A few more tidbits from last night’s Common Council meeting.
Money
It’s correct, but disingenuous, for Whitewater’s city manager to observe that he cannot assure spending without the Common Council’s approval (and so could not have promised a particular public works project). He’s right, but he’s the last official who should make that observation.
These recent years have seen the city manager trumpet project after project, and put himself front-and-center as a deal-maker. There are others in city government, on the council, too, who can make credibly the claim of prudent oversight; the city manger’s not among them.
Memory
Dr. Nosek, formerly on council, spoke last night, and mentioned that the city manager had once declared housing the city’s number-one problem. (I’d say it’s poverty.) Nosek’s correct in his recollection.
Goodness knows that I’m a critic of Nosek’s local proposals, but I’ve never doubted his intellect or memory. I don’t know how serious the city manager was when he decried a supposed housing problem, but Nosek’s serious about it, and remembers those words.
Butterflies
One hears that everything on earth is inter-connected, and so if a butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo, we experience, if imperceptibly, the influence of that effort, even in Wisconsin. The theory came to mind when a member of a neighborhood association suggested that improvements to his neighborhood would make the whole city better.
Again, perhaps. That’s not the proper measure of an allocation though, is it?
The proper measure: Is this the best of all alternative allocations
One might as well say that one could produce a nice breeze in Whitewater if only one raised millions of butterflies in Tokyo — get enough insects flapping their wings in Japan, and surely we’d feel that influence in Wisconsin.
Possible, just possible, but there are better ways to spend on our community than an investment in attenuated influences at a distance. Other neighborhoods would feel the consequences of the Starin Neighborhood’s gains only slightly — there are other projects more necessary and influential for the whole city than several traffic islands along Starin Road.
Yet, we’ll have one, and perhaps a few more, before all is said and done.