Here’s the first numbered topic from a weekly city report:
1. Targeted Housing and Property Maintenance Code Enforcement Program to Begin Next Week
The City will begin a targeted housing and property maintenance enforcement program next week that will focus on the neighborhoods throughout the City but with particular emphasis on those surrounding the UW-Whitewater campus. With many student renters now living in these neighborhoods, the City Neighborhood Services Department will be
focusing on enforcing a variety of local housing code issues including building repairs, proper refuse toter storage and removal, lawn parking, debris and littering, outside house furniture and lawn/weed maintenance. In addition, the City will be observing living conditions to ascertain if the local requirement that no more than three unrelated persons per household may live in the city’s single-family residential zoning districts is being met.Over the next month, Neighborhood Services Officers along with the Police Department Community Service Officers will be enforcing existing city ordinances. These officers will be working seven days a week and will be also distributing information to both landlords and renters on what city ordinances may pertain to them. As such, this
targeted program is intended to be not only enforcement but also educational in its focus.
As readers know, I support the rights of property owners to be free and protected from vandalism and damage to their property. It’s heartbreaking to hear homeowners describe how their homes have been damaged in retaliation for their efforts to report violations of municipal ordinances. (Ordinary homeowners describing their infuriating experiences were — by far — the most powerful part of a recent Common Council discussion of code enforcement.)
Not all means, unfortunately, are appropriate to an end. Consider, for example, two parts of the city’s enforcement plan. First, the stated intention that “…the City will be observing living conditions to ascertain if the local requirement that no more than three unrelated persons per household may live in the city’s single-family residential zoning districts is being met.”
Are you kidding? No, apparently not. These words were written, so far as I can tell, in earnestness.
I would support the discharge of duties in response to citizen complaints or concerns. Our small town has decided to go farther. We’ll actually be using municipal workers — on the city’s initiative — for “observing living conditions” to figure out how many unrelated persons might be in a household. This is more than an overly-intrusive, bad idea: it’s really rather odd and strange. “Honey, what did you do today at taxpayer’s expense? Well, dear, I was staking out rental housing to make sure that no more than three unrelated persons were living there.” A well-adjusted person wouldn’t want to do something like that, even for part of a day. A sensible and prudent person wouldn’t set it down as part of a city initiative.
There’s a real need for better enforcement, but this plan will only make the enforcement effort too controversial, and creepy, to be effective. Rather than a measured, incremental effort to make modest gains, opponents of enforcement will rightly observe that the plan for municipal observations will be (1) a likely waste of time for not observing anything conclusive, or (2) overly prying and intrusive in order to observe something conclusive. ‘Overly prying and intrusive’ is not the business of the city. There’s no cause for this city to begin affirmative action hiring for voyeurs, peeping toms, or the otherwise excessively curious.
As I wrote last week, our town would have shriveled and died long ago without the university. We’ve embarked on a municipal initiative to build better relations with the university, for our common benefit. Now, were risking unnecessary tension and community alienation with students of that same university. I’m not opposed to commercial fishing, but if Ahab told me that the Pequod would have to steer a course, around the whole world, in search of a white whale, I’d have reason to doubt the voyage. Call me Ishmael. There’s far, there’s too far, and then there’s excessive, creepy far.
It’s a foolish over-reaching of municipal authority. It fits, however, the thinking of a town clique brimming with a sense of entitlement, and a conviction that if they want to do something, their chosen means are legitimate. Considerations of humility, modesty, reserve, and limited government are quickly forgotten when it’s what they want; limitations only apply when they might, themselves, be the targets of enforcement.
Which brings us to the unfortunate use of the word ‘targeted’ enforcement. At the last Common Council meeting, one of the council members took great umbrage at the suggestion that he intended to imply that excessive numbers of renters in a residence might be a student problem. Of course he meant students. That’s what this discussion is about, and its disingenuous to pretend otherwise. The latest report doesn’t pretend; the report notes a “particular emphasis on those [areas] surrounding the UW-Whitewater campus.” Near the UW Whitewater campus: where students live. Thanks for clearing that up; I wasn’t quite sure before. I’ve also had trouble determining if the sun rises in the east, if bears actually relieve themselves in the woods, and if the Holy Father is a Roman Catholic. Perhaps you might drop me a line at adams@freewhitewater.com and set me straight on those points when you get a chance.
When the city is finished hunting students, take a moment to re-think the use of the term ‘targeted’ enforcement. The wrap on Whitewater (even more than other places) is that this city’s clique uses public enforcement authority unfairly, and enforces against others, but never among its own numbers. For example, municipal violations — no matter how obvious — seldom seem enforced against city workers, their friends, or relatives. By contrast, those not well-connected, or disliked for personal reasons, seem to experience a disproportionately high number of enforcement actions. There has been more than enough ‘targeting’ in this town, thank you very much.