Last Monday, over at the Daily Union, that paper published an online story entitled, “Whitewater Tech Park advances; panels to study second building.” The story is a solid example of Whitewater officials’ habit of stating the obvious, exaggerating their own achievements, and producing whatever airy speculation they can get into print. In the Daily Union, Whitewater’s officials have found a home where they receive unquestioning acceptance for puffery, distortions, and dodgy claims.

Advancing. One learns that the tech park is advancing. Too funny — no one thought otherwise. With millions of dollars in federal taxpayer money, and millions more in municipal public debt, how could the park not advance? Millions upon millions were sure to amount to something. No one — no one sensible — has seriously doubted that the park’s Innovation Center would be built. I have always assumed that the Tech Park Board would get its park and building — it’s whether it would be worth the cost to the community.

See, from Predictions for Whitewater, Wisconsin 2010:

2. A new Innovation Center will, during the year, produce
A. Cold Fusion
B. the Flux Capacitor
C. More press and publicity than actual benefit
D. More actual benefit than press and publicity

Never did I assume that mere completion of a building could be at issue. If there’s a worry about completion of a building or two, I’d be stunned.

Obvious, really, to set the bar so low — a building or two with millions in public money.

Overwhelming. One learns that there’s overwhelming demand for space in the park, so much that a second building might — might — be necessary: “…investigating a second building due to overwhelming interest in the park.” There’s no mention of the origin of this demand, of course — just the vague reassurance that it’s “overwhelming.”

I can’t tell what overwhelming means, and the story doesn’t bother to quantify or describe that demand. It’s as though writing as much will beguile readers into believing as much. That only works with gullible or foolish people.

The surprise is that more tenants are not yet announced — many more tenants. Others — taxpayers — have paid for all this, and one could expect that a private business or two might enjoy some corporate welfare at federal and city taxpayers’ expense. As it is, it’s not even a private business that’s the anchor tenant; it’s a
taxpayer-funded agency that’s occupying one-quarter of this
publicly-funded building.

For more on CESA 2’s unsuitability as an anchor tenant, see On the Innovation Center’s Anchor Tenant.

For a response to the idea that CESA 2’s size elsewhere benefits Whitewater, see On the Innovation Center’s Anchor Tenant, Part 2.

(Note: The February 8th story merely repeats the unchallenged and silly implication that CESA 2’s service in other places benefits Whitewater. There’s a change, however — downward — in the number of reported employees that CESA 2 will have at the building. Unlike a previous story the DU published on January 19th, in which the city claimed up to 50 CESA 2 employees would work at the building, the number has now changed downward to match what CESA 2’s own administrator has estimated, at 30 employees.)

A Strategic Plan: How to Sell the Lots? Here’s what Whitewater City manager Kevin Brunner had to say about the park:

“On the heels of the first anchor tenant at Tech Park, the board is already talking about additional buildings,” he said. “We need to develop a strategic plan and determine how we are going to sell the lots, or are we going to lease the lots in the park. We are
certainly seeing a lot of interest in the park; that is very encouraging. The board wants to be very pro-active in pushing this forward.”

Oh my, oh my. These gentlemen have their millions, from others who worked for that money, but they’ve not even figured out whether to sell or lease the lots. A serious and responsible person would be ashamed to talk this way — having received a grant from public funds, and issued debt as bonds, the city manager now acknowledges that it’s time to develop a strategic plan for the park.

I’d say it was time even before now.

I am sure city manager Brunner is being honest about this much, however embarrassing it is — no one would lie about being this cavalier.

The Accomplishments at the Friday, February 5th Tech Park Board Meeting. Brunner’s worst critic is not a common blogger, but his own shallow remarks. Consider the story’s account of the February 5th board meeting:

He [Brunner] said the main thing accomplished Friday, besides signage, was setting the Innovation Center groundbreaking.

“We will be getting everything ready for that, on top of some ‘housekeeping’ that still needs to be done,” Brunner said.

Laughable, to be talking about groundbreaking, again, after an earlier groundbreaking at the park, in September. All this money, that other people earned, and that others will have to pay back — and Brunner’s excited about a show, theater, a ceremony, whatever. The main thing accomplished — besides signage, of all things! — was to talk about the groundbreaking.

About that signage, one finds that “the board voted unanimously to approve a 5.4-foot signage for the Tech Park, which will have the park’s logo and will likely have solar-powered lighting….” A sign with the park’s logo! Solar power? Amazing!

Will there ever be a time that the City of Whitewater’s leaders place substance over style?

Next: On Whitewater’s “Advancing” Tech Park, Part 2.

In my small town of fourteen-thousand, in rural Wisconsin, we have both the seasonal inconvenience of too much snow and the year-round inconvenience of planning and scheming bureaucrats.

There are differences of scale between the municipal meddling that afflicts us and that afflicting big cities like Atlanta or Los Angeles. We’re not an over-taxed, over-regulated big city; we’re an over-taxed, over-regulated small town. We’ve not the burden of bureaucrats wasting hundreds of millions of tax dollars and public debt on municipal projects; we’ve the burden of bureaucrats wasting tens of millions of tax dollars and public debt on municipal projects.

Why not pit one problem against another? Let’s have scheming bureaucrats and politicians do what they do best, to address the problem of too much snow in Whitewater: Why don’t they just ban snow?

Over at the Washington Examiner, Sam Ryan proposes exactly that course for Washington, D.C., in a parody entitled, “Parody — Resolved that Snow is Hereby Banned.”

(Presumably, Ryan prefaced the word parody in front of the essay as part of the parody, suggesting that some federal legislators would need to be told his parody was, in fact, a parody. That’s probably doubly necessary in a place like Whitewater.)

Here’s an excerpt from Ryan’s proposal:

As our nation’s capital recovers from yet another massive blizzard, the problem of unregulated snow can no longer be ignored. It’s time for Congress to set limits on the crystalline mayhem that descends through the atmosphere wreaking havoc on all hard-working Americans.

Certainly, snow-control legislation would require political willpower and bipartisan support. But if today’s policy-makers cannot put an end to snow storms, none of us will escape these boom-and-bust blizzards that undermine the foundations of our nation’s growth and prosperity.

Consider the facts.

Local governments — particularly plow crews — cannot deal with snow effectively. Weatherpersons “predict” snow, but don’t do anything about it….

In short, everything grinds to a halt….

The bigger problem, of course, is the practical one. Regulating precipitation — or even banning snow entirely — won’t actually stop snow from falling. Virtually all meteorologists agree that — given certain atmospheric conditions — snow will continue to fall from the sky regardless of any federal law.

Although this may seem like an intractable problem, there is a simple solution. Congress should create a special committee — comprised of a blue-ribbon panel of experts (with at least one labor representative) — to study the problem and submit recommendations four years hence, at which time a more effective law could be passed.

The committee — and its various subcommittees — could be funded by a penny-per-shovel tax. Some might argue that taxing shovels could actually exacerbate the snow problem by discouraging Americans from buying them. However, this problem can also be fixed through legislation.

Congress could simply mandate that that all Americans purchase shovels. Yes, there would need to be a carve-out for Alaskans who already own shovels, and perhaps a Medicaid-style program for those who cannot afford shovels. But those are minor details that could be worked out in conference committee.

Why not a local ordinance and task force modeled on this proposal? We have ample precedent for regulating anything that moves, and quite a few things that don’t. We’re well-familiar with task forces and ad hoc committees that do nothing but doing nothing.

One more law and one more ordinance wouldn’t be a departure for Whitewater, Wisconsin, but rather continuation of a longstanding local habit.