The signs that welcome visitors to Whitewater assure newcomers that we are an exceptional community. It’s an odd slogan for a city: exceptional needn’t mean better. One can be exceptionally talented, for example, but exceptionally narrow and stodgy, too.
The slogan was meant, no doubt, to imply good qualities, but it’s a measure of our confused past that those promoting Whitewater as an exceptional community wouldn’t grasp an ironic, second meaning.
In any event, the time of Whitewater as a self-professed exceptional community now gives way to the city as an increasingly successful part of common and positive trends in America and Wisconsin.
It’s a gradual transition from ‘that’s the way we do things around here’ to ‘eagerly embracing of good ideas from places all across America.’
This transition is necessary if we are to have a prosperous future. Pretending all is perfect and peerless and exceptional is a dead-end.
This change of perspective will bring a more vibrant and prosperous community than anything we’ve yet seen.
Model practices are the new (but better!) exceptional.