The great advantage of a garbage chute is that it takes trash from one place, and carries it off under force of gravity to another. For high-rise apartment dwellers, it’s quite the time-saver.
A local municipal administration, needless to say, should be more than a tunnel through which flimsy proposals drop from vendor to local city council.
Department heads who escort representatives of other cities or big corporations into town, and listen to them say damn near anything (or nothing, really) before our common council exercise no diligence or oversight.
A man who drops trash from the thirty-third floor of a building into a garbage chute does not, after all, assume any responsibility for how the chute is constructed – he just drops it down and walks away.
Common Council should not be, along the same lines, just a dumpster at the bottom, passively receiving any junk that someone flings into the chute.
Make no mistake – this municipal administration and particularly current city manager are vastly preferable to the prior administration and manager. Our present city manager is better educated, more articulate, more affable, and all without the last administration’s tendency to exaggerate accomplishments to the point of repeated (but laughable) small-town mendacity.
Although I’m not looking for the occasion (and I am sure neither is he), it seems clear to me that one could sit at table with City Manager Clapper for a productive and congenial conversation.
Whitewater’s city government, and her thousands of residents, can meet the genuine and competitive standards of all America (and friendly countries beyond with whom we trade and exchange information). The city’s department leaders should be expected to do so, too.
There is no Whitewater political exceptionalism (it’s just a conceit), but there certainly is an exceptionalism and greatness to our country and those places that share fundamental principles with us.
When a vendor or outside interest visits Council, to pitch something, it should not be allowed to say anything, no matter how vacuous or one-sided, without reply.
One should be prepared to say to under-prepared or over-promising presenters:
Go home now, but feel free to come back when you’re prepared to meet the proper standards that all Americans – including surely the residents of Whitewater, Wisconsin – deserve.