FREE WHITEWATER

City, Press

A Normal Perspective Would Help Us All

by  • 

In most cities and towns, a few organizations and institutions play the role of community watchdog. Whitewater has no one who plays that role, as the Whitewater Register — our hometown paper — doesn’t behave like a community watchdog.

In other towns nearby, the newspapers are willing to ask questions of elected and appointed officials. Consider the recent stories in the Janesville Gazette about whether a hockey coach’s contract should be renewed (after allegations that he was excessively harsh toward school-age players). Asking questions like that is merely one of the roles that the Gazette plays, and there are few people in Janesville who are surprised, and surely many who are grateful, that there’s a daily outlet that greets decisions with healthy scrutiny.

We have nothing like that in Whitewater, and the idea of it would be offensive, shocking, and almost unthinkable here. The longer we have gone without it, the more arrogant our municipal workers have become, and the more thin-skinned, too. In Whitewater, even ordinary questions are greeted as presumptuous, as lacking in civic-mindedness.

On the contrary, many healthy communities of our size, and even smaller (like Fort Atkinson), are not so hypersensitive to criticism. A community like ours becomes stultifying quickly, and will not accept reform-minded suggestions. The most typical –and vulgar — reaction is to claim that “if you don’t like it here, why don’t you leave?” Here’s what that really means: “To be here, you have to agree with me, and think like me, and be like me.”

We have no reason to accept a definition of civic-mindedness that implies there is only one right way to think or act, and that any criticism of municipal actions is wrong. Whitewater should be remembered as someplace more than a small town where the First Amendment goes to die, or play dead.

I, and others, will not leave: we will work to offer honest suggestions for a better, FREE WHITEWATER.

City, Free Markets

“White, Non-Minority?”

by  • 

I believe strongly in growth for Whitewater, and in the the importance of attracting new businesses to our city.

The Whitewater Community Development Authority is part of that effort. Here is how the Community Development authority describes itself, from its website:

The Whitewater CDA is a Housing and Community Development Authority formed in 1983 by the City of Whitewater under Wisconsin State Statute 66.1335. It has a seven-member board appointed by the Common Council, and two full-time employees. Although technically a part of the city government, the CDA operates with a great deal of autonomy. Major decisions by the CDA Board must be ratified by the Common Council.

To attract businesses to our city, it makes sense to post information about Whitewater on a website, so that prospective business owners can learn more about our community. So far, so good.

What’s more than a bit troubling is how they describe our potential workforce, on the Community Development page entitled, “Work Force.” Here’s what it says, as of this evening, May 31st:

Our workforce is listed as “white, non-minority 95%.”

I have a few quick questions:

1. Why would the Community Development Authority describe our workforce as “white, non-minority” when the law itself forbids hiring based on racial preference?

2. Who are “non-minorities?” Would Jews, or Mormons, for example, be considered minorities?

3. If the goal were diversity in hiring, why not directly mention by group those who are “non-white, minority” rather than emphasize whites, and leave others out by express exclusion?

4. Who actually wrote this description of our workforce?

5. From the point of view of the free market, why would race matter? Education, or experience in previous jobs, of course. But race?

I can find no similar statistics (‘white, non-minority’) listed for neighboring Fort Atkinson’s website, and that’s unsurprising: the Whitewater Community Development description of our workforce speaks for itself, and its authors, and none too well.

Police, Press

The Week on Star Packaging Raid

by  • 

Mike Heine of The Week has a good summary of developments in the Star Packaging raid, where the Whitewater police and other agencies, acted against Mexican workers, and the American owner of the business, leading to criminal charges against both.

Here’s Heine’s summary of the raid:

Whitewater businessman Allen L. Petrie, owner of Star Packaging, is charged with six counts of conspiracy to commit identity theft, a felony. He is accused of employing Mexican immigrants who allegedly used stolen or made up identities. An Aug. 8 Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at the company led to the arrest of 25 suspected undocumented immigrants.

Heine quotes Assistant District Attorney Diane Donohoo, from an earlier interview, on the legal basis for charges against Petrie:

“Employers cannot knowingly employ people, continue to have them on staff or continue to facilitate their pay when they know that that person is using someone else’s Social Security number,” Donohoo said in an earlier interview.

Defense Attorney Stephen Glynn notes that the use of supposed identity theft charges in this case is unusual:

“This is one of these situations in which the state is using a statute that, I think, probably wasn’t too much to be used in this fashion,” Glynn said. “The typical use of identity theft (law) is somebody getting a copy of someone else’s charge card and securing property or goods or services on the bases of using it. That’s what most people have in mind. They don’t have in mind someone getting a job that the other’s aren’t seeking.”

There is one powerful consequence of plowing ahead with identity theft charges: it allows the Whitewater police and their supporters to use — and misuse — fear of identity theft to shield them from accusations that the raid targeted Mexicans. The raid has generated bad press, much to the surprise of the mostly town-bred elite. Repeating — over and over — that the raid was about identity theft distracts many people from thinking about the raid more seriously.

Police, Press

Whitewater Register’s Fawning Story on Police Day

by  • 

The Whitewater Register proudly proclaims that it’s in its 151st year, implying a place in our history, and entitlement to our respect, its present quality could never justify. Under editor Carrie Dampier, the Register is a fawning, uncritical paper. There’s no solid journalism in the Register, just laughable cheerleading, and ignorance of the challenges that face our community.

The May 24th, below-the-fold story on Police Day is an example — one of many — of cheerleading that descends to self-parody. Consider Dampier’s title, referring to the Whitewater Police Department, “What would we do without them?” No solid newspaper, of whatever size, and whatever politics, would run a fawning headline like that. Even the strongest, sensible editorial supporters of a police department would shy away from a headline that slips from praise to hero-worship.

No one questions that Whitewater needs a police force, but no rational person believes that the Whitewater police are the only thing holding the city together. If conditions are so bad that only the Whitewater police stand between us and ruin, then conditions are far worse than I had imagined. (And, if life is that precarious, then our police force has significantly exaggerated their own crime-fighting, and have concealed from us the threats that create our supposed dependency upon them.)

We are a small, common town, hardly beset by crime, and if our police force changed size by a few officers, we would all go on just as well. If a few officers were to go on vacation, or leave permanently, few of our fellow citizens — beyond the Municipal Building — would notice the difference. It’s false, but no doubt self-satisfying, for the occupants of our municipal offices to believe that this small town depends on them. On the contrary, the workers in our several municipal departments depend on the fourteen thousand residents of our city.

The body of the Register story is worse even than the headline. Dampier begins, as many high school term papers do, with an elegiac quotation. She quotes Ambrose Redman on courage: “Courage is not the absence of fear…but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” I have no idea if Dampier read this in the original, or found it from a book of quotations. It scarcely matters, because she then tells us that “Redman may not have been thinking of police officers when he wrote that…” but in her mind it “certainly epitomizes their calling.” If the police are not Redman’s intended reference, why not find an apt quotation?

(For all the praise she aims to muster, her theology’s bad: police officers have a vocation, but they do not have a calling. It’s fine to respect their work, but it is not a calling.)

Dampier goes on to note that “the WPD lost two exceptional officers to retirement in the last year in Dave Haberman and Larry Meyer, both of whom were honored last Friday.” Leaving aside Haberman, how exactly was Meyer exceptional? Dampier might have written about published reports in the Janesville Gazette on accusations of destroying evidence, or in The Week on attorneys’ claims that Meyer and the WPD were targeting Mexican immigrants. The charges are noteworthy. If (as I suppose) Dampier rejects them, why not at least mention and rebut them?

What will we do without Meyer? Whitewater will have a better reputation and police force. That better day would start sooner if the Register started publishing like a worthy newspaper rather than like a press spokesman for a city department.

Press

The Whitewater Register: Overview

by  • 

Whitewater has its own paper, the seventy-five-cents-a-copy Whitewater Register. Although it’s merely one part of the Southern Lakes Newspapers chain, the Register still lays claim to being Whitewater’s home paper. The Register‘s banner proudly proclaims that the paper is in its 151st year, proof that a century and a half of effort sometimes comes to nothing.

Consider the recent, May 24th edition. Although the newspaper comes in two principal section (plus numerous inserts), only the first section, pages 1 through 16, has news about Whitewater. The second section, entitled “Marketplace,” does not even purport to focus on Whitewater; the section’s subheading is “Southern Lakes Newspapers,” and most of the ads are for other communities in Walworth County.

If we return to the principal section, however, we’ll find that the lead story is hardly news unique to Whitewater; it’s a dull, generic story about cicadas, with an accompanying story on cicada recipes. The story could run in any small town paper in the Southern Lakes chain, offering nothing of unique interest to Whitewater. (Sleep easy: there’s nothing reported to suggest that the cicadas in Whitewater will be louder, or more prevalent, than in nearby towns.)

Carrie Dampier has two other front-page stories, a right column story on roadwork along our east side, and — below the fold — a story on Police Day in Whitewater. (I’ll post about Dampier’s Police Day story tomorrow, because at least it is unique; it’s a laughably bad, poorly written story.) The second part of main paper includes sports stories from Whitewater.

If you want news — school, city, town, community events, local sports — the Whitewater Banner is a much better choice. I believe that Jim Stewart’s Banner only took off last fall, but already it offers more Whitewater information — delivered more quickly — than the 151 year-old Whitewater Register. The Register‘s website is stale, and not worth a visit. I wouldn’t expect the Whitewater Banner to report any critical, detailed stories on the challenges in Whitewater, but then again, one doesn’t find that in the Register, anyway. Stewart delivers more information on the city, more quickly, than the Register, by leaps and bounds.

Merchants in our city understand how ineffectual the Register has become, as they’re unwilling to waste their money advertising in its principal pages. Of the more than sixty principal ads in the main section of the May 24th Register, a majority are for businesses located outside Whitewater. Many of our local businesses shun the Register, whose pages are crowded with advertisements for businesses in Fort Atkinson, Eagle, Palmyra, and Burlington, among other towns. Our local businesses are free to advertise in the Register; if they choose not to do so, it’s because they recognize that their advertising budgets are better spent elsewhere. If the Register were a better, more compelling paper for Whitewater, then it would attract more local advertising. The failure is not of our local businesses, but is the failure of the self-professed local paper that’s increasingly irrelevant to them.

Tomorrow: An example of how the Whitewater Register is so uncritically fawning that it fails our community.

City, Press

The Press Covering Whitewater

by  • 

We are a small town, without a good newspaper published within the city limits. There are some fine papers that provide limited coverage of Whitewater, but the city lacks a solid, responsible paper of its own. The Whitewater Register — part of a newspaper consortium — is sickeningly uncritical of real problems in the city, and as poorly written as a high school newspaper. I’ll devote another post to a discussion of the Register, but for now, let me describe the remaining papers that cover Whitewater.

The Daily Jefferson County Union. As its name suggests, it’s a daily paper. It’s not far away, and not bad. Still, the Daily Union has Fort Atkinson, Jefferson, and other cities to cover, so Whitewater will never dominate its pages. It offers a fair amount of stories about Whitewater, though, and it’s a paper with a moderately developed website.

The Janesville Gazette. The Gazette is farther away, but also bigger, than the Daily Union. One of the few newspapers willing to publish honestly about some of the problems in Whitewater, most recently the disgraceful matter of our municipal judge. It says much about how cautious — almost cowardly — press coverage of Whitewater is that the Gazette was nearly alone in publishing public information about criminal charges against Steve Spear. The Gazette also has a good website (free registration required), but as with the Daily Union, Whitewater will never be the paper’s main focus.

The Week. The Week focuses on Walworth County, and not merely Whitewater, but fortunately it’s a paper, and accompanying website, willing to report on a story without boosterism. Coverage of the Whitewater Police Department in the Star Packaging raid was even-handed, with the Week at least willing to quote opinions critical of police conduct.

The Whitewater Banner. Jim Stewart’s online ‘news and sports’ site. It’s not a site for journalism — I would be surprised to find any critical reporting — but it’s probably the best listing of happenings in town. Stewart’s not a journalist, and his site is as much community calendar as anything. It’s an online print publication, but it would be unfair and misguided to hold it to the same standard as as an established newspaper. For its role as a community calendar and bulletin board, it’s better than the websites of the Daily Union, Gazette, or Week. (Again, I will address the Register later, but I will note quickly that the Whitewater Register‘s website is stale, and amateurish.)

City

Fundamental Challenges Facing Whitewater

by  • 

One must wonder, as perhaps you do, what would inspire this website. Our beautiful city deserves better than it has received from its government, civic organizations, and long-time residents. We are over fourteen thousand in number, but a few hundred short-sighted, self-interested citizens have led others astray, and by doing so leave Whitewater crippled.

Our municipal government is narrow-minded, with a poor grasp of economics, and clings to burdensome regulations that make Whitewater unattractive to businesses. We gain housing, but lose industry: a recipe for perpetual second-class status. Our economic development is less about a free market economy than about any number of empty municipal gestures. We could hang birdhouses, or painted chairs and wooden fish, from our lampposts forever and still businesses would close and go elsewhere.

The recent completion of a roadway Bypass (could it have been any more aptly but ominously named than ‘bypass?’) around Whitewater diverts customers from our merchants. (A special note to every resident who looked forward to the competition of the Bypass to reduce traffic along Main Street: you got what you wanted, but lost traffic doesn’t put food on anyone’s table.)

Our police force is arrogant, of limited skill and intellect, but of limitless self-congratulatory rhetoric.

Our police chief, who never leaves but to return again, is an apologist for nearly all police actions, however embarrassing, and will invariably defend the force he heads rather than acknowledge and correct their deficiencies.

We are in the grip of a small, obstinate, and poorly educated local elite, that often would rather see the city sink under their control rather than for it to prosper free from their influence.

It is a local, town-bred elite that dislikes its own university campus, and resents the student population (a population than contributes mightily to keeping this city afloat).

It is a local, town-bred elite that dislikes, and fears, the many Mexican Americans in our community, and ignores, or distorts, the many positive contribution Mexican American workers make in our community.

We are burdened with a local newspaper, the Whitewater Register, that is hardly a true local paper, reports little news, and investigates almost nothing.

We have a municipal judge who is a vulgar laughingstock (and what Whitewater High School student does not have a repertoire of jokes about him?). He was re-elected because some short-sighted local residents would rather defend someone they perceive as one of their own than admit that his reputation is one of embarrassment and disgrace to our community.

Our public school administrator many be the worst leader the Whitewater district has ever had: bland, mediocre, but autocratic. Of all the many combinations that one might have (smart or dull, empowering or controlling), she has the worst combination: dull and controlling.

And yet…and yet…this will someday be a FREE WHITEWATER, more prosperous, fair, and pleasant. Even these several challenges will be overcome, to the benefit of our community.

School District

Hiring Committees in the Whitewater Unified School District.

by  • 

Under District Administrator Leslie Steinhaus, the public school hires teachers — or principals — through an interview panel. That’s common; many public bodies, and private companies, conduct interviews through a panel with several interviewers.

You may be surprised to learn, however, that an interview panel for teachers or principals might include, for example, a building custodian. I am the first to believe that all people are created equal; I reject, however, the idea that a good way to hire a teacher or principal is to ask the custodian’s opinion. That’s egalitarianism at the expense of merit. It would be false to contend that the custodian is an able judge of a teacher’s credentials or teaching method. It should be unnecessary to use a custodian to get a ‘layperson’s’ perspective on a candidate’s demeanor, as teachers and principals on the interview panel should possess the ordinary intuition to do so.