about sending a message This one’s loud and clear and it says Shut The F**k Up I would never listen to a lecture from him about what he will tolerate from the people who PAY HIS SALARY
Where did these guys work before??? Talk about being born yesterday!!!
Don’t blame the manager — he went to the BP school of public relations They want you to know that they care about the “small” people alot
Hmmm…Having resided many years in the Banner Inland City of the Midwest, I have observed that simply by right of office or title, City employees and Council members believe they are empowered: They Know More Than We Do. Yet, having worked with Mr. Ehrenberg, and knowing the vast knowledge and wisdom of the Tree Doc (OMG—he owns a tree farm), I have to say that the proposed abolition of the Urban Forestry Commission by the Council and Silly Manager, once again exhibits Whitewater at its finest, small-town, insular, narrow-minded…best. Hmmm…
It’s demoralizing to volunteer committee persons to see how energetic and enthusiastic residents are ridiculed for caring about the beauty of their city. It’s even worse when people who are elected or hired decide that they should speak this way about concerned citizens.
I’m disappointed for Whitewater. I don’t agree with everything at Free Whitewater, but in this case you’re right about how citizen volunteers are being treated. It’s happened more than once, and no one seems to have learned from past mistakes.
If commissions can be abolished when city hall doesn’t like the results, why shouldn’t people be able stop paying taxes when they don’t like the results?
let’s have more trees and fewer politicians
I don’t think that the city will be as quick to support withholding of taxes as it is to consider abolition of citizen commissions. I’d guess they wouldn’t even be 1% as eager.
I agree that it’s foolish to conclude that the only knowledge about how to care for trees must rest with city employees. I don’t know anything about tree care, but in a rural city like ours, there are many who know a great deal. They’ve even right to offer suggestions and to contact state officials with their ideas, including complaints. They may not be 100% correct about those ideas, but I’d guess there’s some truth in their views.
If there’s no truth to their concerns, if it’s all just nonsense, the City of Whitewater’s response is even more absurd. Why waste time refuting ludicrous claims? That’s exceptionally wasteful.
On policy, this whole episode is a fiasco.
I don’t think the city manager has spent as much time in many places as he has in ours, and it may be that as he stays longer, his deficiencies are more apparent. The more one sees of him, hears him speak, the more rigid he seems, and the more grandiose.
He still as a hagiographer or two, and beyond that a small circle of back-patters, but they’re a small part of the town. They seem more numerous than they are. As I’ve noted, they’re a demographic group in decline.
If Brunner reacts this way over a dispute about tree care, how would he react in the event of a natural disaster, God forfend that one should befall Whitewater? A commenter alluded to the oil spill in the Gulf, where people are angry and irritable, understandably so. It’s hard to see how a city manager who is so edgy and brittle over tree care would be of use to anyone in the days after an unfortunate natural disaster or calamity.
Although I was not part of the movement for a mayor some years back (before Brunner arrived), I can see merit in the idea. Voting for an elected leader would provide a real mandate and real accountability to Whitewater’s executive.
As it is, Brunner doesn’t have the first, and isn’t held to the second.