There’s a Tom Waits song entitled, “What’s He Building in There?” It’s an ode of (but not to) paranoia, and every time that I hear it, I think of all the small-town busybodies who are sure that your business should, truly should, be their business. 

Private citizens preying on private citizens, enforcing conformity.    

Here’s the song –

Well, what of public matters?  That’s different!  In the words of Democratic State Senator Marlin Schneider, speaking of a legislators’ meeting, that’s “not open to every Tom, Dick and Harry on the planet.” 

Actually, legislators’ meetings should and must be open, even to every Tom, Dick, and Harry.  Our law requires it, but even in the absence of a law, a principle would apply: that good government is open government, visible and accessible to common people.  

Good government is more than open meetings, though.  It’s taking a look at what government does, and that means what it spends.  The City of Whitewater — both rightly and properly — includes copies of invoices paid and unpaid with Common Council agendas posted online.    

The City of Whitewater website has a link to the July 7, 2009 agenda and submitted invoices.

So, for Common Council — a public body — deliberating public issues — what are they building in there?   Let’s consider the last Common Council meeting, from July 7th.  

From the invoices attached to the July 7th Common Council agenda, one finds — 

Over $60,000 dollars in payments to Strand Associates, Inc. for sundry consulting projects.  Now, I thought that only local mattered, and that one didn’t need consultants, if one were a tribune, microphone, voice of the people.  Shouldn’t all this require just a cocktail napkin, a marker, and a few minutes, to whip up something impressive? 

I’m not the least bit concerned about engineering or other consultants from outside Whitewater.  On the contrary, we’re too local, too often, in matters of principle and practices, setting aside the higher, national standards others use.  

Still, there’s little good to say about thousands ($4,700, $1,760, $5,466, etc.) for tax incremental districts that — like much of tax incremental financing — often delivers less than it promises. 

Anyone — or anyone with a ready excuse — can say that “This is how it should be,” “That’s just municipal government,” etc.  

Why, really?  

There’s no inevitability in any of this; it might have been different, and it might still be different.  “It had to be this way” is a lazy person’s excuse.  more >>

I received an email from the City of Whitewater with a link to the federal government’s 2010 census, required constitutionally every ten years. A full and complete count will be difficult, but both practically and culturally critical, that we might see ourselves as we truly are. I’ll create a permanent spot for the link, too, on FREE WHITEWATER’S main page, over the weekend.

Here’s that link –

http://2010.census.gov/2010census/

 It was a relatively brief Common Council meeting on Tuesday, July 7th.  About a half-hour into the meeting, as at last session, the Common Council considered changes to Whitewater’s regulations affecting sidewalk cafés for some establishments near the Cravath lakefront. 

I wrote about that meeting in a post entitled, Whitewater, Wisconsin’s Café Scene”.    Removal of these restrictions was sound, and hardly a threat to community order: 

It’s odd to listen to the discussion, because so much of it sounds like so much of Whitewater — overly-regulatory, with objections based on supposedly raucous behavior, but without a willingness to discuss how to manage or prevent that behavior (should it occur), short of prohibition.  Prohibition is the dumbing down of policy, the lazy man’s way to try to prevent a problem, all the while ignoring the other problems prohibition causes.

Last session, there were two proposed changes to the ordinance: (1) remove a requirement that establishments with café have a minimum of 30% food sales to be eligible to operate a café, and (2) that the required plans for the cafés — the arrangement of tables, etc. — be simpler, less elaborate.   

The proposed amendments — including eliminating any food requirement — passed first reading, on a vote of 6-1.   Now, one session later, on a second reading, the Common Council brought back a 20% food requirement, on a 6-1 vote in favor.  

Only one vote stayed the same between both sessions.  Why the change?  One cannot answer to behind the scenes lobbying. 

There may have been none — the longer I write about Whitewater the more ineffectual I find efforts to persuade between sessions.    

There were, however, two principal reasons, stated in Council, in support of the change to bring back a food sales requirement — on the question in, part, of whether this would be a café or a bar ordinance?  It’s funny — too funny, really — that for the brief time the cafés will be open, it really matters to our local politicians how much alcohol, as against food sales, an establishment has.   

Is there any claim — supported by any proof, whatever — that the 20% food requirement will provide for our safety where no requirement would not?   Of course not — there’s nothing to support this percentage, as a prof of safety — except the insisetence that there should be food, ust has to be, for safety, propriety, semantics, whatever. 

Semantics — hard to imagine how really stupid that justification is — rationalism so narrow it’s irrational.  It’s a café ordinance, not a bar ordinance — as though a café cannot serve drinks alone, or nearly so.  

Did you know, by the way, that God spelled backwards is Dog?  It’s true!  Yet, knowing it, what diffrence would it possibly make to your theology?  The same questions of being, of existence, will still await you.  (If, however, the transposition of these letters changes your views, then I’m afraid you’ve no views worth changing, in any event.)  

No one doubts that Council can swing from view to view, from reading to reading — it’s wholly lawful. It’s laughable, though, and without a serious basis (what did Council really learn on July 7th that it did not know before, on June 16th?).   

But here we are, with the requirement back in. May I ask (I’m merely being polite to soothe the sensibilities of the City Manager, of course I may ask!) where’s the administration in all this? 

Did not the City Manager, just last session, want the removal of the food requirement?  I watched those proceedings, from mid-June, and I very much thought that he did. Here’s what he said, on June 16th, in favor of no food requirement, and eased planning requirements: 

….We just want to, we want to make it a little easier for these permits to be gained….

That’s my transcription, as I was able to hear the audio.  See and hear for yourself, though, at about 35 minutes into the recording: 

So, where was Kevin Brunner on July 7th?  Not literally, of course — he was in the room.  Yet, he made no remarks, that I heard, in support of the removal of restrictions that he advanced only a few weeks ago.  

No one, having watched our local administration, should be surprised.   

It might as well be theater, and bad theater, at that.    more >>