After about thirty minutes of preliminary discussion, our Common Council on April 8th considered a chronic nuisance ordinance for Whitewater. Versions of these ordinances are in force in Madison, Green Bay, Janesville (and surely other communities, too). An officer (Aaron Ellis) from the Janesville Police Department, responsible for enforcement of Janesville’s ordinance, spoke before Whitewater’s Common Council. Officer Ellis discussed Janesville’s ordinance, in law and practice. His initial discussion, including PowerPoint slides, was about twenty minutes long.

Nuisances and Numbers. There’s more than one way to protect property owners who’ve experienced property damage, or meaningful irritations from neighbors. Unlike a nuisance ordinance, one could try to solve problems by restricting the number of residents at a location. Ultimately, every effort to enforce zoning restrictions on the number of unrelated persons in an R-1 district depends on the idea that, inherently, large numbers of unrelated people living together are troublesome. Reduce that number, and you’ll (supposedly) reduce nuisances in a neighborhood.

Note how crude, how simple-minded all this is — it’s not about actual conduct, character, outlook, etc. — it’s civic betterment by decimation. (Worse, really, as for the Ancients decimation meant only one of ten; under strict R-1 enforcement, one of four or five might be removed.) Such has been much of the talk over these last two years — culling the herd, any way one might. Look for cars, stare at garage doors, etc. Not only was this strategy meant to reduce neighborhood trouble-making — one heard also that it would lower home prices for new home buyers, increase the number of children enrolled in our schools, and give cats and dogs especially shiny coats.

(That falling home prices merely impoverish sellers to the benefit of buyers was conveniently ignored. Restrictions on demand benefit some to the detriment of others.)

Restrictions on numbers living in an area may seem tactical, but it’s really strategic — a way to change the very composition of a neighborhood, back to a supposedly idyllic past, and produce a better market outcome, too. Government, to produce a better market than the market: the futile dream of every planner. These sought-after demographic changes were more than just tactics — they were community-changing even more so than complaints about the changes to Tratt Street.

What happened near Tratt Street did not happen through coercion, but through peaceful, voluntary transactions between buyers and sellers. What those who have sought to achieve through government restrictions in an area depends on the coercive power of local government enforcement, against the wishes of homeowner-landlords and tenants.

Much of our last years has been about the number of students unrelated persons in certain districts.

Conflating Ideas. Sometimes, code enforcement of aesthetic regulations, or conduct regulations, have been jumbled into this discussion, sometimes they’ve been separate. They need not have been jumbled together; they might always have been considered separately. A properly designed nuisance ordinance would focus on conduct, leaving aside number-of-unrelated- persons discussions that have achieved nothing. Well, not nothing, actually: they’ve show that Whitewater has wasted its time, like Westmoreland in Vietnam, looking to produce a numerical tally as proof of success.

A nuisance ordinance, if drafted and enforced properly, might shift away from the last few years’ wasted, numbers-culling effort.

Property Rights. I’m am opposed to these zoning restrictions, on the number of unrelated persons living in a given residence, anywhere in the city. I don’t care; neither should the city. Yet, without question, I believe in strong property rights, and have sympathy for homeowners whose property and its enjoyment has been ruined by those living nearby. Those rights will not be protected by reducing numbers, but by narrow regulations directed to specific, objectionable conduct. (It’s because I believe in strong property rights that I am opposed to many municipal zoning restrictions.)

Enforcement. What, though, of a nuisance ordinance — how many infractions will trigger government oversight, sanctions, and review of required abatement? Just as significant, who will oversee all this? These are tactical, not strategic, questions. They’re the questions for which people at neighborhood meetings have sought answers. Sought, but not found.

The City of Whitewater should have, long ago, enforced existing laws regarding conduct toward neighbors, fairly and thoroughly, without the empty talk about supposed problems of student housing. There is no student housing problem, or rental problem — there’s a conduct-of-a-few people problem. Discussions of classes of people shift responsibility from the individual to the group, unfairly and over-broadly.

City Manager Kevin Brunner doesn’t have a housing problem, or even a rental housing problem — he has an enforcement-of-specific-conduct problem. It’s not just a problem of director this, or chief that, it’s the city manager’s problem, too. To whom much is given, much is expected. (One can study Lincoln on leadership, without seeing, I’d guess, that Lincoln was stalwart.) There’s so much desire here to defend, to coddle, to support this city manager, one often wonders if this white-collar career appointee can account for his departments, himself.

Nuisances are also a huge problem, of individual responsibility of a few, and the city manager’s done little to address it. It’s all one study, one commission, one task force, after another. For a man whose vision is much-touted by the same small circle of back-patters, he’s shown no real understanding of how to fix a broken enforcement regime.

How do I know? If you’ve lived in this town — without fair and adequate enforcement of your legitimate concerns — or even fair and reasonable enforcement against you — and many of you have experienced these failures — then you’re the proof, the demonstration, of my argument.

So what will a possible nuisance ordinance do? Turn enforcement over under the same city manager who’s done so little for so long. Divide the responsibilities for enforcement or unite them, it’s a leadership too ineffectual to produce noticeable change.

Well, yes, that’s the plan.

The proposed ordinance will likely be back at another meeting, soon. Some will be hoping for better enforcement under it; others will be concerned about unfair and erratic enforcement from it.

Many will be ambivalent, I’d guess.

We’ll see….

Here’s a quick review of the first part of our Common Council meeting, from April 8th. In this post, I’ll comment on the meeting before the discussion of a proposed nuisance ordinance. (I’ll comment on the nuisance ordinance in my next post.)

What’s most striking about the first thirty minutes of our last Common Council meeting is how ordinary, and predicable, the proceedings were: students singing at the opening, a few proclamations, staff reports, citizen comments. I don’t mean to belittle those who performed or received proclamations (including Abraham Lincoln, posthumously, in a way). Quite the contrary — if one considered our town only from these first minutes, one would be reassured, I wouldn’t wonder, that we must be a well-ordered small town, in good condition.

We’re not, of course — we’ve above-average poverty, a shaky budget, the chimera of tax incremental financing, a school district with a retiring administrator with a retiree’s outlook, and a culture with an anti-growth instinct in a time when growth is hard to come by anywhere in America.

There are hints of something troubled, though, even before the discussion of nuisances.

A merchant complains, and no one really seems to care. He might be right, he might be wrong — no one responds, either way. It’s all been said, and heard, before.

A quick list of all the federal money that might, just might, come Whitewater’s way, for proposals, well, previously proposed. One wonders how we would have funded these ideas absent the unexpected developments of a deep recession, and deep spending as a supposed remedy. There’s no embarrassment about feeding at the federal trough; it’s our opportunity to hold our hands out, in line with other communities. We’re plucky and unique and independent, until we’re looking for money, and then we’re eager realists taking what we can from others’ taxes and interest obligations. Walden Pond this is not.

A defeated Council candidate, against whom I have disagreed as much as anyone, offers thoughtful remarks on his service, and on the press in this town, too. His victorious rival thanks her supporters for their support, a self-congratulatory shout-out to all the people who are sure our best future depends on them, alone.

Little over thirty minutes in, we come to a topic years in the making….