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Common Council’s June 3rd Meeting: Unrelated People at a Residence

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I have written before that I consider civil enforcement (of ordinances, etc.) broken. (See, for example, Our Enforcement Culture. Many people in many towns have doubts about the reasonable, fair, unbiased enforcement of ordinances; those concerns are more serious in Whitewater.

It was, after all, only last fall that a longstanding member of Common Council remarked on her concern about unbiased enforcement during a council meeting. Ms. Kienbaum is hardly what one would consider a dissenter; if she has voiced even some of these concerns, it’s a sign of how prevalent they are in our town.

The many challenges of enforcement in Whitewater were a principal concern of our latest Council meeting. Two topics dressed enforcement matters: (1) number of automobiles to be parked lawfully, and where, at local residences, and (2) the number of unrelated people who may live together at a residential property.

I will consider the topics in reverse order, as the number of unrelated people who may live together at a residential property is the more significant.

The Council considered, and approved a change in a municipal ordinance regulating the number of residents in a non-family household.

There’s no question in my mind that the motivation of the ordinance’s proponent, Atty. Terry Race, is understandable. He has had what one could only describe by understatement as a challenging year with his neighbors. I have sympathy for anyone in his situation (although few people have been as unfairly treated as he has been).

When someone with his recent experiences observes that our current system is broken, it’s impossible reasonably to disagree. One may say that Atty. Race and I both see a problem, but we do not hold to the same solution

Here is our municipal code regarding non-family households, from Section 19.09.520:

“Non-family household” means a group of individuals who do not constitute a family under the terms of this title and who live as a single household in a dwelling unit. Within the R-1 and R-2 districts, a non-family household shall be limited to three unrelated persons. Within the R-3 district, a non-family household shall be limited to five unrelated persons.

His proposal offered, among other elements, the following addition to Section 19.09.520 (emphasis in blue mine):

This Ordinance is meant to ensure the right of quiet enjoyment of each property owner, or resident of their home. The constant or consistent presence of visitors to a particular residence can constitute the equivalent of additional persons living there, for land use purposes, regardless if they are listed as residents on a lease or deed, if the “quiet enjoyment” of other’s property rights are affected. For the purposes of this section, quiet enjoyment shall mean actions by occupants or visitors which unreasonably disturbs other property owners or occupants enjoyment of their premises.

In addition to any other penalties or remedies the City, or any landowner within 300 feet of the property, may maintain an action or injunctive relief to restrain any violation of this Ordinance and/or to enforce compliance with this Ordinance, upon a showing that a person has engaged, or is about to engage, in an act or practice constituting a violation of this Ordinance.

This amendment grants significantly expanded power to the city, so much so that the city may act when it assumes a person is about to engage in an act against quiet enjoyment. An ordinary private party may be constrained by litigation costs where the city has no equal concern.

We have now given a city that has unwisely exercised its authority greatly expanded, additional authority.

Where I differ is the idea that a broken enforcement culture can be easily repaired through legislation. So little having been done before (despite the homeowner’s own efforts), I am unpersuaded that a new ordinance will bring a better approach.

Our law has changed, but all the people involved are the same. One may contend that Whitewater was hamstrung without adequate ordinances, but ‘broken’ – that’s my characterization from months ago — suggests problems far greater than a gap in an ordinance.

If I thought that we could legislate our way out of these problems, then I might favor additional legislation. I have no confidence in that approach.

Events in Whitewater make me more than skeptical – I have no confidence that additional ordinances, amendments to ordinances, or administrative proposals will do us any good.

I simply don’t believe, so to speak.

A remedy is possible, but I contend that a different one is needed. Our experiences are too checkered to ask for anything other than new beginning with how our city sees, understands, and enforces existing ordinances.

We have failed for reasons more serious than lack of an adequate ordinance, however sincere the proposal may be. We can recover, but our failings are an indictment of current municipal practices and practitioners, not of inadequate ordinances.

City, Police

Common Council’s June 3rd Meeting: The PFC

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There were a few topics at the June 3rd Common Council meeting that stood out. In this post, I’ll consider an aspect of the proposal to place a Common Council member on the Police and Fire Commission.

(I have not taken a position on whether I support this idea. There’s time enough to consider the proposal’s merits, as has not been approved, and would not take effect for a year, in any event.)

Instead, let me address the concerns of a citizen, resident, former police officer, and politician on the Walworth County Board of Supervisors who worried about micromanagement of the Whitewater Police Department should a Council member sit on the PFC.

Are you kidding?

I should create a category called “Are You Kidding?” or “Inapt Platitudes” for concerns as misplaced as the idea that the Whitewater Police Department’s leadership might suffer from micromanagement.

The Whitewater Police Department suffers from a lack of any reasonable, accountable management.

One cannot micromanage that department unless one first manages it. As they are managed so poorly they might as well have no management, one may rest assured that micromanagement is an unlikely risk.

It would be better to save a cut-and-paste platitude like ‘lets-not-micromanage’ for an occasion where it has more than a snowball’s chance in hell of being applicable.

City

City of Oshkosh Selects Mark Rohloff as City Manager

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Over at the Oshkosh Northwestern, there’s a story just posted that the City of Oshkosh has offered the city manager’s post to Mark Rohloff of Grand Chute.

(Current Whitewater City Manager Kevin Brunner had been a candidate for the Oshkosh position.)

Crystal Lindell of the paper reports that Rohloff was the only candidate to receive a second interview.

(There might, of course, still be a snag in details that would prevent Rohloff’s taking office. That seems, however, improbable.)

It’s great reporting from Lindell to live-blog the Oshkosh deliberations at her blog, Northwestern Notes. She also has a fine sense of humor, as she notes that she’s paid “to sit through six-hour city government meetings and then create interesting leads about the three-hour debate on TIF districts.”

She deserves acknowledgment for her solid work.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread: June 6, 2008

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There are no public meetings scheduled in Whitewater today.

In our schools, we have a an all-school picnic at Lincoln School, 6th grade yacht races at the aquatic center, and at 7 p.m. this evening, we have 8th grade recognition at the Middle School.

I have several posts to put up over the weekend: two (or three) on the latest council meeting, thoughts on the city over the last few years, and the return on Register Watch.

City, Police

Ed Burns at Reason on “30 Years of Failure”

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Over at Reason, there’s an interview with Ed Burns, the co-creator of HBO’s The Wire. The Wire was an account, for five seasons, of criminal justice in Baltimore.

The administration of justice is seldom depicted accurately, and in any event, Whitewater is almost nothing like Baltimore, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, or New Orleans.

Burns was a former narcotics officer in Baltimore for years before taking his ideas to television. The interview with Reason is interesting for the points that Burns raises about policing, the drug war, and criminal justice.

1. Burns describes himself as “Liberal. Liberal to radical.” His disappointment with the criminal justice system made him this way, by his account. I would not describe myself as liberal or radical (unless one considers Goldwater radical). There are others, some in Whitewater, who wouldn’t understand these distinctions anyway.

2. Burns describes and contrasts ‘community policing,’ with ‘broken window’ enforcement, and ‘enforcement by numbers [of arrests, etc.].’ (Burns calls ‘broken window’ policing – to issue citations to people for small infractions to maintain order – as a ‘trick’. He doesn’t say why he considers it a trick, but most likely it’s because even proponents admit that broken window policing produces little or no reduction in actual crime rates.)

3. There is no mention – at all – of the officer as warrior. It’s the discredited notion that police officers are a like a warrior vanguard within the community, at battle with crime and criminals.

The lack of reference to the notion of the officer as warrior is telling, because Burns is a self-described ‘radical’ who’s willing to criticize existing practices. Yet, he doesn’t even mention the officer as warrior. ’

It’s because almost no one would hold to that model.

The exception is Whitewater: the WPD police newsletter, only a few years ago, touted the officer as warrior perspective as worth considering.

Let me suggest other topics, just as contemporary and useful, for our chief’s column: “Indentured Servitude as a Model for Reducing Labor Costs” or perhaps, “Feudalism: It’s Good for You!”

(There is another reason that no one sensible mentions the officer as warrior model – in the event of a lawsuit against a department, statements in support of officers as ‘warriors’ are just fuel for embarrassing questions at deposition and trial.)

For more on the officer as warrior, see my post from December entitled, “The Force We Need.”

4. Add the view of the ‘officer as warrior’ to the other three, and you have four ways to look at policing. Three of them are sometimes compatible (warrior, broken window, and numbers), but one is not: community policing is incompatible with the others.

True community policing, shifts a focus away from numbers counts, broken window enforcement, or views of the officer as a warrior.

5. If you have a person who simultaneously contends that one can advance community policing and the role of the officer as warrior, then you have someone who could erroneously, and ridiculously, combine any two ideas together: Marxism and the free market, Nixon and Kennedy, dogs and cats, etc.

As a policy or theory, holding to both community policing and the role of the officer as warrior is nonsense. As a rhetorical device for a department, the officer as warrior view plays an internal, self-aggrandizing role, while claims of community policing play an external, public relations role.

The self-flattery and separation of the officer from the community present in the officer as warrior perspective is about the worst model that a contemporary community could adopt. Officers and officials are – and should see themselves as – of, from, and for the communities they serve.

There is no special, separate administrative or guardian class in America, and when there is, we’ll be America no longer.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread: June 5, 2008

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Good morning, Whitewater

There are no municipal public meetings scheduled in the city today. Rand would be happy.

Today offers up sixth grade yacht construction in our schools. Rand would probably be happy with that, too, on the theory that if you are to do something public, ‘yacht’ construction is about as good as anything.

The National Weather Service predicts an even chance of thunderstorms with a high in the mid eighties. The Farmers’ Almanac awkwardly says that today will be “wet.”

Uncategorized

Update on “Local Incumbency”

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On Monday, I published a post on local politics entitled, “Local Incumbency.”

The post was a brief — too brief, I think — stab at the idea (well-circulated long ago) that politicians, despite ideological rhetoric, tend toward self-interest. There’s a school of economics and political thought — public choice theory — that admirably sets out the case. I think that it’s generally how politics devolves (or settles). That’s why a city of incumbent progressives, or opportunity conservatives, act self-interestedly despite more noble (and genuine) intentions.

I’ll post more along these lines in the weeks ahead.

It does not mean, though, that everything is the same between left and right. A different sort of politician might have drawn the line — especially initially — at school or city spending.

Although I have not written on school district finances, I have called for a reduction in the city budget. In the months ahead, I will post on the school district with ideas to offer alternative teaching methods, that would cost no more (and perhaps less) than existing approaches while advancing substantive learning and increasing parental choice.

I want to set out the case that core success can come from a change in approach, and that we can achieve significant gains without additional, incremental spending. I am intrigued by how changes in approach — outside the conventions of teachers and administrators – can bring gains.

Afterward, I may tackle district budget issues, but I will start in these next months with suggestions for substantive, alternative approaches that cost no more.

On the municipal side, I did propose a few changes in the budget last year, but looking back I am surprised at how modest my suggestions were. I am sure they seemed extreme to a few, but they were only a brief outline for a slight reduction in taxation and spending. I will follow this year’s budget debate more closely, and propose a significantly more comprehensive course.

I would be the last person to expect the city to follow that course, but there is much to say about what a libertarian-oriented budget, so to speak, would look like. It would offer more, in my eyes, especially in an ailing local, state, and national economy, than conventional alternatives.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread: June 4th, 2008

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Good morning, Whitewater

There are no municipal public meetings scheduled in the city today. Civil society needs neither government calendar nor agenda — it’s ours freely to shape and enjoy.

At the high school , there are three meetings today. At 6 p.m., there is a model U.N. meeting. At 7 p.m., in the auditorium, there is an ELL (English Language Learners) awards program. Also at 7 p.m., there is a Future Farmers of America meeting.

The National Weather Service predicts that today offers a likelihood of thunderstorms with a high in the upper sixties. The Farmers’ Almanac awkwardly says that today will be “wet, especially for the Great Lakes.” They mean the area around the Great Lakes, of course. They’re also concerned about possible tornadoes for Illinois and Indiana.

On this date in 1861, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society, the “First Recorded Kidney Removal Occurs.” The WHS relates that “on this date Dr. Erastus B. Wolcott, a Milwaukee surgeon, performed the first recorded removal of a diseased kidney.” I do not know if they mean in Wisconsin, in America, or in history. If it’s in history, then the operation would be a milestone, albeit overdue in human experience.

Review

Reading List: Liberal Fascism

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I’ve added a reading list to the right side of my website. I have three books on my list – Liberal Fascism (finished), The Improving State of the World (now reading), and Nobodies (next in line).

The list is a website plug in called ‘Now Reading’ and is the work of a college student from England. (Finding the plug in would not have been possible without a global economy – a clever person in England can offer programs for a donation from people he would otherwise never meet.)

I have a brief review of Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg’s indictment of the American progressive movement, and its left-leaning progeny, as a fascism of the left. Clicking the link for Liberal Fascism on the right side of this page leads to more information about the book, and my brief review.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread: June 3, 2008

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Good morning, Whitewater

There is a Common Council meeting tonight at 6:30 p.m. Published agenda topics include the following:

Amending the municipal code to allow three cars to part in the front or side yard of a home (instead of two cars as currently),

Amending the municipal code concerning limitations on the the number of residents in a non-family household.

The National Weather Service predicts that today will bring a fifty percent chance of thunderstorms with a high of 65 degrees. The Farmers’ Almanac says that today will be fair and pleasant.

The Wisconsin Historical Society reports that on this date in 1911, Ellen Corby, TV’s Grandma Walton, was born.

She was born in Racine, Wisconsin, and was best known for her role in the Waltons. Decades earlier, though, she was nominated for (but did not win) a best supporting actress Oscar for her role in 1948’s I Remember Mama.

City

Local Incumbency

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I’ve pondered before why progressives in Whitewater do well in big-issues elections (president, governor, referenda), but show no similar strength at the local level. Someone wrote back and suggested that at the local level, perhaps maintaining incumbency meant more to most politicians than ideology.

That may well be the reason, but if so, then it suggests a limit to progressives’ gains in Whitewater. They may win on national and state votes (as I am sure they will this fall when Whitewater will choose Sen. Obama over Sen. McCain), but their views have less local traction.

What does it say, too, about progressives’ views that in purely local matters, they look like any other self-preserving office holder? In the end, if they aren’t expressing a local alternative, is being on the left in Whitewater little more than voting on CNN headline issues (however important), and offering no distinctive, local political position?

(The same could be said in Whitewater if, for example, ‘opportunity conservatives’ — those in the tradition of former U.S. representative and VP nominee Jack Kemp — were ascendant. They’re not, and more traditional, less growth-oriented conservatives have eclipsed in them in GOP. Progressives are the more relevant case simply because they’ve had a string of successes carrying Whitewater on state and national races.)

If one were to look at local officeholders who would describe themselves as liberals or progressives, I don’t think one would see a different, substantive take on local policy. More likely, I think they’d seem like other office holders on the center or right. If ‘think globally, but act locally’ is a progressive saying, then I’m not sure it’s distinctive in town.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread: June 2, 2008

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Good morning, Whitewater

There are three municipal public meetings scheduled in the city today. At noon, there will be a Seniors in the Park senior forum at 504 W. Starin. At 5 p.m., there will be a Park and Rec Board meeting. Later, at 6:30 p.m., there will be a Hispanic Outreach Information Seminar at the Cravath Lakefront Building. Published agenda topics include the following:

City of Whitewater new parking permits, City of Whitewater events and services, consequences for driving without a Wisconsin driver’s license, what to do if the police stop you, domestic violence, information to aid with the guidance of your children, session for questions, suggestions and answers.

It is a singular choice of topics.

The National Weather Service predicts that today will mostly sunny with a high of 83 degrees. The Farmers’ Almanac says that today will be fair and pleasant. That’s a vague prediction from a long-range plan that could easily have been written over a few beers at 2 a.m.

The Wisconsin Historical Society reports that on this date in 1911, Wisconsin Supreme Court chief justice Edward G Ryan was honored. This must be a slow day in our history, because Ryan’s biography is unimpressive, including the observation that he was “irascible and over-sensitive” and “frequently at odds with his colleagues.”